CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SIX
“I DON’T ACT that fast,” Stella blurted, snatching back her hand.
What had she just done?
“The hell you don’t,” he scoffed. “You make careful plans for yourself, then seize opportunities when they present. That’s how you wound up in Zermatt.”
Was this an opportunity? Or a trap? And if she had realized the struggles she would face, she might not have done it.
That wasn’t true. She was grateful to her teenage self for making that bold decision.
What would Future Stella think of this choice, though?
Her mind kept falling back on her conversation with Alexandra, when she had said she and Rafael were a team, and Atlas saying that marriage had started out as a tactic for each to get what they wanted.
It gave her the courage to make the leap and offer a jerky nod of agreement.
“I’ll have a draft of the prenup for you shortly.” He moved to the door, then paused. “If you want your family at the ceremony, I can arrange it, but I can’t tolerate your father being there.”
“I don’t want him there, either.” Other brides might want their father to give them away, but Pappa had tried to do that once already. She wouldn’t let it happen again. “Will your family be there?”
“No,” he said decisively. “I’ll tell them when we get to London. Can you trust your family to keep it under wraps for a day or two?”
She thought of the twins, who were eight, and Pappa asking questions about why they’d been away.
“It’s probably best if it’s just you and me.” She was used to keeping secrets from all of them. It wasn’t the best dynamic with her family, but it had always felt safer. The less they knew of what she did, the less they had to confess to Pappa and be berated for it.
“I’ll release the hounds,” he said with a smirk, and left.
She lowered onto the bed again, trying to assimilate what she’d just done, but she wasn’t given much time to react. Within a few minutes people began asking for her time, drawing her into meetings on everything from the correct spelling of her middle name to her mobile number, blood type and shoe size.
When the draft for their prenuptial agreement came through, she nearly fainted at the amounts Atlas was putting at her disposal. She tried to protest and Atlas said it was in line with his agreement with Iris. He told her they would marry in Denmark, since it had no residency requirement and was closer than Gibraltar. They would leave first thing in the morning.
Stella ran the agreement by a lawyer friend in Zermatt. Her friend charged a premium for dropping everything to read it within the hour and suggested an addendum to cover fertility treatments should that arise, but otherwise didn’t spot any red flags.
With that, Stella ran out of reasons to turn back, but she was still trying to wrap her head around having a future with Atlas. She would be his wife and, eventually, the mother of his children. That would bind her to him for life the same way Grettina was bound to Pappa. It was daunting, but after tossing and turning all night, agonizing over whether she was making the right decision, she woke to a text from Beate.
Pappa had turned up wanting breakfast. Somehow, he’d caught wind of the photos.
Beate didn’t tell her what he was saying, but Stella could imagine. He already thought Stella was a show-off for “wasting good money” on a hotel. He never missed a chance to criticize her. From the time she’d begun showing early signs of womanhood, he’d blamed her for it. He’d wanted her to shoulder the role of an adult woman where their household was concerned, but had resented that she had grown into one.
As she thought back to all his hypocrisies, something fierce rose in her, something that wanted to show him he’d been wrong when he’d tried to choose a husband for her. If she was going to buckle to the institution of marriage, it would be on her terms. It would be a marriage that allowed her to get the upper hand with her father once and for all.
“You’re still here,” Atlas said when they met for breakfast. He looped his arm around her and set a brief, minty-fresh kiss on her lips.
“You had doubts?” She touched her mouth, which was buzzing from that light contact.
“You have a history as a flight risk.” He was teasing her, running his hand down the tail of her braid in the lightest of playful tugs.
It was a bright day of broken clouds when they lifted off, affording her a good view as they flew into Geneva. There, they boarded his private jet and reviewed the final prenuptial agreement. By the time they landed in Copenhagen, her e-signature was being requested.
Nerves accosted her then. The reality of what she was doing loomed larger as they were driven to a beautiful hotel in the town center and shown into a luxurious suite with a sun-drenched parlor, a balcony with a view of the harbor and a claw-foot tub in the bedroom.
A stylist was waiting with the dress she’d picked out.
She grew teary at that point, wishing she had asked Beate to be here. She suddenly felt very alone. This was how she’d felt on arrival in Zermatt. It was a new world to her, one where she didn’t know anyone. Where she didn’t know how she would make her way.
