“So, let me get this straight. You come home late at night, don’t try to get into bed with me, sleep in a chair, but then also sometimes just get up and watch me?”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t know why?”

“No.”

I crossed my arms over the soft fur of my cloak, looking at him skeptically.

“I’m not sure I buy that, Wylf. You don’t strike me as the sort of stone sky god who doesn’t know his own mind.”

He cocked his head.

“Wylf?”

“Oh.” I hadn’t even realized I’d called him that. “I guess it’s a nickname.” An apt one, too. Sounded just like wolf. The predator prowling through the forest of my life.

“And why did you call me that?”

“I... I don’t know.”

“Are you sure, Torrance?” he asked, a victorious sneer tugging at his mouth. “You don’t strike me as the sort of human who doesn’t know her own mind.”

God fucking damnit.

“I give up,” I said, shaking my head.

Everything in Wylfrael’s face tightened.

“You give up on what?”

I laughed at how quickly he asked the question. So demanding. Maybe I’d even made him anxious.

“All of this!” I said, “This isn’t working and you know it!” I slashed my hand back and forth in the air, gesturing to him then to me. “This... whatever this is. We’re failing. You more than me, I feel inclined to point out,” I added sourly. He was the one who’d been gone basically every day since we’d struck this bargain. Not me.

“I...” His wings flexed, pounding the air as if in exasperation. “I have business. That doesn’t go away just because I’ll marry soon. Though, I acknowledge that my business has taken longer than anticipated.”

“Hold on. You expect me to believe you’re not actively avoiding me?”

“I am not,” Wylfrael replied with instant certainty. “Being away from you is merely a convenient side effect.”

“Convenient side effect!” I sputtered, enraged.

Hoo, boy. This guy knew exactly how to get under my skin.

“You’re not supposed to be happy about the convenience of not being near me! You’re supposed to be my devoted husband, at my beck and call, feeding me fucking bonbons!”

“What in the snows of Sionnach are bonbons? There is no adequate translation,” he grumbled.

“They’re sweets! Delicious sweets! The kinds of sweets that the wives of rich, powerful men eat all day long!”

I didn’t actually know anything about the lives of rich housewives, but that was what I imagined they did.

“Ask Aiko to make them, then. She’s an accomplished cook.”

“That’s not her job!”

“It is precisely her job,” he countered.

“Do you expect her to feed them to me too, then, instead of you?”

This conversation had entered the realm of absurdity and I knew it. But I couldn’t stop myself now. I was on a roll, and I was going right for the throat.

“You have absolutely no idea what you’re doing, do you? You have no idea how to be my husband!”

Wylfrael’s wings sliced through the air in a violent motion. He caught my shoulders in his huge hands and pinned me with a savage gaze.

“Don’t I?” he hissed, and there was a warning in it, just like he’d warned Brekken. “Because all I can think about when I am near you is how wet you were that night. How you sounded when you came for me, and how you clung to me while you did it. All I can think about is being inside you, and,” his voice lowered an entire dangerous octave, “correct me if I’m wrong, bride, but those are exactly the sorts of things a husband should think, are they not?”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re insane?” I breathed, unable to come up with a more coherent response to what he’d said. My mind was whirling, my blood pounding in my head, my breasts, my clit.

“No,” he said, releasing me, “though no one needs to tell me so for me to know it now.” He turned from me, so all I could see was muscled, leather-clad back, star-spun wings, and hair as bright as snow. “You were right when you said I’m a man who knows my own mind. And I know it well enough to know exactly when I lost it.”

“And when was that?” I asked, though I felt I already knew the answer.

“The moment that I found you.”

Neither of us spoke. Finally, I sighed.

“This isn’t working,” I said again, quietly this time.

Wylfrael’s wings twitched in tension, but he didn’t turn around.

“Tell me how to fix it.”

“I don’t think there is any fixing it,” I replied. “It’s going to just be a grin-and-bear-it situation until this is all over.”

“No,” Wylfrael said, turning around to face me once more. “Tell. Me. How. To. Fix. It.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Well, for one thing, you can’t just keep being gone all the time and only coming back when I’m sleeping. That should be obvious.”

“But that does not solve the other part.”

“The other...? Oh,” I trailed off weakly.

The other part where all he can think about is fucking me.

The problem was that he wasn’t the only one. I burned from my ears to my toes when I thought of that night. I’d masturbated thinking of that night. When I couldn’t sleep, before Wylfrael came home, I’d slid my fingers inside myself, trying to replicate the feeling of his hand and imagining what would have happened if I hadn’t told him to stop.

“Alright, I... I have a proposition.”

My heart jackhammered, and somewhere in the back of my head a part of my brain – the sane part – was screaming at me to shut up and shut up now.

“Oh?” said Wylfrael, raising a brow.

No. Don’t say it. Don’t say it!

“Maybe we could... have some sort of relations after all. All within the confines of an agreement, of course.”

Wylfrael’s nostrils flared. His eyes were like laser beams on me.

“What kind of agreement?” he said tensely.

“No penetration,” I said quickly, the sane part of myself coming back, just a little bit. “At least not with your... your...”

“My cock?” he provided in a flat voice.

“Right. Um, yes. Thank you. Very helpful.”

Wylfrael eyed me suspiciously.

“You’ve gone an alarming shade of red, little bride. Do I need to take you inside?”

“No, thank you!” I squeaked. I was actually enjoying the winter air on my hot face. It wasn’t too bitterly cold today. It felt like it was about negative ten degrees Celsius. In the fur cloak, I was downright cozy.

And now that I was making a goddamn sex deal with Wylfrael, I was more than cozy. I was incandescent with embarrassment and tremulous arousal.

“Alright. I will agree to that. Outline the rest of your terms,” Wylfrael snapped, as if eager to get this over with.

Or eager to get started. Dear lord.

My insides curled.

“Um...” I hadn’t thought this through, considering the insane idea had only just popped into my head. I frowned, trying to think of anything else important. You know, the typical things you want to watch out for when you’re coming up with a sexual arrangement in your fake marriage to an alien god. Jesus.

“When I say stop, we stop, no matter what,” I said.

“Of course, I accept that term. It’s a given,” Wylfrael replied. “As I have already demonstrated to you once.”

“I know. I’m just... reiterating.”

“Fine. What else?”

What else is there? No penetrative sex, no going further than I want to...

“No feelings,” I burst out. The last thing I needed was the confusion of my marriage blurring the lines between real and fake. Orgasms were one thing. Love, on the other hand...

“Is that everything?”

“Well, yes. I think so,” I said.

There was one brief flicker of a thought, there, then gone again, as Wylfrael crushed me to him. I struggled to hold on to it, feeling like it was something vitally important, as he breathed against my neck, lighting up every nerve in my body. His hands roamed beneath my cloak, sliding down my waist to grip my ass. When he groaned harshly against my ear, then said my name with something that almost sounded like pain, the thought came rushing back. It crystallized inside me until I could finally grasp it fully.