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He wanted to put his brand of ownership on her, turn her off every man she’d ever had sex with for the rest of her life. She was his wife, dammit!
He smothered a groan. His hands slid lower, fingers sliding over the upper curves of her partially naked breasts. Blood was thundering hotly in his ears. But if she told him to back off he would.
Immediately.
Walk out and leave her to go for that annulment.
Her skin felt like the softest satin. The firm globes hardening in response to his touch, sending him insane. ‘Not yet?’ The repeated question was thick with his need.
Zoe made a soft whimpering sound at the back of her throat. The lingering touch of his lean fingers, his closeness, were playing havoc with her ability to think. His eyes had turned to smoke, hot with desire. He wanted her. He ignited her.
Aided by his fingers, the towel dropped to the floor. Another step closer, another turn of the screw. She felt a long shudder rake through his body, so close to hers she could feel the potent male strength and heat of him, sense the heavy pounding of his heart. How often had she fantasised about him touching her naked body? Countless. But she had never known it could be this wonderful.
His lean hands not quite steady, Javier lifted both of them and tilted her face towards him. Her eyes were glazed gold, siren-hot, half hidden by the heavy sweep of her dark lashes. She shifted her feet a little, like a sleepwalker. The burning, hard tips of her beautiful breasts were touching his shirt, searing him through the fine material. His body was one long ache for her and he didn’t know how much longer he could hang onto his control. The decision had to be hers.
‘Do I stop this?’ he asked, hardly able to breathe. ‘Tell me.’
CHAPTER FIVE
ZOE’S body throbbed with desire and his did, too—she could feel it. A major miracle had happened! Javier actually saw her as a woman, not as a needy child or a pesky adolescent, and he wanted her!
Add love to her side of the equation and there was no backing off, no denying herself what she had craved for long, empty years.
Did it matter what he thought of her? Wasn’t half a loaf better than no bread? Wasn’t this—him, her love for him—the only thing of any importance?
Lifting her hands, Zoe pulled his head down to hers, her mouth giving him his answer. I love him like crazy, was her last sane thought when, after a nanosecond of stony stillness, he groaned deep in his throat and kissed her back.
Kissed her with fierce passion, ravaging her mouth with his brand of possession, kissed her until she was drugged and breathless, craving the next intimate slide of his tongue, returning it with interest, clinging, her arms around his neck, hands sliding through the crisp blackness of his hair, her body on fire, almost exploding as his hands took off on a hungry quest to explore her willing and wanton nakedness.
His body shook as she lifted herself onto her toes, the eager arc of her hips lifted to meet the burning, insistent pressure of his. She melted into him as though she belonged. His heartbeat thundered as the irresistible force of desire intensified to primal need.
The provocative minx was turning the tables, branding him with her mark. She had made him jettison his self-respect as if it had no more worth than an old paper bag! He had no more self-control where she was concerned now than a newborn baby.
Her pouting lips were teasing now, feathering tiny tasting kisses at the corner of his mouth, grazing down to the underside of his jaw, her elegantly lovely hands slowly parting his shirt buttons.
Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion, every atom of his being centred on what was happening here, the feel of her silky skin beneath his hands, the exquisite curve where her hips flared from her tiny waist, the scent of her, the pulsating, addictive warmth of her flesh. In a moment those perfectly formed, sinfully tight breasts would be touching his naked skin.
He was sweating, shaking with need. Lust. Knowing what she was should have had him fastidiously turning his back on her.
She was a witch. Had to be.
He was bewitched. Glad to be.
Those exquisitely delicate hands at last tugged his shirt free of the waistband of his trousers, the backs of her fingers sliding against his overheated skin. Javier couldn’t breathe.
She was offering what he’d craved for long, tormenting months. Months of doing the honourable thing, of removing himself from temptation as much as possible.
The events of this evening had ejected honour right out of the window.
He heard the tiny mew of her satisfaction as pebble-hard nipples rubbed against the tight drum that was his near-exploding chest and expelled a driven sigh that seemed to come up from the soles of his feet, before lifting her in his arms and carrying her with long, impatient strides to the waiting bed with its mocking smooth virginal covers.
She was his wife, dammit to hell and back again!
Her arms clung; she was boneless, fluid. Her beautiful golden eyes were glazed with passion, enticing, inviting, sending him out of his mind. She was avid for what he could give her and he needed it more than he’d ever needed anything!
She was heaven, spread out on that bed. Her long pale hair spilling over the pillow, her lush lips parted as her breath came in rapid, shallow pants. On driven impulse, Javier bent over her and took one rosy distended nipple into his mouth just briefly and then the other, his pulses surging as her back arched in wanton response, her hands reaching for him.
