by Lynne Graham
‘Wasn’t that a little…offhand?’ she pressed self-consciously as they climbed the stairs.
‘It’s one in the morning and it’s our wedding night,’ Jax intoned, his hand tightening on hers. ‘We can get chatty tomorrow.’
She thought about what she had been avoiding thinking about and colour mantled her cheeks as Jax walked her into a vast room overflowing with urns of white roses and lilies, ornamented with trailing ivy. It was magnificent but not as magnificent as the vast divan bed on the dais scattered with rose petals.
‘Heracles wasn’t joking when he said he’d set the house up for the bridal couple,’ Jax conceded with forbidding cool.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Lucy muttered, because it was and she was grateful that her fatherin-law had been prepared to make the effort on their behalf. ‘But maybe a little too grand for the likes of me.’
‘The “likes of me” now happens to be my wife,’ Jax reminded her in reproof. ‘And nothing is too grand or too good for my wife.’
‘I’ll get used to it…it’s just a little overwhelming coming to a house like this,’ Lucy confided.
‘It’s ours now,’ Jax revealed, sharing his father’s plans with her. ‘I think he’s hoping we’ll go forth and multiply now for him.’
Lucy shrugged a slim shoulder, making no comment on that possibility.
‘I think Bella’s enough for us at present. I still have to learn how to be a father,’ Jax completed, making his opinion clear. ‘Do you want a drink or anything to eat? There’re snacks waiting on the trolley.’
‘No. I only want to get my shoes off,’ Lucy admitted, dropping down into a luxurious armchair with a sigh. ‘My feet are hurting.’
‘Let me…’ In the most disconcerting way, Jax crouched down lithely at her feet and unfastened her shoes to slip them off. ‘You have such tiny feet. They used to fascinate me.’
Long brown fingers gently stroked the back of a delicate ankle and Lucy snatched in a sudden startled breath because her skin felt super sensitive, as though he had touched her somewhere much more intimate.
‘All that got me through the day was the glorious thought of sating myself inside you again, koukla mou,’ Jax said huskily, rising to lift her bodily out of the chair and settle her down on the huge bed.
Eyes flying wide, cheeks flushing, Lucy stared up at him with bright blue eyes.
‘So, why do you look like a cornered rabbit?’ Jax asked pleasantly. ‘You’ve been acting strangely all day.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘I… I FELT OVERWHELMED,’ Lucy told him and it was true.
The cathedral wedding, the sleek bejewelled Antonakos relatives and guests and the absence of any actual friends aside of her father’s had weighed her down. The constant stares and the low buzz of conjecture hadn’t helped either but when someone as rich as Jax married a waitress, who was the mother of his child, people stared and speculated. The wedding had been a strain and her father’s confession of wrongdoing had crushed her. It had been the ultimate humiliation to learn that only Kreon’s criminal act had made it possible for her to marry Jax.
And yet what could they possibly do about it now? Kreon had confessed too late to change anything. If she and Jax were to part this very night, it would cause a major scandal and she knew Jax wouldn’t want to invite that media attention, which meant that at the very least they would have to stay married for a few months to make any breakup appear less worthy of comment.
‘I can understand that,’ Jax conceded, removing his jacket in a lazy fluid movement.
And Lucy watched him with a fast-beating heart, still wondering what she should do and how she should be behaving. Yet with a good ninety per cent of her being she craved the intimacy that being with Jax would give her. She wanted forgetfulness. She wanted to sink into the comfortable depths of the massive bed and shut the rest of the world out to take refuge in Jax. Even if he wasn’t really hers and possibly wouldn’t be hers for very long. His dazzling green eyes gleamed in the low-lit room, so bright against his dark bronzed skin, and her mouth ran dry.
Tugging his shirt from his waistband, he came back to the bed and sank down behind her to unzip her dress. She sat there like a little statue, her heart thudding like crazy in her chest as he lifted the garment up over her head, leaving her clad only in the white lace lingerie she had worn with her wedding gown. Sliding upright again, he unbuttoned his shirt, displaying a wide slice of his torso, well-defined muscles coming into view as he shed the shirt.
