Chapter Eight #2
“I’m not complaining.” They’d only landed a few hours ago.
Her suspicious mind had leaped to thinking Axel was trying to make up with her after their argument, but this wasn’t a bribe or an apology.
He was only holding up his end of the deal they’d struck.
That was a little deflating, but also reminded her that if she was going to stay in this marriage, she might as well get what she had been promised.
“I would love to meet your friend. Thank you.”
The idea of speaking with a professional dancer lightened her mood considerably.
“I’ll call now to set that up.” Heskel stepped away.
The door to the office opened a moment later. Axel came out with a man who could have been thirty or fifty. He had more salt than pepper in his closely shorn hair, but he didn’t have a wrinkle on his dark brown complexion.
“Joy. My lawyer, Gerard.”
“Hello.” She found a smile and rose to move to Axel’s side. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“My wife, Joy.” There was a note of something in his voice—pride, maybe? Whatever it was, it felt at odds with the anxiety she felt in being his wife, leaving her flustered and blushing.
The way he casually set his hand on her lower back sent unexpected warmth shooting into her limbs, but she did her best to play her part, shaking hands with Gerard.
He warmly invited them to dine with him and his wife as soon as possible.
“I’d love to meet her, thank you,” Joy said sincerely.
“I’ll have my assistant set it up, but please excuse me.” Gerard nodded wryly at Axel. “I have a mountain of work ahead of me.”
They walked him to the door. The second it closed behind him, Joy stepped away from Axel’s touch.
His brows went up in question.
She only hurried back to the table, thinking that if she was staying and playing the part of his wife, she needed a better grasp of what he expected of her. She might react to him, but he seemed very take-it-or-leave-it about her.
Heskel was setting out Axel’s plate while wearing his earpiece, speaking German to someone. His tone held a distinct, I have to go flavor as he hurried to end his call with, “Bis sp?ter.”
“Klaus?” Axel guessed as he held Joy’s chair. “Take a few days at home with him since I won’t be working. We’ll be in Paris.” He nodded at Joy as he took his seat.
“Paris? We just got here.” This man refused to let her get her feet under her, didn’t he?
“You need clothes. Our wedding announcement has gone out?” He glanced at Heskel, who looked up from texting to nod a confirmation.
“Invitations will start coming in. I instructed Gerard to sue Otto for breach of contract. He agreed that Otto is likely to attack our marriage, so we need to show people it’s real. ”
But it’s not. She didn’t say it aloud, but Axel’s gaze was waiting to snag her own when she flashed a look at him. He held the eye contact in an implacable way that had her throat flexing in reaction.
By marrying me, you took control…
She absolutely needed to do that, but how?
“My work phone was confiscated before I left the building,” Heskel said. “I’m sure people are trying to reach you. Would you like me to do anything about that?”
“No. Let Otto answer for my absence. If he doesn’t see the light and retire before we return from Paris, I will open my own firm.
Vorstoben’s clients will turn to me out of frustration.
If anyone reaches you in the next few days,” he added as he dug into his breakfast, “let them know I’ll be in touch after I return from my honeymoon. ”
Joy choked on her bite of parfait. Honeymoon?
* * *
As a courtesy to Mira, Axel hadn’t taken a lover in two years. Celibacy hadn’t always been comfortable, but sex wasn’t something he had ever felt he needed.
Not like he did today.
And when it came to sex, he was all for edging. To a point. Now that he knew how responsive Joy was, how she melted and sounded when she shattered, he wanted more. Needed more.
“He will attack your marriage any way he can,” Gerard had warned him during their meeting. “How strong is it?”
“We’ve known each other three days. What do you think?” Axel had asked dryly.
Otto’s potential attack wasn’t why Axel wanted to bind Joy to him physically, though. Nor was it his lengthy dry spell, though that was definitely a factor. They were married. Why shouldn’t they have sex if they both wanted it?
This particular shade of want, however, was biting and primitive and disturbing.
For that reason, he kept trying to put a lid on it. He didn’t want to want her this hard. It felt too much like those times he’d wanted other things he couldn’t have, like parents who took care of him or a hot meal.
