Chapter Ten
CHAPTER TEN
“I came in to wake you and heard you were in the shower.” Jax rose from the table to hold her chair, gaze skimming the silk pajamas her mother had given her yesterday. They were a frosted mulberry color with gray lace on the cuffs.
“Mom gave them to me, since we’re not taking a honeymoon.” She looked down at them rather than meet the heat in his eyes. The subliminal, I know what you did last night .
The bondage in the hallway should have satisfied both of them, but after they’d undressed and she’d washed off her makeup, she had worshipped every inch of him, using her mouth to draw him into a tensile arrow of muscle before she rode him as though she hadn’t seen him in years.
The activity had left her whole body sore in the most delicious way.
As she started to take the chair, strong hands caught at her and drew her to face him. He cupped the side of her neck and nuzzled her temple, lips scuffing her cheekbone.
“Thank you for last night.”
She shivered under the onslaught of his tender caress. He inhaled as though drinking in her scent.
She had trusted him and let herself go. Now she felt unprotected. Wary. What would he do with all this power she’d granted him?
“I could eat you for breakfast,” he said with a run of his lips into her throat, then up to her mouth. “But after today, you’re mine forever so I’ll be patient.”
He left a lingering kiss on her lips, then slowly released her, allowing his hands a final roam across arm and waist and hip before he lifted the cover from her plate of avocado toast.
She sank down, shaken from nothing more than a good morning fondle.
“Do you need anything from your apartment before the movers take everything to storage?” he asked as he poured her coffee.
“I told them to stand down.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m keeping the apartment.” She attacked her food. Nerves had kept her from eating much at dinner last night and she’d worked up an appetite with him overnight.
“Your place isn’t big enough for us to use when we visit. If you don’t want to stay here or with my parents, I’ll buy something.”
“Mom and Quinto want to use it. I didn’t realize they’ve been wanting to semi retire and travel. They were staying for me, to help with Sofia, but now they’ll buy something in Virginia Beach and work here on and off.”
“You’re giving yourself a place to come back to,” he accused.
Her pulse tripped. She had to fight to swallow her bite.
“I’m being realistic.” He was all about being practical, wasn’t he? “You haven’t spent a night trying to soothe a child with an earache, or seen her when she’s overtired or had too much sugar. Parenting might not be for you, Jax.”
“I’m insulted. Have you read the prenup? You already have options if you and I arrive at irreconcilable differences.”
She had. The terms were very generous—provided she give their marriage a year and attend counseling if things grew rocky.
“We’re trying to establish trust, Bree. That’s difficult for me when you’re giving yourself an off-ramp.”
“We’re getting married after four days of knowing each other. Of course I’m giving myself a safety net. But it’s also less stressful. I was losing my mind with making decisions and worrying I would forget something that would wind up in a storage locker. This way, Mom can send me anything I forgot. I can start paring down the next time we’re here.”
He pursed his mouth with dismay, but seemed to accept it.
They ate in silence until his phone pinged. He glanced at it. Frowned. Looked at her.
“What?” she asked apprehensively.
“I reached out to your father.”
She sat back, taking his words like a cold knife into the chest. “Talk about making it hard to trust. Why would you go behind my back like that?”
“That’s not what I was doing.” He frowned. “When you said he couldn’t come to the wedding, I thought we could go through DC on the way to Italy, so I could meet him.”
Against her will, and a lengthy history of endless disappointment, a tiny ray of hope lit inside her.
“What did he say?” she asked timidly.
“This is his wife. She said they’re leaving on vacation today.”
The lightness inside Bree dropped like a stone. She swallowed the bitterness that arrived in her throat. “I told you they weren’t available.”
“I presumed he had surgery. It sounds like he has the day off. Does he not want to meet me?” he asked with incomprehension.
“He treats presidents, Jax. He’s not impressed by you.”
“That’s not what I mean. I’m about to become your husband. I’m the father of his grandchild. He doesn’t care?”
And there it was: the coldest, most shameful fact of her life. The one she’d spent years trying to come to terms with.
“No,” she said, pushing away food that she no longer wanted. “He doesn’t.”
