Chapter 22

twenty-two

Nevaeh

I am Mrs. Nevaeh Isabella Volkov. I have the marriage license to prove it.

It sits tucked into the manila envelope on the back seat of Kane’s truck as he speeds home from the show. I’m no longer just wearing one custom made ring, but two. They shimmer in the low light of the dash as we drive the dark highway home.

Kane glances at me, his hand moving over the center console to rest against my thigh. “Have fun tonight?”

Like always when Kane touches me, my heart flips in my chest. But what really flips it is the sight of the black band that sits at the base of his ring finger. His arms and hands, fingertips included are completely tattooed apart from his naked ring finger that now wears a band for me. I love seeing it there as he rests it against the steering wheel, driving us home. The man has marked me in so many ways, changed so much of my life, it’s nice to see him wearing my mark. Displaying the evidence of me in his life.

“We’ll go on tour again in the new year,” he informs me. “I’ll want you to come with me.”

I jolt, surprised. “Are wives allowed to do that?”

“Don’t know what other bands do. Just know we bring our women.”

“Wrenlee and Candace go on tour with you?”

“Yep. Wrenlee the whole time, but Candace comes and goes. Her career is important to her, and Ian understands.”

“What about Wrenlee?”

“She has one more year of school. She studies mainly online now.”

“Oh, really?”

“She wants to do something with books, I think.”

I snort, unable to stop the laughter. “Something with books? Like edit?”

He winks at me. “That’s the one.”

I shake my head, my smile stretching into a yawn. “It’s late. I haven’t had a late night like this in a while.”

His eyes search my face before he signals down his drive—our drive.

I can’t believe I’m married.

I have to tell Mom and Dad as soon as possible. It’s bound to get out, what with Kane being who he is. I don’t want them to realize from some magazine in a grocery store that their daughter is married to a rockstar.

Oh, my God. Not only am I married, but I’m married to a rockstar. Surreal. There’s no other word for it.

Kane parks and meets me on my side, pulling the passenger door open before he takes my hand and helps me out. I don’t need the help, but I’m charmed that he offers. It’s sweet and something the men in my past wouldn’t have done outside of public view.

I love that he does it.

“Mrs. Volkov.” Kane gives me that melt-me smile. “Welcome home.”

My breath hitches when he dips his head and touches his lips to mine softly. This man could kiss me anytime, anywhere, and I think I’d still lose the ability to breathe.

When he pulls back, his forehead still touching mine, I whisper into his chest, “I can’t believe I’m legally married.”

His arms pulse around me. “Believe it, Sunshine.”

I angle back to look at him, confident the strong arms around my waist will hold me in place, keep me from falling. “I have to tell my parents first thing tomorrow—and I really should do it in person.”

He nods. “We can surprise them with a visit.”

Chewing my lip, I nod. He watches me, studying me. I admit, “I’m afraid.”

“That they won’t like me for you?”

My eyes snap to his. “What? No. Of course not.”

“Most parents don’t, Sunshine. I won’t be offended.” Even though he says he won’t be offended, I sense by the note of the words, the emotion he tries to push down inside them, that he would, in fact, be hurt.

“They will love you for me, Kane—because you’re so⁠—”

“What?”

“You care for me. I think, in a real way.”

“I do,” he confirms without hesitation.

“They’ll see that, and they’ll love you for me.”

“Why are you afraid, Nevaeh?”

“Because it’s so sudden—because I know they are going to be so hurt that they weren’t a part of it.”

He touches a hand to my face; his blue eyes hold mine captive in their glacial prison. “They will forgive you.”

“They will.” I nod, because it’s true. Mama and Dad would forgive me for murder, good reason or not. “But they’re still going to be hurt. And that’s going to hurt me.”

The dark that slashes across those eyes at the mention of me being hurt kickstarts my heart. This man is my fake fian—husband—but there’s nothing fake about the intensity he seems to feel for me.

It’s conflicting. Confusing.

I don’t even know where the boundaries rest anymore. I’m not even sure we have any after last night, when the man shattered me in the absolute best orgasm I’ve ever experienced, before fucking my mouth like he was trying to brand me.

My skin heats at the thought, and the slash of dark in Kane’s eyes shifts, swirling into something else. Something more.

“What are you thinking, Sunshine?” His voice is husky.

My body responds to the sound—to the meaning of that pitch as though my soul has lived a thousand lives with this man, and it knows just what it means when he gets that tone.

