More than a Convenient Marriage?

by Dani Collins

  He hung over her on straight arms, his eyes narrowed hawkishly. “So you’re not running away to wash the feel of me off your skin?”

  “No.” That was absurd. She loved the feel and smell of him lingering on her. “Sometimes I run the shower but don’t get in,” she admitted sheepishly.

  He muttered a curse of soft, frustrated amusement. “Then why...?”

  “You make me feel like I can’t resist you! Like all you have to do is look at me or say a word and I’ll melt onto my back. That’s not a comfortable feeling.”

  “That’s exactly how I want you to be. I want you here, under me. I want to make love to you until we’re so weak we can’t lift our heads. I’ve never been comfortable with how insatiable I am for you. At least if we’re in the same boat, I can stand it.”

  She almost told him then that sometimes she woke in the middle of the night and ached for him to come to her. Shyness stopped her, but she overcame it enough to reach up to the back of his head and urge him down to kiss her. She stayed on her back, under him, and moaned in welcome as he settled his hot weight on her.

  He groaned in gratification.

  * * *

  Moonlight allowed Adara to find his T-shirt on the floor. The doors were still open and the air had cooled off to a velvety warmth that caressed her nudity. She took a moment to savor the feel of her sensitive skin stroked by the night air. It was an uncharacteristic moment of sensuality for her.

  She glanced at her naked form in the mirror. The woman staring back at her through the shadows was a bit of a stranger. The dark marks of Gideon’s fingerprints spotted her buttocks and thighs. They’d got a little wild at times through the afternoon and evening, definitely more voracious than either had ever revealed to the other before.

  Her abdomen fluttered in speculative delight. His focus on her had shored up places inside her that had been unsteady and ready to collapse. Her footing felt stronger now, even if the rest of her still swayed and trembled.

  Yes, there were still places inside her that were sensitive and vulnerable, places very close to her heart. In some ways, she was even more terrified than she’d been before they’d come up here and thrown themselves at each other, but she was glad they’d made love. Very glad.

  A whisper of movement drew her glance to the bed. Gideon’s arm swept her space on the bed. The covers had long been thrown off and the bottom sheet was loose from the corners. They had indisputably wrecked this bed.

  The body facedown upon it, however, was exquisitely crafted to withstand the demands he’d made upon it. Adara took a mental photo of his form in the bluish light: his muscled shoulders, the slope of his spine, the taut globes of his buttocks, his lean legs, one crooking toward her vacant spot as he came up on an elbow.

  His expression relaxed as he spotted her in the middle of the room. She tightened her grasp on the T-shirt she clutched to her front.

  “Get back here.”

  The smoky timbre of his voice was a rough caress all its own, while his imperious demand made her want to grin. Despite being a naturally dominant male, he usually phrased his commands as requests when he spoke to her. That was all part of the distance between them, she realized. Part of both of them not letting the other see the real person. She ought to be affronted by his true, domineering and dictatorial colors, but she liked that he wasn’t quelling that piece of his personality around her anymore.

  She liked even more that she wasn’t afraid of this side of him. He wasn’t an easy man to resist on any level, but she wasn’t afraid to stand up to him.

  Even if he still made her feel inordinately shy.

  “I’m thirsty. And I want to see what’s in these baskets.” She turned away, prickles of awareness telling her he studied her back and bottom exactly as proprietarily as she’d looked at him before he’d woken. She shrugged his T-shirt over herself.

  “That’s the first thing I noticed about you and I hardly ever get to see it naked.”

  “My bum?” Her buttocks tightened beneath the light graze of his T-shirt and she felt herself heat. She turned to bring the basket along with the wineglasses to the bed, not bothering with the wine itself. She was after the sparkling water in the green bottle.

  As she placed the basket on the bed and knelt across from him, she caught a look of disgruntlement on his face.

  “All of you,” he clarified. “You’re gorgeous and I like looking at you.”

  She didn’t know what to say. She was flattered, but only half believed him.

