Chapter Ten #2
“I can’t.” She took a step back, coming up against the dresser.
She grasped the edge of it as though needing the support.
Her mouth tightened. She looked trapped.
Hurt. “You can decide tomorrow that you don’t want Vorstoben and discard me immediately.
I can’t leave for a year, or there will be unpleasant consequences for my family. ”
His heart lurched. “Are you saying you want to leave?”
“No.” Her brow pleated, and she swallowed. “But don’t…” Her voice cracked, and she blinked fast.
“Are you crying? Joy.” He hadn’t meant to upset her. He reached for her.
“Don’t do that.” She shoved at his chest and stalked past him until she was across the room.
“You know you can fry my brain with sex, and that’s not fair!
What happens when the sex fades? Huh? Do you really see us staying married all our lives?
Having a family? That’s a real question, Axel. Do you?”
“I don’t know.” How had this escalated so quickly? “It was just a question.”
“Well, stop and think for a minute how loaded that question is for me! My birth mother gave me away. The man who made me, the one you dragged me here to meet, has no interest in a relationship with me. Now you’re saying maybe you want to keep me around a little longer, but only maybe?
Only if I have a baby that gets you what you want?
A baby you don’t even want except for what it gets you?
Do you hear how cruel that is to say to me? ”
He snapped his head to the side as though she’d struck him.
He felt her sharp words like claws against his cheek.
It was an attack he deserved because he hadn’t really seen how tender this was for her.
She was so good at hiding that particular scar, acting as though her adoptive family had given her all she needed, that he’d forgotten the very real pain of loss and rejection she carried.
“You didn’t like it when Otto changed the rules on you,” she pointed out shakily.
“I’m not changing the rules.” He did want to change the rules, though. He didn’t want a hard end date on this marriage. It bothered him to think of her counting down the days. It didn’t matter that he understood why she was doing it. He didn’t like it. Not at all.
This was the sort of inner turmoil that he had thought to avoid by marrying Mira. They would have easily ghosted through a year of a marriage that was more of a financial partnership, one that wouldn’t have caused any ripples in his life. Or his equilibrium.
“I want to give you what you want,” he said tightly. Because if he gave her what she wanted, he could have what he was increasingly feeling like he needed: her. “If you wanted children, I wanted you to know I’m open to discussing it. That’s all.”
She was still standing across the room, arms crossed to hold up the loosened dress that was hanging off her bare shoulders.
Her expression was dejected. “I want to be loved, Axel. I want someone to say they want me in their life forever. I want to know that I belong with them for the rest of my life. Can you give me that?”
The sensation that jolted through him could have been the electric charge off a cattle prod. It seared so deeply and painfully within him, it damn near stopped his heart. Because how was he supposed to pay that steep a price? “No.”
He heard her breath hiss in as though he’d stabbed her.
“I need to make some calls. I’ll join you later.” He walked downstairs.
* * *
It took Joy a long time to fall asleep.
She hadn’t meant to react so strongly to what had actually been a fair question, given they were married and having sex, but it was a very touchy subject for her and not just because of how temporary their relationship was.
The question of children had always been a sharp jab against her skin with a two-pronged fork.
She wanted children, and she also wanted a career in dance.
It wasn’t impossible to have both, but she knew that each was taxing and demanding and required a devoted level of commitment.
Both also had a biological clock, one reproductive, the other related to joints and tendons and whatever muscles she might sprain or injure during hours of training and performing.
She still had time to pursue both, but this marriage was eating a year.
It was buying her a year of dance, she reminded herself, which gave her a second chance at the career she’d nearly given up hope on having.
That made Axel asking her to put that aspiration aside and start a family rankle, especially when his reasons had seemed so mercenary.
At the same time, the idea of having Axel’s baby was incredibly appealing. One of the reasons she had finally left Todd was the stark realization that she didn’t want to have his children.
Axel had all the qualities of strength and health and a well-built nest that would shake awake anyone’s ovaries.
The ache of yearning went deeper than biology, though, to the part that she had alluded to when she had said she wanted to be loved.
She wanted her baby born into love. She wanted his love.
Because she was tipping toward that emotion herself.