Was she throwing away her independence on a gamble that wouldn’t pay off?
Atlas came in and the woman left.
“Wow.” He halted to take in her satin A-line dress in winter white. It was tea-length with an off-shoulder neckline, simple and elegant. At least, that’s what she had thought, but she brushed self-consciously at the fall of the skirt.
“It’s not too simple? Or too sexy?” She had long ago learned there was no hiding her curves, so she might as well make the most of them.
“You are exactly the right amount of sexy. You look beautiful.” His gaze touched the baby’s breath the stylist had woven into the braided crown she’d arranged atop Stella’s head. “I meant to ask you to keep your hair down, but I look forward to watching you take that apart later.”
When they consummated their marriage. The air in her lungs evaporated.
“You look very nice, too,” she said shyly. He was in pin-striped trousers and a dark gray morning coat. “Would you mind helping me with this? I forgot to ask her to help me put it on.” She showed him the thin chain and offered her wrist. Her fingers were twitching with nerves, making it impossible to close the tiny catch. “It’s my ‘something old.’ Beate gave it to me years ago. She won it at a fair and saved it for my birthday. It was in my laptop bag from when I had to have the catch fixed.”
She braced herself for him to say something dismissive as he took it. It wasn’t even real gold.
“Had I known, I would have bought a charm for it.” He fastened it and the brush of his fingers against her skin made her pulse trip. “Instead, I bought this.” He reached for an embossed bag he’d set on the table and withdrew a wide velvet case. Inside was a necklace with matching earrings.
She gasped, not insulting him by asking if they were real stones, but she did say with shaken hope, “A loan?”
“No, they’re yours. A wedding gift.”
“Atlas.” She couldn’t imagine what he’d paid for the intricate setting of marquise and pear-shaped diamonds set into a vine-like design. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You know what I want you to say. ‘I do.’” He drew a circle with his finger, urging her to turn so he could fasten the necklace.
After he did, his touch traced the vee in the back of her dress, tickling against her skin until he reached where the buttons formed a line down her spine.
“These look designed to slow down an eager groom.”
Trembling, she moved to the mirror to admire the necklace, which was so stunning it blinded her. She shakily removed her small gold studs—which had been an act of defiance since her father said only harlots pierced their ears.
She inserted the diamonds and the sway of their drops made her more aware of herself and how feminine she felt. The necklace was a weighty reminder of the magnitude of the step she was taking, but there was no going back. Atlas was holding the door, watching her with such a look of possessiveness, the air crackled.
It only took a few minutes to reach the courthouse. Inside, a young man greeted them. He held a small bouquet and had a satchel over his shoulder. He wore a dark suit and an excited expression.
“Stella, this is Yana, from our London office. He works closely with my assistant, Derik. He has agreed to help us until Derik is back from vacation, but if you find you’re compatible, you may want to keep him as your own assistant.”
“I don’t think I’ll need one, will I?”
“You will,” Atlas assured her. “Think of all those phone calls and incidentals you pick up for guests at the hotel. Yana will do that for you so you can spend your time on more important things.”
“Like you?” she teased.
“Exactly.” His mouth tilted with dark satisfaction.
“It’s an honor to meet you, Miss Sutter,” Yana said in accented English as he offered the bouquet. “The wedding planner is upstairs, finalizing the paperwork. Shall we go?”
The chamber was surprisingly romantic with a vaulted ceiling and ornate murals on the walls. The ceremony itself was only a few minutes, but unhurried and filled with wishes that they embark on a life of caring and friendship.
As they exchanged rings, pincers of uncertainty took hold of her heart, but if she had harbored any girlish dreams around marriage or her wedding day, they had featured this man.
She had never imagined it would truly happen, though!
Even so, his hand was settling against the side of her neck. He sealed their marriage with a too-brief brush of his lips against hers.
At the last second, as he was about to draw away, he pressed back to crush her mouth with his own. It didn’t hurt, but it sent a deep sting through her—excitement and a sort of appeasement, but also stoked the fear she had barely acknowledged. That she wasn’t enough. That the things he made her feel were too big. Too much.