His eyes track the tip of my tongue as I wet my lips, a shaky breath rattling from my lungs as I lie, “Nothing.”

He makes a noise in the back of his throat that plainly calls my bullshit before he reaches into the back seat for the superficial marriage certificate, (we still have to apply for the real one) flips me bridal style into his arms and carries me over the threshold into our home.

It’s well passed two in the morning, and we have to be up early to surprise my parents, so I say, “We have an early morning. I really should get to bed.”

Kane nods, not bothering with lights as he re-arms the alarm system. Then he takes my hand in his again, leading me to the stairs where our bedrooms sit. Last night, after he thoroughly made me come and I returned the favor, he carried me to his bed where I fell into a deep, sated by orgasm, sleep. When I woke, I didn’t take the time to peek around before I escaped, heart thundering, into my own room before Kane woke and I had to face him in the light of day, naked.

I pause outside my bedroom door, the tug on my hand unquestionable as Kane stops with me.

“What are you doing, Sunshine?”

“Going to bed.”

His eyes darken again, and a slow, dangerous smirk touches his lips. “You’re my wife. You sleep in my bed.”

I swallow hard. “I’m your fake wife.”

I hate reminding him of this. I do it mainly because I need the reminder. This man feels too real to me. Too mine. But I can’t forget that he’s not mine. Not really.

And we have an expiration date.

A single throb in Kane’s jaw precedes his very domineering actions as he twists his body to face mine fully, crowding into my space without ever releasing his hold on my hand. My back connects with the wall outside my bedroom door, and he angles his head to cage me into the prison of his massive body as the hand with the marriage certificate slaps against the wall on the side of my head. The scent of him, like sin and winter and seclusion invades me like a cool breath of awareness surging inside my lungs.

I’m not afraid of him, not even a little, and yet a tremble rolls through the entirety of my body.

His voice is deep, every word sharp as a blade pointed straight at my heart. “I know what you taste like, what your pussy feels like around my tongue as you come. I know that the tension in your body eases when my hands pull you close. I know that the darkness that haunts you in the night shatters to fucking dust when I touch my hand to your skin. You are my wife, Nevaeh Isabella Volkov.” A shiver erupts across my flesh—a thousand tiny needles. “My wife sleeps in my bed. In my arms. Every. Fucking. Night.”

Holy. Wow.

I swallow hard, not able to do anything but nod.

Kane watches me for another long moment, like he’s not sure if he should continue telling me how it is for the sake of ensuring I understand, before he pushes from the wall, pulling me from my room to his. To—ours.

He strolls inside, pulling me behind him before he swings the door closed. It clicks shut with enough of a bang to make me jump.

I’m uneasy. Unsure. This feels different from last night when I’d already been in bed and he’d been in his boxers, joining me.

This feels uncertain and a little uncomfortable. We’re both fully clothed and I’m not sure how to go about making myself comfortable in his space.

Kane drops the manila envelope holding the proof of my insanity onto his dresser before he turns to stare—or glare at me.

Oh boy.

“This is your space now. You’re free to make it yours any way you like.”

I shift on the spot. “This feels awkward.”

His eyes snap to mine. “How?”

I shake my head. “Kane, this is your space. I feel like—like I’m invading.”

“You’re my wife.”

“But—”

“My wife, Nevaeh.”

I swallow hard, but say softly, “Okay, I understand. But see this from my perspective, Kane. Please.”

“I’m listening.” He looks like he’s teetering on frustration.

“I’ve only been in here once before. I have none of my things in here. I don’t even know which side of the bed is supposed to be mine⁠—”

He interrupts, “I sleep closest to the door.”

“Okay.” I press on, “I need a shower, because it’s been a long day and I feel sticky—I have nothing in your bathroom. It’s all in my bathroom, in my bedroom.”

“We’ll move everything tomorrow.”

“Kane.”

“You can use my stuff tonight, Sunshine.” He quirks the first grin since we walked inside. “Think I’ll like you smelling like me.”

I huff. “I’m serious, Kane.”

“So am I.” He crowds me again. Again, my silly heart lurches. “I want me all over you, Nevaeh. Always. So every other man knows who you belong to.” He growls a low, possessive sound against my throat. “So you know who you belong to.”

“And who do you belong to?” My breath hitches. My stomach—it’s in stitches. Knots. All twisted up for this man who isn’t really mine.