His brows came together in a dark line.
She drew a breath that felt loaded with noxious gas.
“When I was very young, I thought it was the demands of his work that kept him from coming home. He’s a brilliant surgeon. Everyone says so.” She wet her dry mouth with a sip of coffee, but it tasted sour. “I understood the importance of his work, so I patiently waited for the day when it would be my turn to hold his attention, but it never came. Instead, shortly after I turned eight, he told Mom he was taking a position in DC. We weren’t invited. He wanted a divorce so he could marry Laura. He had found time to have an affair, but not to come to my recital.”
“What an ass.”
“That’s not even the worst of it. He was already a surgeon when Mom met him, but he was up to his eyeballs in tuition debt. She didn’t mean to get pregnant, but she did, so they married. She sold the house her parents had left her to pay off his loans. Eight years later, he was making big money so she rightfully asked for substantial alimony. Dad retaliated by demanding shared custody. He was trying to push her to lower the support payments. She thought if she wasn’t in the picture, he’d make more effort to connect with me. Spoiler alert, he didn’t.”
And it still hurt. It made her feel inadequate. Unwanted.
“I was old enough to understand the animosity between them, if not the nuance of it. I felt it when I went to see him and he worked the whole time, never making time for me. Laura had three children of her own, all younger than me. She didn’t need another child underfoot.”
“He divorced your mother to marry a woman with three children?”
“Yes.” It wasn’t parenting he didn’t like. It was parenting her that had repelled him. “I don’t know how he met her. A convention or something. Her father is in politics, which is why they moved to DC, to be closer to her family. She resented having me foisted on her, but Dad insisted I be there every second weekend because of the support payments.”
“Your mother couldn’t do anything?”
“Like what? Make him want to spend time with me? No, but she could see I was miserable. When I started high school, she renegotiated so I only had to see him twice a year if he matched her contributions to my college fund. I got a part-time job purely to boost the amount,” she said with spiteful humor.
“Why did you invite him to the wedding? Why do you have any relationship with him at all?”
“Because it’s nice to have access to good doctors. When Sofia had that ear infection, Dad made a call, got us seen right away. Also…” She winced, embarrassed. “I thought marrying someone as illustrious as a Visconti might catch his notice. Or Laura’s. I was using you. It didn’t work.”
“This is why you asked me if I wanted a meaningful relationship with Sofia.”
“Yes.” She kept her eyes on the food she wasn’t eating, not wanting him to see the gaping canyon of emptiness she had kept available for her father that he had always declined to fill. “It would have been easier for me if I’d never had any expectations of him. I didn’t want Sofia to suffer the same disappointment.”
“And it’s easier for you not to have any expectations of me . That’s why you didn’t want my number four years ago.”
Ouch. That landed very squarely on target. “Correct.”
He snorted and looked to the side.
“It’s also why I didn’t expect any different when you didn’t ask for mine.”
His gaze flashed back to hers like a scythe. “In future, I can make a call if you or Sofia need a doctor. You don’t need him in your life unless you want him there.”
She smiled flatly, appreciating the gesture and wishing it was that easy to stop wanting the impossible.
“Are you going to eat anything more?” he asked.
“No.”
“Good. Let’s get married.”
***
Melissa had given her a very good life, one that had gifted Bree with the confidence that she could move through life without a man to fulfill her.
She had longed for a partner anyway. That’s how she’d wound up moving in with Kabir and attaching so strongly to him. She knew fairy-tale endings didn’t exist, but she wanted the realistic happily ever after where someone gave her a place to land when she fell. Someone who shared the small nonsense of life and helped her laugh about it. She wanted great sex.
If she hadn’t been stinging from Kabir’s rejection four years ago, she might not have been so quick to push Jax away. Of course, if Kabir hadn’t rejected her, she might have been married to him, she thought ironically.
A pang of relief followed that realization, forcing her to acknowledge that all this time that she’d been carrying and birthing and raising Jax’s child, she had secretly longed for a relationship with him . She had longed to share Sofia with him and see the pride in his eyes that mirrored her own. She wanted to know more about him and his life and make love with him and feel his arms around her as they slept.
