Chapter Ten
IN MANY WAYS, Jade’s life settled into something that felt steady, if not wholly secure.
Her mother was happy in her new home and Kandili’s salary would keep her with Patricia for as long as she wanted the job. Jade still worried, of course, but it was more around her mother’s long-term health rather than stressing about bills.
She was also padding her nest egg with her income from grant writing, something that went a long way to alleviating her anxiety around things going wrong.
Jade was able to have lengthy conversations with Filomena, too. They spoke over the tablet and sometimes dissolved into laughter at Jade’s mispronunciations, but she could tell that Filomena was excited for the baby and pleased that her grandson was becoming a father.
It made Jade happy to make the older woman happy, but was Luca happy?
There’d been a moment during the scan where she’d sensed him withdraw on some level that he had yet to come back from.
“Reading a piece of paper that tells me I’m a father didn’t prepare me for seeing our baby,” he had said when she questioned him. “It was fresh shock. That’s all.”
She didn’t believe him. He didn’t shock that easily. Plus, from the first moment he’d heard she was pregnant, he had acted as though he wanted this baby.
Now… It wasn’t a rejection of the baby, but there was definitely a wall in place around her pregnancy.
It bothered her that he wasn’t being completely open with her, too.
She valued the honesty and mutual respect they seemed to have for each other, and often told herself that having that from him was better than the mystique of “love.” Wyatt had taught her that word only went so far so she had given up wanting to hear it.
She was falling for Luca, though. In so many ways he was a perfect husband.
He asked about her work and said, “Well done,” when she told him about it.
More than once, he had glared at a man who had tried to speak over her and said, “Please finish what you were saying, Jade.” Often, when they were out, he would look at her and she knew he was asking, Are you bored?
Do you want to leave? He loved to dance with her and when she was tucked on the sofa with a romance novel, he would put in his earbuds to watch the news and pull her feet into his lap to massage them.
Don’t let it happen again, Jade, she told the face staring back at her.
She was applying eyeliner, preparing for yet another evening of meeting strangers.
Her expression grew contrite because she knew it was already happening. She was falling from ten thousand feet without a parachute.
At least when her heart wasn’t involved, she had been able to convince herself that an eventual failure of this marriage would be easy enough to weather. Now she was growing too invested. Too needy.
Too fearful that she was making the same mistake she’d made with her father, hoping for love that would never actually be offered.
“Oh, hello, bella.” Luca appeared in the doorway to the hotel bathroom. His gaze skimmed down, taking in the bra and underwear she intended to wear under her latest gown from Hiro. Her hair was almost dry—she was letting the spirals do their own thing while she applied her makeup.
To call this royal suite in Athens “sumptuous” was an understatement. It had its own library, for heaven’s sake. The view of the Acropolis was stunning, the linen sheets ironed to scrupulous perfection. The bathtub behind her was set in a pedestal of blue marble in the middle of the room.
Luca began undressing for a shower stall that had enough nozzles and space to wash a sedan.
“How was your afternoon?” he asked. “Did you swim?”
“And had a bite on the terrace, then a nap.”
“Mmm. I want to bite you.” He stepped behind her, naked, and brushed her hair to the front of her shoulder so he could set an open-mouthed kiss on her nape. “You look good enough to eat.”
She reacted the way she always did when he touched her. A shiver of delight pebbled the skin down her arms, and her knees went soft.
“I was hoping to catch you before your shower.” He nuzzled toward her ear, sliding one hand proprietarily across her hip and up to her breast. “I’ve been thinking about you all day.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be thinking about the geopolitical implications of climate change and its accompanying costs?” She was trying for a teasing tone, but her voice wasn’t steady. She wanted to believe she occupied his thoughts for more reasons than sex.
“Yes,” he answered in a growl against the crook of her neck.
“But I kept remembering you trying on that bathing suit this morning.” He slid her bra strap down her shoulder and kissed the spot he bared, then lifted his heated gaze to meet hers in the mirror.
His erection pressed the lace covering her buttock.
“Care to tear up that nicely made bed in the other room?”
“I don’t want to ruin my hair.” Before he could bank the heat in his gaze, she canted her hips invitingly. “We can stay here.”
