by Naima Simone
Darius laughed, the loud bark echoing in the room. He shook his head, shoulders shaking. His eyes, bright with humor, crinkled at the corners, and his smile lit up his normally serious expression.
An unsmiling Darius was devastatingly handsome.
A smiling Darius? Beyond description.
Slowly, as they continued to meet each other’s gazes, the lightness in the room dimmed, converting into something weightier, darker. A thickness—congested with memories, things better left unspoken and desire—gathered between them. Even though her mind screamed caution, she didn’t—couldn’t—glance away. And if she were brutally honest? She didn’t want to.
“You’re different from how I remember you,” he said, his gaze roaming over her face. Her lips prickled when that intense regard fell on her mouth and hovered for several heated moments. “Even though it was only a couple of times, you were quieter then, maybe even a little timid and withdrawn. At least around me. Gage said you were different around your family.”
“I trusted them.” She knew they wouldn’t mock her just because she didn’t use the proper fork or couldn’t discuss politics. They accepted her, loved her. She’d never feared them.
Darius frowned, leaning forward on the crossed arms he’d propped on the marble island. “You didn’t trust your husband?”
She paused, indecision about how much to share temporarily muting her. But, in the end, she refused to lie. “No,” she admitted, the ghostly remnants of hurt from that time in her life rasping her voice. “I didn’t.”
How could she? Gage had been a liar, and he’d betrayed their short marriage. He’d promised her Harry and Meghan and had given her Henry VIII and wives one, two and five.
To gain his family’s sympathy after marrying Isobel, he’d thrown her under the proverbial bus, accusing her of tricking him into marrying her by claiming she’d been pregnant. She hadn’t been, though it’d happened shortly after their marriage. At first, they’d been happy—or at least she’d believed they’d been. True, they’d lived in a tiny apartment, living off her small paycheck from the grocery store while he looked for work since his family had cut him off, but they’d loved one another. After she’d refused to take a paternity test at the demand of his parents, things had changed. Subtly, at first, he’d isolated her from family and friends. He’d claimed that since his family had disowned him, it was just the two of them—soon to be the three of them—against the world. But that world had become smaller, darker, lonelier...scarier.
Gage had been a master gaslighter. Unknown to her, he’d thrown himself on his parents’ mercies, spewing lies—that she’d demanded he abandon his family, that she was cheating on him. All to remain in the family fold as their golden child and maintain their compassion and empathy by making Isobel out to be a treacherous bitch he couldn’t divorce and turn back out on the street. In truth, he’d been a spoiled, out-of-control child who hadn’t wanted her but didn’t want anyone else to have her either.
“He was your husband,” Darius said, his tone as low as the shadows already accumulating in his eyes.
“He was my jailor,” she snapped.
“Just like this is a prison?” he growled, sweeping a hand to encompass the kitchen, the beautiful home. “He gave you everything, while giving up his own family, his friends—hell, his world—for you. What more could he have possibly done to make you happy?”
Pain and anger clashed inside her, eating away any trace of the calm and enjoyment she’d found with Darius during the past hour. “Kindness. Compassion. Loyalty. Fidelity.”
“It’s convenient that he isn’t here to defend himself, isn’t it? Still, it’s hard to play the victim now when we all know how you betrayed him, made a fool of him. In spite of all that, he wouldn’t walk away from you.” Fire flared in his eyes. The same fierce emotion incinerating her, hardened his full lips into a grim line. “I saw him just before he died. I begged him to walk away, to leave you. But he wouldn’t. Even as it broke him that he couldn’t even claim his son because of the men you’d fucked behind his back.”
Trembling, Isobel stood, the scratch of the stool’s legs across the tiled floor a discordant screech. Flattening her palms on the counter, she glared at him, in this moment, hating him.
“I broke him? He broke me! And destroyed whatever love I still had for him when he looked at our baby and called him a bastard. So don’t you dare talk to me about being ungrateful. You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
Refusing to remain and accept any more accusations, she whipped around the island and stalked toward the kitchen entrance. Screw him. He didn’t know her, had no clue—
“Damn it, Isobel,” he snapped, seconds before his fingers wrapped around her upper arm.