Here was her chance. She only had to be brave enough to marry him and believe she could have all of those things.
And risk being scorned again.
That was the part that kept giving her pause, but that was life. One way or another, she would suffer disappointments and heartaches. They were inevitable.
At least she knew where she stood with Jax. Everything he’d shared about his first engagement told her he was a very honorable man. The kind of man she could trust and rely on. Maybe even love.
So she married him.
Since it was a private, afternoon ceremony at his parents’ home, Bree had chosen a knee-length, double-breasted coat dress with a pill hat that had a short, netted veil. Jax was in a black morning coat over a silver vest, a white shirt and striped trousers, looking so handsome Bree had to wonder how his first fiancée had backed out.
Melissa arrived with an overexcited Sofia, who put on another new party dress—Nonna was determined to spoil her as mercilessly as Gigi always had—and the moment arrived for Sofia to walk her posy of flowers across the room.
The gauntlet of her new family proved too much for her. Sofia caught a case of nerves, dropped her flowers, and ran to Jax, where he stood with the officiant.
He picked her up and she buried her face in his lapel, clinging tight, refusing to let him put her down. Everyone covered their smiles.
Once Bree joined him, Sofia agreed to stand with them and listened politely while they spoke their vows.
Jax went first, pledging in a deep, steady voice to be a loyal and faithful partner as he cherished, respected and comforted her.
Hot tears arrived behind Bree’s eyes as she accepted the simple band from him that would sit behind his grandmother’s ring. It was warm from being in the pocket against his heart and had a pure quality in its solid, unadorned simplicity, matching the promise he was making to her.
When she slid a slightly wider version onto his finger, and repeated the words back to him, a tremor arrived in her chest.
She hadn’t expected this moment to feel so moving or impactful. She hadn’t expected to believe . But as she looked into his steady eyes, she understood that her inner walls had to come down to give them a real chance.
It was unsettling because it wasn’t just the bulwarks of defenses she had to release. As they moved forward in their life together, she had to believe, somehow, that they would hold each other up. She didn’t know how that would work. She didn’t know if it would.
There was no going back, though. They were pronounced husband and wife.
He drew her into his arms and her own bout of extreme shyness hit. They had danced together last night where all could see them, but this embrace was different. It was a declaration, a deeply intimate one. When his mouth settled on hers, it was a revelation of the passion that had brought them together in the first place. She couldn’t stop herself from twining her arm around his neck or parting her lips to let him deepen the kiss.
She felt the control he exerted even as he gave in to temptation and briefly ravished her, just enough for her heart to leap and send a blush of pleasure into her cheeks.
He kept his arms around her as he lifted his head. His gaze flashed into hers with a light of satisfaction. For the response she couldn’t disguise? Or the marriage itself?
Either way, she knew in that second that the balance of power between them was not equal. It never had been. He had the wealth and resources, the physical strength and greater erotic prowess than her. He even had the unqualified love of their daughter who had yet to discover that Papà could say no just as well as Mama could.
But it was done. They signed the paperwork and accepted congratulations and posed for photos. After a convivial early dinner, they changed to go to the airport.
Bree hugged her mother, trying not to cry. She could fly Melissa out anytime, now that she had an obscene allowance on top of the salary she would continue to receive, but it still felt as though she was stepping aboard a steamer for the colonies, never to see her mother again.
Trying to hide her tears, she gathered up her daughter and left with her new husband.
***
Jax had left his penthouse a week ago, oblivious to the fact he would return with a wife and daughter. Bringing them into his home should have felt disruptive, but he found himself embracing the chaos of decorators converting a bedroom for Sofia and toys underfoot and little feet kicking him in the night because Sofia wasn’t fully settled in her new home and new bed.
He liked being a father, he discovered, except when he had to discipline Sofia. The first time it happened, it was as though Bree wanted to punish both of them.
“It’s your phone,” Bree said when they found Sofia washing it in the sink, trying to destroy the evidence of her peanut butter fingerprints upon it.