  Tucking her loose hair behind her ear, she confided, “I’ve never felt confident about the way I look. Showing any hint of trying to be sexy while my father was alive would have been a one-way ticket to hell. And I never really trusted any man enough to flirt.” She gave him the bottle of water to open for her then poured two glasses, drinking greedily only to make herself hiccup.

  She giggled and covered her wet lips, but sobered as she saw Gideon glowering into his glass.

  “Men who hit women make me insane. I know it’s not right to answer violence with violence, but if your father were still alive, the police would be involved right now, one way or another.” He took a deep slug of his water, eyes remaining hooded, not meeting her shocked gaze.

  His vehemence was disturbing, prompting an odd need to comfort him. She reached across to stroke his tense arm. “Gideon, it’s in the past. It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not,” he said sharply, but when he looked at her, his expression softened a little. “But right now isn’t the time to think about it. Get rid of that,” he ordered with a jerk of his chin at the T-shirt.

  “What am I? Your sex slave now?” She did feel a little enslaved, but she wasn’t as resentful as she ought to be about it.

  “No. You’re my wife. You ought to be comfortable letting me see you naked.” He set aside his glass to reach for an orange.

  She finished her own water and set it aside before easing the shirt off her body and setting it aside while she continued to kneel demurely, feet alongside her buttock, arm twitching to cover her breasts. To distract herself, she watched Gideon efficiently section the orange and bring a piece to his mouth.

  He clutched it in his teeth and looked at her. “Bite,” he said around it.

  Her heart did a somersault. “Why?” The defensive question came automatically, but then she thought, Just do it, and leaned down to close her mouth on the fruit.

  They bit it in half at the same time. Tangy juice exploded in her mouth. At the same time, his firm lips moved on hers in an erotic, openmouthed kiss. When she would have pulled away in surprise, he set a hand behind her head and kept her close enough to enjoy the messy, sweet, thorough act of sinful wickedness.

  When he finally let her pull away to finish chewing and swallow, he grinned. “You flirt just fine, Mrs. Vozaras.”

  “Do it again,” she blurted, making herself be assertive so she’d quit letting habits of inhibition hold her back from what she wanted.

  A flicker of surprise flashed in his eyes before his eyelids grew heavy and his gaze sexily watchful. In her periphery, she was aware of him growing hard and her mouth watered for that too, but she took another bite of orange and splayed her hand on his chest, leaning into him to enjoy the sticky, tart kiss.

  The last shreds of her inhibitions fell away and they didn’t get back to the orange for a long, long time.

  * * *

  “You’re going to burn,” Gideon said as he returned from the waves to see the sun had moved and the backs of Adara’s legs were exposed to the intense rays.

  She stayed on her stomach on the blanket, unmoved and unmoving, only blinking her eyes open sleepily, as if she didn’t have an ounce of energy in her. Forty-eight hours of unfettered lovemaking, impulsive napping and abject laziness were taking a toll on both of them. His own ambition had frit
tered into an I’ll look at it later attitude. He’d left his phone and tablet up at the house, bringing only his sunglasses and wife to the beach.

  “I like being on vacation,” she told him, still not moving.

  He adjusted the umbrella so she was fully in the shade then flopped down beside her. “So do I. We should definitely do this more often.”

  A shadow passed behind her eyes before she lowered her lashes to hide it. She shifted to rest her chin on her stacked fists, the circumspect silence making him aware of all the things they’d avoided while enriching their knowledge of each other’s capacity for physical pleasure. Suddenly they were back in the pool, he couldn’t think beyond his sexual hunger, and she was telling him that she needed to know where their relationship was going.

  Restless frustration moved through him. He didn’t know what to tell her. This was perfect. Wasn’t it? He couldn’t think of one thing they needed besides warm sand, the reassuring swish of a calm sea, each other’s heated breath while they—

  A faint noise lifted his head and a preternatural tingle went through him as he noticed a speck appear in the distant sky. They hadn’t been tracking time, neither of them particularly interested in a return to reality, but apparently it was descending whether they were ready for it or not.

