by Carol Rose
It had always seemed unbelievable that he’d married her for sex. A man like Jared, even without his money, would never have trouble finding willing, talented sexual partners.
And she’d realized the hostess-angle couldn’t be that strong when she’d seen his apartment. The setting was beautiful, but there was hardly a stick of furniture in the place. This was the home of a businessman who wanted to entertain?
The thought of being manipulated into having a child made her stomach jump again. She felt betrayed, mostly by the idea that he’d had this agenda all along. Had Jared been playing her for his own hidden goals? Kelsey reached for the glass of water sitting on her desk and took a sip.
It just didn’t make sense. Jared wasn’t hard and cruel. Yes, she’d seen him in action in the business world, but her every instinct had told her she could trust him.
So much for instinct. From now on, she had to be very wary, had to watch herself and her crafty husband.
The thought left her trembling in denial. She didn’t want to believe the worst of him, didn’t want her dream husband of the past week to be false. Oh God. She wanted it to be real, wanted to let herself sink into the fantasy of perfect union and ever after.
Drawing in a trembling breath, Kelsey realized for the first time just how dangerous he could be to her heart. Jared made her want the bliss she’d seen her mother chase all her life.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Doug, we’ve looked at over a hundred couches,” Amy said in exasperation, “and you don’t like any of them.”
He shifted on the specimen under current consideration. “Hell, I don’t know. I mean, this is fine. They’re all fine.”
Amy snorted. “We can’t buy them all. Now, is this one as comfortable as the brown one over there?”
Doug’s expression of discomfort deepened. “Yeah, sure.”
Staring at him, she couldn’t help wondering what had come over her usually opinionated lover. In her experience, men didn’t much care how a couch looked as long as it suited their posteriors when in proper tube-watching position. But Doug’s complete disinterest surprised her.
“Maybe if you lie down on it,” she suggested. In the last two weeks, they’d made love on her cramped loveseat, his couch, the floor, both their beds—anywhere horizontal. She’d never have guessed her hero was such a tiger when it came to lovemaking. But he’d looked like a man headed for a root canal from the minute she’d suggested this excursion.
Then again, what man truly enjoyed shopping for furniture? She’d felt like a hassled woman dragging a reluctant three year old behind her all day.
“I don’t know,” he said again after stretching his legs briefly on the couch before getting up restlessly. “It’s going to be your couch. You try it.”
Sinking down onto the upholstered surface, she heard the disclaiming note in his voice and recognized it with a pang. Her couch, not their couch. She was stupid to feel hurt by his unwillingness to commit to a joint furniture purchase, she told herself, as Doug turned to stare out the store’s front display window. He was in transition, this man she welcomed into her bed each night, still struggling with the habit of believing himself to be in love with her sister.
But the couch symbolized something more, she knew.
Amy got up, slinging her bag’s strap over her shoulder.
Sometimes her fears overwhelmed her and she wondered if things were really going to turn out good for the two of them. Did he kiss her and dream of Kelsey?
“Let’s go,” she said, walking up to where he waited.
Doug looked at her in surprise. “You don’t like it? Are we looking somewhere else?”
“No,” she said shortly, “I don’t think I’m in the mood for this today. It can wait.”
Relief skated over his features. “Okay, if you’re sure.”
Threading their way through recliners and bedroom suites, they left the retailer and walked toward the subway.
Despite everything, she believed Doug loved her. It was a conviction that had held her through many a lonely night, had comforted her these past months when all he could do was talk about Kelsey. But now he was her lover. It was Amy he turned to when his heart was aching, her he took out his bad moods on. The Kelsey Doug was obsessed with couldn’t hold up to the day-to-day loving Amy knew she could give him.
She knew this, but still his preoccupation with her older sister lanced through Amy’s heart.
He saw her sister like an award to be won, a fantasy more about himself than Kelsey. He didn’t really love her sister, didn’t seem to know the real woman inside, but he thought he did.
