Chapter Eight #2
Beth had never had to consciously think about walking, but with her legs like jelly, it was taking all her concentration to put one foot in front of the other. There was a tempest of nerves in her stomach, the racing of her heart enough to put a hummingbird’s to shame.
Only her father’s steady presence beside her kept her vaguely rooted in reality.
This didn’t feel real. She’d spent the morning feeling like she was in a waking dream and, walking through this magnificent cathedral with its impossibly high frescoed ceiling and with the light flowing through the stained-glass windows bathing everything and everyone in colour, that dreamlike sensation only grew stronger.
It wasn’t until she was ten paces from Xavi, darkly gorgeous in a light grey three-piece wedding suit, that the dream veil lifted.
Her hummingbird heart sighed and wrenched in a single motion, and in the next beat, the tempest in her belly churned with such violence she feared she was going to be sick.
She was on the cusp of marrying Xavi.
She was about to wilfully pledge her life to him knowing her pledge was a lie, and as all her thoughts and emotions collided, the impulse to turn on her tail and run away was almost stronger than she could bear.
Her heart wrenched again. She wanted it to be real. This wedding. Their marriage. The old dream of spending her life with him… She was about to touch it. Touch that dream and then step into it. If she could only forgive the devastation he’d wrought on her, she could step into it and embrace it.
Did it really matter that Xavi’s reasons for marrying her now were so different to when they’d made their plans for marriage and a family all those years ago?
He would be hers, just as he’d once sworn he would always be.
Why should she care that he wasn’t marrying her for love?
He wanted her and desired her; that hadn’t changed.
Why couldn’t it be enough for her when the truth was she’d never felt a moment of real, true happiness without him?
She barely felt her father release her arm or the kiss he placed on her cheek. Her hand had been enveloped in Xavi’s, and he was all she could see and feel.
The dreamlike sensation cloaking her again, she gazed into his dark brown eyes and felt the warmth and desire blazing from them warm her skin as effectively as his touch.
The two of them saturated with the colourful light filtering through the stained-glass windows, Beth watched Xavi’s lips move as he spoke his vows, but her heart was pounding too hard to hear the words as more than a distant whisper.
And then it was her turn, and Xavi’s dark gaze held hers as intently as she’d held his.
Squeezing his fingers tightly, she repeated the Spanish vows, flooded with emotions strong enough to burn her eyes with tears that didn’t fall, and yet her voice didn’t falter…she didn’t falter. ‘I promise to love, cherish and be faithful, in good times and in bad, all the days of my life.’
When the time came to seal their vows, they gazed into each other’s eyes one long, last moment before their mouths came together in a tender, lingering caress that sealed what her heart already knew.
The vows she’d just made…she would never be able to break them.
‘Are you happy, mi vida?’ Xavi whispered into his bride’s ear as he moved her around the floor for their first dance.
She turned her cheek from where it was pressed against his chest and lifted her gaze to him. ‘I feel like I’m in a dream.’
He smiled and bowed his head to kiss her.
Truth was he felt like he was in a dream, too.
When they’d exchanged their vows, he’d felt something touch him, something that had felt almost holy, which was a strange sensation for a man who rarely attended mass and would have been happy marrying in the grounds of this hotel.
They’d been married only eight hours, but he felt different.
He’d felt different since he’d walked Beth back down the aisle as his wife.
He hadn’t expected that. What was marriage but a piece of paper?
It had meant more to him when he’d been young and crazed on lust, and it had felt imperative that he tie Beth to him forever.
That young man had let his head be turned for six months into believing in fairy tales and magic. Beth’s magic. It had possessed him.
He could feel her spell weaving around him again now, but that was okay. This was their wedding day. She’d made the same vows as he had, to love and be faithful for all their days. Powerful words that contained a magic of their own.
Had he ever stopped loving her? He couldn’t say. He couldn’t even say if what he felt for her was love, and it was dangerous to even think in such terms, a certain path to the madness that had subsumed him before.
He knew better than to let Beth’s spell weave too deeply into him.
Tonight he would make love to her all night long, and then tomorrow, they would fly to the Caribbean and make love whenever and wherever they liked, and then they would come home and settle into their new lives together with the boundaries he’d put in place carefully adhered to.
But for tonight and the next five days, he would honour his promise and be entirely hers.
Beth lifted her hair so Xavi could unclasp the tiny button at the top of her dress, and shivered with pleasure as he slowly pulled the hidden zip down to the base of her spine.
She released her tresses as the dress fell into a puddle around her feet.
He buried his nose into her hair and gripped her hips, pressing his arousal against her back. Thickly, he said, ‘All day I have wondered…’
Naked except for white silk stockings, Beth turned around and wrapped her arms around his neck. Gazing into his eyes, she whispered, ‘Make love to me, husband.’
His molten stare held hers. ‘For all my days, esposa.’
Her heart, incapable of beating properly the whole of that magical day, ballooned. Esposa. Wife. Xavi’s wife.
Gathering her into his arms as if she were as light as a small child, he carried her to the honeymoon bed of the honeymoon suite and laid her down.
Their mouths fused.
There was no hot desperation in their lovemaking. Not that night.
Together, they unhurriedly stripped Xavi out of his wedding suit until they were skin to skin. Hands roaming and exploring each other’s naked flesh, their tender yet passionate kisses came from the same dream that had carried Beth through the day.