“You.”

Oh, heaven help me. This man is going to destroy me.

“Kane,” I protest. I’m not even sure what I’m protesting.

“You’re nervous, so I’m going to take over now, yeah?”

What? I hesitate, asking, “Take over?”

He says nothing as he takes my hand in his again, the tatted skin closing around my unmarked flesh. Then he’s pulling me deeper into his space, into a bathroom done completely in shades of black. But what’s even more astonishing is the wall of glass that looks out over the private master balcony. The view is…

“Wow.”

“It’s privacy glass. No one can see in,” he assures me. I hadn’t even gotten there yet, too concentrated on the view of the shimmering dark sea reflecting the light of the moon over gentle ripples. “But if you don’t want to see out, this button will drop the blinds.”

“I’ve never seen a bathroom like this.” I marvel. “Not even in those home and garden magazines Mama loves.”

He chuckles. “You like it?”

“I love it.” I marvel at the big splash of green that sits outside to the far corner of the balcony. I’m not sure what kind of tree it is, but it’s done well in that pot to have grown that big.

I’m still marveling at the space when I feel Kane’s big presence at my back. My eyes lift to the mirror, and I see him standing behind me, a tremor threatening to split my heart in two—to cleave right through the middle of me.

We’re so completely different. Dark and light. Kane, in his black jeans, black fitted t-shirt, and black ink—me in the simple white sundress I’d worn to marry him in this morning. With the lights dimmed low, the ink on his tan skin and the way he towers over me, he looks massive. Beastly, almost.

I’ve never felt safer.

I sense, deep, deep down, that this man would free his monster to maim for me, would submit to torture to protect me.

Saying nothing, his large hands move to the strings holding the back of my dress in place, freeing them. The material relaxes around my breasts, loosening from my body before his inked hands slip under the straps on my shoulders and he pushes them slowly down my arms, watching in the mirror as the dress falls around my feet in a splash of white against black tile.

I’m in nothing but my white underwear now against the fully dressed, black ink backdrop of him.

It’s strangely erotic. I feel the tug of that need I seem to feel exclusively for this man awakening inside me as he drops my shirt to the floor, his inked hands moving to my belly, palms connecting with goose pebbled flesh, fingers splaying wide. The man is so much bigger than me, his hands cover nearly every inch of my stomach as he tugs me into his wide front, dropping his face to the side of my neck, pressing a molten kiss there.

That tremor intensifies.

He inhales the scent of me, his hands roaming my skin until I feel weak in the knees. It’s as though he senses I’m at a point of melting into a puddle on the floor with my dress, because he unclips my bra and lets it fall to the floor, my breasts bouncing free as I gasp in a sharp breath, watching his blue eyes—the only splash of color in the dark—spark with heat in the mirror. Then his big fingers dip into the lacy band of my panties, slowly pushing them down my hips as he moves to his knees in front of me so I can still see our reflection in the floor to ceiling mirror.

“You’re beautiful.” His voice is rough and raw. A guttural rasp in the otherwise quiet space where only the thud of my heart and the quiet panting of breaths I try to hold in sound.

The way he’s looking up at me, those blue eyes shining with dark heat through ebony lashes has my heart racing. But it’s the way his fingertips curl into my waist, as though it’s physically taxing for him not to yank me down to devour me, that nearly brings me to my knees.

This man is on the edge. He’s clinging to it with his fingertips, clinging to control, for me.

I’ve never been so exposed in my entire life, standing naked before a fully clothed man.

I’ve also never felt so powerful as I do now, because although I’m naked before him—he’s the one on his knees.

“Fucking hell, Nevaeh,” he hisses when my fingertips spear through thick hair. We have to be going on three in the morning now, but I’m not tired at all. I feel as though I could go forever, high on him.

“Are you going to kiss me, husband?”

His eyes flutter closed as he tips his head forward, lips pressing to my navel. “Say it again, wife.”

“Husband,” I gasp when his fingers curl into my hips a moment before he stands, lifting me with him as he crushes his mouth to mine. He kisses me like he’s trying to slip inside me, like his soul is trying to touch mine. As though he’s sating a millennia old hunger, his soul having suffered through a thousand lives before finding the well of mine and drinking deep. Devouring wholly.

If Mama knew how I felt in this moment as Kane kissed me, she’d say everything that lead up to him was fate. All the pain and fear I suffered, the betrayal and abuse—it was the path I had to walk to eventually fall into his arms.

