The Mélendez Forgotten Marriage

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  She looked up at him with a sheepish expression. ‘I haven’t been to the gym once since I’ve been home. I can’t believe I did it before. Izabella said I was obsessive about it. I normally have no self-discipline. I much prefer incidental exercise, like walking or swimming.’

  ‘And sex?’ he asked with a teasing smile.

  Her face coloured and she lowered her gaze to her plate. ‘Is that all you think about?’ she asked in a tight little voice.

  ‘It’s what we both used to think about,’ he said. ‘You are the most sensually aware woman I have ever been with.’

  Her grey-blue eyes flashed back to his. ‘And I bet there have been hundreds.’

  He took a moment to respond. ‘You knew about my lifestyle when we met. I have made it no secret that I lived a fast-paced life.’

  ‘Which is no doubt why you wanted a shallow smokescreen marriage to impress your business contacts,’ she put in. ‘I can’t believe I agreed to it. I never wanted to turn out like my poor mother, preening herself constantly in case her wayward husband strayed to someone slimmer or better looking or better groomed or better dressed.’

  Javier frowned at the sudden vehemence of her words. Her face was pinched and her mouth tight and her shoulders tense. Without her veneer of sophistication, she looked young and vulnerable, and yet she looked far more beautiful than he had ever seen her. ‘I didn’t realise you felt like that,’ he said after a little pause. ‘You always seemed so confident. I didn’t know you felt so unsure of yourself.’

  Her throat moved up and down, as if she regretted revealing her insecurities to him. ‘I haven’t been honest with you,’ she said. ‘I mean right from the start. I should have told you but I was frightened you would walk away, that I would appear too needy or something. I guess back then I wanted you on any terms. I was prepared to suspend everything I wanted in life to be with you.’

  He reached out a hand and picked up one of hers, entwining his fingers with her soft trembling ones. ‘I don’t want to lose you, querida,’ he said. ‘But I can only give you what I can give you. It might not be enough.’

  She pressed her lips together, he assumed to stop herself from crying, but even so her eyes moistened. ‘I want to be loved, Javier,’ she said softly. ‘I want to be loved the way my mother craved to be loved but never got to be loved. I want to wake up each morning knowing the man I love is right there by my side, supporting me, loving me, cherishing me.’ She drew in an uneven breath and added in an even softer voice, ‘And I want a baby.’

  Javier felt a shockwave go through his chest. He recalled his lonely childhood: the ache of sudden loss, the devastation of being cast aside by his father after his mother had died. He could not face the responsibility of being a parent. He would mess it up, for sure. Even people from secure backgrounds occasionally ran into trouble with their kids. What chance would he have? He would end up ruining a child’s potential, crippling them emotionally, stunting their development or making them hate him as much as he had ended up hating his own father for his inadequacies.

  He couldn’t risk it.

  He would not risk it.

  ‘That is not negotiable,’ he found himself saying in a cold hard voice that he could scarcely believe was coming from his throat. ‘There is no way I want children. I told you that right from the start and you were in total agreement.’

  She looked at him with anguished eyes that scored his soul. ‘I only accepted those terms because I was blindsided by love. I still love you, Javier, more than ever, but I don’t want to miss out on having children.’

  Javier pushed out his chair and got to his feet. ‘You can’t spring this sort of stuff on me, Emelia,’ he said. ‘Less than a month ago everything was fine between us. It was fine for almost two years. You did your thing. I did mine.’ He pointed his finger at her. ‘You are the one who suddenly changed things.’

  Emelia put up her chin. ‘I’m tired of doing things your way. I’m tired of seeing your picture splashed over every international paper with yet another wannabe model or starlet. Surely you have more control over who you are seen with?’

  He clamped down on his jaw. ‘The person I should be seen with is my wife,’ he said. ‘But she is always too busy shopping in another country or having her hair or nails done.’