They were still new, she hurried to remind herself, as though that would stop this flailing sensation inside her. She couldn’t expect declarations of love, especially when that emotion was so very sharp-edged for him.
For Axel, making love didn’t make love the way it did for her.
That was what was happening to her, though. She grew more enamored and more vulnerable to him by the day.
Which made the fact that he held all the power in terms of ending their relationship all the more pointed. And made his casual suggestion that they could have a baby and stay married tear at the scab on her heart, the one she pretended wasn’t there.
She didn’t remember falling asleep but woke in the night to an awareness of him beside her.
The distance across the mattress was mere inches, but it felt like an intolerable chasm.
She slid closer, not wanting to wake him but seeking contact. Reassurance at a very basic level.
“Cold?” He was awake and rolled toward her, drawing her into the heat of his body.
He always slept naked while she usually pulled on a short nightie over a soft sleep bra, even if they’d made love. That was what she wore now. She laced her bare legs with his and her lips met the hollow of his shoulder without her even thinking about it.
At the brush of her lips against his skin, the shift of his hand against her back stilled. He was hardening against her stomach and started to draw back.
“I don’t want to fight,” she whispered into his throat, touching her lips under his jaw. She let her thigh stroke higher against the outside of leg, so her nightgown rode up to her hips.
His breath hissed in, and his hand roamed lower, catching under the lacy hem and pushing it to her waist as he rolled her beneath him.
He kissed her. Not rough but hard. Greedy.
As though they hadn’t seen each other in months.
Years. As though he had felt the distance and hated it as much as she did and was determined to close it.
His tongue swept between her lips, telling her what he wanted. Now.
There was an urgency in him that tensed all his muscles and made her feel pounced upon, but not in a bad way.
There was something exciting in the way he pushed her legs apart with his hard thighs and dragged his mouth to her breast, raking aside lace and cotton as though he’d been waiting too long to feast on her.
He was lighting a fire in her that was more of an explosion, alarming but thrilling.
He wet his finger and pressed it into her, rasping something she didn’t catch because her senses were under assault. What she had thought would be tender makeup sex was more of a claiming; one she encouraged by arching herself in offering.
He slid beneath the covers to lick fire into the very core of her, making her twist against the weight of the blanket and the strength in his arms as he hugged her thighs. She couldn’t get away and didn’t want to, but his caresses were almost too much to bear. Deliberate and demanding.
For the first time, he did not seem to be in control, though. Not to the extent that he usually was. Each of her responses made him growl or dig his fingers into her thigh muscle or hold her tighter.
As the tension in her belly coiled to exquisite levels, she dug her heel into his back, lifting her hips, seeking the climax he was driving her toward.
He rose and threw off the covers.
She released a loud sob of protest. Agonized denial.
They were both panting. He remembered to put on a condom, which was a nearly intolerable delay, then he dragged a pillow beneath her hips and hooked her legs over his arms.
His first thrust, imperative and wild, pushed a ragged groan from her lips.
He froze. “Too hard?” he asked through gritted teeth. His whole body quivered with strain.
“Too good,” she breathed and set her hands against the headboard so his next thrust went even deeper.
“Stay with me,” he growled as he quit trying to restrain his power, thrusting with all his strength, fast and ferociously intense as he drove them straight to the peak.
The second her breath hitched and the first flutter of orgasm arrived, he let go, locking his hips to hers while he bucked, joining her cries of pleasure with his own shouts of helpless triumph.
Waves of ecstasy rolled through her for long minutes, keeping both of them in exquisite stasis, pulses fading slowly, slowly, until he sagged all his weight onto her, both of them sweaty and shaking and trying to catch their breath.
She was utterly wrung out, barely able to breathe under the press of his body, but she twitched in protest when he started to gather himself. “Don’t go,” she whispered.
His hand clenched in her hair, and his damp lips scraped across her cheek to the corner of her mouth. “I’m not going anywhere, Meine Schonste. Don’t you, either.”
He had to roll away to remove the condom, but he returned immediately and gathered her close, allowing her to believe what he’d said with her whole, glowing heart.
Until the party on Saturday.