CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER EIGHT
H E SHOULD HAVE expected it, Atlas berated himself as he was forced to say, yet again, “She’s not feeling well.”
All the guests were longtime family friends and business associates. They knew “unwell” was code for “relapse.” Their reactions ranged from murmurs of compassion to less sincere, more judgmental brow lifts before they turned their attention to Stella.
His wife was weathering her own spectrum of reactions from polite welcome to undisguised curiosity to a few greetings that were more askance.
If she found it uncomfortable, she didn’t show it. She smiled warmly and asked appropriate questions and complimented gowns all while giving away very little about herself despite being grilled relentlessly.
“I grew up near Bern, but moved to Zermatt at eighteen. That’s where I met Atlas five years ago,” she said for the thousandth time, touching his arm and smiling up at him. “I didn’t expect we would rekindle things, but here we are, stealing the limelight from the guest of honor. Have you known Oliver long?”
She was actually an artist at deflection. If he wasn’t in such a foul mood, he would have appreciated that sooner. He would have noticed the stress around her eyes.
He was winning all the prizes for selfishness today, wasn’t he? God, he wanted this night over with.
Catching Chester’s eye, he signaled that champagne should be served, then cut off the man droning on about his recent trip to the Amalfi Coast.
“Would you excuse us? It’s time for the toast.” Bringing Stella with him, he wove through the crowd to the ballroom where a chamber orchestra was assembled on one end.
The conductor nodded when Atlas appeared next to him and gracefully closed out their piece, stepping down so Atlas could bring Stella onto the dais in his place.
With the music silenced and staff circulating with trays of filled glasses, people gathered into the room and quieted, offering their attention to him and Stella. Atlas handed her one of the tall flutes that Chester brought and kept one for himself.
“First, if you haven’t had a chance to meet my beautiful wife, Stella…”
She really was beautiful. The color of her gown made her eyes look purple. Each time he looked at her, he wanted to kiss her. To be alone with her and hold her. To lose himself completely in her so he could escape himself. Until there was no part of himself left.
“…then that is your loss,” he continued. “Because we’re leaving right after our first dance. We’re still newlyweds, after all.”
That earned a knowing chuckle.
“Where is Oliver?” Atlas scanned to where his father had come in from the terrace to glare at him.
Oliver hadn’t said a word to Stella yet. He’d been avoiding them, not that Atlas had bothered making a point of introducing them. They were in a firm standoff of clashing wills.
“At sixty-five, my father continues to astound me,” Atlas said with more sincerity than anyone could know. How could he be so neglectful? How? “Our relationship hasn’t always been smooth sailing—” He paused for the laughter that understatement provoked. “But I anticipate he’ll have more time for sailing and other relaxing pastimes very soon.”
There. The gloves were off and on the floor between them.
A speculative murmur went through the crowd, hardening his father’s expression.
Atlas grimly lifted his glass. “Please join me in wishing Oliver the health and happiness he deserves.”
Rot in hell was what he really meant.
Glasses went up along with cheers of “Hear, hear.”
They stepped down and the conductor led a chorus of “Happy Birthday” before switching to a waltz.
“I’m not much of a dancer,” Stella warned Atlas as he guided her onto the floor.
He didn’t care if she stood on his shoes and let him shuffle her around. They needed to start the dance portion of the evening so they could get the hell out of here.
She was actually a lovely dancer, easily matching his lead, much the way they were in bed. His father danced by with one of the women from the board—a widow he slept with on occasion and was likely trying to seduce onto his side against Atlas.
Atlas didn’t take the chance that his father would ask them to switch partners. He cut the dance short and swept Stella out the front door to his waiting car.
“Oh! I thought—” She looked over her shoulder.
“There’s a spa hotel up the road. I had Chester arrange it. We have bags in the back. I can’t make you stay here.” He couldn’t stay here. He was liable to smother Oliver in his sleep.
Stella’s shoulders went down a notch, letting him know how much tension she’d been carrying while she’d been here, but she gave him a wary look as they slid into the car.
Thankfully, she didn’t say anything until they’d arrived at the vine-covered estate house that had been converted into a luxury hotel. It offered fitness facilities and spa treatments along with a farm-to-fork restaurant and other exclusive amenities. Carmel spent as much time here as she did at rehab so he knew it was a top-notch place.
