His heart squeezed up with pain, Alexander took a step back. “I know I hurt you—”
“It’s not what you did, Alexander. All the women you have dated before me, they were all perfect like Kim, without a blemish.” She laid her palm on his mouth and hid her face in his shirt. “If this whole circus with the media has taught me anything, it’s that they will always haunt you, always be hungry for a story about you. They will keep digging, keep making stories. Even if they extinguish every angle of my past, what about our future? I’m someone who will always make mistakes, who can never be perfect. Only one day the disdain will be back in your eyes again, and it will absolutely crush me. If you begin to hate me again, I’ll break, Alexander. And you will, eventually.”
Alexander pulled Olivia up and hugged her to him until neither of them could breathe with the pressure. He wanted to touch her soft curves, lose himself in her until she agreed to anything he asked, but he fought the urge to do that. She trembled in his arms and he pressed a kiss to her shoulder. “I’m not saying everything will be a bed of roses, Liv. There will be days when you will want to kill me as surely as there will be days when I’ll want to tie you up so that you can’t wreak havoc on us. But, your past, that will never bother me. It’s what made you the woman you are today. And it’s that woman I love, strengths and faults.”
A shadow still diluted her smile. “But don’t you want to take this slow, play boyfriend-girlfriend for a little while before—”
“No. I want the whole world to know that you’re my wife, my equal. We’ll learn our way as we go. The most important thing you’ve taught me is that life can’t be lived in a vacuum, that you have to keep taking chances on yourself even if it means you might get hurt. So we’ll fail and we’ll try again. It is the scariest thing I’ve ever wanted to do, but I want to do it with you. I want to laugh with you, take care of you, grow old with you, even if it also means you’ll drive me up the wall every other day.”
She met his gaze, a glimmer of a smile in it. “You really think so?”
He laughed and pushed her back into the bed. He tugged his shirt out of his trousers with hurried movements and slid into the bed next to her. Ignoring her gasp, he pulled her tee up in one movement. Desire was a low hum in his blood as he gazed at her tight-tipped breasts, the indent of her navel and her pink panties with little bows begging to be ripped. He bent his head and licked a wet path around her cute navel. “Yes and you better be prepared. I can’t wait for everyone to know that Olivia Stanton’s generous heart, amazing spirit and her luscious body belong to me and only me,” he said, struggling to hide the possessiveness that bled into his words. The emotion he felt for her choked and terrified him with its strength. One day at a time, like he had told her, one day at a time. “If there’s one thing you should know about this, it’s that there’s no half-ways about this, Liv. I’m never going to let you go, ever.”
Olivia plunged her hands into his hair and pulled his head up, every inch of her writhing with pleasure. The possessiveness in his gaze, in his words, rolled over her skin. She kissed him with an urgency that had her suck and bite his lower lip.
He laughed and stroked her thighs, his fingers inching toward her core, achy and throbbing for his touch. “Not that you have a choice except to agree,” he said, his voice dark and hoarse.
Olivia raised a brow. “No?”
“Not if you want me to do all the wicked things I want to do to you.” His hands parted her legs, stole under her panties and his thumb flicked at the heat between her thighs. She closed her eyes and moaned, pushing herself into his touch. “So is it a yes?”
She opened her eyes, and gazed at him. Love and desire gazed back at her, washing away her doubts. “Yes,” she whispered. He plunged a finger into her core and rubbed at her swollen folds again. Olivia laughed and gave into the sensation piling upon her, whispering the single word over and over again as Alexander took her to ecstasy.