“You know I respect you,” he said gruffly.

“I know,” I murmured, my lips swollen and sensitive.

“Good. Because for the next five seconds, it’s going to look like I don’t.” He squeezed his length and shot his cum all over my face and breasts.

The warm liquid slithered down my cheek. It was thick and slimy but oddly enough, not degrading. All I could feel was more lust, and my womb clenching against nothing, begging for something that my husband had.

I licked the cum from the corner of my lips and looked back up to him, smiling.

He smiled back.

“I think we’re going to get along fine, my dear wife.”

I WOKE UP WITH THE same, terrible craving. A sweet tooth that wouldn’t go away.

I feel like a strawberry milkshake.

No. I need one. Bad.

I rolled from my side of the bed and bumped into hard abs, groaning as I cracked one eye open. Five weeks after our retreat to Lake Michigan, and I’d found out some interesting facts about my new life with Senator Wolfe Keaton. For one thing, I very much enjoyed waking my husband up with a blow job. For another, he thoroughly enjoyed my new role as his human alarm. I kissed my way down his stomach, following the happy trail of dark hair, and lowered his gray sweatpants with his college name on them. Once I had him in my mouth, he stirred awake, but unlike the other times, he flung the blankets off of us and pulled me by my hair, gentle, but firm.

“Not gonna cut it today I’m afraid.” He threw me back on the mattress so I was on all fours, retrieving a condom from the nightstand. I still wasn’t on the pill. I was supposed to book an appointment as soon as we got back from Lake Michigan, but I was embarrassed to go by myself, knowing I’d get checked down there. I didn’t want to go with Ms. Sterling, and knew that Mama and Clara did not believe in contraception, in general. I called Andrea three times, and she said that she’d have loved to come with me, but my father would kill her if she was seen with me in public.

“It’s not personal, Frankie. You know that, right?”

I did. I knew that. Hell, I couldn’t even blame her. I feared my father just as much at some point.

This left me with asking my husband to come with. When I heavily hinted at appreciating his company over dinner that week, he dismissed me and said I could go on my own.

“What if it hurts?” I asked him. He shrugged.

“My being there won’t take away the pain.” It was BS, and he knew it.

The next day, he came back from work with a huge package of condoms and a receipt from Costco.

Wolfe threw the no-sleeping together rule out the window. We still had our clothes and belongings in separate wings of the house, but we always spent the entire night together. Most nights, he came to my room, holding me close after making love to me. But sometimes, especially on days he worked very late, I entered his domain and served him in his bed. We began to attend galas and charity events together. We became that couple. The couple I always thought Angelo and I would be. People watched us with open fascination as we flirted with each other at our dinner table. Wolfe would always have his hand on mine, press a kiss to my lips, and behave like the perfect gentleman that he was—a far cry from the sarcastic, taunting bastard who dragged me to Bishop’s son’s wedding.

I even began to lower my guard when it came to other women. In fact, Senator Keaton showed no interest in any of them even though the offers kept pouring in, including, but not limited to, panties I’d found in our mailbox (Ms. Sterling was outraged and disgusted; she waved the pair of thongs all the way to the trash bin), and endless business cards Wolfe and I found ourselves emptying from his pocket at the end of every night.

Life with Wolfe was good.

Between school, horseback riding with Artemis, my garden, and the piano lessons I resumed, I had very little time to sit and ponder over my father’s next chess move. Mama came over every week, and we gossiped, drank tea, and flipped through fashion magazines, something she enjoyed and I couldn’t stand, but I humored her. My husband never showed any opposition to having Mama or Clara over. In fact, he often invited them to stay longer, and Ms. Sterling and Clara really seemed to hit it off, sharing their love for daytime soap operas and even sneakily trading romance books with each other.

I bumped into Angelo a few times at school after Lake Michigan. He was taking classes, too, though we didn’t have any together. I was pretty sure that could never happen. Not when my husband was so acutely aware of his presence at Northwestern. I felt the need to apologize for what happened the day of my wedding, and he waved it off and told me that it wasn’t my fault. Which might’ve been true but that didn’t make me feel any less guilty. At the same time, I could understand why Wolfe didn’t want Angelo and me to maintain our friendship, seeing as I was silly in love with him when we’d first met. Angelo, however, wasn’t a fan of my husband’s opinion. Every time we met at the cafeteria or local coffee shop, he’d strike up lengthy conversations with me and fill me in on every little detail from my old neighborhood.