  “Babe? I think your brother’s here.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  GIVEN HOW THEIR trip to Greece had started, Gideon supposed he shouldn’t be surprised by Adara’s reaction, but the way she paled and panicked startled him. She took herself back to the house as if her skin was on fire. In their room, she pulled on a sundress and revealed a level of agitation he’d never seen as the thwack of chopper blades became loud enough to make the house hum.

  He dragged on shorts and a collared shirt, concerned by the way her hand shook as she tried to apply makeup.

  “Adara, you look great,” he reassured her, even though her lips were bloodless and her eyes pools of anxiety.

  Coming back from a place of dark thoughts, she gripped his forearm with a clammy hand. “Thank you for being here with me. I don’t know if I could have done this alone.”

  Shaken by the reliance and trust her statement represented, he wanted to pull her into his arms and assure her he’d always be here, but she was already pulling away from him. She had been waiting for this a long time and he could see she was both eager and filled with trepidation. Not knowing her brother or how this would go for her filled him with his own anxiety, wanting to shield her yet knowing he had to let whatever happened happen. He could only accompany her outside where the sound of the chopper blades faded to desultory pulses.

  Walking out a side door, they stood on the steps, Adara’s fingernails digging into his biceps as she gripped his arm.

  They watched Nic Marcussen help a woman with crutches from the helicopter. Rowan Davidson was vaguely familiar to him as a moderately famous child actress who’d had a flirtation with notoriety among the euro-trash social elite. She seemed surprisingly down to earth now as she spun with lithe grace on one foot, accepting her second crutch while trying to take a bag from her husband at the same time.

  Nic shouldered the bag’s strap and reached back into the chopper for one more thing: an infant carrier.

  As the couple made their way across the lawn toward them, Gideon felt the slicing gaze of the media magnate take his measure.

  It wasn’t often that Gideon met a man he considered his equal. Standing on the man’s stoop didn’t exactly put him on an even playing field and he might have been more uncomfortable with that if a severe expression of anguish hadn’t twisted Nic’s expression when he transferred his gaze to Adara.

  Her tense profile barely contained the emotions Gideon sensed rising off her as viscerally as if they were his own. Everything in him wanted to pull her close and screen her from what was obviously a very painful moment. But he had to stand helplessly waiting out the silence as Nic paused at the bottom of the steps and the siblings were held in a type of stasis, staring at each other.

  Like a burst of rainbows into a rainy afternoon, Rowan smiled and stepped forward. “We’re so glad you came,” she said in a warm Irish accent. Hitching up the steps on her crutches, she embraced Adara with one arm, kissing her cheek. “I’m Rowan. It’s my fault we’re late. And you’re Gideon?”

  She hopped over to hug him as if they were long-lost relatives, and for once Gideon didn’t take offense at an unexpected familiarity, accepting her kiss on his cheek, still focused on his wife who seemed to be in a kind of trance.

  Slowly Nic set down the baby carrier and let the bag slide off his shoulder on his other side. He took a step forward and Adara tipped forward off the stoop, landing in the open arms of her brother. It was beautiful and heartrending, the reunion so intense it could only be the result of long, intense suffering apart.

  “We should give them a minute,” Rowan said huskily, her eyes visibly wet as she dragged her gaze from the pair. “Would you be an absolute hero and bring Evie into the house for me?”

  Gideon didn’t like leaving Adara, but followed Rowan to the kitchen where she began preparing a bottle. The baby craned her neck and followed Rowan with her Oriental eyes, beginning to strain against the confines of her seat, whimpering with impatience.

  “I know, you’re completely out of sorts, aren’t you?” Rowan murmured as she released the baby while the bottle warmed. Cuddling the infant, she nuzzled her cheek and patted her back, soothing the fussing girl.

