The Consequence He Must Claim

by Dani Collins

  She almost left it at that. If he’d still been her boss, she would have, but they were married. She took a risk. “Was? He’s no longer alive? It sounds like you would steal him from your father if you could.”

  “He passed away four years ago. My parents didn’t tell me or I would have gone to his funeral.” Cesar turned his head to look out his side window, but she saw his hand close into a fist on his thigh.

  Oh, Cesar. She reached to cover his hand.

  He looked down at her small hand over his for a long moment, then removed his own from under it. He gave her a faintly disdainful smile. “It’s fine.”

  She swallowed, looking out her own window, stung. Apparently it didn’t matter if she was his wife. There were still lines she wasn’t allowed to cross.

  The villa was stunning, sprawled across a hillside with an infinity pool that overlooked the lower bench of the vineyard and the blue-green horizon of the Mediterranean.

  The interior was absent of furniture and Sorcha wasn’t sure about the chartreuse in the dining room—a space that could easily seat thirty—but as they moved through the arched doorways from room to room, she mostly goggled. Ten bedrooms? Six with their own sitting rooms and baths? Plus a nursery with a nanny suite?

  This was not her life. She subtly pinched herself as she stood in the huge master suite, slowly pivoting to take in the three walls of windows, plus the terrace overlooking the pool and sea. It didn’t matter how big a bed they put in here, there would still be room to play tennis. The tub in the attached bathroom was its own lap pool.

  Apparently the owners had run out of money after choosing to build a new villa rather than renovating the one that had been here for a century.

  “What do you think?” Cesar asked when they returned downstairs and stood in the third lounge, this one an indoor-outdoor space with removable walls, a fireplace and a wet bar. “It only has a six-car garage and I don’t see a space to expand it. The beach is quite a hike, but at least it’s private.”

  Only six cars. Forty stairs to the private beach. Such hardship.

  “Do you realize what it will take to furnish this place?” she murmured as the agent gave them a moment of privacy. Sorcha was talking about the cost, but Cesar gave her a sharp look, taking Enrique from her as she shifted the baby to her other shoulder. Their son was growing every minute and surprisingly heavy.

  “I don’t expect you to source everything yourself,” Cesar said. “Hire a decorator so you just have to make the decisions. Paint first. That green in the dining room is hideous.”

  That streak of artistry in him always surprised her. He was such a man of logic and facts, but aesthetics were as important to him as function. He would have made a terrific architect.

  They signed the papers the next day. Sorcha’s hand trembled as she wrote her name. How did she own half of such a property? The prenup gave her their principal residence, but she felt like the biggest fraudster alive putting her name to a house like that.

  Fortunately, babies had a way of narrowing one’s focus down to the most immediate priorities and she didn’t have time to worry about it. The next few weeks passed in a blur of meetings with decorators, interviewing nannies among staff needed for the new house, enduring fittings for a new wardrobe for herself—Cesar gave her an obscenely high budget and told her to use it—choosing baby clothes and other nursery items and occasionally being woken by her husband with “He won’t settle. He must be hungry.”

  If she had thought it would be a time of growing closer to her husband, she was both right and wrong. They often talked as they always had. He shared work details; she gave him updates on the house. They marveled at Enrique and laughed at themselves as new parents.

  Where their son was concerned, they grew very close. If Sorcha had dreamed of watching Cesar fall in love someday, her wish was granted. He stole time with Enrique every chance he could, walked him at night, changed him when he needed it, even came back to her one time with his sleeves rolled up and the front of his shirt wet, Enrique smelling fresh and damp, wearing a different outfit.

  “That turned into a bath. But he’s clean and dry now. And hungry.”

  Sometimes they watched a movie in the evenings and when she started joining him in his gym, where she walked the tread while he did his weight routine, he only asked, “Did the doctor say you’re allowed?”

  They slept together, often with their bodies touching. She knew he was hard every morning, but they kept their hands to themselves and their kisses tended to be pecks of greeting and departure. The domestic kind. A brief touch on her shoulder or waist, an even briefer touch of his mouth to hers on his way out the door.

  Was he still getting used to the idea that he could kiss her? Was he showing restraint because she hadn’t been cleared for sex yet? Or did he simply not want anything more from her?

  If she didn’t have a baby to show for it, she would think that passionate man who had seemed so driven by lust and determined to elicit the same in her had been a hot dream by a wicked mind.

  So she was doubly anxious when she came home from the doctor the day they were supposed to go to his mother’s for the evening. Part of her had been wishing for weeks that they could make love and get the suspense over with. Now the moment was at hand and she found herself swallowing her tongue.

  She hadn’t reminded him she was seeing the doctor today. He wound up running late, arriving home as she was finishing her makeup. Leaving the ivory tower of his penthouse was enough to deal with, she decided. Aside from her doctor appointments, she had been enjoying this time of seclusion, cocooned with her baby, visiting with her family over the tablet so she didn’t feel isolated.

  The thought of fully assuming the title of Señora Montero publicly was intimidating the heck out of her.