“Don’t touch—” She whirled back around and, misjudging how close he stood behind her, slammed into the solid wall of his chest. Her hands shot up in an instinctive attempt to prevent the tumble backward, but the hard band of his arms wrapped around her saved her from falling onto her ass.
The moment her body collided with his, the protest died on her tongue. Desire—unwanted, uncontrollable and greedy—swamped her. Her fingers curled into his sweater in an instinctive attempt to hold on to the only solid thing in a world that had constricted then yawned endlessly wide, leaving her dangling over a crumbling edge.
“Isobel.” Her name, uttered in that sin-on-the-rocks voice, rumbled through her, and she shook her head, refusing to acknowledge it—or the eruption of electrical pulses that raced up and down her spine. “Look at me.”
His long fingers slid up her back, over her nape and tunneled into her hair. She groaned, unable to trap the betraying sound. Not when his hand tangled in the strands, tugging her head backward, sending tiny prickles along her scalp. She sank her teeth into her bottom lip, locking down on another embarrassing sound of pleasure.
“No,” he growled, pressing his thumb to the center of her abused lip and freeing it. With a low, carnal hum, he rubbed a caress over the flesh. “Don’t hold back from me. Let me hear what I do to you.”
Oh, God. If she could ease her grip on his shirt, she’d clap her palms over her ears to block out his words. She hadn’t forgotten how his voice had aided and abetted his touch in unraveling every one of her inhibitions the night of the blackout. It was a velvet weapon, one that slipped beneath her skin, her steel-encased guards, to wreak sensual havoc.
“Look at me, sweetheart,” he ordered again. This time she complied, lifting her lashes to meet his golden gaze. “Good,” he murmured, giving her bottom lip one last sweep with his fingers before burying them in her hair so both hands cupped her head. “Keep those fairy eyes on me.”
Fairy eyes.
The description, so unlike him and so reminiscent of the man in the dark hallway weeks ago, swept over her like a soft spring rain. And then she ceased to think.
Because he proceeded to devastate her.
If their first kiss in the dark weeks ago started as a gentle exploration, this one was fierce. His mouth claimed and conquered, his tongue demanding an entrance she willingly surrendered. Wild and raw, he devoured her like a starving man intent on satisfying a bottomless craving. Again and again, he sucked, lapped, dueled, demanding she enter into carnal battle with him.
Submit to him. Take him. Dominate him.
With a needy whimper that should probably have mortified her, she fisted his shirt harder and rose on her toes, granting him even more access and commanding more of him. Angling her head, she opened her mouth wider, savoring his unique flavor, getting drunk on it.
But it wasn’t enough. Never enough.
“Jesus Christ,” he swore against her lips, nipping the lower curve, then pressing stinging kisses along her jaw and down her throat.
Kisses that echoed in her breasts, sensitizing them, tightening the tips. Kisses that eddied and swirled low in her belly.
Kisses that had her thighs squeezing to contain the ache between her legs. Already a nagging emptiness stretched wide in her sex, begging to be filled by his fingers, his cock. Didn’t matter. Just as long as some part of him was inside her, branding her.
The thought snuck under the desire, and once it infiltrated, she couldn’t eject it. Instead it rebounded against her skull, loud and aggressive. Branding me. Branding me.
And Darius would do it; he would imprint himself into her skin, her body until she couldn’t erase him from her thoughts...her heart. Until he slowly took over, and she ceased to exist except for the sole purpose of pleasing him...of loving him.
No. No, damn it.
Never again would she allow that to happen.
With a muted cry, she shoved her palms against his chest, lunging out of his embrace, away from his kiss, his touch.
Their harsh, jagged breaths reverberated in the kitchen. His broad chest rose and fell, his piercing gaze narrowed on her like that of a bird of prey’s, waiting for her to make the slightest move so he could swoop in and capture her.
