Chapter Six #3
Swirls of pleasure unraveled like yarn in her abdomen. His touch felt so good.
She moaned into his mouth and slid her arms up to his shoulders, angling her head in offering, twisting her body to invite the delicious stroke of his hands. Touch me, she telegraphed as he set her ablaze.
His mouth ravaged hers while his hands claimed the rest of her—spine and shoulders and the cheeks of her ass. His palms slid to draw drugging circles on her backside, then clenched her buttocks, making her lift onto her toes in erotic delight.
“Say mehr bitte,” he commanded in a rasp against her ear before his busy mouth moved to her neck. “More,” he translated. “Ask me for more.”
She couldn’t think, could only tremble while his lips sent shivers into her throat and delightful tingles into her breasts. Her nipples stung, and her arms clung, and she was arching to feel the thickness behind his fly against her mound.
“What do you want, Joy?” His head came up. His tongue flicked at the corner of her mouth. Then his wide palm pushed into the notch of her thighs, claiming her swollen mound with such deliberate, possessive pressure, lightning shot through her.
A ragged groan left her.
“You want this?”
No one had ever made her feel so good with so little effort. She had always had to self-serve if she wanted an orgasm, but she was already so aroused, so delirious with lust, she said, “Yes. More. Bitte.”
His kiss drew her back into the velvet darkness, and his hand pressed more firmly. Rocked. Deliberate and unhurried.
She was dimly aware of fisting her hands into his pullover and arching to ensure his touch was exactly in the perfect spot. Exactly the right amount of pressure.
Breaking from his smothering kiss, she gasped urgently, “Don’t stop.
Please don’t stop.” She was taut as a bow, supported by the strength of his arm across her back.
This is paradise, she thought. This was how it was supposed to feel.
This was the kind of sex she’d been promised by books and movies and whispers and giggles over wine.
“What do you need?” He kept up the delicious rubbing, but added a tiny bit more pressure. A fraction more friction. Some low, filthy words about how he wanted his tongue right here…
His touch pressed the center of her pleasure, and she broke, crying out as contractions struck her middle, collapsing her knees.
He kept his hand there, practically holding her up while she clung and shook and panted. Her pulse had its home in his palm, ringing through her body while she turned her face against his shoulder and saw the door was still open to the lounge.
“Anyone could have seen us,” she said in horror, lurching away from him on shaking legs.
“We’re newlyweds. No will come looking for us,” he said dryly. “But I’ll leave you. Sleep well.”
She stared with bewilderment at the door he closed behind him.
* * *
A hand on her shoulder woke her.
Joy snapped her eyes open, completely disoriented to find herself in bed, the room lights dim, the white noise of the jet’s engines filling her ears.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.” Axel sat on the edge of the mattress and soothingly stroked his hand down her bare arm. It sent titillating tingles through her bloodstream that were deeply unwelcome when her defenses were still below zero. “We’ll be landing soon.”
She sat up, then regretted it. It put her too close him. She inched away. “I didn’t think I would sleep so hard.”
“No?” Was he laughing at her? Jerk. It had actually taken her a long time to fall asleep while she stressed out over marrying a stranger, one who could take her apart without any effort whatsoever, then walk away.
Eventually, she had stripped down to the T-back bra and boy short underwear she’d been wearing beneath her yoga clothes. It was more than she wore onstage, but she felt very naked wearing so little right now. Sensitive. And deeply aware of him on a sexual level.
An image of him flattening her to the mattress sprang into her head.
It should have been accompanied by alarm, but the fantasy sent a golden heat spiraling through her, making her breasts feel heavy and their tips tight.
An ache hummed to life between her thighs, carnal and wet.
Receptive. Her skin called out to him, begging for his touch.
Embarrassed and confused by this potent, relentless attraction, she moved farther toward the middle of the bed. She glanced over to see an indent in the other pillow and a discarded blanket atop the wrinkled covers.
“You slept here?” That made her feel even more vulnerable.
And resistible. Unwanted, even. It was a lesson in how uneven this relationship truly was. She would have to guard herself more carefully against him.
“For a few hours,” he replied. His eyelids were heavy, his mouth relaxed. He was watching her in a way that said, I know what you’re feeling.
Mortification became a hot coal in the pit of her stomach while a guiltier heat throbbed in the notch of her thighs.
“Would you like to join me in the shower?” His voice was so low, she felt it more than heard it. It resounded inside her, making her heart thud.
“No.” It should have come out firm and strong, but it was thin and high. Strained but also defiant as she took back a little of the control she’d surrendered earlier.
His fingers twitched into a loose fist where his hand rested on his thigh, then relaxed. He rose abruptly, making her stomach swoop. “Wise. We’d be on the tarmac for hours.”
“You really take a lot for granted, don’t you?”
He only looked down at her with those flame-blue eyes. “Do I?”
He walked into what she’d already seen was a spacious lavatory, especially by airplane standards. It didn’t have a bathtub, but the shower could easily accommodate two.
Don’t think of it.
As the door closed behind him, her exhale burst out of her. She dropped her forehead onto her knees, wanting to run, but where? She was on an airplane a mile over the ocean. Or Britain, maybe, since they were getting close to landing.