And she was as entranced by his sheer male beauty as she had once been in Spain, feasting her eyes on him with feminine appreciation. Jax worked out and it showed. He was all lean muscle and controlled power.
‘Take the rest off,’ he urged. ‘I want to look at you.’
Her face burned as she reached behind her back to unclasp her bra. She had never done that before in front of him. Her clothes had once vanished beneath his skilled hands and she hadn’t had to think about it or ever feel particularly naked. But there in that silent bedroom she was insanely aware of her body and its deficiencies as she let the bra fall. Most of the pregnancy weight had fallen away but there was no denying that she was curvier at bust and hip and there was an obvious scar low on her belly from the Caesarean she had had to have. Her waist was bigger too, she thought nervously, anxiously cataloguing every flaw. And this was a guy accustomed to the flawless female bodies of underwear models.
Jax studied the pouting swell of her pink-tipped breasts with intense pleasure, arousal flashing through him with storm-force potency. Everything about her daintiness appealed to him because her slender lines became lush in all the right highly feminine places. And he knew exactly what would happen when he touched her. He knew she would respond to him in a way no other woman ever had and that there would be nothing fake or exaggerated about it. Anticipation gave him the ultimate high.
‘I’m not perfect,’ she warned him tightly as her fingers flirted with the band of her knickers. ‘Well, I never was, but—’
A flashing grin flared across Jax’s lean, darkly handsome features as he came down on one knee on the bed and yanked her playfully to him by her ankles. ‘You’re perfect for me… I only want to see you.’
Sharply disconcerted by that teasing assault, Lucy looked up at him with apprehensive eyes of blue. He hooked his hands into her knickers and dragged them off, lowering her back gently against the pillows and then rearranging her to his own satisfaction, her legs parted and her hands by her side.
‘I’d love a painting of you looking like this, all spread out and waiting for me, but I couldn’t stand the artist seeing you naked,’ he admitted thickly, peeling off his trousers and his boxers in an impatient movement.
Lucy lay there feeling like a sacrifice and yet she was quite ridiculously excited by his scrutiny and the thrusting fullness of his arousal. He was so ready for her, was always ready. He made her feel as though her body were flawless and the desire he made no attempt to hide warmed the sore place inside her where her father’s betrayal had contrived to undermine her self-esteem.
Jax joined her on the bed and went straight for her mouth with hungry, driving kisses that parted her lips and sent a current of high-voltage expectation flying through her trembling length. Her fingers clutched into his spiky, messy black hair and tears burned behind her lowered eyelids because she wanted him so much that she hurt with the wanting. It felt too intense, too desperate and that wasn’t what she wanted to feel. She needed to stay in control, she told herself, remember what was real and what wasn’t real. And what they had now wasn’t real. Why did thinking that drive a knife through her when it was only the truth?
‘I can’t get enough of you,’ Jax growled between the urgent biting kisses that bruised her lips and the devastating plunge of his tongue that made her slight body jackknife in reaction beneath his.
‘We’ve got all night,’ she whispered through rosy swollen lips, eyes glazed with passion.
‘I’ve got a
hunger that one night won’t come anywhere near satisfying,’ Jax told her rawly, fisting a hand in her tumbling curls as he snaked a string of kisses down over her collarbone and found a plump, pointed nipple to torment with attention.
‘Oh… Jax,’ she gasped, a fire trail of tingles lighting up from her breast to her pelvis where a warm damp sensation pulsed.
With difficulty Jax dragged his lips from her writhing body and stared down at her. She was his wife now. Signed, sealed and delivered. In the strangest way, he registered, he liked that, liked that ring on her finger that marked her as his and loved the way she was looking up at him as though he had hung the moon.
‘You will be very tired tomorrow,’ Jax forecast without hesitation. ‘I’m planning to take everything you can offer and then some more.’