He stood back, avoiding the supplication of her outstretched arms. It took one hell of a lot of will power. He wanted to possess his wife—his woman—right now. But two could tease. She didn’t have the monopoly on driving the opposite sex crazy. He shed the rest of his clothes very slowly. Her witchy yellow eyes drank in every movement.
Siren’s eyes.
Pulling him to her. The air was hot, full of sex, the awareness between the two of them more intense than anything he’d ever experienced.
Naked, he joined her. She writhed towards him, threading her fingers through his hair, pulling him to her like the experienced wanton she was, slick skin fusing with the heat of his.
Javier took both her hands in his and held them above her head. Long mouth twisted in a wry smile, his eyes hot smoke, he began to stroke lazily tormenting kisses over her breasts, down to the soft curve of her tummy. She squirmed in wild ecstasy, frantic need, her fingers digging into his shoulders, her hips lifting for him, her breathing out of control.
Javier gave her a grim smile and, before moving his dark head lower, told her, ‘Patience. I’m in no hurry. I’ve waited a long time, and I fully intend to savour every slow second…’
The soft light of dawn was filtering through the open window. Birdsong woke her with liquid silvery notes. Her lips curved with blissful contentment, her eyes turning to him, to his smooth, muscular back packaged in taut golden skin. A hand reached out to touch. She withdrew it, her smile widening. After last night he would need all the rest he could get.
Last night. If her body didn’t ache in all sorts of unaccustomed places she would have believed it to have been a dream, a precious fantasy.
Her heart swelled within her breast. No dream. It had been real and way beyond and above mere perfection. A delicious tremor rippled through her as she recalled that one short moment when he might have denied her.
When he had finally, for the first time, parted her thighs and entered the place he had made so ready, thrusting his swollen length so deeply within her she hadn’t been able to disguise the sharp gasp of pain as the barrier had been broken.
Javier had gone still. Very still. Had lifted his head. ‘Zoe, you’re—’
‘Yes.’
‘I—’
‘Don’t talk!’ A command bordering on panic. Not prepared to let him get all protectively honourable, not now, she wrapped her legs tightly around his body and that decisive movement let him know she was giving him everything, all she was, all she had ever been.
And he gave, too. Gave heaven on earth.
He stirred. Zoe’s body stirred in response. She touched him then, the pads of the fingers of one hand tracing a loving path down his back.
He went still, seemed to stop breathing, then turned, met those melting, slumberous golden eyes and his heart contracted. ‘Zoe—’ He reached out to touch his fingers to the side of her adorable face, his dark brows clenching as she gave him her glorious smile, arched closer and wrapped her long legs around his.
His for the taking.
Guilt swamped him.
He reached for the hands that were already creating havoc as they palmed the blatant evidence of what she did to him, held them in his fists between their bodies.
Javier knew he should move, shatter this incredible feeling of intimacy. What he had to say to her would banish the bloom from her lovely face, turn the soft light in her eyes to sharp daggers of disgust.
He would deserve it. He disgusted himself!
‘Zoe—’ His fingers tightened around hers. She returned the pressure, her eyes vulnerable with trust. He didn’t deserve her trust! And he was about to shatter it. ‘It was your first time. Forgive me—I was angry—I thought—’
‘I know what you thought.’ One hand was tugged from his grasp, a finger laid across his mouth, effectively stopping his words because his breath went as he fought the temptation to take that soft warm finger into his mouth and start everything all over again. ‘You thought Oliver Sherman and I had been lovers. I can’t blame you,’ she absolved him softly. ‘That note he sent with those flowers,’ she reminded gently. ‘And when you asked me, before we married, if I’d been sleeping with him I refused to give you a straight answer.’
Her eyes glimmered, her thick lashes flickering down as she remembered her bolshie need at that time to pay him back for the double standards that told him it was OK for him to share his bed with the woman of the moment while she was expected to be chaste as a nun.
The frown line between his smoky eyes deepened. Repentant, she released her other hand and stroked it away. The movement brought her body into closer, more intimate contact with his. She felt a long shudder rake through him and told him, ‘Last night wasn’t what you thought it was. Oliver wasn’t at the ceremony, I checked. He turned up at the wedding party late on and seemed to latch onto a group of people I’d never seen before. It was a relief. I didn’t want anything to do with him, not after that note. I was about to leave when he jumped me. He was drunk as a skunk, that’s the only excuse I can think of—’
‘There is no excuse for that kind of behaviour,’ Javier shot in tightly. No excuse for his, either. Feeling worse than bad about himself, he stated heavily, ‘You were a virgin. I was angry, I took advantage, I’m no better than he is. You should have told me.’
Her lips curved in a smile that turned his heart inside out. ‘I could have done, and asked you to be gentle with me—like a properly brought-up virgin should!’ An entrancing dimple told him she was up to her old witchery. ‘But I wanted you to find out for yourself.’
