Chapter 6
Chapter Six
“I WANT TO SEE HIM.”
Ellie was still recovering from the fact she’d somehow agreed to his plan. That she’d agreed to a marriage that would be far from a cold one! A marriage that included her – all of her – in his life, as his wife; in his bed! All she could do was stand there and contrast his cold threats with the passion they’d shared the night before. With the affection that had been so easy between them four years ago.
Affection was a lie. Passion was easier to believe.
Their passion was honest and all-consuming. He was as lost to it as she.
Her expression was grim when she lifted her eyes to his.
“He’s asleep.”
“I’ll be quiet.” There was both a challenge and a plea in his eyes and it was the latter that gently began to unpick her resolve. She tried to imagine how desperate he must be to lay eyes on the boy they’d made together – a boy he hadn’t known about until twelve hours ago.
“Fine,” she said stiffly, accepting the necessity of this and yet wishing that in some way she could delay it. Indefinitely. “But only because I need to check on him anyway.”
“Which way?” He crossed his arms over his chest and the pleading look in his face was gone, leaving only ice-cold emotion.
Anger, she knew to be the root of it and it chilled her to her core.
It was a pervasive anger. Xavier felt it often. He felt angry when he reached for a fact or recollection and came up blank. He felt it when he tried to recall details of the months leading up to the accident and couldn’t. He felt it when he was practically crippled by a blinding headache, left bed bound for at least a day while it ravaged his body and left him nauseous from the pain – another hangover from that damned crash.
Discovering that he’d lost years of his son’s life was the last straw.
She stood there, hesitating, for several seconds and then finally nodded brusquely. “Here.”
She shivered as she pushed out of the kitchen, moving into the lounge area and towards the stairs. She kept her eyes trained forward and took the steps slowly – unconsciously delaying this as long as possible. At the door to Joshua’s room, she paused.
“Wait here,” she said, without meeting Xavier’s eyes. “I’ll check on him and tell you if it’s – safe – for you to come in.”
His eyes clashed with hers in fierce rejection of this directive, and in a way that made her wonder if he intended to ignore her request. But when she stepped into Joshua’s room, Xavier remained in the corridor, all dark and hard in contrast to the cream carpet and white walls of her townhouse.
And even though Xavier dominated every single one of her senses, the moment she crossed the threshold into their son’s room, Joshua had her entire focus. His breathing was heavy, thick with the effects of a chesty cold.
She crossed to him and lay the back of her hand against his forehead. His temperature was still high, and his sleep deep. She stroked fingers over his hair, and then dropped a palm to his chest.
“I love you so much, my darling. You know I’d do anything for you, don’t you?” And she leaned closer, pressing her lips to his forehead. “Even make a deal with the devil.” She swallowed, her mouth dry. “You deserve a father.”
A blade was slicing along the edges of her heart, and she endured every painful gash.
Four years ago, she and Xavier had slept together and she’d given him her heart and her hopes, and he hadn’t deserved them. And now? She was giving him so much more. But would he be a good father?
She had no reason to believe so, and yet she did. Some deeply-held certainty was slipping through her, reminding her of what he’d been like before. Yes, he’d been lying to her, but he’d been funny and smart, thoughtful and attentive. If he could fake those emotions, surely he could feel them genuinely as well?
It was a bitter pill to swallow, to accept that she hadn’t been enough for Joshua. With Eleanor and Apollo living in Greece most of the time, Ellie was seeing how alone she and Josh were.
A floorboard creaked and she startled, sitting up and tilting her head. Xavier stood in their son’s room, his darkly intent eyes blazing as they met Elizabeth’s. A thick wedge of light fell from the corridor into the room, so she saw everything as it played across his face. The anger and recrimination, the hatred, and then, the wonderment, as his gaze slid sideways and down, to Josh’s sleeping face.
“I told you to wait outside,” she said, but the words lacked bite. She couldn’t hold onto her temper. She was mesmerized.
Xavier took a step closer to Joshua and hovered, uncharacteristically uncertain. When he spoke, it was with a voice roughened by obvious emotion. “Is he okay?”
Ellie nodded. “He still has a temperature, and his chest is thick, but he’s sleeping well. I’ll check on him often tonight, and bring him into my bed if he’s fevered.”
He didn’t respond. She couldn’t even tell if he was still listening. His eyes were locked to Joshua’s face. And finally, he reached down and pressed his fingers to Joshua’s hair, lightly, gently, a gesture full of uncertainty.