Without hesitation, Lucy leant up and claimed his sensual, taunting mouth for herself, revelling in the instant rush of hungry need he betrayed. He scored the edge of his teeth across her full lower lip, dallied over the sensitive skin below her ear and then returned to his self-imposed worship of her full breasts. He lashed the hard little tips into swollen, throbbing sensitivity and her hips rose beneath his long, lean physique until he settled a leg between hers, giving her the pressure she craved at the crux of her body.
The demanding ache at the heart of her spread, sending little tingles through every skin cell, building and building her tension. He teased her nipples with his teeth and the heat of a climax simply exploded through Lucy in a glorious rush that made her cry out and jerk under him.
‘That’s one…’ Jax husked with satisfaction.
‘You’re counting now?’ Lucy mumbled distractedly, dragged into brain-dead lethargy by the shimmering backwash of sheer pleasure.
‘I always was goal-orientated,’ Jax reminded her, working his passage slowly down her quivering length.
Tell him you know about the blackmail, a guilty little inner voice urged her. But that would unleash a very difficult conversation after an extremely long and trying day. In any case Jax was reasonably happy at this precise moment, she decided, and she didn’t want to spoil things. Later they would both be more relaxed and less tense. He tugged her thighs apart and buried his mouth there and suddenly her brain didn’t have any space left in which to be rational. Suddenly she became a twisting, gasping creature at the mercy of her own sensual responses.
Jax slid a finger through her silky folds. He stroked her, smiling as she moaned and shifted, striving to urge him on, but in bed Jax was always in control, most particularly because Lucy had no control.
‘Torture!’ she muttered between gritted teeth, a rosy flush and perspiration slicking her skin as she thrashed under his ministrations, gasping as he hit the exact spot where she was most sensitive.
‘I love the taste of you,’ Jax growled, the vibrations of his dark deep drawl pulsing through her tender flesh.
Involuntarily, her body erupted again, driven to the point of explosive climax by the intensity of her excitement. She screamed his name and jerked and then fell still, wonder creeping over her that anyone could possibly wreak such havoc with her system and give her that much pleasure.
‘Thee mou, I want you so much,’ Jax ground out as he slid over her, his hands strong on her hips to angle her back.
He entered her slowly, urging her tender flesh to open for him and stretch, and the sensation made her dizzy with yearning and wildly impatient for more. He eased back and then pushed in hard and deep and her body convulsed and tightened round him, intense sensation ravishing her. A string of tiny sounds was wrenched from her parted lips as he ground into her and picked up the pace, raw excitement flooding her as she tilted up to meet him, hot, damp and abandoned as the wild roller coaster of sensation raged on and on. He slammed into her with primal force and her body just splintered from the inside out, taking her apart in pieces so that she slumped back on the bed, barely aware of his muffled groan of completion but welcoming the warm, heavy weight of him.
Empty of all conscious thought, Lucy skated her hands over Jax’s smooth damp back and then wrapped her arms round him tightly. He was struggling to catch his breath close to her ear and she smiled and twisted her head to kiss him on the cheek.
Jax froze as though she had crossed some invisible boundary line. He refused to do that stuff with her again. Bone and sinew he rejected any show of affection that came from her and he yanked back from her and rolled away. He wasn’t buying into that again with her, no way! She had given him that same hugging and petting and apparent warmth in Spain and he knew it was meaningless. He had known that when he saw her in that alleyway having sex with another man. As that cringe-making memory returned, Jax wanted to smash a fist into the wall.
That was better left buried and he knew it, particularly now that they were married. When he thought about it, he felt seething anger and violent. Forgiveness wasn’t in his vocabulary and forgetting wasn’t in his nature. There wasn’t any reason for him to think about that sordid episode, he told himself grimly. All he had to do for his own protection was remember that she was treacherous and watch out when she was around other men.
When Jax jerked away from her and headed for what she assumed was the bathroom, Lucy felt as if he had slapped her in the face. He had recoiled from her as if she were contagious, as if he couldn’t bear her touch. After such intimacy, that hit hard and hurt, spelling out the message that once he had had sex, he was up and away, any pretence of courtesy or caring set aside and rejected.