‘Minx!’ He meant it. She wriggled against him. His body wanted to take what she was offering. This woman, this flirt, was twisting him around her little finger.
This woman. His wife!
‘This changes everything.’ His body throbbed with desire, but his mind took charge as he levered himself away from the little witch and swung his legs out of the innocent-seeming, pristine bed that had become a honey-trap.
By making love with her he had changed the rules that had governed their sham marriage. ‘Last night you told me our marriage was over. Now I’m telling you that it isn’t.’ Still sitting, he reached for the shirt so hurriedly discarded the night before, shrugged into it. ‘There’s no question of a divorce.’
Zoe squirmed to her knees. He sounded as if he were handing out a life sentence when he was giving her paradise, everything she’d dreamed of since she was fifteen years old! Her hands slid beneath the hem of his shirt, caressing the firm warm flesh, laying her cheek against the hard span of his shoulder blade as he dragged in a harsh intake of breath.
‘That’s OK,’ she murmured. She loved him so much she felt as if every inch of her were disintegrating, melting into a treacly river of desire and adoration. Her hands slithered round his taut body. The muscles below his ribcage were rigid, she lovingly discovered. ‘You never know, I might be pregnant,’ she said in a small voice, her vocal cords knotting up, all of her mind wonderingly focussed on the tightness of her breasts, the pulsating heat deep in the place that seemed to have taken centre stage in her being.
Pregnant!
Tension locked Javier’s jaws together. He leapt to his feet, reaching for the remainder of his clothes, getting into them while she just flopped back against the heaped pillows and lay there, butter-wouldn’t-melt, all elegant silky limbs, pale hair fanned out against the pillow, watching him with those come-bed-me eyes.
He hadn’t thought. He hadn’t damn well thought of anything but his driving need to claim what was his by right, the heaven he’d stoically denied himself for so long! The dam had finally burst and he’d tumbled mindlessly with the flow. And if his opinion had been asked at the start of it he’d have probably said that the ‘goer’ had to be well protected.
Having his back to her successfully hid his sharp wince of shattering self-loathing. Irresponsibly, he might have fathered a child. And for all he knew she might not even want to think about motherhood for several years. Was the possibility that he might have selfishly impregnated her the only reason she’d given in and changed her mind about leaving him?
And if the pregnancy scare proved to be unfounded, would she change her mind right back again and walk out on him as last night she’d unequivocally stated that she fully intended to?
Unwilling right now to inspect how he’d feel in that eventuality, Javier tightened his jaw and bit out, ‘I’ll see you at breakfast.’ He reached the door in rapid strides, adding heavily, ‘We need to talk things out fully and clear-headedly—away from your bed. Without sex to muddy the waters.’
His grim tone shook her rigid, closing up her throat. And what he’d said—did he still, in the privacy of his thoughts, name her as a whore by inclination? Her uninhibited behaviour last night, the way she’d given him unlimited access to her body, encouraging him every inch of the way, would have hammered that impression all the way home.
She stared at the door he had just closed behind him, tears welling in her eyes. The glittering prize, her acceptance as his true wife, her place in his life as the mother of the children she desperately hoped to give him turned into a handful of ashes, slipping through her fingers.
She shouldn’t have mentioned the possibility of pregnancy. It had been a flip, thoughtless comment, tossed out to cover the fact that she’d been over the moon and practically speechless with happiness when he’d so strongly vetoed divorce.
He might have lusted after her, enjoyed the sex, but he wasn’t in love with her, not yet, she knew that. And he would hate the responsibility if she’d come out with the truth and confessed that she’d always loved him and always would.
He took his responsibilities seriously, he was that kind of man—as evidenced by the way he’d suggested a paper marriage in the first place—so she couldn’t land that on him, she decided miserably, forcing herself to leave the bed where she’d been so ecstatically happy, so hopeful about the wonderful future she and Javier would have together, so confident that she could in time teach him to love her as much as he’d learned to want her.
Clarity came when she turned off the shower and huddled into a towel. He hadn’t ruled a divorce out of play because he wanted her permanently in his life—he was simply sticking to his original dateline.
Two years. They’d stay married for one more year, until she came into her inheritance and could demonstrate that she was mature enough to handle it. By his own admission he was deeply ashamed of having made love to her. No—having had sex with her— ‘muddied the waters’, she corrected dully as she finally exited the en suite. And he’d probably make damn sure it didn’t happen again. He’d go back to what he had been: remote, often absent, impersonally kind. She simply didn’t think she could bear that!
Was she the last woman on earth he would choose to be the mother of his children? Had he seen the steel jaws of a trap close around him when she’d mentioned the word ‘pregnant’?
Her balloon well and truly pricked, Zoe put on the act of her life and went down to breakfast wearing a tiny pair of lemon yellow shorts, a skimpy, silky camisole top in a matching shade and a great big smile.