Even as her brain yelled at her to get the hell out of there, her body urged her to let herself be caught and devoured.
“No,” she whispered, but not to him, to her traitorous libido.
“Then you better go,” Darius ground out as if she’d spoken to him. “Now.”
Not waiting for another warning, she whipped around, raced down the hall and bounded up the stairs. Once she closed the bedroom door behind her, she stumbled across the floor and sank to the mattress.
Oh, God, what had she done?
The no-sex rule had been hers. And yet the first time he’d touched her, she’d burned faster than kindling in a campfire.
Desire and passion were the gateways to losing reason, control and, eventually, independence.
Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.
She’d heard the quote many times throughout her life. But never had it been so true as this moment.
She’d made this one mistake.
She couldn’t afford another.
Seven
An ugly sense of déjà vu settled over Isobel as she stared at the ornate front door of the Wellses’ home. It’d been a slightly brisk October evening just like this one four years ago when she’d arrived on this doorstep, arm tucked in Gage’s, excited and nervous to meet his family. She’d been so painfully naïve then, at twenty, never imaging the disdain she would experience once she crossed the threshold.
The differences between then and now could fill a hoarder’s house. One, she was no longer that young girl so innocently in love. Second, she fully expected to be scorned and derided. And perhaps the most glaring change.
She stood next to Darius, but with Gage’s son riding her hip.
Her stomach clenched, pulling into knots so snarled and tight, they would need Houdini himself to unravel them.
“There’s no need to be nervous,” Darius murmured beside her, settling a hand at the small of her back. The warmth of his hand penetrated the layers of her coat and dress, and she steeled herself against it, wishing he’d remove it. When about to enter the lion’s den, she couldn’t allow her focus and wits to be compromised by his touch. “I’ve already talked to them about us, and I’ll be right here with you.”
Was that supposed to be a reassurance? A pep talk? Well, both were epic fails. She wore no blinders when it came to Gage’s family. Nothing—no talk or his presence—would ever convince them to accept her. She’d robbed them of their most precious gift. There was no forgiveness for that.
“This night is about Aiden,” she said more to herself than him. “All I care about is how they treat him.”
The weight of his stare stroked her face like the last rays of the rapidly sinking sun. She kept her attention trained on the door. It’d been almost a week since she’d moved into his home—since the night they’d kissed. And in that time, she’d become a master of avoidance. With a house the size of a museum, it hadn’t proven to be difficult. When he spent time with Aiden, she withdrew to her room. And when she couldn’t evade him, she ensured Aiden remained a buffer between them. A little cowardly? Yes. But when engaged in a battle for her dignity and emotional sanity, the saying “by any means necessary” had become her motto.
“They’ll love him,” he replied, with certainty and determination ringing in his voice.
Before she could respond, the door opened and Gabriella, Gage’s sister, stood in the entranceway. The beautiful, willowy brunette, who was a feminine version of her brother, smiled, stepping forward to press a kiss to Darius’s cheek.
An unfamiliar and nasty emotion coiled and rattled in Isobel’s chest. Her grip on Aiden tightened, while her vision sharpened on the other woman.
Whoa.
Isobel blinked. Sucked in a breath. What the hell was going on? No way could she actually be...jealous. Not by any stretch of the imagination did Darius belong to her. And even if in some realm with unicorns and rainbows where he was hers to claim, Gabriella was like a sister to him.
Get a grip.
If this overreaction heralded the evening’s future, it promised to be a long one. Long and painful.
“It’s about time you arrived,” Gabriella said, laying a hand on his chest. “Mother and Dad are climbing the walls.”
“Now, that I’d pay money to see,” he drawled.
So would Isobel.
“Gabriella, you remember Isobel.” Darius’s hand slid higher, to the middle of her back, and just this once, she was thankful for it.
The other woman switched her focus from Darius to Isobel. Jade eyes so like her brother’s met hers, the warmth that had greeted Darius replaced with ice. Isobel fought not to shiver under the chill. She can’t hurt you. No one in this house can hurt you, Isobel reminded herself, repeating the mantra. Hoping it was true.