When he drew back, she discovered her hand was clenched around his lapel. Her mouth burned and her heart thudded. She felt ravaged.
But wanted. Needed, even.
She blinked back emotive tears and signed the papers with a pen the stylist had lent her as her “something borrowed.”
Yana took their photo on the stairs a moment later, offering congratulations as he lowered the camera.
They were married.
* * *
* * *
Chilled champagne waited in the room along with fresh strawberries, a selection of chocolates, an extravagant arrangement of flowers, and a blend of essential oils for the bath labeled Relax and Romance.
“Yana thinks of everything,” Stella remarked, taking off the cap to inhale the aroma of rose, jasmine and sandalwood. It did nothing to ease her nerves.
“I requested this.” Atlas popped the champagne.
As he poured, her phone gave a few pings where it sat on the dresser. She had deliberately left it here while they went to the courthouse so she wouldn’t be distracted by it. Now she set aside the bottle of oil and picked up her phone.
“I’m used to keeping it on for work, but I’ll mute it—” She cut herself off as she saw she’d received several emails from Atlas’s staff: a copy of their signed agreement, a confirmation of a bank account opened in her name, a listing from a property agent she’d spoken to yesterday, and access to a joint calendar, among other things.
She liked to think she could roll with whatever life threw at her, but this was so much .
Atlas offered her a tall flute crackling with bubbles. “You look nervous. Would you like to fill the tub and see where it takes us?” The quiet rumble of his voice made her skin feel tight.
She turned off her phone and left it on the dresser.
“I’m afraid that I won’t live up to your expectations and you’ll regret all of this,” she admitted, then sipped to wet her dry throat.
“What about your expectations?”
“I don’t have any.”
“The hell you don’t.” He sounded amused. “You’ve waited to have sex because you wanted it to feel a certain way. Do you think I’m not wondering if I can live up to that ?”
He looked the furthest thing from worried or insecure, though. He looked hungry.
She swallowed.
“That means you’ll have to be very clear about what you want,” he said in a voice that settled even lower, becoming almost velvety in its timbre. “You’ll have to say yes and more and harder . I won’t make you say please .”
She choked on her champagne.
He took the glass with an admonishing look. “This is my best suit.”
He set both glasses near her phone.
“I don’t know what I want,” she confessed in a strained voice, then had to ask, “What do you want?”
He made a rumbling noise of consideration as he shrugged out of his jacket and loosened his tie, gaze traveling from her hair to her cheek to her shoulders and onto her throat.
“I want to watch you take your hair down and undress. I want to see you in only that necklace while you ride me and I feel your hair all over my chest.”
She gasped. Her hand went to the necklace, but only because her pulse pounded so hard, she thought she might dislodge it.
“Am I coming on too strong?” He sounded amused, but his voice held a rasp that suggested he was keeping himself in firm check. “This is what sex is, Stella. If you want it to be good—and I know you do—then we have to say what we want and trust the other one will set the limits if it’s too much. I have very few.”
“Limits?” She suspected she didn’t have any, not where he was concerned. She was standing here fully dressed, but already felt naked. Vulnerable and raw. But excited.
His eyes narrowed. “If you’re not ready for that, keep your hair up. We can go for an early dinner.”
“No, I—” She reached for her hair and began searching for pins. Which felt like the most blatant action in the world. It felt like saying, Yes. More. Please and harder . It felt like begging.
She half expected him to laugh at her, but when she dared a glance toward him, he was watching her intently as she let the sprigs of baby’s breath fall and unwound the tail of her plait, then began to unravel it. His hands flexed as though he was resisting the urge to touch her. To hurry her. That gave her an unexpected thrill. A sense of power as she realized how much control he was exerting over himself.
When she had combed her fingers through her hair, fanning the long, rippling tresses around her shoulders, she asked, “Do you want me to keep undressing?”
“Yes.” The gritty word dropped like a hard stone in the quiet of the room. His urging was like a tangible force. Command rolled off him in aggressive waves.
Which should have had her hurrying to comply, but the strangest urge to defy him struck her. Not defy. Provoke . She didn’t know what possessed her, but she bent to pick up the hem of her dress and hooked her fingers into her underpants, sliding them down and off while letting the skirt fall back into place.
