“Christ, you look stunning like this. Wet and panting. Bare and begging.”

My legs wrapped tighter around his waist as he increased his speed. His hand dove between us, rubbing my tender, bitten clit. “I want to come, esclave. I want to fucking come so bad inside you.”

I flinched as intensity became my enemy.

Discomfort flared in my shoulders as my back arched for more.

Words were forgotten as Q lost himself in me. I willingly threw away any decorum or rules and chased him into the darkness.

He pinched my pussy, sending me up the final rungs of my release.

“Fuck. Fuck, yes.” His lips pulled back as he jerked into me with short, savage thrusts. His body went taut as he stopped fighting and let go.

The splash of his pleasure inside was the last element I needed to come a second time.

I combusted.

The orgasm thundered into being, webbing on the knife edge of pain, then crescendoing in a shower of sparks. My entire body contracted as I writhed on Q, milking him of everything he had left.

We didn’t speak as we stood there, twitching as the final ripples of our bliss faded. The pool slowly calmed from the tidal splashes we’d created and the little pieces of my soul collided with his, acknowledging that this was the start of something bigger than us.

Q chuckled, still rock hard inside. “If you keep clenching around me, Tess, I might have to fuck you again.”

My smile was lazy and sated. “I wouldn’t say no.”

Shadows entered his gaze as he kissed me softly. “The next time, I won’t hurt you. I won’t bind you, cut you—do anything to make you fear me.”

Before I could tell him I had no intention of letting him do such a thing, he pulled out and spun me around. With the scissors he’d nicked me with, he sliced my yoga band and freed me.

As I rubbed circulation back into my wrists, he kissed my throat. His face etched with confliction and heavy self-loathing. “I love you, Tess. And because of that, I won’t touch you that way again.”

Instead of being content and in love after a soul-deep connection, I felt stranded and alone.

Couldn’t he see I didn’t want him to pull away?

Couldn’t he see he hurt me more saying such things than he ever could with his scissors?

Not giving me a chance to argue, Q swam to the side and climbed out.

He didn’t look back.

LAST NIGHT.

Fuck, I shouldn’t have gotten that drunk. I shouldn’t have come home with frustration in my heart. I had no control over the bastard inside when I did.

I rolled over in bed, drinking in Tess’s sleepy form. Her skin glowed with a mixture of marks and bruises, but as she roused beneath my gaze, her smile was sleepy and sexy as she stretched like a well-petted cat. The two small cuts on her breast and belly mocked me.

I daren’t look between her legs where I’d bitten her hard enough to break her delicate skin.

“Morning.”

I grunted in response, nursing a headache and the awful taste of regret. Swinging my legs out of bed, I massaged my temples. “If I hurt you in the pool, I’m sorry.”

Sheets rustled as she crawled toward me. Her warm nakedness draped over my back as she looped her arms around my chest. Her lips landed on my cheek. “Q…I thought we’d discussed this way before we got married. You can’t hurt me. I have a safe word if it ever gets too much and I trust you to stop if I ever say it.” Her arms banded tighter. “Nothing you did last night was too much. I loved every second of it.”

I did my best to shrug her off, standing naked over her. “And what of the other thing we discussed.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, doing my best to get my wayward emotions under control. “What of that?”

Tess stood on her knees, proudly displaying the body that I’d coveted, claimed, and ultimately couldn’t get pregnant.

Two months.

That was my dirty fucking secret. For two months, I’d slept with my wife, all the while knowing she wasn’t on contraception.

Every time I came inside her, I thought she’d come to me with the shy but happy news.

I begged for that day.

I dreamed of her telling me she carried my baby.

But her period kept fucking coming, renouncing me as a man, proving I didn’t have what it took to knock her up.

She sighed. “I want a child, too. And I’m willing to do what it takes to make that happen.”

A huge gust of relief filled me. Relief that was so fucking opposite to my normal opinion of families and offspring. But with her…everything about me had changed. She’d tamed me but unleashed me. She’d cured me but ruined me. How could I compete with a woman who had the power to kill me if anything ever happened to her?

I paced away, digging at my pounding head. “That’s the fucking thing. I want you pregnant, Tess. I want a child with you. But I hate the thought of you in pain. I already want to slaughter the kid for hurting you in childbirth. If I can’t handle that shit now, how the fuck will I handle it when it happens?”

If it ever happens.

Tess gathered the sheet and scrambled off the bed. The white simplicity looked like a shroud around her delicious shoulders. “Tell me what you want, Q. You can’t have it both ways. You want me pregnant…fine. We’ll work together to make it happen. You don’t want me pregnant? Also, fine. We can adopt or do any other number of things. You just need to be honest about what you need.”

What did I need?

I didn’t fucking know.