“Of course,” Gabriella said, her tone even, polite. “Hello, Isobel.” She shifted her gaze to Aiden, who hugged Isobel’s neck, his face buried against her coat. Unsurprisingly, he had a thumb stuck firmly in his mouth. Isobel didn’t blame him or remove it. Hell, she suddenly wanted to do the same. “And this must be Aiden.”
“Yes, it is.” Darius removed his hand from Isobel’s back and reached around to stroke a hand down her son’s curls. Curls that were the same nearly black shade as Gabriella’s. “Aiden, can you say hi?”
Shyly, Aiden lifted his head and whispered, “Hi,” giving Gabriella a small wave.
The other woman stared at the toddler, her lips forming a small O-shape. Moisture brightened her gaze, and she blinked rapidly. “Hi, Aiden,” she whispered back. Drawing in an audible breath, she looked at Darius. “He looks like Gage.”
Anger flared to life in Isobel’s chest. She wanted to snap, Of course he does, but she swallowed it down. Yet she could do nothing about the flames still flickering inside her.
Part of her wanted to say screw this and demand Darius drive them home. But the other half—the half that wanted the Wells family’s derision toward her regarding Aiden’s paternity laid to rest—convinced her to remain in place. She still resented their rejection of her son, but if they were willing to meet her halfway so Aiden could know them, then she could try to let it go.
Try.
“Come in.” Gabriella stepped backwards, waving them inside, her regard still fixed on Aiden.
Minutes later, with their coats turned over to a waiting maid, they all strode toward the back of the house and entered a small parlor. Helena, lovely and regal, was perched upon the champagne-colored settee like a queen surveying her subjects from her throne. And Baron occupied the largest armchair, his salt-and-pepper hair—more salt now than the last time she’d seen him—gleaming under the light thrown by a chandelier.
Their conversation ended when Gabriella appeared with Darius, Aiden and Isobel i
n tow. Slowly, Baron stood, and Isobel just managed to refrain from frowning. Though still tall and handsome, his frame seemed thinner, even a little more...fragile. And perhaps the most shocking change was that the hard, condemning expression that had been his norm when forced to share the air with her was not in attendance. By no means was his gaze welcoming, but it definitely didn’t carry the harshness it formerly had.
But the censure his demeanor lacked, Helena’s more than made up for. She rose as well, her scrutiny as frigid and sharp as an icicle. Her mouth formed a flat, disapproving line, and for a moment Isobel almost believed she’d stumbled back in time. Gage’s mother had disliked her on sight, and like a fine wine, the dislike had only aged. Into hatred.
Suddenly Isobel’s arms tightened around Aiden, flooded with the need to shield him, protect him. And herself. He was her lodestone, reminding her that she was no longer that timid, impressionable girl from the past.
“Darius.” Baron crossed the room, his hand extended. Darius clasped it, and they pulled each other close for a quick but loving embrace. Then the older man turned toward her, and even with his lack of animosity, she braced herself. “Isobel, welcome back to our home.” He stretched his hand toward her, and after a brief hesitation, she accepted it, her heart pulsing in her throat. His grip squeezed around her fingers, rendering her speechless, the gesture the most warmth he’d ever shown her. “And this is Aiden.”
Awe saturated his deep baritone, the same wonder that had filtered through his daughter’s in the foyer. His nostrils flared, his fingers curling into his palms as if he fought the need to reach out and touch her son. Clearing his throat, Baron switched his gaze back to Isobel.
“He has your eyes, but his features... It’s like looking at a baby picture of my son,” he rasped. “May I...?” He held his arms out toward Aiden.
Nerves jingled in her belly, but the plea in the man’s eyes trumped them. “Aiden? Do you want to go to Mr. Baron?” She loosened her grip on her son and tried to hand him, but the child clung harder to her as he shook his head. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, feeling regret at the flash of disappointment and hurt in the man’s gaze. “He’s a little shy around new people.”