How can something that feels like this—like fate—be fake?

The sound of the water turning on in the shower hardly distracts me from Kane’s kiss. If it wasn’t for the way I slide down the length of his body as he sets me on my feet again, I’d have kept kissing him. Kept clinging to the solid mass of him.

I catch sight of my reflection in the mirror and startle at just how captivatingly dishevelled I look after his kiss. My lips are a brutal red and puffy, swollen from his kiss. My breasts feel impossibly full and heavy, my nipples pointed to him, pleading for touch. I’m almost horrified by the glistening sheen that catches in the light of the reflection between my thighs.

I want him with every inch of my body. It’s written into my flesh as boldly to see as the ink on his own.

He hisses between his teeth as his eyes swoop over me, taking in the same desire-painted woman I see in the mirror. Heat prickles under my skin and I scrape my bottom lip with my teeth on a slow release as I suck in a shuddering breath.

Kane doesn’t speak a word as he grips the back of his shirt to pull it over his head in the way men do. It falls to the floor, exposing an inked chest I want to lick before big hands, deliciously veined, drop to the buckle holding his jeans in place. Leather slides through metal as a shiver slides through every inch of me. The wet between my legs intensifies, and I squeeze my thighs together, swallowing a moan.

His eyes hold mine as he pops the button, drops the zipper and kicks out of his jeans. His black briefs follow quickly behind until we’re both standing naked. My heart trips over one beat, then two, before it quickens in a race to keep pace with my breaths. My hands are trembling at my sides, why, I have no clue.

Maybe it’s because I love the thrill of knowing how much bigger he is than me. How easily he could crush me—destroy me. But I know he won’t. I know that between these powerful hands, I’m safest. Beneath his massive body, I’m most cherished.

One of those powerful hands lifts from where it rests at his side to push into my belly, wordlessly commanding me beneath the spray of deliciously hot water. He follows, closing the glass door behind him as he crowds me in the space. My heart lurches as I watch him come closer, his desire on proud display between his legs.

The things I want to do to this man.

The things I want him to do to me.

The things I’d let him do…

I’m in trouble. Big, big trouble.

Kane doesn’t hesitate to reach for me, pulling my body against his. He holds me tight, his arms banding around my waist like iron as he lifts me, pressing hot kisses to my lips, my face, my throat. I lean back against the cool tile as I wrap my legs around his waist, feeling the swollen tip of him sliding against my core in a way that makes us both suck in air.

“Kane,” I moan as he slides the tip of him through the wet of me, seizing my core.

My heart isn’t far behind as he says, “Whatever you want, beautiful.”

“You.” I kiss him. “God, Kane, you.”

His lips fall against my throat. “You have me, baby.”

“Mmm,” I moan, shifting my hips. I need him closer. I need—him to fill the aching emptiness inside me. He pulls back. I cry out, “Please.”

A deliciously dark chuckle, and then the man lowers to his knees. Before I can protest, he has one leg thrown over his shoulder and his face is between my legs. My head falls back as I gasp in steamy air, a cry spilling from the cavern of my lungs because the man just sucked my clit into his mouth hard. When he pulls away only to return with teeth in the mix, that tremor that wracked my body earlier returns full force.

Something entirely inaudible slips from between my lips, and Kane makes a proud sound as he pushes a hand between my legs, shoving two fingers deep, fucking me with his fingers as he uses tongue and teeth on my clit until I’m a mess of spilled nerves and shattered orgasms in the palm of his hand. As he rises, holding me there against the wall with a hand in my belly, I can’t help but note the angry red of his swollen erection as he towers before me. My stomach tightens, the ache returning with a vengeance even though I’ve just came.

How? Honestly—how?

Before him, I’d thought I’d been the only one capable of getting myself off with the help of my trusty collection of toys. Before him, the only orgasm I’d ever experienced had been at my own hand. And now that I’ve experienced this earth-shattering pleasure from him, I’m not even sure I gave myself an orgasm. Not a real one. Or not the kind of orgasm that Kane gives. Because whatever he gives is full body intense.

“My turn,” I gasp when I’ve regained enough control of my limbs.

Kane shakes his head. “No.”

“Kane.”

“Wife.” The stern way he commands me has a thrill chasing the ache in my core, making it that much more intense. That much more painful. That much more needy.