She kicked away the white cheekies and straightened to see an incandescent mix of astonishment and lust consume his expression.
“Is that how we’re playing?” He came toward her and cupped her head and smothered her mouth before she could finish saying, “Yes.”
His tongue swept between her parted lips, plunging her into a passionate kiss while she was still absorbing the erotic sensation of the silk lining caressing her bare bottom and thighs.
I’m not wearing underwear. He knows it .
She wore a strapless bra and wished she didn’t have that, either.
This was a very immodest way to behave, but she reveled in it. His hands roamed in circles on her backside, stimulating her with the heat of his palms and slippery glide of satin against her skin.
The press of his erection nudged where it had the other night. It was even more enticing now that she knew what he could do for her. She pushed into him, urging him to do what he had done then.
He spun her to the bed and came down on the mattress with her. His weight crushed her and his mouth plundered her lips and her only complaint was that she’d lost that delicious pressure between her thighs.
“Atlas,” she gasped, turning her head away to catch her breath.
“Tell me what you want,” he said as he levered himself up and off the bed. “This?”
Before she could respond, he adjusted her angle on the bed. Her skirt rode up as he dragged her closer, leaving her exposed to him.
She tried to pinch her thighs together, but he dropped to his knees and hugged her leg, then pressed a damp, open-mouthed kiss to the inside of her knee.
“Do you not want my mouth here, asteri mou ? Or here?” He set his mouth higher on the tender skin inside her thigh, eyes bronzed with iniquity. “Tell me.”
In that moment, she knew she would never have the upper hand with him. Never.
Her heart lurched even as her pulse tripped with sexual excitement. Provoking him had unleashed a ferocity in him that she had no hope of outgunning, but as he gently sucked a love bite into her skin, she groaned in capitulation.
“Yes.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Please. More.”
He teased her, making her wait for the trail of kisses to work in pinprick sensations toward the ache in her center.
“Please,” she heard herself pant again, right before his touch delicately parted her folds and the heat of his mouth captured her most sensitive flesh.
It was distressingly intimate and deeply pleasurable. Sinful, probably, but she couldn’t bring herself to stop him. She was seduced. Melted into liquid iron, heavy and glowing and molten.
“There. More. More ,” she moaned.
His long finger entered her slippery channel, moving in delicious cadence with the sweep of his tongue in such a perfect dance she thought she must be levitating off the bed. She was nothing but sensation, trying to capture the most intense waves with the knowledge there was something even greater beyond the break.
Then the crash happened, cracking her in half with the force of it, suffusing her in more pleasure than she could stand. Her cries of inhibition filled the room and he kept up his caress through the crisis and into the aftermath, only slowing when her contractions were fading to twitches.
She was boneless and buttery then, still trying to recover as he closed her legs.
“Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do that?” He rolled her onto her side and settled behind her so he could open the buttons down the back of her dress. “Five years .”
Soft kisses peppered her shoulders and spine as he opened the dress, making her twitch in the liminal space between satisfaction and returning arousal.
“I liked making you come apart like that,” he whispered hotly against her ear. His lips nibbled along the rim. Her scalp tightened and her strapless bra relaxed. A shiver chased down her naked spine while his restless hand brushed bra and dress away so he could cup her breast. “I’m going to be deep inside you when it happens again,” he promised.
His diabolical lips trailed to her nape, but as he shifted his mouth to the side of her throat, there was a pull on her scalp.
“You’re on my hair.”
“I need a condom anyway.” He lifted off the bed and stripped his clothes. “It’s in our contract.”
He was joking, but she checked in pushing off the last of her clothes. Part of her wanted to say You don’t have to . She wanted to feel him. At the same time, she was disconcerted to realize he still had the capacity to think of something coldly practical when really, he could have done anything to her at this point and she would have thanked him for it.
He drew a condom from the box in the night table. “Do you need lube?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Stella.” He leaned down to kiss her and slid a very proprietary hand between her legs as he did, caressing with a light, sweeping touch against her damp folds.
She tensed, shy, but he was in no hurry and, between kiss and caress, she was easily seduced into lying back on the bed. He gently invaded with one finger, then two. It was so flagrant, and fluttered such intense sensations through her, she bit her lip.
“Hurt?” He stilled.
“No.”
