A Tiger's Bride (A Lion's Pride Book 4) by Eve Langlais

animal on the cramped furniture, and he would ruin her first time. Ruin their future sex life.
    No. He’d wait. The only problem with waiting was it hurt—and turned a certain part of his body blue. But at least he respected his new bride.
    A shame she didn’t appreciate it.

Chapter Ten
    Just what does a virgin wife have to do to get debauched?
    Teena really wanted to know. Offering herself hadn’t worked. Telling her husband he would be her one and only seemed to set off a state of panic. Would she have to tie Dmitri down and have her way with him?
    The idea had merit, if she had the guts to go through with it, but she didn’t. Only too easily she could imagine the disaster if she went that route. The use of ropes, or even a belt, might result in a loss of circulation to his limbs. Throwing herself at him could result in bodily harm.
    Daddy might be able to handle his baby girl, but other men tended to get squashed. Not that Teena knew this first-hand, but she’d heard enough stories from her sister, Meena, and helped her send enough “Hope that broken collarbone mends soon,” cards to know it happened.
    If Teena had the guts, she would have stripped, right down to her birthday suit.
    Resist that!
    However, shyness wouldn’t let her.
    It seemed, even married, she was doomed to fail with men. One man. Her husband. My mate.
    Despite his initial attempt to marry her sister, Teena had now spent enough time with him to come to one certainty. Dmitri was hers.
    As in her soul mate. Her one and only. Her man.
    Now if only the brash Russian she’d met would make her certainty a reality instead of putting her off with a misguided notion that she needed wooing.
    The limo ride to the airport was a quiet one. She sat across from him, watching as he made calls, speaking in Russian, the rolling cadence of the foreign words a sensual delight. Was he the type to purr Russian endearments in her ear? Maybe one day she’d find out.
    When he hung up, she asked, “That sounded pretty serious. Problems?”
    “Nothing unusual. Just my sister and mother, being brought up to speed on our current situation.”
    “Are they upset that you married me without them there?”
    “I am their lord. It does not matter.”
    She arched a brow at his arrogant statement.
    He laughed. “Okay, I heard a long spiel about how I was an ungrateful son robbing a mother of her chance to throw a lavish wedding and show those other clan upstarts how royalty weds. Whereas, my sister said I was a boorish ass who needed to get clubbed over the head for acting like a Neanderthal.”
    She couldn’t help a smile. Despite his complaints, she could hear the fondness in his voice. “You sound close to your family. Do you live with them?”
    A grimace twisted his lips. “Yes. But I assure you my home is quite large. While they are situated in the east wing, we have the entire west wing to ourselves.”
    “Wings? Just how large is this place?”
    He gave a negligent wave of his hand. “The size doesn’t matter.”
    The imp in her, the one that had obviously heard her sister one too many times, retorted, “Funny, I was always told by the girls that it’s all about the size. The bigger, the better.”
    While her own words didn’t make her blush, his reply did. “I assure you, I have more than enough size to please you, little kitten. And my oral skills are to scream for.”
    The ardent flare in his eyes stole her breath, and she thought, for a moment, he would lunge from his seat and join her, maybe kiss her, except his damned phone rang and broke the spell.
    Arriving at the airport, they went through a prioritized screening routine, which involved very little checking but a whole bunch of handshaking.
    “How did you manage that?” she asked as they exited the main building and headed toward a small plane sitting outside a hangar.
    “Manage what?”
    “Getting me out of the United States, past all the security clearances. I’d heard they’d cracked down on