Well, I’m beginning to think I might like a dominating man, after all.

Still, I tip my chin and meet his eyes with my own. “Husband.”

“Fucking love when you call me that.”

Should the fake husband love it that much when the fake wife calls him such things?

Should the fake wife love it equally as much?

Shoot. Doomed. Trouble. I’m up to my eyeballs in it.

I just don’t give a flying flip anymore.

“It’s only fair,” I insist, even though a tone like his to anyone else would surely warn them off. Have them stepping down.

Kane quirks a grin, telling me just how much he likes it when I push him. “I’ll have mine, Sunshine, I promise. Right now, it’s about you.”

My mouth goes dry. My knees weak.

My pussy? She’s drenched. On fire.

Weeping.

Hell.

Kane reaches for the soap that smells of him, washing me from head to toe. Then he washes himself, all the while his angry red cock juts out hopefully in my direction, teasing me.

When I can take it no more, and the last of the soap drains from his body, I find myself dropping to my knees, gripping his cock as I lean forward to press a kiss to the tip. A hiss of breath rushes between his teeth as Kane jerks, blue eyes fixed on me.

“Wife,” he warns, but I don’t heed it as I open my mouth and take him deep. As deep as I can go.

He groans, a thick and husky sound vibrating into the space, vibrating through me. I don’t stop, give him more. All of me. I pump my mouth on his dick, hitting the back of my throat with his tip over and over before pulling back, swirling my tongue around the tip, and bobbing back down.

A dangerous growl rips from his throat as he pulls me from his dick, pushing me back against the tile with a big paw in my belly. There’s a feral glow in his eyes, a hardness to the set of his jaw that tells me I’ve crossed a line, and I’ve got a different version of my new husband. A version I have yet to meet, but one I sense I’m really going to love. Because this version isn’t just lacking control, he’s abandoned it completely to embrace the dark wild of a desperate hunger I’ve sparked inside him.

I want a taste of that beast.

No, I don’t want a taste. I want to bow and bend to it, owning the monster in the prison of my submission.

What. The. Actual. Hell. Nevaeh?

Big hands find my hips and he slides me up the wall as those feral eyes hold mine. A gasp escapes my lips that he captures in a fierce kiss. “When I come, I’m coming inside my wife, Nevaeh. I’m not coming in your mouth tonight. I’m coming in your perfect pussy as many times as you’ll fucking let me, until you’re so full of my cum, it drips down your thighs.” He inhales a deep lungful of air that gushes from my own. “Fucking love it when you smell like me, baby. I’m going to come inside you so many times, you’ll never question this again. Never question us.”

Wait, what?

“You’re going to know after tonight, after I have you over and over until you can’t think, can’t protest, can’t cope with taking me even one more time, that. You’re. Mine.”

“Wh—”

I don’t have time to finish that, because Kane lines up, and thrusts once. Hard. Filling me until I’m impossibly full of him.

A small scream tears from between my lips, because he’s so big, and even though I’ve never been so wet in my life, I kind of feel as though he might tear me in two.

“Relax, Sunshine,” he coos as he pulls out a fraction only to thrust back inside. My back arches off the wall. Or maybe I’m trying to climb it. Trying to escape. He’s huge.

“Kane.” My nails bite into thick shoulders. “Holy shit.”

“You can take it, baby.” He pulls out and thrusts in again. “Take me. Show me I’m yours.”

The words. They do something to me because not a second after he says them, my body opens for his. He fucks me like a maniac against the wall of the shower. The sound of water-slick skin slapping against tile is the backdrop to the song of messy kisses, breathy groans, and sharp cries. I cling to him as my hips meet him thrust for thrust as he impales me again and again.

When he pulls me from the wall with an arm around my waist, fucking me upright like the beast he is, somehow, I take him even deeper. I ride him even harder, and I think he’s quite possibly awoken a beast inside me too, because I’ve never been this woman. This demanding for—everything.

Big hands fall to the globes of my ass as that thing that’s been building since he split my body in two, cleaved down on my heart with words in the dark, shatters. I come undone around his cock, untethered at the seams of me, the foundation of all I know myself to be rocking in his arms as he pulls me down hard on his cock, rooting himself to the core of me. And then I feel the hot heat of his release spill deep, so deep inside me, pumping me full.

“Mine,” he growls into the side of my neck as I slump in his arms, sated. “You are mine.”