Chapter Seven
CHAPTER SEVEN
The ring was on the inventory list for the box at the bank, Romeo reported, but he returned with photos of Eve to show Sofia how much she resembled her aunt. Nostalgic tales ensued.
By the time Bree saw an opportunity to rise and leave without making a scene, they were being called in to dinner.
Of all the times for Sofia to be on her best behavior! Everyone had the gall to be nice to her, too. Nico brought her books to sit on since they didn’t have a booster seat, acting like a doting uncle despite the remark he’d made to Jax.
You have no choice but to acknowledge your child and marry her mother. Then you’ll take them to Italy? Good.
Get them out of our sight, he meant. It was her childhood all over again.
“What of your family, Bree?” Ginny asked her. “Are they here in New York?”
As if this test couldn’t get any more grueling.
“My mother is here, yes. My father is in DC. He’s a heart surgeon.” It was a pathetically predictable way to earn a murmur of admiration, as though she had anything to do with his ability to save lives. As though he cared about her life one way or another.
When Sofia yawned as coffee was being offered, Bree leaped on the excuse of an approaching bedtime. She’d had the forethought to bring a toothbrush and pajamas so she could change her before they left, anticipating she would fall asleep on the way home.
She emerged from the powder room to see Jax accept an overnight bag from the butler, saying to Nico, “We’re staying in the suite at the Signature.”
“I booked the Donatellis into that,” Nico said with a scowl. “Haven’t you done enough? You have to evict our bankers and get them on our bad side?”
“I texted him. He said they were visiting family while they were in town and didn’t need it anyway.”
Bree was on her last nerve, but she waited until they were in the elevator before she said, “This has already been a big day for Sofia. She’ll sleep better in her own bed.”
Jax gave her a flinty look, but he directed the driver to her apartment. When they arrived, he carried the sleeping Sofia from the car. As he tucked her into her bed, Bree had the fleeting thought that he had proved himself to be a more doting, affectionate father inside of twelve hours than her own had been in her entire lifetime.
But she kept hearing Nico’s voice. You have no choice…
She snuggled Sofia’s favorite stuffie under the blanket with her, kissed her cheek, then drew the door closed as she came out.
Jax was in the middle of her living room, overcoat gone, imposing presence taking up all the space. He had changed before dinner into brown wool trousers and a knitted pullover with a shawl collar. She didn’t know how he made everything he wore look like a photo shoot from a fashion magazine, but he did.
“You didn’t have to bring us home. Now you’ll have to backtrack to the hotel.”
He snorted. “Subtle.”
“What did you expect? An invitation to stay over? It’s been a long day.” She was emotionally and physically exhausted, but also keyed up. “I don’t want to go to this party, Jax. I don’t want to shop with your mother and I don’t want to wear a family heirloom! Did you see how they looked at me when you brought up marriage? No. ”
She absolutely would not subject herself to being unwanted again.
“See?” He ran his hand down his jaw as he stretched it out. “We have things to talk about. The party is unavoidable.” He dropped his arm to his side. “I can’t go alone, then reveal I have a daughter. The first question would be When did you learn about her? That would bring far more attention—negative attention—than announcing it amidst the party news. If you’re worried about the cost of the gown, don’t. It’s covered.” He waved his hand to dismiss such trifling things.
She hated that he made a good point about burying the revelation in the excitement of the party. Eventually, the world would know he was Sofia’s father. Her coworkers weren’t blind. She had already received a few texts asking why she hadn’t come back to work this afternoon. They knew something was up. Bree dreaded having to make explanations, but if the truth was announced formally, it would save her from stumbling through it.
“Fine,” she huffed, pacing into the living room. “I’ll go. And I’ll wear whatever your mother picks out for me.” The better to win her approval and blend in. “But I’m not wearing your grandmother’s ring. Why would you even suggest that?” She spun back to face him.
“Because Nonna gave it to me for my bride.”
“Then you should keep it for her, shouldn’t you?” she said tartly.
“Our marrying is also unavoidable,” he said in that same dispassionate tone. “And best accomplished as quickly as possible. Sunday afternoon, before we leave for Italy.”
The floor disintegrated beneath her feet again. She kept flailing, thinking she had hold of a branch only for it to snap and plummet her deeper into a dark chasm.
“Your mother hates me.” She leaned into that statement, crossing her arms defensively. “In case you didn’t notice. So does your brother.”
“They don’t hate you.” His brows came together. “Nico is on his back foot over orchestrating Eve’s marriage, but he understands how important it is for me to marry you.”
You have no choice…
“As for Mom, she arranged a date for me. The daughter of a friend. Now she has to gracefully withdraw from that.”
“Tabitha?” Bree immediately hated herself for sounding like a jealous wife. She had no claim on him whatsoever.