Their room was actually a stand-alone two-story cottage in a converted granary. Upstairs was a four-poster bed beneath a skylight. A small balcony overlooked a private garden lit with fairy lights. Downstairs, in the sitting room, wine sat on ice next to a basket of fruit, cheese, chocolate and crackers.
“Are you hungry?” Stella asked.
“No.” Not for that. Maybe this confined space had been a bad idea.
She sent him a considering look before she came across and slid her arms around his waist.
He stiffened.
“Do you want to talk?” she asked.
“No.”
“Get drunk?”
“Hell, no.” He was always careful how he used alcohol, having seen the dark side of abusing it.
“Do you want to make love?”
“Stella—” He took hold of her upper arms, which were bare and warm and smooth. Inviting. “I’m not in a very romantic mood.”
“Have sex, then? Or—” The next word she used lifted his brows into his hairline. “Did you think I don’t know that word?” she chided. “I’ve stubbed my toe.”
He choked on a laugh. Then shook his head. “I can tell when I’m being managed. You don’t have to pacify me.”
“It’s not pacifying. It’s…” She frowned. “You’re upset and you’ve put up a wall because of it. I understand why, but it’s a mental stubbing of a toe. All that energy needs to go somewhere. Why not me? You’ll make it good for me. I know you will. And when we’re naked, I feel close to you.”
He shook his head. “You’re still new to this.” He was reminding himself because he was in a mood that would push boundaries if he wasn’t careful.
“I am.” Her lips tilted into an enigmatic smile. “And I’ve been thinking I want to try something I haven’t done yet.” She started to lower to her knees.
“Wait.” He tightened his hold on her arms.
“You don’t want me to?” She blinked in surprise.
“I do. Desperately,” he said through his teeth.
“Then let me.”
He held her for a few pulsebeats of indecision, then, “Put a cushion down so you don’t hurt your knees.”
* * *
Atlas heard a creak on the stair and jerked his head up, realizing Stella was gone from beside him.
“Where are you going?”
“I need my bag.”
“I’ll get it.” He came up on his elbow, but she was already down the stairs.
He fell onto his back again, listening until she crept back up and took her bag into the toilet.
He had a thought to check his phone, to see if there was news about Carmel, but his brain was still dull with sleep and his body still lethargic from an excess of sex.
Stella had destroyed him, utterly destroyed him. First, she’d taken him in her mouth and generously caressed every which way he guided her to do. She had been right about the energy within him needing an outlet, though. As much as he’d wanted to let her take him over the edge, he’d also wanted to punish himself on some level. To hurt. And he’d needed some semblance of power to combat the helplessness that stalked him.
Before he lost control, he had picked Stella up and tipped her onto the couch to ravish her in the same way. Claiming her with his mouth and his touch and every part of him, again and again, on every piece of furniture he could abuse—the coffee table, the stairs, the bench at the end of this bed. He’d had her cling to the bedpost while he knelt behind her and covered her hands and buried his mouth in her neck while burying himself in her body.
Each time he made her cry out and spasm with joy, he’d exulted in his ability to do so. He’d tested the limits of their eroticism until, at some point, the urgency within him had reached its breaking point. He’d exploded within her. Finally, their raw, frenzied connection had turned slow and sensual and become a tender sprawl across the soft mattress.
They had passed out, naked and sweaty and spent. Now the predawn glow at the edges of the curtains was coating the room in a liminal gray light.
She came back to bed on tiptoe, still in the hotel robe, fingers working to braid her hair.
“I’m awake,” he told her, and pulled back the covers on her side.
“I think I’m getting my period. My back hurts.” She sat on the bed, legs curled to the side while she continued binding her hair. “I wanted to put something on.”
“Are you sure I’m not the reason your back hurts? I think I might have broken my own.” His whole body was aching as though he’d trained for hours.
“I’m sure.” She was reaching the end of her tail and held it while she searched in the pocket of the robe. His bow tie came out, and she used it to tie off the braid.
“Sacrilege.” He reached for the braid and lightly rolled the length around and around his fist, pulling her in slow motion to lean down and kiss him.
