Marriage Without Love & More Than a Convenient Marriage?

by Penny Jordan

  “I’m sure,” she scoffed, lips coming alive under the feathery stroke of the blossom. She licked the sensation away. “What are you doing?”

  “Seducing you. It’d be nice if you noticed.”

  She might have smiled, but he distracted her by brushing the flower under her chin. She lifted to escape the disturbing tickle and he stole a kiss.

  It was a tender press of his mouth over hers, not demanding and possessive as she’d come to expect from him. This was more like those first kisses they’d shared a lifetime ago, during their short engagement. Brief and exploratory. Patient.

  Sweet but frustrating. She was too schooled in how delicious it was to give in to passion to go back to chaste premarital nuzzling.

  He drew back and looked into her eyes through a hooded gaze. “I remember every single thing about that night. How soft your skin was.” The blossom dropped away as he stroked the back of his bent fingers down her cheek and into the crook of her neck. His gaze went lower and his hand followed. “I remember how I had to learn to be careful with your nipples because they’re so sensitive.”

  They were. Sensitive and responsive. Tightening now so they poked against the dual layers of bra and shirt, standing out visibly and seeming to throb as he lightly traced a finger around the point of one. A whimper of hungry distress escaped her.

  “I remember that most especially.” The timbre of his voice became very low and intense. “The little noises of pleasure you made that got me so hot because it meant you liked what I was doing to you. I almost lost it the first time you came. Then you fell apart again when I was inside you and you were so tight—”

  “Gideon, stop!” She grasped the hand that had drifted to the button at the waistband of her shorts. Her lungs felt as if all the air in them had evaporated and a distinctive throb pulsed between her thighs.

  “I don’t want to stop,” he growled with masculine ferocity. “The only thing hotter than our first time together has been every time since.”

  She wanted to believe that, but yesterday...

  Gideon watched Adara withdraw and knew he was losing her. He’d come on too strong, but hunger for her was like a wolf in him, snapping and predatory from starvation.

  “What’s wrong?” he demanded, then swore silently at himself when he saw that his roughened tone made her flinch. He wasn’t enjoying these heart-to-hearts any more than she was, but they were necessary. He accepted that, but it was hard. He was the type to attack, not expose his throat.

  Adara flicked him a wary glance and stepped back, arms crossing her chest in the way he was beginning to hate because it shut him out so effectively. She chewed her bottom lip for a few seconds before cutting him another careful glance.

  “Yesterday you said... Maybe I’m being oversensitive, but what you said when we were swimming really hurt, Gideon. About me not being good enough. I try to give you as much pleasure as you give me—”

  He cut her off with a string of Greek epithets that should have curled the leaves off the surrounding trees. “Yesterday was a completely different era in this relationship. What I said—” The chill of frustration gripped his vital organs. How could he explain that his appetite for her went beyond what even seemed human? He understood now why she’d confined their relations to oral sex, but it didn’t change the fact that he ached constantly for release inside her. “I felt managed, Adara. I don’t say that with blame. I’m only telling you how it seemed from what I knew then. I want you. Not other women. Not tarts like Lexi. You. Having you hold yourself back from me made me nuts. I need you to be as caught up as I am. To want me. It’s the only way I can cope with how intense my need for you is.”

  She blinked at him in shock.

  He rubbed a hand down his face, wishing he could wipe away his blurted confession. “If that scares the hell out of you, then I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have told you.”

  “No,” she breathed, head shaking in befuddlement. “But I find it hard to believe you feel like that. I’m not a siren. You’re the one with all the experience, the one who thinks about using condoms because you’ve used them before.”

  “Yes, I have,” he said with forcible bluntness, not liking how defensive he felt for having a sexual history when she’d come to him pristine and pure. “But you know when the last time I used one was? The night before we met. I don’t remember much about the woman I was dating then, only that the next evening she left me because I asked her if she knew anything about you. Pretty crass, I know. I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

  Her searching gaze made him extremely uncomfortable. He jerked his chin.

  “Let’s keep walking.”

  “And talking? Because it’s such fun?” Adara bent to retrieve the blossom he’d dropped and twirled it beneath her nose as they continued deeper into the orange grove. His revelations were disturbing on so many levels, most especially because they were creating emotional intimacy, something that was completely foreign to their marriage. Nevertheless, as painful as it was to dredge up her hurts, she was learning that it was cathartic to acknowledge them. Letting him explain his side lessened the hurt.

  She glanced at him as they walked, no longer touching.

  “I hate thinking of you with other women.” The confession felt like a barbed hook dragged all the way from the center of her heart across the back of her throat. “Infidelity destroyed our family. We were quite normal at first, then Nico was sent away and it was awful. Both my parents drank. My father fooled around and made sure my mother knew about it. She was devastated. So much yelling and crying and fighting. I never wanted anything like that to happen to me.”

  “It won’t,” he assured her, reaching across with light fingers to smooth her hair off her shoulder so he could tuck his hand under the fall of loose tresses and cup the back of her neck. “But tell me you were jealous of Lexi anyway. My ego needs it.”