Sofia knew phones were off-limits. Jax had to put her in a time-out on the bottom stair and restrict her screen time for two days. She cried. He felt horrible. She apologized and he tried not to crush her as he hugged her.
“Do you still love me?” she asked fearfully.
“Of course I love you. I will always love you,” he promised her.
“Next time I’ll ask first,” she promised, snuggling into him.
He resolved to keep it out of her reach from now on. He couldn’t go through this again.
Feeling close and connected to Bree didn’t happen as easily. Not that they were in conflict. Things were actually going as smoothly as they could.
They hired a nanny and Sofia took to her and her new preschool very quickly. She was picking up Italian words as easily as she absorbed English, outpacing Bree, who spent an hour on an app every night, trying to keep up. Bree struck up the acquaintance of a few mothers at the preschool, which also helped her assimilate and kept her from feeling isolated in a new country.
She came to work with him three mornings a week, occupying an office two floors down from his, then spent two evenings online with Eve’s group back home. They often had lunch together. At home. After a quickie. Once they even defiled the stately desk in his office.
There was the real source of his satisfaction with domestic life, he supposed. Sex on tap. Yes, they had to be mindful of Sofia, but they necked all the time. He liked thinking about what he was going to do to Bree, sometimes fantasizing all day without hardly seeing her, then playing it out when they got to bed.
He liked more than the steady diet of orgasms, though. He wouldn’t have called himself lonely before they married. His life was too busy and demanding, but he liked having someone to come home to. He liked the chitchat over meals and he liked having Bree next to him when they went out.
Small things niggled at him, though. Things like the fact she’d kept her apartment in New York and her own bank account where her salary was deposited. She stayed on the pill.
She had good reasons for all of those decisions, but in his mind, they added up to a withholding of her full commitment to their marriage.
Marriage to him was a lot, though. He had to admit it.
Even in the run-up to Christmas, there were holiday parties and the frenzy of shopping. They spent Christmas with Eve and Dom in Como, where his parents joined them for a few days, then attended a New Year’s Eve party at the home of a famous movie star.
Things grew even busier in January, especially his social calendar.
Bree was already a working mother. Now she was also the wife of an executive. His role at the helm of the Euro division meant he was expected at cocktail parties and charity galas and ribbon cuttings. He loved the convenience of not having to find a date for these things, but Bree was soon at her wits’ end.
“ Another ball? Can I wear my wedding dress?” She was joking, but he said, “Absolutely not.”
Her wardrobe was deeply inadequate, though. She had a stylist who had loaded her up with designer ready-to-wear, but she needed more.
He booked them for a few nights in Paris and surprised her by flying Melissa in to join them. Sofia was thrilled to spend her days with Gigi, freeing up Bree to meet with designers and shop the boutiques.
“Are you afraid they’ll Pretty Woman me? Why are you coming with me?” she asked on their first morning.
“I thought it was obvious that I have a passion for fashion.” He waved at his bespoke trousers and slim-fit suede jacket over a tight black sweater. He’d almost added a vintage fedora. “I used to come with Eve. I know a lot of the designers.”
Also, Bree was not nearly courageous enough when it came to spending his money.
“It’s forty thousand dollars,” she hissed when he told her to wear a cashmere day dress out of the shop.
“It suits you. You need a better coat, though.” He picked one that cost twice as much, enjoying spoiling her.
Once she got over her sticker shock, she deferred to his taste, reluctantly admitting, “I do like it,” and “It feels really nice.”
On their last day, they visited a shoe gallery on Rue Saint-Honoré. Jax opened an account for Bree, then stepped outside to take a call from Nico. Through the window, he watched her try on a pair of tall black boots with a stiletto heel.
Today, she wore a tweed skirt with a chunky, peach-colored sweater with sleeves that fell past her knuckles. It was a perfect ensemble for a pair of sexy boots like that.
As she paced in front of the mirror, head tilted in consideration, he decided he would buy them for her even if she only ever wore them for him. He could already imagine how he would arrange her to best admire them.
A man passed behind him and entered the shop. Jax didn’t pay much attention until he saw Bree turn and say something to him.
The man froze, then walked across to embrace her.
“What the hell?” Jax muttered.