“You’re tearing up.” He carefully withdrew.
“Because it’s so…” She stopped herself from saying “big.” “I really want this. You.”
I feel like you’re taking all of me. I’ll have nothing left .
This marriage was a disaster of the best and worst kind.
He kissed her again, tenderly, then applied the condom. He piled the pillows against the headboard and brought her with him as he settled back against them, guiding her to straddle his hips, but he only had her settle her damp core against the rigid line of his erection.
“Do you have any idea how beautiful you look right now? Rosy and aroused…” He brushed the fall of hair away from her breast and over her shoulder, then cupped the swell, lifting it. “Let me suck your nipple.”
She had to catch at the headboard as she leaned forward, then jolted at the sensation of his hot mouth closing around the tip, pulling with light suction. Her legs were open; he was fondling her backside, reaching to touch her again, making her writhe while gently torturing her with the flick of his tongue against her sensitive nipple.
“And the other,” he demanded when he released her.
She bit her lip, wanting this, but wanting the other. Wanting to belong to him. She arched, trembling with arousal.
He dropped his head back and looked at her through hooded eyes.
“Now you’re starting to look like I feel.”
As though he was being torn apart? As though the heat billowing through blood and flesh and lungs was burning him alive?
“I can’t wait anymore,” she said helplessly and yes, there were tears in her eyes. “It’s been a long five years.”
“It has,” he said in a voice like gravel. “Take me.” He held himself steady and set his hand on her hip, guiding her.
The sensation of impaling herself on him was imposing and stark and deeply intimate. She was nervous, but too shaken and weak with arousal to fight gravity. Too ready and curious and trembling with need.
“There’s no hurry,” he admonished in a murmur, keeping his fist wrapped around his shaft so she could only feel the breadth of his tip filling her.
“I don’t want to wait anymore.” The ache of longing rang in her voice.
His breath hissed in and he removed his hand to clasp her waist.
She sank fully upon him, shuddering at the pinch as his length filled her. It was carnal and real, so very blatant, but good. It felt right. Like a culmination. Like she was meant to be right here in this moment in time, looking into his golden eyes.
As she panted and tried to adjust to this new experience, his touch pressed lightly into her tailbone, inviting her to move.
She did and her entire body felt stroked. Sensuality fluttered through her as she began to rock her hips in a rhythm set by instinct and the clasp of his hands on her hips. Her breasts swayed and she leaned down to kiss him, moaning with pleasure into his mouth.
It was perfection. Joyous, beautiful perfection that was building with each grind of her hips, with the way his tongue flicked into her mouth and his hands moved across her skin.
She didn’t care that all of Denmark could probably hear her. She rolled her hips, wanting more, wanting him deeper. He wrapped his arm around her to keep her hips secured to his and slid down on the bed, then began to rise up to meet her, fingertips digging into her hips. The coil within her tightened, the urgency gathered.
“Atlas, Atlas…” Within moments, it was happening again. She was splintering into a million pieces.
She held herself very still as climax washed over her, hands splayed on his hard chest, thighs gripping the hips that were pinned high beneath her.
But there was no easing her into the afterglow this time.
When the tension began to leave her body and she dragged her eyes open, she found his were alight with a feral gleam. In a move that reminded her he’d been an Olympian, he rolled her beneath him, and thrust once, deep, to secure their connection.
She cried out as fresh nerve endings were seared by steel and friction.
“Too hard?”
“No.” She brought her knees to his waist and locked her ankles in his lower back. “More. Harder .”
He was no delicate novice at this. He wasn’t brutal, but he unleashed his strength, making love to her in a way that did nothing less than claim her. While his kiss stole her breath and his arms caged her, he built one powerful thrust on another until sensations were twisting through her like forked lightning, making her writhe at the intensity of it. The pleasure was too much to bear.
She was trapped, though. Trapped in a world that had shrunk to him. Only him. The damp heat of his chest rubbing her breasts, the tension of his shoulders, the crash of his pelvis into hers. His smothering mouth and the scrape of his teeth at her jaw and the incredible tension that gripped them both.
When they were both sweating and making animalistic noises, when the ferocious pleasure was threatening to kill her, Atlas rasped, “Come now, Stella. Now .”