Javier laid aside the morning broadsheet he’d been trying and failing to concentrate on, his wide chest tightening as his eyes locked onto his wife. She was exquisite; she put the sunlight that streamed into the room to shame. A truly vital presence, all silky, endless legs, shining silver-gilt hair, breasts enticingly peaked against the top she was wearing.
He got to his feet, narrowed eyes watching as she returned Boysie’s ecstatic greeting, pulling out a chair for her when those long legs brought her to the breakfast table. She was wearing hot pink lipstick on those lush, kiss-swollen lips. His pulses quickened. He ignored them and poured her coffee.
‘Eat something,’ he ordered as the slice of toast she’d buttered was being cut into small pieces and fed to the dog. Had her appetite deserted her because she was fretting over the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy?
Again he mentally flayed himself. He had hated the things Sherman had implied, but hated himself even more for having been unable to stop believing them. Which had led, in turn, to his inexcusable lack of protection.
‘We need to discuss our situation.’ Self-disgust put an edge on his voice, made her soft lips tremble before she clamped them forcibly together. She fed the last of the toast to the tail-thrashing bunch of fur then turned to face him, pushing her hair away from her face with the back of a slender hand, her magnificent eyes flashing with the old rebellion, the slender bones of her shoulders tense beneath the shimmery fabric of the top she was wearing.
He sounded as if he thoroughly regretted their ‘situation’, as he so grimly named it, Zoe decided sinkingly. It was truly terrible to love to distraction when the object of all that emotional passion didn’t love you back, to have all your hopes of happiness and fulfilment dependent on just one man.
But she wasn’t going to let him know what she was feeling. Still holding his silver-smoke eyes, she lifted her chin even higher just as Joe entered the room, grinning. ‘Pardon me, boss, but it’s time for his lordship’s morning walk. We usually go up through the woods and on down to the lake.’ He gave a low whistle and Boysie pricked up his ears and raced to the man in the doorway, his small body one huge hairy wag.
‘I’ll take him—’ Zoe was half out of her seat, unreasonable jealousy that her dog now recognised Joe as the leader of the pack making her voice shrill.
But Javier’s hand reached out to clamp around her wrist, forcing her back, his, ‘Carry on, Joe,’ full of raw impatience.
Rubbing her released wrist, Zoe glared at him, trying not to burst into tears. Not because of Boysie’s fickleness—if she was honest with herself she was glad the little stray had finally integrated into his new home and family. It had taken ages before he had stopped viewing Ethel with suspicion and even longer before he had been comfortable around Joe.
No, it was Javier’s attitude that was breaking her heart. Last night she had felt as if they had at last found each other, their hearts and souls recognising each other just as their bodies had, and this morning it would seem that he wished he’d never set eyes on her!
‘I always take him for walks. That’s when you bother to turn up to bring me down here at weekends!’ Zoe knew she sounded petulant and childish. But she had to say something to explain away the sudden tears she could feel filling up her eyes. No way was she about to let him know that his patently obvious impatience with her and their cataclysmic unplanned change of marital situation was making her want to cry her eyes out!
Javier leaned forward, his forearms on the table, a frown scoring a deep line between his slashing black brows. Judging by her reaction to her pet’s preference for Joe’s company, the poor kid was still needy, clinging onto love wherever she found it. ‘Let it go,’ he advised a touch more curtly than he’d intended before the image of how unchildlike she’d been in his arms last night had flashed across his brain and made his voice emerge like a shot from a gun.
She was no kid—hadn’t he known that for months now? She was all woman. It had been her first time but she’d been a natural. He went hot just thinking about it. And not with shame, either.
Shifting edgily in his seat, he told her, ‘Don’t be so intense about your feelings. They’re likely to rear up and slap you in the face. More coffee?’
Zoe mutely shook her head. That was a warning, wasn’t it? Telling her not to read too much into what had happened last night, not to take it seriously.
He looked into her glittering golden eyes, eyes to drown in, and the air in the sunny room was suddenly thick with sexual tension. She was so lovely. And she was his. It hadn’t been planned, in fact he’d fought what she’d been doing to him as soon as he’d recognised it for what it was.
But what the hell? Their sham marriage had turned into vivid reality and he aimed to keep it that way. He would concentrate all his powers to make her forget she’d ever decided to walk away from him.
The probably pompous discussion about their altered relationship was promptly jettisoned.
What kind of fool had he been to think he could keep this beautiful, slightly elusive, bright and feisty creature by spouting a list of ground rules?
A fool who hadn’t recognised the fact that he’d been falling in love, hook, line and sinker.
But it was too soon to let her know that. She might have believed herself to be in love with him at age sixteen. An adolescent infatuation she’d grown out of. Must have done or she wouldn’t have been determined to walk out on him.