“What’s wrong?” Nico asked.
“I’ll call you back.” Jax shoved the phone into his pocket and entered.
“Here he is,” Bree said. “Jax, this is Kabir.” She seemed flustered as she introduced the tall, fit, South Asian man.
He wore a camel-colored overcoat and such yearning in his eyes as he looked at Bree, it was a punch in the stomach for Jax.
“Kabir and I dated in university,” she reminded Jax with a tight, uncomfortable smile. “I was just telling him I was here with my husband.”
“I didn’t know you were married,” Kabir said. “The last time I talked to Jessica, she only said you had a baby. That was a couple of years ago.”
“A daughter,” Jax provided. “Sofia. She’s three.”
Chew on that.
Kabir’s brows went up, and he said a faint, “Congratulations.”
“And you? Married? Children?” Bree asked him politely.
“I was engaged. It didn’t work out.” He looked like he wanted to say more, scratched the back of his head as he looked between them, then sealed his lips. His expression as he looked at Bree was filled with despair.
“What are you doing in Paris?” Bree asked into the potent silence.
“Work. I’m with my uncle’s company. I promised my sister I’d bring her a pair of shoes.” He looked around. “I don’t have a clue where to start.”
“We won’t keep you, then. Are you finished?” Jax asked Bree.
“Um, yes, I’ve chosen some shoes, but I don’t think I’ll take the boots.”
“No,” he agreed. “A different style, perhaps.” Something that wouldn’t remind him of this interaction.
Jax had already opened an account. Her shoes would be shipped to Naples. He helped Bree remove the boots and handed them off to the shopping assistant.
“We should get back to Sofia and your mother,” Jax said.
“Melissa’s here? Say hello to her for me,” Kabir said with genuine affection.
“I will. It was nice to see you.”
“You, too. And, Bree—” Kabir caught at her hand as she reached for her handbag.
Jax glared so hard at that proprietary touch, the man’s fingers should have incinerated and fallen to the bench in a pile of ash.
“I just wanted to say…” Kabir cleared his throat and stuffed his hand into the pocket of his overcoat, glancing warily at Jax. “Since I have the chance. I’m sorry. I’ve always felt bad about…” He glanced at Jax again, loathing that he was prostrating himself in front of an audience, but his gaze swiveled back to Bree, filled with a plea for understanding. He searched her gaze. “I know how things were with your father. The way things ended between us—”
“It’s fine,” she cut in with a breezy smile. It was the one that grated on Jax’s nerves because it was so fake. “Don’t give it another thought. Have a good life, Kabir. I mean it.”
They left and didn’t speak until they were in the elevator at the hotel. Then Jax couldn’t keep it in any longer.
“He’s still in love with you.”
“I know.”
***
“What do you mean, you know ?” Waves of animosity were coming off of Jax.
Bree was still recovering from the shock of seeing Kabir in a place that was so out of context from anywhere she would have expected to run into him. It was like getting off on the wrong floor at work and not knowing it until you walked into the wrong office.
“I always knew he loved me. I just didn’t know he would lie to his family about my place in his life and leave me anyway.”
The doors opened to reveal a well-dressed older couple.
Bree smiled tightly at them and moved with Jax to their suite.
“Mom?” Bree called out as they entered. She checked her phone and saw her mother had texted that she and the nanny had taken Sofia to a nearby playground.
She let Jax take her coat and glanced at the bar, wondering if it was too early for a drink. Wondering what it was about running into Kabir that felt so unsettling.
“Have you been texting him?”
“ No. You heard our entire conversation. It’s the first one we’ve had since he left our apartment four years ago.”
“But he reached out to your friend since then,” he noted, pouring himself a drink.
“Jessica,” she provided. “She was my roommate first year. She was in the same biochemistry track as Kabir, so they were always trading notes on assignments. She probably contacted him about job prospects.” Bree still saw Jessica sometimes when she came to New York, but she had never mentioned Kabir asking about her.
“If you hadn’t had Sofia by then, do you think he would have tried to get you back?”
“I doubt it. His family life is complicated. That’s why he never told them about me.”
“And you forgave him for that?”