  “I felt insecure and useless,” she said flatly.

  He checked his step and a spasm of pain flashed across his face before he seared her with a look. “Exactly how I felt when I saw you walk up the driveway here. Like I’d been rejected because I wasn’t good enough.”

  She bit her lips together in compunction while her heart quivered in her chest, shimmering with the kind of pain a seed must feel before the first shoot breaks through its shell. She wanted to cry and throw herself into him and run away and protect herself.

  “We’re never going to be able to make this work, Gideon. I don’t want the power to hurt you any more than I want you to be able to hurt me. This is a mess. We’re messing each other up and it’s going to be—”

  “Messy?” he prompted dryly. “Just take it one day at a time, Adara. That’s all we can do.”

  She drew in and released a shaken breath, nodding tightly as they kept walking. Their steps made soft crunches in the dry grass while cicadas chirped in accompaniment. No breeze stirred beneath the trees and the heat clutched the air in a tight grip.

  “Should we go back and swim?” she suggested.

  “If you like.”

  It didn’t matter what they did, she realized. They were filling time until her brother returned, distracting themselves while sexual attraction struggled for supremacy over hurt and misgivings. They should give in. Sex would take the edge off their tension and God knew she wanted him. Lovemaking with Gideon was a transcendent experience as far as she was concerned.

  But she’d never felt this vulnerable with him before. It made physical intimacy seem that much more intimate. Her normal defenses were a trampled mess. The idea of letting him touch her and watch her lose control was terrifying. He’d see how much he meant to her and that was too much to bear.

  Twenty minutes later they were in the pool. His laps were a purposeful crawl with flip turns and patterned breathing, hers a less disciplined breaststroke that made one lap to
his four. Tiring, she moved to sit on one of the long tile stairs in the shallow end, half out of the water as she watched him. The pool was fully shaded now, leaving her quite comfortable watching his athletic build cut through the water.

  When he stopped and joined her on the step, he was breathing heavily, probably having swum a mile though she’d lost count ages ago, distracted by the steady thrust of his arms into the water and the tight curve of his buttocks as he kicked. She really couldn’t fathom what a sexy, virile man like him was doing with mousy, boring her.

  And even though he’d pushed himself with thirty minutes of hard swimming, his gaze moved restlessly, as if he was looking for the next challenge.

  “You’re not comfortable with downtime, are you?” she said.

  He glanced questioningly at her while diamond droplets glittered on his face and chest hair.

  “You’re driven,” she expounded. “I keep thinking of all those plans we made, but what does it matter if we have a floating hotel? I know it’s top-notch, but who cares? We don’t need the money and the world doesn’t need another behemoth cruise ship.”

  “It matters to the people we’ve employed and the ones who invested with us. But you’re right, I suppose. Wealth isn’t something either of us really needs. Not anymore. It’s a habit I’ve fallen into, I guess.”

  “You worked hard to get here and now you don’t know how to stop,” she paraphrased.

  He made a noise of agreement.

  “If we don’t have children, what would we fill our lives with? More hotels and boats?” Involuntarily, her ears strained to hear the words each other.

  They didn’t come. After a long moment he said, “Our last five-year plan took months to mold. This one can, too. There’s no rush.”

  “There is,” she insisted. “I feel like if we don’t have everything sorted out before we sleep together again, our marriage will go back to the way it was and I’ll be stuck in it.” There. She’d said it. Her worst fear had blurted out of her.

  He stared at her for a long minute, absorbing her outburst, then he chuckled softly and shook his head. “And I can’t think of anything but making love to you again. New plans?” He shook his head as if she was speaking another language. “We’re at quite an impasse.”

  He wasn’t being dismissive, just blatantly honest. Her heart constricted as she absorbed that this was what he’d meant about trusting him. Somehow she had to dredge up the faith to believe he’d continue working on their marriage along with the courage to surrender herself to him. The potential for pain was enormous.

  While the yearning to feel close to him was unbearable.

  She looked up to where the afternoon sun had bleached the clear sky to nearly white. Not even close to evening or bedtime. She hadn’t brought either her green-light or red-light nightgown. How else could she possibly signal to him that she was receptive to his advances?

  Oh, Adara, quit being such a priss. They were learning to communicate, weren’t they?

  Her internal lecture didn’t stop her heart from beating frantically in her throat as she set tentative fingertips on his wrist where it rested on his thigh. Leaning toward him, she shielded her eyes with a swoop of her lashes and watched his lips part slightly in surprise before she pressed hers to them.

  Heat flooded into her. The very best kind of heat that had nothing to do with Greek sunshine and everything to do with this man’s chemistry interacting with hers. He didn’t move, letting her control the pressure and deepening of their kiss, but he responded with a muted groan of approval and drew on her tongue with gentle suction.

  Runnels of sexual hunger poured through her system, spreading out in delicate fingers that excited her senses and made her want to tip into his lap.

  Shakily she pulled back and licked the taste of him off her lips before she gripped the railing in slippery fingers and forced her weak knees to take her weight as she stood.