Close to meeting her father.
She had so many mixed feelings about all of this, but now she had to confront her worries over meeting Otto.
Was he really as callous as Axel had implied?
She’d read the contract he’d had Axel sign and practically memorized the letter from her birth mother.
It did seem dodgy that Otto had known about her for three years but had only reached out to her a week ago, but maybe Axel was misrepresenting things.
She’d only heard his side of it, and he’d blinded her with his generosity toward her and her adoptive father.
She knew Axel’s support wasn’t coming from the goodness of his heart. He was using her to one-up Otto.
Leading up to the wedding, she had told herself she didn’t mind because she was using him, too. She wanted better care for Paul. She wanted her family together in California. She wanted to dance.
And she wanted to meet her birth father.
What if Otto was angry with her, though?
Over the years, she’d talked to other adoptees and had had several in-depth conversations with her sister-in-law, Carrie, who was a family therapist. Joy would have sworn she had long ago made her peace with being relinquished by her birth mother.
Wendy and Paul had given her a very stable, privileged, loving upbringing.
Yes, there were times Joy had felt like an outsider in their family, but that wasn’t because of anything they had done. It was all in her own head.
Then Wendy had died, and Joy had felt so adrift she’d reached out to the agency, seeking a connection with her first mother only to learn that she was gone, too. They had refused to provide more than her name. That loss had hurt in a way Joy hadn’t expected.
That was when she had realized that she harbored a deep, hidden sense of rejection along with a heavy weight of obligation toward her adoptive family. They would never want her to feel that way, but it was there all the same.
As for her birth father, he’d remained a mystery.
She had considered doing one of those ancestry tests, but learning Lorena was dead had been such a kick in the stomach, she hadn’t had the courage to look for her father.
She’d also had all that drama with Todd messing with her head, then moved home.
She had been struggling to survive ever since.
Now here was Axel claiming he would protect her from Otto.
Maybe, deep down, she had latched onto that promise because she was so fearful of another rejection. Maybe she was still looking for a connection beyond her adoptive family, one that didn’t come with tangled emotions of gratitude and indebtedness.
And maybe she had married Axel because she knew she wouldn’t see him again otherwise. She had been enthralled with him from her first glimpse of him. She didn’t want to be, but she was.
She had also thought this intense attraction was mutual, but he really seemed to be able to turn it on and off at will, which was painfully lowering.
The bathroom door opened. Axel emerged in a towel, bringing a spicy fragrance of aftershave with him, sending a punch of sensuality into her middle.
She was still sitting in the bed and pushed her legs toward the edge of the mattress. “You’re quick.”
“I can be,” he said laconically. “When the occasion demands.” He pressed a section of wall to open a closet, revealing a handful of suits.
She stared at his naked back. Had that been a sex joke?
She threw off the covers, starting to rise, but he turned to show her a small gift bag. He ambled toward her with his towel sitting low and loose and precarious across his hips.
“What—” She had to clear her dry throat as she was confronted by his stacked abs and the sprinkle of hair that arrowed down from his navel.
She fixed her gaze on the black bag with its gold embossing and satin ribbons for handles.
It matched the shop where they’d bought the wedding rings. “What is it?”
“A thank-you,” he said. “A sweetener, maybe.”
She hesitantly took it and peered into the bag, drawing out the black octagonal velvet box. Not another ring? She pried it open.
“Oh my God.” It was a ring. Two pear-shaped stones, an emerald and a yellow sapphire, sat at angles to each other on a coiled platinum band caked with small round diamonds. “Why…?” She looked up, up, up at him.
“I saw it when we were picking the wedding rings.” He rolled his smooth shoulder. “It reminded me of the way you wrap yourself around the pole.”
A sweetener. Do you want to join me in the shower?
“And how do you expect me to thank you?” she asked with a thrum of disenchantment, offering it back. “Wrap myself around your pole?”
“You already said no to that,” he reminded pithily. “So I took care of myself.”
The ball of heat that exploded within her was impossible to hide, especially because he knew she was picturing him erupting into his own soapy hand.
“I can also be quiet when the occasion demands,” he said with a mocking smirk. “But don’t feel you need to be. Shower’s all yours.”
“Oh shut up.” As if she would do that, knowing he was out here listening! She dropped the ring and the box onto the rumpled blankets and stood.
He caught her arm before she’d taken a step.
She flung a glare of temper at him, as if she wasn’t looking for an excuse to wrestle with him across those tangled covers. As if his burnished skin didn’t make her mouth water and she wasn’t dying to know how the point of his nipple would feel against her tongue.
“Wear it to our meeting with Otto.” He turned into the jaded executive before her eyes, naked chest and slipping towel notwithstanding. “He’ll interpret that you’ve thanked me appropriately and know you’re firmly on my side. That you’re mine.”
His crude, possessive words crashed through her, inciting a flutter of intrigue but toppling her belief that they were anywhere near equal in this sea of sexual attraction that was drowning her.
“I really am just a pawn to you, aren’t I?” She shook off his grip and locked herself in the bathroom.