  “We were supposed to be here all summer just enjoying being a family,” she said to Gideon. “Then it came up that I could have a few pins taken out of my leg. I wanted to put it off, but Nic said no, he could handle Evie for a couple of nights while I was in hospital. But Evie decided to cut a tooth and bellow nonstop. He didn’t get a wink of sleep. Then he found out Adara had come looking for him. He didn’t know which way to turn. Here, do you mind?” she said as a ping sounded from the cylindrical bottle warmer.

  She held out the infant and Gideon had no choice but to take her so Rowan could retrieve the baby’s bottle.

  He held the sturdy little girl’s rib cage between his palms. Her dangling legs wriggled and her tiny hands scratch-tickled his forearms while her doll’s face craned to keep Rowan in view. She was the smallest, most fragile creature he’d ever held and fear that he’d break her made him want to hurriedly hand her back, but Rowan was occupied tipping the bottle to spray milk on her wrist then licking it off.

  “I’ve used crutches so many times I can do a full tea service on them without spilling, but I haven’t mastered juggling a baby. Yet.” She smiled cheekily and hopped over to him. “Just rest her in the crook of your arm and—yes, I know you want that. You’re hungry, aren’t you? Uncle’s going to feed you.”

  No, I’m not, Gideon thought, but found himself with a weight of soft warmth snuggled onto his forearm. As little Evie got the nipple in her mouth and relaxed, he did too. Her charcoal eyes gazed up at him trustingly and he felt a tug near his heart. Her foot tapped lightly onto his breastbone while she swallowed and breathed heavily with audible greediness. He felt like a superhero, making sure she wasn’t going hungry.

  “Shall we sit outside? I hope you’ve been comfortable here?” Rowan led him out of the kitchen to the patio.

  “Very,” he assured her, sincere. “You’ll have to let us return the hospitality when our cruise ship launches next year. Now, how do we do this? Do you want to sit and take her—?”

  A noise inside the house snapped Rowan’s head around like a guard dog hearing a footstep. “That was Adara into the ladies’ room. I’ll just— Do you mind? I want to make sure Nic...” She was good on crutches, swooping away like a gull, a telling thread of concern in her tone as she disappeared into the house.

  He snorted in bemusement, thinking that Nic Marcussen seemed the least likely man in the u
niverse to require a mother hen for a wife, but apparently he had one.

  While Gideon was literally left holding the baby.

  He looked down at the girl, surprised to see how much of the bottle she’d drained. As her bright gaze caught his, Evie broke away from the teat to give him an ear-to-ear milky grin of joy and gratitude and trust.

  A laugh curled upward from deep in his chest, surprising him with how instant and genuine his humor was. Little minx. They learned early how to disarm a man, didn’t they? He was in very real danger of falling in love at first sight.

  * * *

  Adara wiped at her still-leaking eyes and tried to pull herself together so Gideon wouldn’t worry. He had been right. It was okay. Nico was and always had been her big brother in every way that counted. Nevertheless, her heart was cracking open under the pressure of deep feeling. She desperately craved the arms of her husband to cushion her from the sensation of rawness.

  As she went in search of him outside, she saw him settling into a chair at the patio table, his back to her. Biting her lips together, she tried not to burst into happy tears as she stepped through the door and moved to his side—

  —where she found him holding a baby, smiling indulgently at the infant as if the tot was the most precious thing in the world.

  The kick of pain blindsided her. For a second she was paralyzed by the crash back to the reality of their imperfect life, winded so much she wasn’t able to move, let alone retreat, before Gideon glanced up and saw the devastated expression on her face.

  If he’d been caught with Lexi in flagrante delicto, he couldn’t have looked more culpable. It wouldn’t have hurt this badly.

  “She’s on crutches. The baby was hungry. I couldn’t say no,” he defended quickly while his arm moved in the most subtly protective way to draw the baby closer to his chest. In the way of a natural father sheltering his young.

  At the same time, his free hand shot out to take Adara’s arm in an unbreakable grip.