His expression didn’t change, but he grew watchful, perhaps wondering how much she had overheard. “Yes. It was essentially a blind date. I’ve met her very briefly in the past, but I don’t really know her. We’re not involved.”
Now she felt even worse. Like she needed mollifying. Which she kind of did.
“Date whoever you want. I don’t care.” She looked into the darkest corner of the room, already sulking at the prospect.
“Really? It wouldn’t bother you if I married a stranger and brought her into Sofia’s life?”
She snapped her attention back to him. “Don’t you dare.”
“So you would prefer I marry someone you approve to be her mother figure?” The corners of his mouth dug in and his brows tilted into a complacent angle. “Who would that be?”
Herself, obviously.
He knew he had her, which was enormously frustrating.
It was terrifying. She was scared of being locked into an intimate relationship that was based on nothing but practicality. His lack of genuine regard for her would chip away at her self-esteem. She had fought really hard to find her confidence and autonomy and he only had to look at her to fill her with yearning. That made him very dangerous to her peace of mind.
But the alternative, where he married someone like this unknown Tabitha, and that stranger became a pseudo parent to Sofia? Like Laura had been to Bree?
No, no, no. Absolutely not.
That’s what would happen, though, if she wasn’t the woman who occupied that position in his life.
“Maybe we could come to Italy for a while, to see how things go between us,” she conceded with great trepidation. “We don’t have to marry.”
“I want Sofia to wear the Visconti name. You would benefit from it, too.”
“I’m not marrying for money,” she said firmly.
“Money is power and you will need both, Bree. You’re right to be concerned about media attention falling on both of you. It’s an unfortunate reality in my life, but becoming part of the fold will give you some protection.”
“Push, push, push. I just agreed to go to Italy with you and you’re still not satisfied?” She waved an exasperated hand, then hugged herself, worried now about how she would be treated by the press. She considered herself a modern woman who didn’t buckle to society’s most limiting expectations, but she knew darned well that Jackson Visconti’s baby mama would be regarded differently than his bride.
“I’m thinking beyond this weekend,” Jax said. “For the next fifteen years, you and I are partners in Sofia’s upbringing. Have you thought about giving her a sibling?”
“Oh, my God. Slow your roll, cowboy.” She held up a halting hand.
“I’m just asking. But these are all aspects that weigh into this decision. If you want more children, it’s another point in favor of marrying.” The lamplight was behind him, casting his face in sinister shadows that were impossible to read. “I would be amenable, by the way. Not immediately, but it’s definitely on the table.”
“You don’t want to marry me, Jax,” she reminded him. “You don’t want me .” He had proved it when he walked out in Como.
“I’m arguing very passionately that I do. There hasn’t been anyone else in four damned years.” He stepped close enough she felt the heat off his body. “We’re already lovers. I’m saying we should make official what is going to happen anyway.”
You don’t know that.
That was what she wanted to say, but delirious heat burst in her, likely signaling her reaction to him in a flush of bright red under her skin.
Why? Why does he do this to me?
Goose bumps of excitement rose on her skin. Her nipples pinched into stiffness.
His gaze raked down as though he knew what was happening to her. He probably did. He read her like a book. He wasn’t even touching her and she was feverish with desire, mind echoing with that word. Lovers.
Tell him to leave. Be smart.
Instead, she turned her head and saw the open door to her empty bedroom. She thought about how he had apologized to their daughter for not being here sooner. How he had stood up for her with Nico.
She didn’t know if it was true that he’d been celibate all this time, but she knew she didn’t want him to be with anyone else in the future. It wasn’t only about not wanting strangers parenting Sofia. It was the pull of a link that had been forged between them four years ago, one she didn’t want broken again.
One she wanted to reinforce.
“Kick me out if you need time to accept it,” he said grittily. “But spending the night thinking about it won’t change the fact that we’re going to sleep together again. So why fight it?”
Why indeed?
Why deprive herself?
She nodded and walked into her bedroom, heart in her throat as she heard his footsteps behind her.
The moment they stepped through, he filled the small space with his expansive energy. He closed the door and locked it, then began to undress, dropping his clothes where he stood while watching her fumble to do the same.
“We’re going to have to be quiet,” he said in a low voice as he stalked closer and dropped her bra straps off her shoulders. “Aren’t we?” He slid magical fingers behind her, releasing the catch to let the bra fall, then caressed from her collarbone to the points on her shoulders and down, grazing the sides of her breasts.
His gaze on them made them tighten and swell. Her nipples were taut pebbles that brushed the wide plane of his chest. Lower, his erection brushed her abdomen, making her stomach dip with anxious anticipation. With more nerves than that afternoon in Italy. There’d been no stakes then. Now they were so high, she could barely find the courage to take him in hand and see if she could give him as much pleasure as he gave her.
