“I trust you more than any other man on this planet.” He might be the only man on the planet she did trust. He had to know that.
“It will make it better for you,” he explained.
“How do you know?” she demanded. “Have you had sex with many virgins?”
She found that possibility seriously disturbing.
“None,” he practically snarled as he lifted her up and set her in the bathtub with surprisingly gentle movements, considering his apparent irritation. “I read up on it.”
“Because you’re a planner.”
“Yes.” He still sounded like a man ready to take someone’s head off.
“Why are you mad?” she asked plaintively.
“I’m not angry!”
“You’re snarling at me.”
“I’m turned on.” The low growl rumbled through her.
“So am I. The bath was your idea!”
“For your benefit.”
Oh, man. “I’m sorry. This isn’t easy for you, is it?”
“Waiting?” He stepped into the bath behind her, pulling her into his lap, his hands settling on her possessively. “No, my sexy little redhead, it is not easy, but you are worth it.”
Another white-knight moment. “If you aren’t careful, you’re going to have me believing in fairy tales.”
His only answer was one languid touch to her thigh. That caress was followed by another and another and another, all over her body and each touch accompanied by the ever-present presence of his hardness pressed against the small of her back.
Her nipples were aching and sensitive, her clitoris vibrating with pleasure, and her entire body melted over his by the time his hands stilled their insidious movements.
There were no words left in her brain when he drained the tub and lifted her back to the tile floor. They dried off in silence, bodies aware and straining toward each other.
She and Vik stripped the bedding back without acknowledging that was what they were going to do, and then together they fell to the mattress covered by the single sheet.
The lovemaking was everything she had ever dreamed it would be, his sex filling her so deeply she felt like they’d really bonded into one entity in that moment.
There was still some pain, but nothing stabbing and dark, and the pleasure pushed any lingering discomfort to the bottom register of Maddie’s awareness.
This time when she climaxed, she screamed until her throat protested the strain. Vik grew impossibly hard inside her, his body going rigid just before he shouted his own release in the form of a single word.
“Mine.”
She didn’t even think about birth control until the next morning.
* * *
Viktor came to awareness in the dark, two things at the forefront of his mind. The woman he’d craved for years was now in his arms and they hadn’t used birth control the first time they made love.
The former gave him satisfaction and the latter a twinge of regret. In a perfect world, they would have a couple years of marriage to enjoy their time together as a couple, to solidify their relationship.
In the real world, Madison had been forced into marriage by the actions of that bastard who had called himself her friend, and Viktor’s grandparents were getting on in years. If his children were to have the time to enjoy them as Viktor had, they would have to come along sooner than later.
Viktor had taken advantage of Timwater’s idiocy. He could deal with the consequences of other realities, too.
For him, family was everything.
It was the reason he’d been driven to succeed. The one thing that drove him most intensely was the desire to not only make his grandparents proud, but to also provide for his own family as his own father had not done.
Viktor had determined early in his life never to walk a single step in his own father’s shoes.
When he’d first met Jeremy Archer, Viktor had believed he’d found the mentor he sought. And he had, but he had also come to the realization that as wrapped up in AIH as Jeremy was, his vision was still too limited.
Both in a business sense and when it came to family.
Jeremy had never understood that all of AIH’s success meant nothing in the face of his spectacular failure with his daughter.
Madison was Viktor’s match in every way. They were not just sexually compatible, they were combustible. Just as he’d known they would be.
But equally important, they were friends with compatible, if very different, goals for the future.
Viktor felt an unfamiliar sense of having dodged a bullet with Maxwell Black’s presence in the conference room that morning. Jeremy bringing in Maxwell—of all men—had precipitated actions on Viktor’s part he hadn’t intended to take until later.
But he couldn’t complain about the outcome.