She did, becoming pliant as she splayed her hands on his chest, but she lifted her head to say, “I’m not broken, but I think I’d rather wait and see.”
“I was just saying hello.” Maybe avoiding what he knew she deserved. “And thank you.” He released her hair and found her knee beneath the slit in the robe, appreciating the feel of her soft, cool skin.
“Can I ask something before we go back to sleep?” She braced her arm on the far side of his waist so she was bridged over him, hip leaned into his side. “Was Carmel’s drinking really our fault? She’s upset that you married me?”
“Her drinking has nothing to do with you, Stella. Don’t ever let either of them get into your head that way. Unless you pour a drink and hand it to her, there is no way it could be your fault. She began drinking herself to blackout in her teens. If we want to point fingers, we can look to the genes on her mother’s side where there’s a history of addiction and alcohol abuse, but that’s not her fault, let alone yours.”
“Yet I get the sense you’re blaming yourself.”
He drew a deep breath against the weight of Carmel’s struggles.
“I carry a lot of guilt where she’s concerned,” he admitted. “She lost her mother about a year before I came to live with them. That’s when her drinking started, at boarding school. She was already struggling academically. She has some learning challenges and grief didn’t help. She began acting out, getting suspended.”
“She probably wanted to come home.”
“Perhaps.” He nodded. “But when she did, I was there. She wasn’t aware I existed until I arrived. Suddenly, she learned her father had not only had an affair while her mother was pregnant with her, she had a brother who was entitled to half the estate. I remember overhearing her crying, trying to understand, and Oliver said to her, ‘Someone has to take over. You’re not up to it.’”
“That’s horrible.”
“It was. She felt rejected. Usurped. It’s not that she’s not capable of working alongside me, but she’s never applied herself because her anger and drinking were always in the way. I’ve often questioned whether it’s worth being Oliver Davenport’s son, but I stuck it out because my mother wanted me to claim what she saw as my birthright. I’ve invested years of my life into DVE. I’m definitely a better leader than Oliver, but Carmel thinks I have a master plan to steal it from both of them. Oliver plays us against each other. I’m dead sure he fed her some line about my marrying you so I could cut her out. That’s why she has always sabotaged my relationships. She feels threatened. Our photos? Iris would have seen them, but Carmel made sure she saw them. She knew I’d have leverage with the board the minute I had a wife.”
“Aren’t you trying to stick it to Oliver, though? A little? You were needling him with your toast.”
“I was.” He winced with remorse and fury. “But what kind of man uses his daughter’s illness as a weapon? Do you know why he didn’t take her to the clinic? He wanted me to see her like that.” Sick and weak and soured by vodka. “He wanted me to feel responsible.”
“But you’re not, Atlas.” She brought his fist to the spot where her warm breastbone was exposed by the lapels of the robe, cradling it there. “You care about her. I can see that.”
“I do.” Agony sliced through his chest as he thought about how much damage had been done to Carmel through the years. “But I swear he would rather she died so he wouldn’t have to deal with her any longer.”
She released a small noise of sympathy and pain and brought his knuckles to her lips, kissing it better, but only making the ache inside him throb deeper.
“That’s what I come from,” he said, swallowing the thickness from his throat. “That’s what I cause by existing. By claiming what’s mine.”
“Oliver had the affair, Atlas. Does Carmel never see his role in it?”
“Where do you think she gets her victim mentality? None of this is Oliver’s fault.” He threw his free arm over his head. “In his opinion, my mother was a slut waitress who trapped him by having his son. His bastard was getting attention on the sports channels so he had to acknowledge me before my paternity came out. His daughter failed to live up to his expectations so he had to bring in his second string. I keep telling Carmel that she should trust me, not him, but she desperately wants Daddy’s love. He can never be the villain in her eyes. Only me.”
“And it hurts.” She rubbed her soft cheek against the backs of his fingers.
“I don’t expect her to love me or accept me, but my taking over isn’t just about besting Oliver. It’s what’s best for all of us,” he asserted, believing it. “I should have seen our marriage would cause her a setback, though. I was being like him. Going after what I wanted.” Going after Stella. He could see how he had roped her in with his selfish logic, binding her to him no matter the cost, so he could have everything he wanted in one ruthless move.
