by Dani Collins
It was awkward in other ways, too, especially when they returned to Madrid for higher-profile events. Scarlett was used to wearing a pretty dress and making small talk, but with Niko she’d been relegated to the background. He would introduce her, and then she would largely be ignored.
With Javiero, she was his date. He brought in stylists to up her wardrobe game, and there was no retreating to the sidelines after twenty minutes. He wasn’t the focus of attention because of his attack or his new baby or his mysterious affair with his father’s PA, either. He was Javiero Rodriguez, a marquis guest for any hostess or gala.
Which put Scarlett in the spotlight alongside him.
Thankfully, her Spanish was decent, and she had her position as trustee of Niko’s fortune to mention whenever someone tried to dismiss her with, “I suppose the baby keeps you busy.” The fact she held such a prestigious position always earned her a reevaluation.
It didn’t quash the oblique inquiries as to her exact role in Javiero’s life, however, and apparently he had grown tired of it.
She came back into their room one evening having just fed Locke. She wore only her silk robe and was about to shower and finish getting ready for the charity ball they were due to attend.
Javiero had just come out of the shower. His hair was damp and he wore only a towel, comfortable now in letting her see the scars down his chest. They no longer alarmed her. They were merely a part of him—the same way his nipples were that light shade of brown—but her mouth went dry as she took in his burnished shoulders, muscled chest and abs that went on for days. Especially when he assumed that commanding air and gave her a thousand percent of his focus.
“We’re engaged,” he informed her.
“We are?” He caught her off guard completely with that pronouncement.
“We are.” He produced a velvet box and opened it.
She was further dumbfounded.
“It’s beautiful,” she said of the gold setting that held a round white diamond and at least a dozen smaller stones. The blue-green gems made it truly eye-catching, though. “Sapphires?”
“Blue emeralds. Trilliant cut, or so I was told by the jeweler.”
“It’s not a family ring? It looks like an heirloom.”
“It probably was,” he said drily. “And like my grandfather, whoever owned it must have had to sell his wife’s jewelry to hang on to his house. I was looking for something like what my grandmother wore in our old family photos, and this jumped out at me.” He held it near her cheekbone. “It reminded me of your blue eyes and golden hair.”
His smile quirked with self-deprecation before he picked up her hand. He glanced at her as he began to thread the ring onto her finger, challenging her to refuse it.
Her fingers flexed lightly in his grip, the feel of the ring sliding into place more impactful than she expected.
Perhaps he felt her instinctive tension. His own grip tightened.
“‘Fiancée’ is a lot nicer than some of the euphemisms I’ve been trying to find for ‘mother of my illegitimate child.’ I want to call you my wife, Scarlett.”
“I know.” Guilt had her pursing her lips, but marriage was such a big decision. “I do think about it every day, you know.” She stared at the sparkling ring until her eyes went hot. “What our life would look like.”
“It would look exactly like what we have right now.” He let their joined hands relax into the space between them. His other hand rose to touch her chin, nudging her gaze to come up to meet his. “With the addition of physical intimacy. Which I think about daily.”
Her cheeks went hot and little tugs and pulls accosted her insides.
“Do you?” she asked with a measure of doubt. “You’re very...” She shrugged, trying to turn her spasm of insecurity into a diffident smile. Aside from innocuous touches to her lower back or a brush of his hands against her as they transferred Locke, he only made physical contact with her in bed and that was—at most—a bit of spooning in the middle of the night when one of them came back from tending their son. “You’ve been very hands-off since that first night.”
“Because we have seven more nights to get through. If you think I’m not counting them down, you’re not nearly as smart as I’ve always believed.”
She wrinkled her nose, humor breaking through a veil of worry she hadn’t realized was thick enough to weigh on her until she caught this glimmer of light. “I thought you were...”
His brow went up, prompting her to continue.
“I don’t know.” She drew her hand from his and tangled her fingers. Sharing a bed and a bedroom meant there had been a few wardrobe slips that had revealed a stretch mark here and a plump thigh there. She hadn’t run on a treadmill in months, unable to find the energy.
“I don’t look like I did before.”
“No, you don’t,” he agreed gruffly. His touch on her chin tightened slightly. He gently turned her face so he could examine each side of her profile. “You look fragile with these hollow cheeks and dark circles under your eyes. Your skin is translucent and even your lips are pale. I heard the doctor telling you to take your iron and get more rest. I want you to eat more and quit worrying about losing weight, but that’s the only demand I feel comfortable making when you well up over a kitten crying in a tree. That doesn’t mean I think there’s anything wrong with this new figure of yours.”
He raked his gaze down the blue silk of her robe, eyeing where her lapel lay against the inner swell of her breast. He bit his own lip.