  Emelia flinched at his stinging words. But perhaps the sliver of truth in them was what hurt the most. She had been caught up in the world of being his wife instead of being his companion and soulmate. There was a big difference and it was a shame it had taken this long for her to see it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought I was doing what you wanted.’

  There was a stiff silence.

  ‘Forget I said that,’ Javier said. ‘I didn’t exactly make it easy on you on the few occasions you came with me. I am perhaps too task-oriented. I tend to focus on the big picture and lose sight of the details.’

  ‘We’ve both made mistakes,’ she said. ‘I guess we just have to try not to make them again.’

  He pushed his hand through his hair. ‘I want this to work, Emelia,’ he said. ‘I want us to be happy, like we were before.’

  ‘Javier, you were happy but I wasn’t, not really,’ she said. ‘My accident has shown me what a lie I’ve been living. The woman you want in your life is not the one I am now. I have never been that person.’

  He came over and took her hands in his, pulling her to his feet. ‘You were happy, Emelia,’ he said, squeezing her hands for effect. ‘I gave you everything money could buy. You wanted for nothing. I made sure of it.’

  Emelia tried to pull away but he held firm. ‘You’re not listening to me, Javier. We can’t go back to what we were before. I can’t go back.’

  ‘Let’s see about that, shall we?’ he said and brought his mouth down hard on hers.

  At first Emelia made a token resistance but her heart wasn’t in it. She wanted him any way she could get him, even if it was in anger or to prove a point. At least he was showing some emotion, even if it was not the one she most wanted him to demonstrate. She kissed him back with the same heat and fire, her tongue tangling with his in a sensual battle of wills.

  He pressed her back against the nearest wall, pulling down the zip at the back of her dress, letting it fall into a black puddle at her feet, his mouth still locked on hers. She clawed at his waistband, her fingers releasing his belt in a quest to uncover him.

  He tore his mouth off hers. ‘Not here,’ he said. ‘Aldana might come in to clear the table. Let’s take this upstairs.’

  Emelia had her chance then to call an end to this madness but still she let her heart rule her head. Later, she barely recalled how they got upstairs; she seemed to remember the journey was interspersed with hot drugging kisses that ramped up her need of him unbearably.

  By the time they got to the bedroom she was almost delirious with desire. He came down heavily on top of her on the bed, his weight pinning her, his mouth crushing hers in a red-hot kiss that made her toes curl.

  He removed her bra and cupped her breasts possessively, subjecting them to the fiery brand of his mouth. He went lower, over the plane of her belly, lingering over the dish of her belly button before he parted her thighs. She gulped in a breath as he stroked her with his tongue, the raw intimacy as he tasted her making her spine unhinge. She felt the tension building and building to snapping point, the waves of pleasure coming towards her from a distance and then suddenly they swamped her, tossing her around and around in a wild sea of sensual pleasure that superseded anything she had felt before.

  Then he drove into her roughly at first and then checked himself, murmuring something that sounded like an apology before he continued in a rhythmic motion that triggered all of her senses into another climb to the summit of release. His thrusts came closer together, a little deeper each time, his breathing intervals shortening as he approached the ultimate moment.

  Emelia felt her body preparing for another freefall into pleasure. She pushed her hips up to intensify the feelin
g his body provoked as it rubbed against her point of pleasure, her breathing becoming increasingly ragged as she felt the tremors begin. This time when her orgasm started she pushed against him as if trying to expel him from her body, the action triggering her G spot, sending her into an earth-shattering release that rippled through her for endless seconds.

  Javier came with an explosive rush, his deep grunt of ecstasy sending shivers of delight down Emelia’s spine. This was the only time she felt he allowed himself to be vulnerable. She clung to him as he emptied himself, the shudders of his body as it pinned her to the bed reverberating through her. She kept her arms wrapped around him, hoping he wouldn’t roll away and spoil the moment.

  ‘Am I too heavy for you?’ he asked against the soft skin of her neck.