“We could have been doing this all this time,” he rasped, drawing lacy patterns on her breasts with his tickling touch.
“You didn’t want to.” Her whisper held a thick edge. “You didn’t stay. You didn’t ask for my name .” He wasn’t the only one who felt slighted by these long years apart.
She saw his mouth tighten, then closed her eyes, not wanting him to realize her anger stemmed from hurt. She didn’t want him to have the power to hurt her. He shouldn’t. Despite the child they’d made, they were strangers. But he had hurt her by leaving without a qualm. He could easily do it again.
That realization had her parting her lips with hesitation, but his mouth came down on hers, hungry and demanding, but tender. Soothing? Or was that merely the relief of waiting years to be like this again?
She released his erection and he pulled her closer. Naked skin met naked skin. Her arms rose to fold around his neck, easing the ache inside her. The one that had longed to be held like this again.
He shuddered and a thankful groan resonated through her. His? Or her own?
She didn’t know because she was lost. Melting. Still hurt and angry, but those emotions were burning clean in the inferno of need that licked at her. His tongue danced across hers, stoking the heat while his hands swept her shape, becoming flames of their own.
His lips trailed into her throat and his wide hand slid into her underwear, pushing them down. As they cut across the tops of her thighs, he moved his palm to cup her mound.
Lightning shot into her loins, then exploded outward to her nerve endings.
“I’ve been thinking about this all day. Even before you came so hard against me at the hotel. The second I saw you again, I wanted my hands all over you.” His whisper warmed her ear while his clever fingers delved. “I wanted to touch you like this. I’ve never stopped wanting you. Tell me you want this, Bree. That you want me .”
“I do.” It was a small, broken cry sent toward the ceiling.
“Shh.” She felt his smile against her cheek right before his teeth scraped the edge of her jaw. “I want to taste you, but I can’t, can I?” His fingertip rolled around the swollen center of her pleasure. “You’ll wake her.”
She pressed her mouth to his shoulder to stifle her moan of pleasure, barely able to make sense of his words. She curled her nails against his skin, dying.
“Do I need a condom?”
“I’m on the pill,” she gasped. She’d called her doctor for a prescription the day she’d seen his photo.
“Heard that before.”
She opened her eyes and tipped her head back, but his mouth was quirked with irony, not accusation. He inched her backward to the bed.
Her heart thudded with anticipation as he pressed her across the mattress and stole her underwear, then prowled like a panther to loom over her. He used his thick thighs to make space for himself between her legs and held himself on an elbow, watching as he guided his tip against her moist folds, teasing both of them.
“I would happily get you pregnant again,” he said with primal possessiveness in his eyes. In his voice.
It was such an animalistic thing to say, her pulse lurched.
Then he lined up and pressed. She was so aroused, he slid deep with one claiming thrust, but it still pinched. The burn of his invasion felt good, though. The fullness relieved an emptiness that had been with her since they’d last been like this.
He noticed her flinch and froze.
“Hurt?” His thumb caressed her jaw.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I just really missed this.” She had. There was a dampness behind her eyes that had nothing to do with discomfort and everything to do with how much she had longed for the feel of him.
He set a comforting kiss at the corner of her mouth, then swept his lips across hers in a more carnal kiss. One that drew her back into the sea of passion.
When her knees climbed of their own accord to hug his rib cage, he tucked his hand beneath her tailbone and tilted her hips so he could bury himself an extra fraction of an inch.
They both shuddered.
And when he started to withdraw a moment later, she clung with arms and legs and the inner muscles of her sheath.
“I’m not going anywhere, bella .” He returned in a deep thrust that made all her nerve endings sing. “I’m staying right here for the rest of our lives.”
She could accept his proprietary statement—could even celebrate it—when he delivered so much pleasure. Such a feeling of homecoming and being desired.
For long minutes, nothing existed except the sublime friction of their lovemaking. It was exactly like their first time. Electric. Nearly too much to bear. His skin seared her own. She ran her hands across his shoulders and cupped the sides of his head and reveled in the slow heaviness of his strokes. The controlled power.
She gasped for breath, then sought his kiss again, groaning into his mouth. Trying not to bite his lip as she fought the grunts and groans of wild abandonment.
“Harder,” she begged. “Faster.”
“It has to be slow and quiet.” He wove their fingers together against the mattress, prolonging their pleasure. It became tantric, melding her to him in a way that nothing else could have. She was aroused to the point of wanting to scream. Each stroke was exquisitely erotic. Necessary.
When she was mindless, when nothing else existed but his full ownership of her body, her body surrendered for her. The first waves began to crest over her and his hand fisted into her hair. His fingertips bit into her thigh as his hips cemented to hers.