  Fortunately, she had Octavia. She often texted her new friend at odd hours. It wasn’t unusual to find Octavia giving Lorenzo a midnight feed when she rose to nurse Enrique. Octavia was also riding the ups and downs of new motherhood and she was a terrific resource when it came to living the lifestyle to which Sorcha had socially clambered. Best of all, she made no judgment about Sorcha being a newbie to this stratosphere.

  Sorcha texted her:

  I need to buy some gowns. The stylist says I need at least ten. That seems excessive.

  Octavia texted back:

  Conservative. I bought two dozen when I married. I just bought twelve more—thanks, Lorenzo, for the ample hips and bust.

  Two dozen? The gowns were four figures each!

  This first event was Cesar’s mother’s reception for her new daughter-in-law, however. La Reina Montero was hosting a very civilized affair to introduce her eldest son’s new wife to five hundred of her closest friends and relatives. In a month, La Reina would do it all again when her second son’s engagement to Diega Fuentes was formally announced. One would think Señora Montero had a reduce-reuse-recycle zero-waste attitude, if not for her willingness to feed the same crowd twice.

  Sorcha glanced at Cesar, glad he couldn’t read her thoughts.

  She had glimpsed these sorts of events from afar as his PA, and had usually been the one to arrange tuxedos to come back from the cleaners and drivers to arrive at the door. When she had asked if those sorts of duties fell to her as his wife, he’d asked, “Do you want them to?”

  Much discussion had ensued about her role in organizing his private life—which harkened back to her claim that she might want an outside job again, eventually, but the truth was she was already overwhelmed. Readying their new home was a job in itself and mothering was nonstop. She liked the idea of taking charge of his personal calendar, but wasn’t sure if she could handle it yet.

  He wound up suggesting she needed a personal assistant, which had made her laugh outright.

  “My mother has one,” he’d said with a negligent shrug
. Like it was a handy app you downloaded onto your tablet.

  “I’m not on your mother’s level,” she had protested.

  “You’re not the Duquesa yet, but you will be. She’ll judge you far more harshly for not wearing the affectations befitting your station than for acting the part out of the gate.”

  No pressure to be her absolute highest self tonight or anything.

  They arrived earlier than the rest of the guests so they could form part of the receiving line. Sorcha felt as though invisible eyes were on her as she walked up the front steps in her heels, green-and-gold skirt caressing her thighs while she resisted the urge to tug on the strapless bodice to ensure her breasts didn’t make an appearance.

  She’d been to this house exactly once, in the days after Cesar’s crash, when she’d brought some things from his office to his father. She’d used the service entrance and had been shown into his office for twenty minutes. She had spent nineteen of those minutes memorizing Cesar’s boyhood face in a family portrait over the fireplace.

  Tonight, she was a member of his family. Cesar led her without hesitation up the stairs into the private domain where he had grown up, seeking out his parents in their personal lounge. He made a point of calling them by name when he greeted them. “Sorcha, you remember my parents, Javiero and La Reina.”

  “Of course.” Sorcha smiled. As his PA, she had used their titles when speaking to them and their greetings had been touchless. They both held her hands and kissed her cheeks today.

  “Welcome.” Javiero was an older version of Cesar, very handsome and still with a full head of dark hair. He stood tall in his tuxedo, jacket not yet on, and moved with economy. He never wasted a word, much like his son. Working closely with him in those first days after Cesar’s crash, doing everything she could to ensure the impact to the corporation was minimized, she had thought Javiero respected and valued her. This evening, he was inscrutable as he glanced at his sleeping grandson.

  Sorcha had mostly spoken to La Reina on the telephone, ingratiating herself shamelessly in the first year of her employment. Mothers were worse than wives if you got on their bad side as a man’s assistant. She figured she had one chance as his wife.

  “So lovely to have you back with us,” La Reina said, proving she could lie as elegantly as she could dress. “And a son. Such a delightful surprise. I’ve been tied up with planning this party or I would have come to see him. I thought when you’d moved into the new house would be convenient, so I could see both at once.”

  Tonight was not, apparently, a convenient time to view her grandson.

  “I’m nursing,” Sorcha said, pretending the payoff check hadn’t happened. Or the generous but ironclad prenup. This was how his family did things, right? All business, purely practical, no emotion. “We couldn’t leave him home.”

  “Oh, yes. I always thought breastfeeding sounded like such a nuisance,” La Reina murmured.

  Sorcha bit her tongue.

  “The nanny will watch him in my suite,” Cesar said. “But we won’t stay the night.”

  “When you have him settled, join us for cocktails. Rico and Pia are here. They might be downstairs already,” she added.

  They left for Cesar’s suite and Sorcha felt as if she could breathe again. At least it hadn’t been ugly. Maybe she could get through this after all.

  Thirty minutes later, she accompanied Cesar toward the stairs. He offered a hand as they began to descend and she gratefully took it, even though she kept the other on the rail. It would be just like her to go headfirst, she was so sick with nerves right now.

  “Your hand is freezing,” he said, closing his warm one more tightly over hers.

  “I’m terrified,” she muttered. “What are people going to say?”

  “Congratulations,” he replied. “What else can they say?”

  “I suppose,” she mumbled, and told herself to quit frowning, but couldn’t shake her worry. “Are you sure I look all right?”