  ‘No,’ she said as she ran her fingers up and down his back.

  He lifted himself on his elbows, looking down at her for a lengthy moment. ‘I didn’t hurt you, did I?’

  She shook her head. ‘No.’

  His eyes travelled to her mouth, watching as she moistened it with her tongue. ‘Still unhappy?’ he asked.

  Emelia searched his features for any sign of mockery but she couldn’t find anything to suggest he was taunting her. But then he was a master at inscrutability when he chose to be. Even his dark eyes gave nothing away. ‘There are times when I am not sure what I feel,’ she said, taking the middle ground.

  His mouth tilted in a rueful smile. ‘I suppose I deserve that.’

  Emelia let a silence underline his almost apology.

  After another moment or two he lifted himself off her, offering her a hand to get up. ‘Want to have a shower with me?’

  The invitation she could see in the dark glitter of his eyes stirred her senses into a heated frenzy. How could he do this to her so soon after such mind-blowing satiation? Just one look and he had her quivering with need all over again. Wordlessly, she took his hand, allowing him to lead her into the en suite bathroom, standing to one side as he turned on the shower lever that was set at a controlled temperature.

  He stepped under the spray and pulled her in under it with him. The fine needles of hot water cascaded over them as he brought his mouth to hers. It was a softer kiss this time, a leisurely exploration of her mouth that lured her into a sensual whirlpool. His tongue swept over hers, stroking and gliding with growing urgency, his erection hot and heavy against her belly. She slid down the shower stall and took him in her hands, exploring him with sensuous movements that brought his breathing to a stumbling halt. ‘Careful, cariño,’ he said. ‘I might not be able to hold back.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ she said recklessly.

  She gave him a sultry look from beneath her lashes before taking him in her mouth in one slick movement that provoked a rough expletive from him. She smiled around his throbbing heat, her tongue gliding wetly along his length. She tasted his essence, inciting her to draw more of him into her mouth. His hands shot out to the glass walls of the shower to anchor himself, his thighs set apart, his chest rising and falling as he struggled to control his breathing. ‘You don’t have to do this,’ he said, but the subtext, she knew, was really: please don’t stop doing this.

  ‘I like doing this to you,’ she said. ‘You do it to me so it’s only fair I get to do the same to you.’

  He swallowed tightly, his jaw clenching as he watched her return to his swollen length. Emelia felt the tension in the satin-covered steel of his body. He was drawing closer and closer to the point of no return and it excited her to think she could have such a powerful hold over him.

  He jerked and then shuddered into her mouth, spilling his hot life force, his flesh lifting in goosebumps in spite of the warmth of the shower.

  Emelia glided back up his body, rinsing her mouth under the shower spray before meeting his dark lustrous eyes. He didn’t say anything. He just looked at her with dark intensity, his hands reaching for the soap and working up a lather. She quivered with anticipation as he started soaping her, firstly her neck and shoulders, and then her breasts, the length of her spine and then her belly. He used circular movements that set all her nerves into a frantic dance, his touch so smooth and sensual she felt every bone inside her frame melt.

  His hand cupped her feminine mound, seeking the swollen nub of her desire. She felt her breathing come to a stumbling halt as he bent down before her as she had done to him. His tongue separated her, teasing her, a soft flicker at first and then increasing the pace until she was gasping her way through an orgasm that shook her like a rag doll.

  She collapsed against him as he rose to hold her, his arms coming around her as she rested her head against his chest. His heart was drumming under her cheek, one of his hands coming up to stroke her wet hair. He rested his chin on the top of her head and for a moment she wondered if he was going to tell her he loved her after all, that he wanted the same things she wanted.

  But of course he didn’t. Instead, he turned off the water and silently reached for a bath towel, wrapping her in it as one would a small child.

