He gazed down at her shining ebony hair, marveling at what wonders were at work that the fates had deemed him fit to grant him this beauty.

He was thinking this as his queen lifted her head and blindsided him.

“We must talk of my father.”

“Silence, you rest on my cock.”

“It has been some time since—”

She ceased speaking on an outcry as he pulled her from his shaft and tossed her to her back on the silks beside them before turning himself to cover her down one side.

“You do not bring him to our bed,” he ordered on a growl, and her face screwed up in a manner he found adorable, which was inconvenient, as it should be aggravating.

“I bring him to our bed because I have asked repeatedly, and you do not—”

“Has it occurred to you that I do not because it would upset you?”

“Has it occurred to you that you not doing it is upsetting me more?”

He growled, for it had not.

“Mars—” she began.

“I will say first that you do not find your way to getting your way by playing my cock,” he told her.

“And I will say first that it is most exasperating when you do not allow me to finish what I intend to say,” she retorted.

Another growl came from him.

His wee queen gazed up at him narrowly and continued speaking.

“And I will get my way however I decide to go about getting my way.”

He was not going to be cornered into demanding his wife not fuck him blind in order to get what she wanted, because in all truth, he quite liked when his Silence fucked him blind.

Thus, he said nothing.

“And I will say second,” she went on, “that it was not me who woke you by playing with your cock, but a scenario quite different, my king.”

She was correct about that, thus Mars remained quiet.

She studied him through his silence, and he watched her shift to using another tool she possessed to get whatever she desired from him.

She cupped his jaw in both her hands and said softly, “Mars, I would know about my father, and I would hope you’d understand that I need to know.”

He did understand this.

And because he did, he drew in a breath through his nostrils before he rolled to his back.

He was staring at the canopy of their bed for naught but a second before he felt her soft breasts pressed to his chest and saw her beautiful face hovering over his.

“My love, now I’m becoming frightened,” she whispered, peering closely at him.

She appeared just that.

Fuck.

He had left it too long.

But how did one tell one’s beloved wife that her father was not her father, he’d whored her mother out in order to gain an heir, and the man had never loved her?

Mars moved his hand to trail a finger down her cheek, murmuring, “Perhaps you should put on a dressing gown and we can go to the other room.”