Maybe if she wasn’t so frosted by how things had gone with Otto, things would be different, but he couldn’t change what had happened and wouldn’t if he could. At least she had stayed and would continue this pantomime they were calling a marriage.
He didn’t want it to be pantomime, though. He wanted the reality of touching her. Covering her. Claiming her.
Don’t, he ordered himself, but his ears were ringing with the sound of her footsteps as she explored their suite in the Paris hotel.
His eyes refused to look away from her, only noting very absently the backdrop of tasteful creams and dull bronze, white sculptures and pink floral arrangements.
She wore boots with her jeans, giving her strolling steps a swagger that entranced him. She paused in the rounded nook of windows that offered a view of the Eiffel Tower shining golden against the purple clouds of fading dusk.
They had both fallen asleep on the plane from Berlin. It was too early to go for dinner. What else were they going to do right now?
“Heskel told me how you helped him and his husband. Do you mind if I ask why?”
He lifted his brows. Heskel wasn’t usually so forthcoming.
“I knew Klaus from school. We’d kept in touch, which is how I knew to recruit him.
I was working in Hong Kong when his crash happened.
It took a few weeks for me to get back here to visit them.
When I saw Heskel, I saw myself.” He winced at how uncomfortable it made him to refer to his darkest days even in passing.
“I recognized how much stress he was under, trying to keep them afloat. It looked a lot like the way you were drowning when we met,” he said sardonically.
Her brows came together crossly. “I was fine.”
He ignored that blatant lie, saying, “I threw him a life ring because I wished someone had done that for me. You asked me why I continued working for Otto even after I knew what sort of man he was. Because, in many ways, Vorstoben was my life ring. Seeing the way Otto dismissed Klaus without telling me was the beginning of me making plans to leave, though.”
“Hmph.” She moved past the doors to the balcony, skirting the end of the sofa to the bookshelf. Hardback copies of French classics stood next to framed black-and-white photos of Paris streets. She peered into the bedroom.
“Only one.” She sent him a cool look. “I’m sure you think I’m very casual about sex, given my line of work.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I don’t care how you made ends meet, Joy. I was poor for the first half of my life. If I’d had a skill like yours, I would have used it, so I don’t judge how you leaned into yours.”
“What did you have?” she asked with a curious tilt of her head. “To rise to a life like this? Besides a job at Vorstoben?”
“Hunger.” Literally. He tucked his hands in his trouser pockets and leaned on one of the square mirrored columns.
“A ferocious desire for security and control over my future. Single-mindedness.” Desperation, at times.
“I was fifteen when I worked on a hotel like this.” He glanced around.
“An iconic building getting an upgrade. The furniture they threw out was nicer than anything I’d ever seen.
I stole a chair from the dumpster and took it home to my mother.
She still has it. She loves it. I remember promising myself every morning, when I arrived on the jobsite, that one day I would stay in places like this and not think twice about the cost.”
“Is this the first time you’ve thought about the cost today?” she asked with a twist of humor on her lips.
“I haven’t at all. Heskel booked it.” He shrugged.
“I’ve been pinching pennies for so long, I can’t imagine that sort of confidence.” She touched the bouquet on the bookcase, realized the flowers were real and cupped a bloom, bending to inhale its fragrance.
He let his gaze trace the line of her back, the roundness of her ass, the beautiful length of her legs.
She glanced up and caught him, not that he was hiding his interest.
A light blush stole into her cheeks. She dropped her gaze to the flowers, toying with the petals. “I keep wondering if you’re still in love with her.”
“Who? Mira? No,” he dismissed firmly.
She angled her head, studying him from the corner of her eye. “That sounds like you don’t even like her. But you were going to marry her?”
“She’s fine.” He heard how lukewarm that sounded and curled his lip at himself. “We’re friends. Soldiers in the same infantry, maybe. I’ve never wanted love in my relationships, and she knew that.” It was probably a good idea to make that clear to Joy as well.
“Why not?” She blinked in a way that asked, Who doesn’t want love?
“It weighs too much. Fills you with obligation and gives others leverage over you.”
“Like the way you exploited my love for my father to pressure me into marrying you?”
“Yes.”
Her brow flinched, but that wasn’t new information. She seemed to mentally brush it aside. “You were marrying Mira for the company? Same as me?”