She did.
* * *
Atlas managed to get them both between the sheets and should have passed out the way Stella did.
Hellfire, she was beautiful, looking like Aphrodite with her hair spilling around her generous curves and her skin still flushed with orgasm. Her face was serene, innocent if not for the lips that were swollen and pink from their kisses.
He pushed the sheet down to his waist, still hot. Still recovering. Not just physically, but mentally.
He had known sex with her would be spectacular. He hadn’t expected it to be that . She was completely uninhibited, bringing out a primal side of him he’d taken pains to bury deep in the back of the cave.
An undeniable possessiveness had been expanding in him since the photos had come out. Sooner than that, probably, but the moment he realized she was under threat, he had felt compelled to protect her. There was a disconcerting other side to that coin, however, one that recognized the threat she posed to him. In the last hour, she had taken him to his breaking point and would continue to do so. He was vulnerable to her now and, because she was his wife and he was obsessed with her, she made him vulnerable to anyone who might attack her.
His practical mind had seen this marriage as a single path to several benefits: a wife he genuinely wanted, sex with a woman who had quietly obsessed him for years, and proof that he wasn’t his father. He hadn’t seduced a virgin while married to someone else. He married the virgin he wanted. He intended to treat her like a goddess.
Marrying Stella had been the right thing to do. He couldn’t regret it, but he recognized that things had changed for him . He wouldn’t remain faithful out of an arrogant desire to prove he was better than his father. It went far deeper than that. He tried to imagine wanting someone besides Stella, anyone, and it didn’t compute.
She was the one he wanted. The only one. He had her and that should be enough to satisfy the beast within him, but there was an itch to hunt still pacing within him. He wanted more from her. He wasn’t sure what it could be, but it bothered him that this craving sat in his gut even as his blood was still slowing from being inside her.
He wasn’t aware of falling asleep, only knew the waterfall he heard didn’t make sense. He was in a hotel in Denmark. Married. Wasn’t he?
He snapped his eyes open and found her side of the bed empty. Her jewelry sat on the nightstand.
“Stella!” He came up on an elbow and there she was in a hotel robe, hair piled atop her head in a messy bun.
She finished pouring oil into the running tub and closed the bottle. “Do you mind?”
“No.” He sat up, letting the covers fall to his waist. “How do you feel?” Sore enough she needed the bath?
“Embarrassed,” she admitted in a voice he barely heard over the rush of water.
“Why?” He threw off the covers and stood. “There’s no shame in what we did. Even if we weren’t already married.”
“No, but…” She bit her lip, rueful. Her lashes flickered, suggesting her gaze had gone to the twitching flesh between his thighs.
“What?” he prompted, stalking toward her, growing smug.
She lifted a defensive shoulder, so damned cute with her blush and pert smile, he wanted to kiss her before she could reply.
“I woke up and thought, ‘Why isn’t he awake? I want to do it again,’” she confessed.
Oh . Conceit poured in a line of heat from his throat to his torso to his loins, pulling him into arousal as he drew her into his arms. “You can always wake me for that. I’ll never be mad.”
“You look angry right now.” She sent a teasing look to the aggressive thrust of his erection. “Can I, um…?” Her hand hesitated to take hold.
“That’s part of our shared property now, asteri mou . Help yourself.”
She hummed a noise of amusement and gently gripped him. Her hand was soft, her touch hesitant, but deeply seductive all the same.
He cupped her jaw and kissed her while she explored, learning the shape of him. His own fingers found the opening in her robe and discovered that she had, indeed, been thinking about this. Her wet heat called to him. He wanted to taste her again and imagined her tongue where her thumb was riding the sweet spot on his tip.
Desire rose so sharply in him, he had to cover her hand to still it.
“Should I stop the water?” she asked in a voice soaked with arousal.
He glanced at how slowly it was rising.
“We have time. But why don’t you watch it, just in case. Turn around and hold on to the edge of the tub.”
Her eyes flared with shock, then glittered with libidinous interest before she did exactly as he’d commanded.
Oh, she was dangerous. If he wasn’t careful, she would have him wrapped around her finger before he knew it.
He remembered to get a condom, barely, then returned to sweep the robe up to the middle of her back, before losing himself in her perfection.