“Are you tired?” Doug asked, taking her hand in his. “We’ve been shopping all day. Would you rather catch a cab?”
“The subway’s fine,” she murmured, absorbing his concern and hugging it to herself like a love-starved fool.
They descended the flight of steps in silence, paid their tokens and caught an uptown train as it pulled into the station. Stepping into the subway car, Amy sat down next to him on the hard seat.
“So Jared’s back at work,” she said cheerfully, determined to help Doug see that his fantasy woman was married and out of his reach. Maybe then he could find the joy in the reality of their relationship. “Is married life making him harder or easier to work with?”
“He’s pretty much the same,” Doug said after a moment of consideration. “Have you talked with Kelsey lately?”
“Yes.” Amy waited, aware of the urge to comfort him and slap him at the same time.
“Is she…happy?” The studied casualness of his question told its own tale.
“She seems very happy,” Amy said truthfully. In fact, she’d never seen her sophisticated, older sister so in love with a man as she was with her husband. Even Kelsey’s annoyance with him for talking to Chloe about their plans for a family seemed particularly couple-like. Loving a man just seemed to increase the opportunities to be annoyed with him.
“Good,” Doug said after a long moment. “I want her to be happy.”
“So do I,” Amy agreed, a feeling of sickness in her midsection.
The subway train racketed through the subterranean darkness, the harsh lights overhead a glaring blur.
“She loves him, you know,” Amy found herself saying, her tone abrupt.
“Yes,” Doug said, staring across the train at an empty seat.
“And Jared loves her.” Amy shot him a glance. “It’s not like they’re going to break up.”
“I know,” her lover admitted. “I’m getting used to the idea of them together. It takes some adjusting, but they seem happy together.”
“She was your first love,” Amy said, trying to convince herself that he was moving closer to letting go of his fantasy, closer to realizing how perfect they were together. “But people change. They move on and find other people.”
“I know,” Doug said again, reaching out to draw her closer, his arm around her shoulder. “I’m lucky to have found you.”
***
He’d never handled the silent treatment well. Being on the receiving end of it from Kelsey tore him up. And left him angry. He couldn’t see why she was so upset.
She’d told him herself that she wanted kids. Even looking at it from her perspective, he couldn’t figure this. Since she thoroughly believed that marriages didn’t last, hadn’t she anticipated being divorced from her child’s father?
Maybe she’d planned on artificial insemination. Cut the man out of the picture from the start. But she’d never been an isolated woman. He couldn’t see her having a child alone and devoting all her days and nights to it. Kelsey without a social life?
Jared watched her, huddled reading in a chair in the bedroom, a pool of light from a lamp making her hair shine like polished wood.
It had been nearly a week since she’d come to his office to confront him. A long, cold week of monosyllabic conversations and little physical contact.
He’d done without sex a hell of a lot lo
nger, but her anger bit into him. What exactly had he done to deserve it? Gotten a little too close? Hoped for a future with her?
Maybe she just couldn’t accept love from a man.
On three separate occasions he’d tried to talk about the situation. She’d categorically refused to clarify her feelings except to state with emphasis that she wouldn’t be producing any children for him.
He was baffled, frustrated and lonely.
The only thing that gave him hope was the fact that she snuggled up to him in the night. Sometimes he’d lie there entangled in her silken limbs and feel his heart clench.
She let her guard down when she was asleep, and she still responded to his touch—even though she obviously didn’t want to. He’d seen her eyes go dark once when they’d brushed against each other in a doorway. Heard her in-drawn breath. And once, when he’d leaned past her, his arm coming into contact with her breast, he’d felt her go still, her eyes suddenly dilated.
He ached for her, wanted to shake her, wanted to sink into her soft womanly folds, to hold her naked body against his.
Hell, if cuddling in her sleep and sex were the only two avenues he had, he’d use them as unscrupulously as required.