She felt hollow and very, very foolish. This was the aggressive male her father had blackmailed into marrying her and this was the payoff, she assumed sickly. Evidently he had taken the only thing he actually wanted from her and now she was like an abandoned toy, a distraction good enough only to be tossed back in the cupboard until the next time he wanted to take her out and play with her.
‘You don’t like it when I touch you after sex,’ she accused baldly.
Jax shot her a winging glance from narrowed green eyes that glittered. ‘Because it’s fake.’
Lucy sat up. ‘It wasn’t fake,’ she told him but he had already vanished into the bathroom and within seconds she heard the sound of a shower running.
Well, Jax needn’t think that was the end of the conversation just because he wanted it that way, Lucy thought angrily. She scrambled out of bed and grabbed up her handbag to extract the letter that Kreon had given her. Whether she liked it or not, it was time to be open and honest. She opened the bedroom door and found their luggage piled outside. She lifted a case and dragged it in, opening it up to remove a light cotton robe. Nothing slinky about her nightwear, she reflected ruefully. Iola had insisted on buying her some stuff and the prospect of Jax gazing in disbelief at her chain-store PJ’s had persuaded her. She wrapped herself in the robe, watching out of the corner of her eye as Jax strode naked into what sounded like an en-suite dressing room because she could hear drawers being rammed open and shut and cupboard doors being slammed. My goodness, he was in a bad mood…so much for her assumption that intimacy would bring relaxation and a release of tension!
Jax reappeared, clad in a pair of faded jeans and a black tee shirt that clung to his muscular torso. He headed straight for the trolley and opened it before lifting a plate and piling food on it. ‘Would you like anything?’ he asked with studious politeness and she wanted to slap him for his tone.
‘Not right now, thanks,’ she murmured tightly. ‘I have something for you… Kreon gave it to me today.’
Jax swung round, fully acknowledging her for the first time, his lean, darkly handsome face guarded until he saw and immediately recognised what was in her hand and he stalked forward to snatch it from her with a profound look of revulsion.
‘Were you in it with him?’ Jax shot at her accusingly, for most ironically that possibility hadn’t occurred to him and right there and then he called himself an idiot for not having suspected her active involvement in Kreon’s blackmail threat.
Lucy’s
chest swelled on a stark indrawn breath of shock as she drew herself up to her full unimpressive height. ‘Are you certifiably insane?’ she demanded in fiery rebuttal of that suspicion. ‘Yesterday, after the wedding, Kreon told me what he had done to you because he felt guilty. He knew he’d done wrong—’
‘Diavolos…’ Jax derided. ‘Kreon felt guilty? You will never know what a comfort that is to me!’
‘He did wrong but he’s not a bad man and the mistake you made was in not immediately coming to me about my father’s threat and the existence of that letter,’ Lucy condemned with conviction. ‘I believe I could’ve stopped it because he would have been too ashamed to continue with it once I knew about what he was doing.’
‘And pigs fly and there’s two blue moons in the sky,’ Jax scorned, shaking his tousled dark head in wonderment, green eyes as cutting as sword blades. ‘I’ll ask you one more time…were you aware of his intentions?’
‘No, I blasted well wasn’t!’ Lucy shouted back at him, her blue eyes flooded with angry, defensive discomfiture. ‘How can you even ask me that? I wasn’t expecting you to ask me to marry you, wasn’t even thinking along those lines!’
Jax cocked his proud dark head back, black curling lashes semi-screening his stunning eyes. ‘It’s done now.’
‘Yes,’ she acknowledged uncomfortably. ‘But I had nothing to do with the blackmail or any idea of what was going on behind the scenes—’
‘But it all worked in your favour, all the same,’ Jax spelt out with contempt. ‘You got to marry into the Antonakos family.’
‘Well, from where I’m standing now, on my wedding night, marrying into the Antonakos family is not the triumph it’s purported to be!’ Lucy shot back at him furiously, an angry flush mantling her cheeks. ‘In fact it feels like hell, most particularly when I seem to have a husband who can happily have sex with me and then virtually push me away afterwards!’