  He was exceptionally handsome in his tuxedo, wearing it like old jeans. He’d shaved and wore the bored expression of a man who’d done this too many times to count.

  “I told you before we left that you look beautiful, but Enrique started crying. You might not have heard me.”

  “No, I did. I just—” Didn’t believe it. She’d seen him with his lovers in the past. He’d always been so attentive and indulgent, performing foreplay with light fingers on a woman’s skin and nuzzles of his lips against her cheek.

  She was his wife and while his compliment had sounded sincere, he’d also seemed stiff when he’d said it. Standoffish. He wasn’t flirty and affectionate with her.

  They reached the bottom of the stairs and she let go of his hand, turned to face him and made herself confront her worst fear. She had always felt attractive, if wary of her own allure, but the changes of pregnancy had her confidence faltering.

  “Be honest. Is the baby weight turning you off? Because I’m trying to drop it as fast as I can, but it’s hard.”

  “Sorcha.” He looked genuinely shocked and confused. “What gave you the idea...? Even if you were still out to here—” he stuck his hand in the air at his middle “—it wouldn’t matter. You always look flawless. You’re the most naturally beautiful woman I know.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just really nervous and—” She was such an idiot. She shouldn’t have started this here, now, but this party felt like the official beginning of their marriage and she wouldn’t relax until she at least knew... “I went to the doctor today. She said we could, um...” She looked around. “You know,” she said in an undertone. “If we use, um,” she swallowed and mouthed, condoms.

  He stared.

  She felt as though she grew transparent, skin thinning with heat, clothes incinerating until they flaked off her body in papery curls and she stood naked before him. She had just handed him the power to accept or reject her, leaving her self-worth hanging in the balance. She wished he would—

  “You tell me that now? Here?”

  “Where else—”

  “The shower? An hour ago?” An avid light fired his gaze and his hand wrapped firmly around her arm. He steered her down the hall, but rather than taking her toward the main area of the house, he tugged her past the office she’d seen last time, then into a billiards room.

  She scuffled along, fearful she’d be pulled off her heels. “Cesar, you’re scaring me.”

  “I wait three damned years, then you disappear for eight months. I marry you and still have to wait six weeks...”

  He pushed through a frosted door into a humid solarium. The scents of oranges and earth, lilies and herbs, were so pungent, it was almost overwhelming. The room was dark, lit only by the lights surrounding the tents erected outside. The glow filtered through small panes of glass, most of the light kept out by the abundance of greenery growing upward and dangling from hooks.

  It was enchanting, but... “You want to, um, here—?”

  “I want,” he growled, pulling her into his arms and pressing a hot, openmouthed kiss against her neck. His hand slid low, taking firm possession of her bottom to press her into the hardness of his unquestionable erection.

  “Oh!” she cried, clutching at his shoulders for balance.

  “I have been wanting and waiting and you finally tell me I can have you, but that I have to wait a little longer? I never took you for cruel, Sorcha.” His breath moved the tiny hairs along the edges of her updo, tickling and stimulating her sensitive nape, sending shivery waves of pleasure through her whole body. Gooseflesh rose on her arms.

  She had wondered what had happened to the unabashedly sexual playboy she used to work for and here he was, flicking his tongue against her earlobe before he caught it in his teeth. He was moving his hands all over her waist and hips, sliding the silk against her skin, learning the shape of
her thighs and buttocks. It was a disconcertingly familiar touch, kind of shocking in its level of ownership, but it sent tingles of anticipation and excitement through her. It felt really good to be touched. By him. So greedily.

  Heat suffused her as she arched her neck and found herself turning her face, seeking his mouth with her own.

  A sound tore out of him and he covered her lips with his own, full and knowledgeable. The sweet, occasionally lingering kisses of the past six weeks were gone. This was raw, undeniable passion. His tongue pierced unapologetically and searched for hers. Her abdomen contracted with excitement.

  A deeper moan escaped her and she crowded closer to him, loins flooding with a hot ache, dampening with excitement. They stood there barely moving but for caressing each other in erotic pulses of their bodies against each other, mouths mimicking the thrust and reception they both craved.

  With a little sob, she tore her lips from his, panting as she said, “I didn’t bring any condoms with me. I left them in the table by the bed. Do you have one?”

  He drew back and even in the shadowed light, she could tell he was glaring.

  “You had one that day,” she protested. “I thought it was something you always carry, like a credit card.”

  “No,” he growled. “I don’t have one and I’m not about to consummate our marriage on a potting table in my parents’ garden shed.”

  “Save it for our anniversary?” she suggested.

  He looked to the glass panes of the ceiling, shaking his head. His hands were still flexing on her. “This is going to be a very hard, hard evening to get through.”

  She ducked her head against his chest, sheepishly delighted. The evening ahead began to feel more like a date.

  “Thank you,” she murmured. “I feel pretty now.”

  “You are more than pretty. You’re radiant,” he said, sounding as if he meant it. They exchanged another kiss that promised a “to be continued.”

  A moment later, drunk with arousal, she let him lead her back into the billiards room. They would make love later. The knowledge whispered and sang inside her, like a delicious secret. Like Christmas was coming.