He wasn’t giving up.
***
A week later, Kelsey lie in bed, trying to ignore the rising sun and Jared.
How could the man disturb her sensual equilibrium when she was so wary of him? Shouldn’t one cancel the other out?
Kelsey drew in a breath, looking away quickly as he walked naked from his closet, a casual shirt draped over his arm. But his image remained imprinted on her mind’s eye.
If he wasn’t such a sensual man, she’d have been tempted to think he was deliberately toying with her. For the last two weeks he hadn’t demanded sex or even mentioned it. But he touched her…often.
His hand to the small of her back as he followed her out of the apartment. Drawing her hand into his to lead her to a cab waiting at the curb. He brushed the hair away from her face, had once picked lint off her lapel.
Every time he leaned close, her pulse zipped into a tango rhythm, conjuring up memories of damp skin and moans in the dark. She tried to find her footing, tried for the friendly, distant attitude she’d used with her dates in years past. For some reason, her shield seemed to have evaporated.
That fact scared the heck out of her.
It was almost as if that glorious week of letting herself pretend love could be real had cracked open the door to her foolish heart. She could hate him or feel incredibly drawn to him. There didn’t seem to be any in-between. No middle ground. No safety net.
More often than not, her emotions seemed to contain both wariness and wanting. She missed his weight on her, hated the awkward silences that fell over the breakfast table.
She dreamed. Sweet, romantic fantasies and hot, erotic dreams. In many of these she was making slow, hungry love to him. Furious and yet insatiable.
This morning she’d woken aroused, so conscious of him next to her that it was all she could do to keep from rolling over and pressing her mouth to his.
It didn’t seem to matter that his trustworthiness was in question. She’d accepted that fact about men in general. A sane woman rarely laid her heart truly bare. But that didn’t change the fact that he drew her like a magnet.
Words between them were useless, but touch…touch seemed simple.
Across the bedroom, Jared pulled on his shirt, covering the golden expanse of muscled back.
Almost against her will, Kelsey watched him from her side of the bed. Still huddled under the covers, she hadn’t gotten up yet.
“I’m going to make some orange juice,” he said pleasantly, walking toward the door. Halfway there he paused as if he’d remembered something. Coming back toward the bed where she lie beneath the sheet, Jared leaned over her, stretching to reach for the newspaper he’d left on the bed. “Want some?”
“I’m…not hungry,” she managed to say, her voice feeling strangled. Heat from his body assailed her, along with the pheromone-laden scent that was his alone. Kelsey clenched her hands in the sheets.
Men could have sex regardless of how they felt. Why couldn’t women? Why couldn’t she throw the sheet off and pull him back into bed, purely for sex? No emotion, no love.
Jared was halfway to the door when the realization hit her. She felt a lot for him. Yes, she didn’t trust him, but that didn’t diminish the other feelings.
Alone in the bedroom now, Kelsey jumped from the bed and almost ran into the bathroom. Diving beneath the shower, she tried to ignore the ringing in her ears.
She wasn’t, absolutely wasn’t, falling for him. People had different emotions for other people all the time. That didn’t necessarily add up to love.
Loving Jared wasn’t acceptable. She wouldn’t allow herself to go there. Most men were safe, some easy to love, not so hard to forget. There was nothing easy about Jared. He was the largest risk she’d ever faced and she wasn’t fool enough to ignore that.
Dressing quickly in a casual sleeveless top and matching short skirt, she dried her hair and firmed up her defenses.
Wanting to have sex, enjoying the sex, didn’t equal love. People copulated all the time with people they didn’t give a flip about.
Leaving the bedroom, headed for the kitchen, she saw him through the floor-to-ceiling windows and paused. He sat on the terrace on a wide reclining chair, his hair lightly ruffled by the morning breeze.
She wanted to slide her hands into his hair, to draw his lips to hers.