Ellie couldn’t look away. In some ways, it was intensely private and she felt as though she were invading a moment to which she hadn’t been invited. But it was fascinating to look from one to the other and catalogue their likenesses – of which there were so many. Far greater than there were differences. She stood, somewhat awkwardly, and slipped from the room, checking the time on her slim wristwatch as she went.
It had only been an hour since she’d given him his paracetamol; mentally she calculated when she’d be able to administer another dose and then took one step down the hallway. But Xavier was right behind her; the clicking of Josh’s door into place alerted her to his presence and she waited courteously, spinning to face him.
And then wished she hadn’t.
There was a stone-cold determination on his face. “You will move in with me tomorrow.” His eyes were loaded with intensity and determination. “If you think I am missing another day of his life, then you don’t know me at all.”
“I don’t know you,” she whispered the first thing that came to her mind, even though it wasn’t an answer to his statement at all.
His eyes narrowed, and his expression darkened, if that were possible. “Then know this. That boy is my son.” His voice was lowered but it reverberated as though he’d yelled. “I want him in my house, under my roof, and I want him there tomorrow.”
Or else.
He’d issued the ultimatum often enough to leave Ellie in little doubt as to how strongly he meant it.
She shivered at the threat, but she didn’t bother to argue. She suspected there’d be plenty of things to argue with Xavier about, and suddenly she wanted to save her energy for things that really mattered.
“Fine,” she said, nodding softly, her eyes focused on the carpet at her feet.
But it wasn’t enough to placate him. With a growl of frustration, he put a hand in the small of her back and guided her down the corridor and through the next door frame they came to. It just happened to be her bedroom.
Her cheeks flamed, but it wasn’t necessary – seduction was apparently the furthest thing from Xavier’s mind.
“How could you have kept him from me?” he demanded, his expression grim, his lips a thin line in his handsome face, his teeth white and evenly spaced.
“I-I’ve explained that,” she repeated with an air of patience that was belied by the trembling of her fingertips.
“Not well enough!” He ground out. He took a step towards her, his manner unknowingly menacing, so that she flinched. “There is no explanation you can offer that will make up for this.” His fingers curled around her arm, pulling her to his body. “You have taken so much from me, Elizabeth. I thought I had lost everything I cared for.” The words were shredded by despair and her heart twisted painfully in her chest. She stared up at him, seeing his heartbreak, and hating beyond words that it had been caused by another woman. That he still pined for his ex-wife.
And yet her body was tightly pressed to his and she could feel for herself the power of his attraction, his arousal hard against the flat plane of her belly.
Her breath snatched from her mouth in short, raspy bursts.
“How could you wake up each day and hug our child to you, knowing I had no clue of his existence?” His eyes bore into hers, hard like black diamonds. “How could you look into a face that is so like mine and actively choose to hide him from me?”
Her teeth chattered together and the words she sought didn’t come.
She couldn’t think of what to say. She was adrift.
“I have lost so much,” he said again. “And even at that damned fundraiser, you lied to me. You tried to keep me from discovering my son…”
“I-I thought you’d forgotten all about me.”
He took a step towards her and she stepped backwards instinctively but her back connected with the hardness of the wall, and then his hands braced on either side of her body, effectively trapping her right where she was.
“And that gave you the right to do this?”
She swallowed, an involuntary contraction of the muscles in her neck. “I’m his mother,” she stammered, wishing she didn’t feel so completely tremulous. Where the hell was her courage and strength?
At her feet, that’s where – his hard, cynical look has stripped it from her, piece by piece.
“I have to make the right decisions for him.”
“And I am his father,” he said, the word quietly spoken but loaded with disgust. “You think I want to hurt him?”
She shook her head to the side. Hadn’t she just admitted to herself that she knew Xavier would be a good father – whatever his many failings as a man, husband and human might have been?
“I was shell-shocked,” she said instead, rallying her defences.
“I asked if we knew one another and you told me ‘no’.”
“I’m sorry,” she said jerkily. “But the last time I saw you, your doting fiancé was by your bedside, crying her eyes out. You’ll forgive me if I didn’t rush to ruin her life because of your mistakes,” she said, the accusation satisfying to fling at him. “You were the one who cheated. Not her. Not me. I had to wear the consequences of your decisions but if I could spare her the pain I’d felt then you’d better believe I was going to,” she said, her chin tilted angrily and her eyes spitting fire.
But he spat it right back, fury bouncing off his frame in waves.
