The theatre is full. It’s a charity concert, and I’m scraping the barrel for public events to take Taggie to, because this is fucking opera.
At least the private box—a little closed-in area with just two seats, high at the side of the theatre, looking down on the stage—gives us space and the illusion of privacy.
Taggie looks amazing in a floor-length light-blue dress in a silky material. It’s strapless and reveals her creamy shoulders, and when I saw it, I very nearly vetoed leaving the house.
Except, then I wouldn’t get to touch her.
The show starts, and there’s immediately squawking in Italian. I pretend to listen, but all my attention is on my fake wife.
“What’s it about?” Taggie asks me in a whisper, after a few minutes. She has given up on the little binoculars provided.
“I think it’s going to be a tragic love story,” I mutter back, leaning close. I breathe in the scent of her, and all the singing is suddenly much more bearable. We watch, tilted into each other, arms brushing.
I needed this. Taggie next to me.
“Do you want children?”
My head snaps around.
Taggie is looking up at me questioningly, with her big eyes. That sweet pink bow of a mouth is wet, and my heart is trying to launch out of my body through any location it can. My throat. My ribcage. My stomach.
How does she know?
“Children?” I gasp.
“Yeah. I believe it’s something married couples do,” she replies teasingly, keeping her voice low, even as the music soars.
“Why do you ask?” I’m in a panic. Feverish almost. I’m hot and cold, and I think there is sweat trickling down my spine.
She doesn’t know. She can’t. The idea that women have magical powers that allow them to recognise they’re pregnant is absurd.
It isn’t possible. She was asleep.
“I was just thinking about how we could be even more convincing as a couple,” she replies. “And I’ve always wanted to have a baby.”
Oh fuuuuck. Why did she have to tell me that?
“I wonder if we should pretend I’m pregnant,” she muses quietly, turning her attention back to the stage. “Maybe the Essex Cartel won’t believe you care about me if I’m not pregnant.”
“What?” No one could possibly think that, because it’s not true. Taggie is the centre of my universe.
“Kids are permanent, right?” she adds. “Without kids, or if you don’t want kids, Thaxted will assume I’m disposable. Just a first wife.”
“No.” The idea of faking that is too much when she might be pregnant for real.
“But you said Richmond is all about family—” she begins.
“It was until the rumour I betrayed and had them all killed.” I press my lips together and stare at the stage like it did me personal injury. I see nothing.
The two of us starting a new family would heal parts of me I hadn’t fully realised were broken. I want this far too much.
“Would you like to have children with me?” she continues, “Would you mind if I got pregnant?”
I flick my despairing gaze at her. I deserve this torture. No question. But my god, I had no idea she’d emotionally waterboard me. Especially after last night when she was mia bambola, pliable and innocent.
When she could be pregnant with my child, right now, and not know.
“I’d get a big belly.” She places one hand on her flat stomach, and giggles softly.
Inwardly, I groan. The image is instantly in my mind, of Taggie full of our child. My cock thickens.
“That wouldn’t put you off, would it?” Her hand creeps onto my thigh.
I make a strangled noise.
“What was that?”
“I…” I cannot lie to her. “It wouldn’t put me off you,” I grit out.
“Oh good. Because I don’t have much experience. Well. Any. I’m a virgin.”
My teeth clench. No, you’re not.
She casts her gaze down and although one hand is on my knee, the other is behind her back. My brain is so far into overload with this conversation and her touching me in a way nobody could possibly see—so it’s not strictly part of our pretending—that I can’t understand the significance.
“And so many of the other wives in the London Maths Club—yes, I call it that now, sorry—have children. But I wouldn’t want us to even pretend you’ve got me pregnant if that grossed you out.”
“It doesn’t,” I reply faintly.
“Oh good. That’s a relief. You know,” she gives a little chuckle. “Just in case I pretend. Or if I were pregnant… One day.”
Okay, this is cruel. Below us on the stage, the woman is singing a big, mournful song about how her love is unrequited, and yeah.
I get it, universe. Seriously? More subtlety, please.
But I don’t regret anything I did last night though. I can’t.
I look at Taggie again.
She blinks back innocently. For a second I’m so sure that she knows everything that happened last night, and she’s doing this on purpose…
I thrust away the idea.
Absurd.
That is not how a young woman responds when she finds out that a man twice her age is so obsessed with her that he let himself step over a line when she trusted him with an unlocked door, sub-tropical bedroom temperatures, and a sleeping tablet.
I should be strong enough to withstand the temptation of her. I’ve never had this issue before, but then, Taggie is on a different level. I cannot control my desire for her.
And suddenly, I know what I have to do.
Scare her.
My sweet bambola is playing with fire, and I need her to realise that. She must find out the danger she’s in.
“But I’d like to be clear,” she insists. “Would you want me to be pregnant?”
“Taggie.” I take her hand from my knee, and drag us both to our feet, her chair falling over with a noisy thud I’m sure draws attention.
Never mind. I only see Taggie.
In a second, I have her pinned against the side of the box. There’s a curtain only slightly obscuring us from the rest of the audience, and nothing to block the view from the stage if the performers were to glance up.
“Is this what you wanted?” I bite out, lowering my head so my lips are close enough to ghost a breath on her lips. I can’t kiss her. There’s no to see, and that isn’t our deal. “For everyone here to assume I’m so horny for my wife that it pains me to last two hours without having her?”
She pants.
“Perhaps you want them to think I’m obsessed with getting you pregnant, and would do anything, even fuck you in full public view, to ensure my seed takes at exactly the right moment?”
A little whimper tells me I’m on the correct path. But even if it didn’t, I’m not sure I could hold myself back from saying this.
“They already know you’re mine, Taggie. Everyone thinks we bang like rabbits because you’re so irresistible. All the people in this theatre suspect you’ll be swollen and fertile with my child in the months to come. That I fuck you as hard as you deserve, and make you scream.”
I draw back enough to look into her blue eyes. She trembles. Her arms are pinned above her head, and she arches into me.
This girl is so innocently seductive. My cock throbs with the need to take her. Fuck her and claim her as mine in truth.
“Now, are you going to behave?” I ask, with dangerous softness. “Or do I have to make you?”