“I do now, yes.” She appreciated Kabir’s apology. She had never allowed herself to look back on their time with fondness, too hurt by the rift at the end, but now she could see how young they’d been. It hadn’t been realistic of her to think they were ready for marriage. She was barely ready for it now.
“He would have taken you back today if I hadn’t been there,” Jax muttered.
“Are you jealous?” she asked with shock.
“He talked to you as if he knew you.”
“He did. We lived together for two years. Before I met you. ”
“You’re mooning over him.”
“I’m not mooning . It’s nostalgia for the people we were. We had happy times, Jax. Sorry to break that to you, but that’s why we were together for so long. Because we loved each other. And might I remind you that you were engaged ? You loved someone else, too. At least the people from my past don’t insult our daughter and make you feel small.”
He had the grace to look away.
“Jealousy is not a compliment, you know,” she continued with ire. “It tells me that you don’t trust me.”
“It’s hard to trust you, Bree. You made him sound like he’d broken your heart. Like it was over.”
“He did . It is.”
“Well, lucky him, having that much effect on you.”
“Are you serious right now? His feelings for me are not within my control, but you know what? It’s nice that someone loves me.”
He snapped a look at her.
Her heart was pounding with emotions that had climbed way out of control, but this was an undercurrent she’d been avoiding and now found herself unable to escape. She was flailing in it.
“You think I don’t hear you tell Sofia every single day that you love her?” she asked with a catch in her voice. “And wonder if I’ll ever hear it?”
“Do you love me ?” he asked bluntly.
She was starting to think she did. He was clawing her apart right now with a chilly attitude and a few dispassionate words.
She would be damned if she would admit it, though, not when he was being such an ass. Not when he didn’t trust her and was only being possessive.
“That wasn’t our deal, was it?” She fought to keep her voice steady. “This marriage is practical.” In this moment, it was a certifiable nightmare.
“But you loved him. You were still in love with him when we slept together in Como,” he said grittily.
“You knew that,” she shot back.
“Do you still?”
“No.”
He only stared at her, skeptical.
“You’re being very insulting right now.” She crossed her arms.
“You aren’t committed to this marriage. That’s insulting.”
The door beeped and opened.
“Papà!” Sofia ran straight to Jax and he picked her up.
“I didn’t think you’d be back already.” Melissa set down her bag to remove her coat. “I told Nanny to take a few hours off. I was going to order lunch and watch a movie with Sofia.”
“Shopping fatigue. I’m going to take a bubble bath,” Bree said with a strained smile.
“Me too?” Sofia asked.
“Sure.” She could do with a dose of innocent enthusiasm and unconditional love.
An hour later, when Sofia’s fingers and toes were wrinkly, Jax came into the bathroom to say that lunch had arrived. He rinsed Sofia in the shower, then wrapped her in a towel to carry her out to dress her.
Bree showered her own bubbles from her skin, stepping out in time for Jax to return.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” she said, tucking the edge of the towel beneath her arm. “Maybe I didn’t give up my apartment, but I still gave up a lot to marry you. I know it doesn’t seem like it. Not when you’re giving me shopping trips to Paris, but I knew who I was when I was a single mom climbing the corporate ladder. Now I’m someone’s wife in a strange country with no friends. I don’t have Mom around the corner to lean on. Every weekend I’m paraded through some black-tie event where I have to pretend I belong. You have me looking at villas on the Island of Capri, for Pete’s sake! That’s not me , Jax. Forgive me for clinging to a few pieces of myself that are familiar.”
“We got it, by the way. The villa on Capri. That’s what I came in to tell you.” He leaned on the counter, arms folded, ankles crossed.
“The one with the pool?” She hugged the towel around her a little tighter. “And the gardens and the view?” It had been built in the nineteenth century, but modernized into something so charming, she hadn’t believed she was standing in it. Now she would live in it.
He nodded.
“I’m glad.” Her smile faltered as she took in the gravity in his expression. “Are you?”
“Very. I’ve ordered champagne.”
She wiped at a trickle of water that was leaking down the side of her neck onto her bare shoulder.