“I will not forgive you,” he said slowly, menacingly, with a dark threat in the words that chilled Ellie to the core. “No concern for Bella overrides what was due to my son and to me. Do not hide behind a noble consideration when the truth is so much darker.”
“And what’s the truth?” She demanded, wishing that she couldn’t feel the painful scrape of erect nipples against the soft cotton of her clothes, wishing that she couldn’t feel the throb of anticipation and the curdling of her blood.
“By your own admission, I hurt you,” he said. “And you wanted to hurt me back. Isn’t that why you hid my child?”
“I didn’t –,”
“Didn’t you relish knowing this to be sweet revenge?”
“No!” She shook her head from side to side, so that her dark hair glistened around her beautiful face. But he didn’t see beauty in her face, he didn’t see truth in her eyes. He saw the face of a manipulative, lying woman who had kept the most valuable thing away from Xavier. He saw a figure of hatred.
“You thought to have your revenge and now you will have a lifetime living with mine,” and he dropped his mouth to hers to punctuate the threat, sucking her gasp of surprise into his throat and drowning it in the sensual, angry heat of his kiss.
Her body sagged against the wall, so that it was only the strength of his kiss that held her in place, the taste of his desire washing over her body as his last words swam around and around her brain.
Now you will have a lifetime living with mine.
Revenge? Whatever did he mean?
His kiss was too intense, too much, for her to think clearly. She was done thinking. Her body, so long starved of a man’s touch, reacted to his as it had the night before.
Spontaneous combustion.
Her fingers pushed at his shirt, lifting it to expose the tanned, taut flesh of his stomach to her touch. She ran her fingers over it and moaned when his hands did the same, separating her shirt from her jeans and lifting it, breaking their kiss only to rip it from her head.
Sanity threatened to burst through the fog of desire – she needed to put an end to this! She hated him! – but then his mouth was dropping to her breasts, teasing her nipples through the fine lace of her bra. He fingered one, plucking it until it was erect and hard and she was moaning over and over with the heat of need and his lips engulfed the other, his tongue flicking it so that her nerve endings were screaming out for release. He reached behind her and unclipped the bra with an ease born of experience, and then his stubbled jaw was dragging across her flesh. He took the other breast into his mouth, each draw of his lips making her arch her back and cry out his name.
She was no longer Elizabeth Jones. She was simply a quivering mess of nerve endings and sensations; she was lost to reality – simply a piece of flotsam. He lifted her easily, carrying her to the bed, where he deposited her without ceremony, dropping her into the middle and staring down at her, pinning her with his gaze as he stripped his clothes from his body with a sensual economy of movements and efficiency. Then, he returned to her, and all Ellie could do was whimper as he stripped her jeans and silk underpants from her legs, leaving her naked in the middle of the bed.
It was too much; it was wrong.
Now you will have to live with mine.
Revenge.
There was no revenge here. Only white-hot passion and it was burning them both. He brought his powerful body with that broadly muscles chest and tapered waist over hers, hair-roughened thighs pushing her own silky smooth legs apart. She whimpered when he kissed her again, his tongue pushing into her mouth and the weight of his head pinning her own head to the softness of the mattress.
He dominated her in every way. Somewhere along the way he’d taken the precaution of sliding a condom over his large arousal, and he nudged the tip of himself at the entrance to her womanhood, just enough to make her reach for him, to cry out for more.
“You want me?” He demanded, pushing up on one elbow and regarding her with cheeks that were slashed with colour. His eyes glittered with something more than sexual heat. There was such ice in there too. Rage and coldness, side by side.
But she pushed that thought aside; how could there be anything but desire in this moment? Besides, she did want him. She wanted him with all that she was. She nodded, a movement of acceptance and desire.
“Then say it. Tell me you want me.”
“I want you,” she moaned, reaching around behind his rear and cupping him, trying to pull him towards her. But he held himself where he was, with just the tip of his arousal hitched into her entry, so much promise, and she was so impatient.
“Say please.”
Her eyes flew wide and a sharp blade of reality began to perforate the fog of her need, but damn it, it wasn’t enough. Her body was on fire and it was an almost intoxicating feeling, a sense of loss that would overcome her if she didn’t find a way free.
“Beg for me, Ellie.”
She was shivering against the bed, trembling all over from the passion he could light within her blood. But the words he was asking were heavy in her mouth, almost as though she knew that by speaking them she would be driving a wedge between them forever.
“Why?” She asked, her face unknowingly young and innocent.
“Because you have a lot of penance to pay,” he said simply. “And I will enjoy extracting it.”