I snickered when he told me who got married, who got divorced, and that Emily—“our Emily”—was seeing a Bostonian mobster from New York, Irish, no less.

“Good Lord!” I made a scandalized face. He laughed.

“Thought you should know, in case you were still wondering about me and her, goddess.”

Goddess.

My husband was stoic, powerful, and ruthless. Angelo was sweet and confident and forgiving. They were night and day. Summer and winter. And I was beginning to realize I knew where I belonged—in the storm with Wolfe.

One conscious decision I took in order to maintain my blissful life with my husband was not to open the wooden box. Technically, I needed to do that a long time ago. Right after my wedding to Wolfe. But I only had one note left, and Wolfe turned out to be the rightful owner of my heart with both previous notes. I didn’t want to ruin his perfect strike. Not when I was so close to happiness, I could almost feel it at my fingertips.

Now I was feeling woozy and drowsy, still craving the milkshake, but also dangling my butt in my husband’s face, wanting him to satisfy my other need. Wolfe entered me from behind, sheathed and fully erect.

“My sweet poison, my gorgeous rival.” He kissed the back of my neck as he drove into me from behind. I purred. When he finished inside me, he took off his condom, tied it up and strolled to the bathroom, completely naked. I collapsed on his bed facedown, a heap of warm flesh and lust.

He emerged ten minutes later, freshly shaven, showered, and already getting dressed in a full suit. By the time I rolled on my back to take a look at him, he had a tie on.

“I want a strawberry milkshake.” I pouted.

He frowned, flipping his tie and tying it without even looking at a mirror. “You don’t normally have a sweet tooth.”

“I’m about to get my period.” It was, in fact, a little overdue.

“I’ll have Smithy get you one before I go to work. You good for school? Need a ride?”

I was due to take my driver’s test next week.

“I don’t want Smithy to get me a milkshake. I want you to get me one,” I rose on my knees, walking on them across the bed and toward him. “He always screws my orders up.”

“What’s to screw up in ordering a strawberry milkshake?” Wolfe returned to his bathroom to put some of the delicious-smelling product in his hair. One day, I was going to have a heart attack with how attractive he was and how tantalizing he smelled.

“You’d be surprised,” I lied. Smithy was great. I just had an irrational need to have my husband do something nice for me. Since Artemis, he was careful not to show any signs of romantic gestures.

“I’ll get you your milkshake,” he said in no particular tone, leaving the room.

“Thank you!” I called out.

A moment later, Ms. Sterling, the number-one eavesdropper in North America, popped her head into the room.

“You two are the thickest smart people I know.” She shook her head. I was still lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, basking in my post-orgasm bliss. The sheets were wrapped around my body, but I wasn’t particularly worried about what she saw. She must’ve heard us hundreds of time by now doing what married couples did.

“What do you mean?” I stretched lazily, stifling a yawn.

“You’re pregnant, my sweet, foolish child!”

No.

It’s not happening.

It can’t happen.

Only it can. It must. And it makes so much sense.

The words looped in my head when I paid for my pregnancy test at Walgreens before I went to school. I devoured the strawberry milkshake as if my life depended on it, only to feel terribly nauseous afterwards, and I had a bad feeling, even before I crouched down and peed on the stick in the restrooms of my school, that Ms. Sterling was right. I swore under my breath. I could use Andrea right now. Someone to hold me when it was time to flip that stick and check the results. But Andrea was scared of my dad, and it was time to find and make new friends, outside of The Outfit.

Putting the cap back on the test and setting my phone to count down the minutes, I pressed my forehead against the door. I knew two things for certain:

I didn’t want to be pregnant.

I didn’t want to not be pregnant.

If I were pregnant, I’d have a huge problem on my hands. My husband did not want kids. He told me so himself. Quite a few times, actually. He even went so far as suggesting I’d live in a different place and get a sperm donor if I cared so much for children. Bringing an unwanted baby into the world was immoral, if not completely deranged, considering our circumstances.

But then, oddly, not being with child was also going to leave me disappointed. Because there was excitement and anticipation in finding out that I was carrying Wolfe’s baby. My mind took me to insane places. Places I had no business visiting. What eye color would our child have? They would have dark hair. Slim build, like both of us. But—gray or blue? Tall or short? And would they have his wit and my talent with the piano? Would they be ivory and snow, like my pale skin? Or would they have his rather tan complexion? I wanted to know everything. I resisted the urge to drag my palm over my stomach, imagining it getting swollen and round and perfect, carrying the fruit of our love.