A chill of self-contempt invaded his chest, but Stella was shifting to blanket herself across his chest as a weight of plush velour and warm curves and that unique scent of almonds and honey.
The rope of her hair slid across his neck. He picked it up and pressed the cool, bound silk to his lips, deeply aware of the way she captivated him, making him disregard the consequences of his actions.
He wanted to replace Oliver, not be like him, but the more enthralled he became with her, the more he felt the ruthless, self-serving blood that ran in his veins.
* * *
* * *
Stella was still thinking about all that Atlas had confided when they drove to Carmel’s clinic after breakfast.
His frankness and genuine torment over his sister had allowed her to glimpse who he was deep inside—a man with a strong conscience and a desire to protect the vulnerable. A man worth loving.
As she had curled up against him, she had felt her heart cracking open in a way that scared her. She had learned to protect herself with calm smiles and carefully chosen words and behind-the-scenes maneuvering, but he was sliding past all those defense mechanisms.
It had been concerning enough when she’d realized how much physical power he had over her. Not brute force. He would never wield his strength against her—not in a way she objected to, anyway. He preferred to assault her senses so she bent willingly. When his hands trapped hers or his thighs held hers open, she was always weak with passion and was thrilled by the rough exertion of his strength. He never hurt her when they were like that and that had already begun building her trust in him.
Now her thoughts and feelings felt impossible to disguise from him. It was a terrifyingly unguarded sensation. She wasn’t sure how to deal with it. She wanted to withdraw the way he seemed to do without effort, but all he had to do was give her hand a small squeeze and she was smiling with shy joy, unable to hide how much she was won over by his tiniest show of affection.
They arrived at a stone building at the end of a shady drive and walked inside, past a brass plaque that read Aster Lane Retreat. The building wasn’t big, possibly holding ten or twelve rooms. There was a dining room, which was empty, and the sound of a piano from a parlor she couldn’t see.
They were shown to a small, well-tended garden surrounded by a tall stone wall where Carmel reclined on a lounger. She wore pink Davenwear joggers, a matching jacket and sunglasses.
“Yech,” Carmel sneered when she saw them. “Here to gloat?”
“I wanted you to meet Stella. Properly.” Atlas turned a nearby chair and caught Stella’s ponytail, drawing it up and away so she wouldn’t trap it behind her back as she sat. “How are you feeling?”
“Hungover. Obviously.” Carmel turned her head to study Stella from behind her lenses. “Daddy said he got you fired when we were in Zermatt that time, and you two have been doing it ever since. I don’t remember you,” she added with deliberate dismissal.
“You might not remember me saying yesterday that Stella is off-limits,” Atlas said in a tone of quiet warning. “Now you will. And no. We haven’t.”
“No?” She looked to him.
“I wasn’t expecting this marriage, either,” Stella said evenly. “I know how it makes me look. I feel like I should apologize to you for it, but I can’t. I don’t regret it.” Even when Atlas seemed to be dismantling her hard-won self-reliance with only the brush of his touch on her shoulder.
Carmel’s mouth tilted into a sugary smile, as though she wanted to make some disparaging comment, but she must have thought better of it because she asked, “How was the party? Was I missed?”
“Always,” Atlas replied. “Everyone asked about you.”
“Did Daddy ?”
Silence. There was only a latent buzz of a bee moving from rose to rose nearby.
Carmel made a choking noise and looked away from both of them.
“I don’t think he was speaking to Atlas because of me,” Stella murmured. “We didn’t stay long. We spent the night at a spa Atlas said you like. I had them put together a basket of things you’ve bought in the past. The front desk said they’ll leave it in your room.” After they inspected it.
Carmel rolled her head to look up at Atlas.
“What can I say?” he drawled. “She’s nice .”
“Then what the hell is she doing with you ?”
“A fair question.” He extended his hand toward Stella. “We’ll go. Text me if you need anything.”
“What could I possibly need, Atlas? My life is perfect.”
“Good. Mine, too.” He wove his fingers with Stella’s, but she had the sense he was being ironic, which sent a pang into her heart.
Their marriage might not be perfect, but she wanted to know she made his life better on some level. That he didn’t regret marrying her.
But maybe he did?