She was quivering all over, her legs unsteady, her body trembling. He moved to straighten, and everything inside of her rejected that! Rejected the distance! She needed to feel him and to remember that when they were together, things made more sense. It was clearer – it would be clearer to both of them.
“Beg if you want me,” he demanded coldly, so if it weren’t for the visual clues of his state of arousal she would have thought him completely unaffected by any of this.
Her body ached, a throb of desire low in her abdomen and she knew only he could satiate it.
“Why are you doing this to me?” She asked again.
“Because I want to punish you,” he said honestly. “But don’t worry, querida . You’ll enjoy your punishment, I assure you.”
But at what cost? Her pride?
Damn it. “Please,” the word fell from her lips and her eyes, when they met his, were swirling with the pain of betrayal.
“Beg for me,” he said again, not moving, his face like granite.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, desire flashing in her but falling, too, so that she was sobering.
“Let’s see if this helps you remember,” he grunted, dropping his mouth to her womanhood, his tongue finding the cluster of nerve endings that were bunched at her opening and he flicked her with his tongue so she was arching her back and driving her fingers through his hair, and the words spilled from her mouth as he brought her to climax and then withdrew, softening his kiss, moving to her inner-thigh, while the waves of pleasure receded and then he stoked them anew, each time bringing her to the precipice of explosion without allowing her to topple over.
He did it again and again and her eyes had stars in them when finally she understood what they both needed.
“Please, Xavier, please, make love to me,” she said, over and over, until he pushed up on his elbows, bringing his hard arousal between her legs.
“This is not making love,” he said, the words hoarse with his own needs. “There is no love between us, Elizabeth, and there never can be. It is just sex. Don’t forget that.” And he thrust into her, splintering her world apart with one powerful movement, so that her fingers dug into his shoulders and she held on for dear life as the world obliterated before her, leaving them in free-fall. He didn’t ease up on her while she exploded, though. Wave after wave of pleasure racked her body and he continued to layer new ones over the top, tormenting her with the rhythm of his possession while his mouth teased her breast and tasted her sweet, soft flesh.
“Keep begging,” he demanded, but he hardly needed to speak. She was saying his name over and over again, imploring him to keep going, not to stop, begging him to take her.
And he was taking her – body and soul – but to the very fires of hell, she suspected.
She crested over the ridge of pleasure for a third time, her body heavy with the sensations that were coursing through her, and then he came with her, his hands pinning hers to the side of the bed as he moved his hips again and again, pumping all of himself into her and convulsing with his own powerful relief. His cry was a guttural noise of release and it ripped through the room, and into Ellie’s heart.
Even as their breathing was still rushed and their hearts still pounding, she woke up, as if from a dream. She saw their passion as it had been – she saw the way he had dominated and controlled her, demeaned her for his own pleasure, and shame and anger and hatred were swirling through her.
She pushed at his chest but he was already moving, straightening, standing from the bed and disposing of the condom in one smooth movement. He turned his back on her and the gasp that fell from her lips was involuntary, overtaking every other concern for the briefest flash of moments.
His back! A back she had kissed and worshipped four years earlier, a back that had once been smooth like just-melted caramel, was scarred and ridged all over.
He heard the involuntary sound and turned to her, catching the shock on her face. His expression was grim. “The accident.” He reached for his pants, pulling them on, then his shirt, without speaking. As though it didn’t matter. But the physical reminder of what he’d endured made her gut twist and for the briefest moment, she wished she could have stayed with him then, that she’d been able to tell him four years ago that no physical damage could change how she loved him.
There is no love here, and never will be.
Why did those words have the power to turn her heart ice-cold?
“You will move to my house tomorrow,” he said stiffly. “And join me in my bed each night. And each night you will beg for me, just like you did now.”
It was a beating of a drum that she wanted to ignore; a calling of a future that would be both a torment and a sick kind of delight. Because even now, humiliated by his power over her, desire was rekindling in her blood. As he buttoned his shirt into place she thought only of unbuttoning it.
Foolish, weak-minded woman! She cursed herself. How could she be so stupid?
“Why?” She whispered, but she knew the answer.
“Because I like to hear you beg,” he said darkly. “And I need to hear you repent.”
“You’re a bastard,” she said through chattering teeth.
“Yes,” he agreed with a sharp dip of his head, his features all hard-planes in his arrogant face. “And it’s best you don’t forget that. Because I am a bastard, and I will make your life a living hell if you don’t do everything I ask of you. Is that clear, Elizabeth Jones?”