With desire and longing pounding through her body, she hesitated, watching him. Why did she hold back? Why not share a bed with him? They’d started this marriage as almost a business deal. A deal that had specifically included sex.
She’d slipped into a regrettable fantasy interlude, but she’d regained her perspective. He’d helped her with that by showing himself to have an ulterior motive. Children.
It was like having a business partner who had a hidden agenda. She’d simply said no, emphatically. That didn’t have to negate the whole partnership.
Certainly, she wasn’t holding back from him because she’d fallen for him and he’d let her down.
The possibility wasn’t acceptable. She’d needed him to help her with Doug and Amy, and he was doing that. It wasn’t likely that a healthy, sensual man like Jared would give up sex for a year. Sex with each other was a reasonable and desirable aspect.
In fact, now that she thought of it, the only reason for her not to go out there on the terrace and copulate like bunnies was…love. And love didn’t enter into this.
Her heart beating against her breast bone, Kelsey opened the door to the terrace.
Jared glanced up from the paper, his intent gaze meeting hers.
She walked across the balcony, a fleeting gratefulness that their building was one of the tallest and since it was Sunday, few offices in nearby buildings would be occupied.
No onlookers.
Stopping at the wood reclining chair where he waited, she leaned toward him without saying a word.
Kelsey pressed her mouth against his. Instantly, fire erupted through her veins as his arms came round her, pulling her down on top of him to hold her fiercely against his body.
Jared’s response was instantaneous. He ravaged her mouth, his tongue tangling with hers, his breath harsh in his throat. No aphrodisiac was more powerful than knowing herself so instantly, savagely desired.
She clung to him, her hands climbing up to anchor on his wide shoulders. Her mouth against his, she met his tongue with her own and promptly lost herself in the haze of a flash fire.
This was what she needed, wanted so much.
With a tangle of lips and breath, Kelsey strained against him, drowning in his scent, in the piercing pleasure of his touch.
Jared’s arms enveloped her, his hand splayed at her back, pressing her body against his. He met her with a hunger that brightened her own flame, his mouth voracious as his ha
nds slid down to cup her bottom, pulling her tightly against his erection.
She felt only him, breathed only him. Ached to feel him inside, to know the stroke of his fingers, the completion he could bring her. Straining against him, her breasts felt tight and tender against his chest.
It couldn’t be love, but seemed at that moment so much more reliable, a hunger that went bone-deep.
He lifted her, sliding them both back until they lie together on the wide lounge chair.
His kiss was everything, day and night, heaven and hell. Sinking into him, she reveled in his touch, the swamping seductive scent of his skin. How she’d longed to stroke him.
Now, lost in the seduction of his mouth on hers, Kelsey tugged his shirt free of his waistband and tunneled her hands beneath, finding the smooth, hot skin of his muscled back.
Hard against her leg was the evidence of his desire. She rejoiced in it, turning to him more fully, to ride against his arousal. He was erect and powerful, hungry for her.
Jared left her lips, placing soft, hot kisses along her neck as he stroked the skin at her midriff, bared as her top rode up. She whimpered, the buzz of need and demand stirring every cell of her body.
Her hands still under his shirt, she pressed herself to him, hearing only the soft panting of her own breath and the roaring of passion-driven blood in her ears. Everywhere he touched, he left a ragged wave of sensation, a rising tide that sent shivers over her when his hand slipped beneath her top.
Cupping her bare breasts under her blouse, he kissed her once again, deep and hot as his fingers fondled her nipples. She thought she’d die from wanting. How could everything disappear so completely in a haze, all thought submersed?
Jared lifted from her to tug his shirt off, baring broad shoulders and a lightly furred chest. She explored his delights as he bent to her, quickly discovering the buttons up the back of her sun top.
Within seconds, she was naked from the waist up. He trailed his mouth over the crests of her breasts, fondling and stroking, his hands as greedy as his expression was dark with intent.
She found herself gasping, reaching for his belt and struggling to free him.