His breath rushed out as though she’d kicked him in the stomach. In the mirror, she watched his gaze sweep down. The hand at her hip slid forward, tantalizing the growing damp patch on the front of her cheekies.
His gaze flashed back to hers, pupils shot with excitement, nostrils twitching as he worked her knickers down her hips so they cut across the tops of her thighs.
It was thrilling for her to see him overtaken by lust as quickly as she was. He bared his teeth, seeming to struggle to stay in control as he slid his arm around to brace diagonally across her chest, then used his superior strength to tilt her forward.
She dropped her makeup brush into the sink and slapped her hands on the mirror, bracing herself so her belly was clear of the sink, and arched her back.
His fingers cruised to where she was slick with desire. He circled and teased, making her eyelids flutter in growing pleasure.
“Watch,” he demanded. His feet spaced hers farther apart and he guided the broad tip of his erection between her thighs, seeking the molten sheath that took him in one smooth thrust.
He grunted and she moaned.
It was as wild as their first time. His hand gripped her shoulder while his hips began a firm, slapping rhythm that prompted more earthy groans from her. His other hand continued to tantalize, ensuring she was swept as quickly toward culmination as he was.
Within moments, she was sobbing in climax and he was gritting his teeth around a harsh cry toward the ceiling, the pulses of his release clashing deliciously with her own.
They only broke a sweat in the aftermath, when they were both still panting. He gently withdrew and set a fresh kiss on her shoulder, helping her straighten to a stand, but his gaze was avoiding hers now.
“What’s wrong?” She self-consciously pulled her cheekies into place even though she would have to change them.
“Nothing.” He started into the shower, then turned back, saying tersely, “I let that get out of hand. I should be more careful with you. Are you all right?”
“Perfectly.” She smiled at how dismayed he seemed with himself.
“You would tell me if I was hurting you.”
“Of course.” She moved close enough to lift her face for a kiss.
He cupped her cheek and set his mouth across hers, then took his time feasting on her. It was the sort of passionate kiss that usually led into the wild sex they’d just had. Their arms slid around each other and they stood there a long minute, caressing and prolonging the afterglow.
When he lifted his head, he looked at her from beneath eyelids heavy with satisfaction, expression finally relaxing. “I will wreck that bed with you after all, if I don’t get into the shower right now.”
“How important is this thing tonight?”
His shoulder lifted negligently. His gaze traveled over her face, warm with temptation. Affection, maybe.
He felt something for her. She was sure he did. Her heart lifted along with the corners of her mouth. She grew emotive at the idea she could be more important to him than his work. Maybe more than anything else.
A sudden sensation in her abdomen widened her eyes.
“What?” he asked with alarm.
She brought his hand to her belly. Until now, she’d only felt little flutters that she had thought were as much in her imagination as actual movements of the baby, but that?
“He’s kicking.” A tremulous, silly happiness crinkled her chin and glossed her eyes. She pressed his hand to the spot and their little athlete obliged with another demand to be noticed.
Luca stiffened. Something flashed across his face that was tense and uncomfortable before he smoothed his expression and brushed a light kiss on her cheekbone.
“He feels strong.” He withdrew his hand from beneath hers. “We should make an appearance at this thing. I won’t be long.”
She blinked, trying to convince herself she had misread that moment of apprehension in him. The books had warned that men might feel weird about having sex once they felt the baby move. Maybe that’s all it had been.
It was impossible to tell, though. Luca turned away and stepped into the shower.
She went to change, feeling inexplicably hurt and, despite her assurance to him minutes ago, unwilling to tell him that he was the cause of it.
Luca didn’t need a psychologist to tell him the impending birth of his son was bringing up his own mixed feelings about his father. He kept trying to push it aside, exactly as he’d done all his life, but he couldn’t keep avoiding the question that plagued him.
How far would he go to safeguard his wife and child? Would he commit violence?
He couldn’t say he wouldn’t.
That was the sort of truth that had been punched into him with the soft kick of his son against his palm. A tiny action, but one that reminded him how fragile that tiny life was. How necessary it was to do everything in his power to protect both of them.
He didn’t want to be like his father. Not in that way.
But he feared he was.
And it was unsettling. Humbling.