  “Will you, um, give me a minute to shower before you come up?” The question was so uncouched and blatant she felt as though she’d stripped herself naked here in public.

  “I’ll use the shower in the cabana and be up in ten,” he replied gruffly, eyes like lasers that peeled her bathing suit from her body.

  Adara wrapped a towel around herself and went to their room.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE PARALLEL TO their first time kept ringing in Gideon’s skull. He was just as keyed up as he’d been then, his masculine need to possess twitching in him like an electric wire, while his ego inched out onto that wire, precarious as a tightrope walker.

  No room for false moves. The message pulsed as a current, back and forth within him.

  He climbed the stairs as though pulled by an invisible force. No matter how many times he told himself it was ridiculous to place so much importance on this—he’d done this before. They had. It didn’t matter. This meant something. The last time he’d felt this sense of magnitude, Adara’s initiation to sexual maturity had been on the line. He’d felt a massive responsibility to make it good for her, especially as he’d been selfishly determined he would be her only lover for the rest of their lives. The pressure to ensure they were both satisfied with that exclusivity had been enormous.

  Without being too egotistical, he believed they had been. He certainly had. Her subtle beauty had flourished into his own private land of enchantment.

  This ought to be a visit to the familiar, he told himself as he turned the handle on the door and pressed into their room. It wasn’t. This was uncharted territory and the initiation this time was happening to both of them, moving them into some kind of emotional maturity he would have rather avoided. The tightrope he was walking didn’t even feel as if it was there anymore. He was walking across thin air, reminding himself not to look down or he’d be tumbling into a bottomless crevasse.

  As he leaned on the door until it clicked, she opened the bathroom door and emerged wearing one of his T-shirts. The soft white cotton clung to her damp curves and naked breasts before falling to the tops of her thighs. He couldn’t tell if she wore underpants and couldn’t wait to find out.

  “I didn’t bring anything sexy,” she murmured apologetically, her eyes bigger than the black plums in the basket. Her apprehension was unmistakable.

  “You look edible,” he said, voice originating somewhere deep in his chest. He moved across to her. “I didn’t shave.” He took her hand and rubbed the heel across his jaw where a hint of stubble was coming in.

  “It’s okay,” she murmured and pulled her hand back then wrung it with her other one. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m so terrified. This is silly.”

  A swell of tenderness rose in him. He took her hands and kissed each palm. “It’s okay. I’ll take it slow. As slow as the first time. I want to savor every second.”

  Her smile trembled. “I know it will be good, but my body seems to think we’re strangers. I keep reminding myself I know everything about you. The important things, anyway.”

  His blood stopped in his arteries as he thought about what she didn’t know about him. Important things, but so was this. He needed to cement their connection before he could even contemplate stressing it with a full exposure of who he was. And wasn’t.

  Adara cupped the sides of his head, trembling with nerves and anticipation, wanting the kiss that would erase all her angst and drown her in the sea of erotic sensations he always delivered.

  Gideon wasn’t moving, seeming to have slipped behind a veil of some kind.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked as doubts began to intrude.

  “Nothing,” he said gruffly and set his mouth on hers.

  The first contact was just that, contact. Like finding the edge of the pool when your eyes were closed and head submerged and your lungs ready to give up. Relief poured through her as the familiar shape and give of hi
s full lips compressed her own.

  And then he opened his mouth in a familiar signal that she do the same and she nearly melted into a puddle of homecoming joy. His arms slid around her and pulled her into a hard embrace against his shirtless chest, muscles bulging with such strength it was almost uncomfortably hard against her tender breasts, but so welcome.

  Adara curled her arms around the back of his neck and clung, kissing him unreservedly as her senses absorbed every delicious thing about him. His shoulders and back were gloriously smooth and naked, scented with body wash and rippling hotly as he moved his hands on her, awakening every nerve in her body.

  The wide plant of his strong legs let her feel the brush of his hairy legs against the smoothness of her thighs. She wriggled closer, wanting to feel the hard muscle that told her he liked the feel of her against him. Her body craved contact with that gorgeous erection and she arched herself into firm pressure against the ridge she could feel behind the fly of his shorts.

  “This isn’t slow,” he growled, straightening and grasping a handful of T-shirt between her shoulder blades.

  The soft fabric stretched across the round thrust of her breasts. Her nipples stood out prominently. Eagerly. He leaned to take one in his mouth, suckling her through the fabric until she let out a keening moan of distress at the pleasure-pain. He pulled back to examine the wet stain that turned the cotton invisible, clearly revealing the sharp pink tip and shaded areola of her breast.

  Adara gasped at how flagrantly erotic this was, but couldn’t help arching a little in pride when she could see how excited he was by the sight. He smiled tightly before bending to do the same to her other nipple, bringing her up on her toes the sensation was so ferociously strong. A ripple of near ecstasy quavered in her abdomen, making her weak and mindless. She clung to him as if he was a life raft.

  “I’ve always liked that, too,” he said with satisfaction.