They tumbled into the abyss.
***
Bree woke a few minutes before her usual alarm. Her bed was only a twin and she was right at the edge. Jax was on his stomach behind her. His knee was crooked so her back and bottom and thighs were curled into the nook of space he had left her.
I like this , was her first thought. Latent satisfaction kept her relaxed as she blinked against the morning gloom, but renewed desire began to stir her nerve endings, especially when she recalled their lovemaking. It had been torture of the most delicious kind.
And a horrible mistake. Because this was exactly what she feared most—beginning to soften toward him and form an attachment, even a physical one. She had been in this situation before. At least with Kabir she had waited to share her body until she’d been more confident in their emotional connection.
It hadn’t kept them together, though. Despite the love they had declared to each other, he had walked away, destroying her sense of self-worth.
Maybe she would fare better in a situation where her expectations were low. Maybe it would be safer to involve herself with a man who gave her terrific orgasms, but didn’t steal pieces of her heart. That way, if he ever did leave her, she wouldn’t be so devastated.
And maybe she was rationalizing sleeping with someone who had already slid past her defenses.
She sat up, trying not to wake him, but had to bite back a groan as her muscles protested. Everything ached in a way that filled her with gratification. She kept the edge of the sheet across her breasts, but the tips peaked with renewed arousal. Her skin pebbled from more than the morning chill. Weakness.
“She’s not up yet, is she?” he asked, voice mostly muffled by the pillow.
“No, but I can’t sleep.” She didn’t dare look over her shoulder at his bare, golden shoulders. His arm snaked around her waist. His wicked lips brushed her lower back.
“We don’t have to.”
Tempting. So tempting.
“She will be up soon, though.” And her whole life had to be rewritten to include him without losing herself. “I need a shower.”
She removed his arm and rose, then shrugged on the robe hanging on the back of her bedroom door before she faced him. There was no call for shyness. He’d seen and touched and tasted every inch of skin she possessed, but she was still deeply self-conscious.
“Can I trust you not to kidnap her while I’m in there?” She was only half joking.
He was on his elbow in the rumpled bedding, jaw shadowed with morning stubble, eyelids heavy. “How much more proof do you need that I want you both?”
She tied off the belt and hung on to the tails, wondering why she experienced such an atavistic thrill at his possessive language when she refused to believe he actually wanted her .
“My parents had passion in the early days, too.” She kept her voice low. Barely above a whisper. It added a note of despondency to what she was saying, but maybe that was her inner child still aching to be heard. “That’s how they wound up with me. Our situation reminds me too much of that. I don’t want Sofia to go through what I went through.”
“And what is that exactly?”
She twisted her mouth, unable to call it abuse or neglect. Her needs had been met, if grudgingly on her father’s side. Her mother had lied to her, but only to protect her. She hadn’t told the truth when Bree asked if her father loved her. Who could, when the answer was no?
“Sadness,” Bree replied.
“Because they divorced? We won’t.”
“You don’t know that.” At least her mother had loved her father. She had married him believing her feelings were reciprocated. “What if you fall for someone else? What if I do?”
“You won’t.” It was a quiet, implacable order that made her chuckle drily.
“It happens, Jax. Then you’re stuck in a marriage you accepted for a child you never wanted in the first place.”
“I want her.”
“So do I. But asking Sofia to carry the weight of a marriage isn’t fair to her.”
“I don’t expect her to. It’s on us to make it work.”
“Mama?” The knob on the door wiggled. “Who are you talking to?”
Jax had retrieved his bag from the driver last night. He rose and stepped into track pants, calling out, “It’s me, piccolina .”
“Papà?”
“Yes.”
As he tied the drawstring, Bree unlocked the door and opened it.
Sofia was in her wrinkled pajamas, a penguin stuffie hugged under her arm. She blinked at him. “Why are you here?”
“Because I’m part of your family now.”
He might be annoyingly domineering, but Bree liked the way he spoke to Sofia in ways she could understand. She also liked that he didn’t imply they hadn’t been a family before he entered the picture. He was joining what she and Sofia already had.
Sofia frowned. “But I like to cuddle with Mama in the morning.”
His mouth twitched before he schooled his face into patience. “You still can. We’ll have a big bed in Italy where we can all cuddle together.”
She looked up at Bree, brows pulled in confusion. “With the elevator?”
“Not where we went last night, no. Italy is a different place.”
“I’ll tell you about it while I make breakfast. What?” Jax caught Bree’s askance look as he finished pulling on his T-shirt. “You think my Italian grandmother didn’t teach me how to cook? Come, piccolina .” He came to the door and offered his hand. “You can help me.”
Bree’s chest constricted as she accepted that she had to give her daughter the kind of father she’d always longed for.
It was herself she needed to worry about.