  Emelia stepped out of the shower cubicle and did her best to squash her disappointment. Was this intense physical attraction the only thing she could cling to in order to keep him by her side? How long would it last? What if he tired of her and went to someone else to fulfil his needs? The thought of it was like an arrow through her heart. She hated even thinking about all the partners he had had before her. He never spoke of them and she never asked, but she knew there had been many women who had come and gone from his bed.

  Javier turned her face to look at him. ‘What is that frown for?’ he asked.

  She gave him a half-smile. ‘Nothing…I was just thinking.’

  His hand moved to cradle her cheek. ‘About what?’

  She pressed her lips together momentarily. ‘I don’t know…just where this will lead, I guess.’

  His hand dropped from her face. ‘Life doesn’t always fit into nice neat little boxes, Emelia,’ he said. ‘And it doesn’t always give us everything we want.’

  ‘What do you want from life?’ she asked.

  He paused in the process of drying himself to look at her. ‘The same things most people want—success, a sense of purpose, fulfilment.’

  ‘What about love?’

  He tossed the damp towel on the bed. ‘I don’t delude myself that it’s a given in life. Love comes and it goes. It’s not something I have ever relied on.’

  Emelia mentally kicked herself for setting herself up for more hurt. If he loved her, he would have told her by now. He’d had almost twenty-three months of marriage to do so, irrespective of what had occurred over the past couple of weeks.

  ‘Come to bed, querida,’ he said. ‘You look like a child that has been kept up way past its bedtime.’

  She crawled into bed, not for a moment thinking she would be able to sleep after spending so much of the day in a drug-induced slumber, but somehow when Javier pulled her into his body she closed her eyes and, limb by limb, her body gradually relaxed until, with a soft sigh, she drifted off…

  Javier lay with her in his arms, his fingers laced through the silky strands of her hair, breathing in its clean, newly washed fragrance. In sleep she looked so young and vulnerable. Her soft full mouth was slightly open and one of her hands was lying against his chest, right where his heart was beating.

  He’d thought he had the future all mapped out but now he was not so sure. Things were changing almost daily. The more time he spent with her, the more he wanted to believe they could be in this for the long haul.

  He tried to picture a child they might make together: a dark-haired little boy or perhaps a little girl with grey-blue eyes and hair just as silken and golden as her mother. But the image faded, as if there was no room in his head for it.

  Perhaps it was fate. He wasn’t meant to be a father. It wasn’t that he didn’t like children. One of his business colleagues had recently become a father and Javier had looked at the photos with a strange sense of loss. H
is lonely childhood had marked him for life. He couldn’t imagine himself as a parent. He didn’t think he would know what to do. He hated the thought of potentially damaging a child’s self-esteem by saying or doing the wrong thing. Children seemed to him to be so vulnerable. He had been so vulnerable.

  He had never forgotten the day his mother had died. She had been there one minute, soft and scented and nurturing, and the next her body was in a shiny black coffin covered with red roses. He still hated the sight of red roses, any roses, in fact. They made his stomach churn. Within a year he had been sent off to boarding school in England as his father couldn’t handle his ongoing grief. Javier had taught himself not to love anything or anyone in case it was ripped away from him without warning.

  The thing that worried him the most was that it might be too late to change.

  CHAPTER NINE

  EMELIA woke up in bed alone and when she came downstairs Aldana informed her that Javier had left to see to some business in Malaga and would be back later that evening. She handed her a note with pursed lips. Emelia thanked her politely and, taking a cup of tea with her, went out to the sunny terrace overlooking the gardens.

  The note was simple and written in Javier’s distinctive handwriting, the strong dark strokes reminding her of his aura of command and control. It read:

  Didn’t want to wake you. See you tonight. J.

  Emelia felt disappointed she hadn’t woken before he’d left. There was so much she still wanted to say to him. She felt he had sideswiped her yet again by enslaving her senses. It was always the way he dealt with conflict, by reminding her of how much she needed him. It made her less and less confident of him shifting to accommodate her needs. He still had control, as he had always done. Nothing had changed, except the depth to which she could be hurt all over again.