“I was being possessive,” he admitted with a grimace. “Your past with him didn’t matter to me until I saw you with him today and realized how much history you had with him. History that I don’t have.”
“Because I didn’t try to find you when I was pregnant. You still haven’t forgiven me for that. I know.” Would he ever?
“I’m trying,” he said bluntly, making her heart lurch. “Because what’s done is done. It’s not productive to hang on to it. I know that.”
“I’m trying, too. I’m trying really hard to believe all of this is going to work out.” Her mouth trembled with uncertainty, though. “Fighting with you doesn’t help.”
“I know.” He leaned forward and grabbed a handful of the towel.
She clutched at it, keeping it from falling, but his grip pulled her into the space he made as he opened his feet.
“Kiss and make up?” he suggested.
There was no I’m sorry . No I love you . No I’ll do better next time .
She nodded, though, needing the approximation of remorse and acceptance and promise. She needed more than a kiss, too.
He must have as well. The moment his mouth touched hers, it was as though a match lit. A flame burst to life between them.
His kiss turned hungry and he spun her, then lifted her to sit next to the sink. He dragged the towel open so it pooled around her hips.
She opened her thighs and reached for the buckle on his belt, pulling him closer. Needing connection. Needing his need of her.
He took over, jerking open his fly, hitching his trousers down and freeing his erection.
He gripped the towel beneath her, sliding her hips right to the edge of the counter while he guided himself to part her folds, seeking the damp heat.
They were kissing again, grasping at each other, bordering on frantic. This wasn’t make-up sex. It was an extension of their fight. It wasn’t anger, though. It was more an expression of the hurt they were causing each other. She wasn’t quite ready so it stung as he entered her. She nipped at his bottom lip and he pulled back to give her a glittering glare through his narrowed eyes.
They pulled each other closer, grappling, provoking each other with all the secret things they knew each other liked. She dipped her head to suck hard on his nipple. He swept his hands beneath her thighs, planting his palms on her hips so she was tipped back and had to catch her balance on her hands. She was constrained, but the angle stroked places that made her eyelids flutter.
He whispered flagrantly sexual things. He told her how beautiful her breasts were and how much he liked her heat clamped around him. He watched as he made love to her with steady precision, driving her arousal relentlessly up the scale until she was one humming nerve. All her awareness was centered in the place where he claimed her. The sweet burn and the coiling tension.
“No one else will ever give you this, Bree. No one else will see you like this and feel you—” He gritted his teeth, barely hanging on. “Only me. Say it.”
“Only you,” she moaned obediently, arching so the top of her head was against the mirror behind her, the ceiling light in her eyes. “I only want you. Only you.”
It was true. So profoundly true, it shook her to the center of her being. She couldn’t imagine her life if he wasn’t in it. She hadn’t loved Kabir. She had loved the idea of love. She had wanted the potential for stability and a secure future and had been devastated when he denied her that.
This was love. It was the delicious agony of feeling deeply connected and utterly defenseless. Of knowing her husband’s flaws and being angry with him and wanting to make love with him and share her life with him anyway. Wanting to share herself .
“I’m yours. Always. Never stop, never stop.”
The fingers digging into her hips pulled her a fraction of an inch closer so the slam of his hips struck where she needed it most.
Climax hit, detonating a sting of pleasure through her, one followed by wave after wave of pure pleasure. He bit back his own groans, throat flexing, muscles straining as he locked himself to her and pulsed with glorious, powerful throbs inside her.
Then, with both of them still shaking, he gathered her close, cradling her so tenderly against his damp chest, she wept a little.
Because she loved him. She was so fathoms-deep in love with him, it compressed her lungs. She couldn’t breathe.
His kiss was gentle when he tilted up her chin. His thumb swept the tear from the corner of her eye. Concern pleated his brow.
“We’ll both do better next time.” The corner of his mouth dug in with irony.
At what? Lovemaking? Fighting? Meeting old lovers? Or loving each other?
He gently withdrew and the sense of loss made her ache.
She began trying to pull herself back together, but as usual, she was in pieces. Vanquished.
While he zipped his trousers and was in complete control.