It had been a beautiful day, and she wasn’t ready to let it go and for reality to seep back into her psyche.
Let her have this one day and night of believing their marriage was what her heart so wished. One day and night before she pushed the illusion of feeling loved aside and accepted reality back into her heart.
His dark stare locked on hers, he drove into her slowly, then captured her mouth for another deeply passionate kiss.
Limbs tightly entwined and enveloped in a blissful dream of heady emotion, Beth let the pleasure of Xavi’s lovemaking saturate her, heart, body and soul, and when she came, consciousness drifted away until it was only them left in the world.
The dream cloaking Beth was still in no hurry to lift itself.
She was still in no hurry to shake it off.
The de la Rosas’ private island was a picture-perfect paradise.
Situated between the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos, they’d flown to the former, then speed-sailed on Xavi’s new catamaran to the island itself.
Barely six miles square, it was thick with greenery and spectacular wildlife and ringed with the finest, softest light golden sand.
The shallow turquoise water surrounding it was clear enough for her to swim out and marvel at the colourful fish who’d escaped the coral reefs farther out swimming around her.
Even the villa was a delight, in part because it was no villa but a hamlet of Balinese-style lodgings dotted around a main house that had all the facilities of a luxury hotel.
She would have loved her time there no matter the company, but sharing it with Xavi sealed its perfection.
These had been the best days of her life.
‘When can we come back?’ she murmured on their last evening as they lazed in bed after making love. Her cheek lay on his chest. The comforting rhythmic beat of his heart lay beneath her ear. The French windows of their suite facing the sea were open, a delicious, gentle breeze cooling their skin.
His fingers continued their lazy circular motions on her back as he said, ‘As soon as I can carve out more than a few days in my schedule.’
She kissed his chest to stop her mouth from protesting. The dreamlike state she was living in was too wonderful to spoil with words that could wait until they returned to their real life. ‘Can we try for the New Year?’
‘That should be doable.’
She sighed her happiness and nuzzled her cheek over the fine dark hairs of his deeply tanned chest. A veritable sun magnet, their days there, few though they’d been, had deepened Xavi’s olive skin by several shades.
By contrast, Beth’s pale skin had gained a few extra freckles.
She supposed slathering factor fifty sunscreen on every couple of hours didn’t help the tanning process, but with her complexion, she wasn’t taking any chances.
The upside was that Xavi had insisted on being her personal sunscreen slatherer.
‘I have to admit, I thought you would find it boring here,’ he commented.
‘You’re kidding? This place is heaven!’
He chuckled softly. ‘You’re like a bee, always busy, busy flying from flower to flower in search of your next dose of pollen. And you’re impulsive. When you get an idea to do something, you jump in with both feet. There’s not much scope for impulsivity here.’
She considered this. ‘I suppose it depends on where I am and what I’m doing.
If something takes my fancy and it’s doable, then yes, I’ll just go ahead and do it because why hold back?
Life is short—we both know that—and so I guess I just want to live it while I can because who knows when it will be over for me? ’
He was silent for a long time. ‘I can’t be like that, Beth. I don’t think I’m built to be like that. I have to have lines and boundaries on my time, otherwise everything blurs.’
Her happiness ebbed at the reminder. ‘Is this your way of reminding me that our marriage is just a business deal with benefits?’ she whispered sadly.
He’d rolled her onto her back before she could snatch a breath; had pinned her wrists to the sides of her head before she felt his fingers wrap around them. ‘That isn’t what this marriage is,’ he said tightly. ‘I wanted to marry you, Beth. I want to father your children and have a family with you.’
Her heart swelled with a combination of hope and sadness, and for the first time since they’d been on their honeymoon, Beth was unable to stop herself thinking about the child they’d lost. The child Xavi had never known existed.
Another swell bloomed inside her, a swell of sudden yearning to tell him the truth that he’d already fathered a child with her, but how could she?
She’d never spoken the words to a soul and didn’t know if she could do it now, and even if she could, what purpose would it serve other than to hurt him?
To hurt him would be to hurt herself.
Xavi was right that she was impulsive. She’d agreed to marry him thinking she was going to embark on a wrecking project to destroy him the way he’d destroyed her, and then jumped in with both impulsive feet on her plan of action to pull it off.
He’d never wanted to hurt her. She was certain of it.
Not deliberately. He’d behaved terribly to her, but she needed to find a way to forgive him for that because one thing she was certain of was that she was in this marriage for keeps.
She loved him. She’d always loved him. She would always love him.
She had no more choice in her love than she had over her natural hair colour and freckles.
The past was the past, and she had to find a way to live with it and find a way to embrace their future together. Find a way to embrace Xavi for who he was and not hate him for no longer being the young man who’d put her first, second and third in his life.
She had no idea how long they spent positioned like that, with Xavi pinning her down, his gorgeous face glaring at her, his arousal slowly springing to life at the base of her pubis.
And she had no idea what he was thinking. The face she’d once read like a book was closed to her of everything but what he wanted her to see.
Without saying a word or yanking her wrists from his hold, she held his stare and tilted her hips so his arousal was positioned at the entrance of her heat.
Neither spoke nor reacted facially as he slid inside her. Neither moved their gaze from the other as he brought them both to orgasm.