The air changed. Her scalp prickled and she curled her toes in her slippers.
“Make no mistake,” he said in a throaty voice. “I’m obsessed with seeing more of it.”
She swallowed, accosted by a flush of wry pleasure and sexy twinges she hadn’t experienced in what felt like ages. And she was tearing up, but they were happy tears.
“Really?”
“Deeply. But I’m afraid if I start touching you...” He allowed his fingertip to draw light patterns on her breastbone. The back of his knuckle caressed the swell of her breast, making both her nipples peak against the light layer of silk. “I may not stop.”
She looked at his mouth. I don’t want you to stop, she wanted to say, but his mouth was already coming down on hers.
They both moaned with satisfaction as the kiss dragged them into passion like an undertow pulling them into a heavy sea. She crashed herself into his big frame, knocking her own breath from her lungs.
His hands caught her and roamed, greedy, his touch everything she needed and not nearly enough. She folded her arms behind his neck and tried to drag him down closer. Into a harder kiss. Something that could appease this ache that had been simmering below the surface, ignored and quilted over with exhaustion and worry, but now rose up as a conflagration that engulfed her.
It was like that day in this apartment. Once the fuse was lit, it ran from one to the other, setting barrels of gunpowder alight so they exploded again and again until there was only this. Fire and flame and heat and light.
His big hands slid down her backside and caught under her cheeks, and he pulled her up. Her legs parted and she hugged his waist with her thighs as a wall pressed against her back.
He felt so good! Heavy and strong. So much warm satiny skin beneath her splaying fingers, muscles shifting and straining. She couldn’t get enough. His mouth devoured hers and she loved that, too. The soft abrasion of his beard, the scent of his soap and the faint taste of mint in his mouth as he raked rough kisses across her lips. Their tongues tangled as the kiss grew flagrant and unmistakably sexual. He plunged his tongue between her lips, letting her know what he really wanted.
The erotic signal made her blood run like warm honey, sweet and thick. Her body dampened with slick heat and she moaned her capitulation. To passion. To him.
He dragged his head up. They panted, breaths mingling.
<
br /> “My towel is falling off.”
“I know.” She could feel the shape of him against the gusset of her knickers, so hard and hot the silk should have singed away. She wanted him so badly she could have wept.
The belt on her robe had loosened. Her soft belly was pressed to his firm one. Her breasts were exposed.
“We can’t,” he growled in a voice that rang with agony. “I know we can’t. But I want to.” He gave a thrust of his hips to punctuate his need.
He hit such a magic spot that she let out a strangled groan of pleasure.
“Oh,” he said in a tone of pleased discovery. “You like that.” He did it again.
Her whole body shimmered with pleasure.
“More?”
“Yes,” she sobbed. Her fingernails clawed into his shoulder.
“It doesn’t hurt?” He licked at her dry, parted lips.
“No. It feels so good,” she gasped helplessly, catching at his mouth with her teeth. “Keep doing it.”
He did, sawing his hard shape against the thin layer of damp silk. It barely shielded her aching folds and her swollen, neglected button of nerve endings. His mouth smothered hers again, swallowing her moans of pleasure in a brazen kiss as he kept stimulating her, naked and powerful and deliberate.
She consumed his mouth and gave him her tongue. She thought she would die when he pinned her stiffly to the wall with the weight of his hips, not moving anymore, just holding her on that pinnacle of acute pleasure, the pressure of him there sending her eyes rolling into the back of her head. It was too much and not enough, being held in this vise between everything and nothing.
He let go of her bottom with his one hand and yanked her robe aside, fully exposing her breast to his hot palm while his mouth trailed into her throat.
She groaned again, arching her back to increase his touch. Her thighs stayed clamped around him, but her movement sent a pulse of joy up from between her legs. Her hips began rocking in an abbreviated grind, feeding the excitement still gripping her. He shook with strain, holding her pinned and suspended while she found the sensations she needed.
She stroked her fingers through his hair, pleading, “Don’t stop, please don’t stop.” She clung to him and writhed in the tight space between his hard body and the hard wall, nipped at his stubbled jaw and bared her throat to the rough suction of his love bite. And when the striving tension turned to tingling shivers of climax, she nearly screamed, she needed it so badly.
As an achingly splendid release washed over her, he grabbed her butt in both hands again. All of him went taut as he thrust his erection across wet silk. He tipped back his head and made the sexiest, most animalistic noises of pleasure she’d ever heard. It was earthy and primal, and time stopped while throbbing ecstasy fused them together, melting and hot and indelible.
When she came back to awareness, her forehead was lax on his shoulder. He was still trembling with exertion. They were both quaking with aftermath. Javiero still leaned on her, heavy and damp. His weight made it hard for her to catch her breath, but he seemed as wrung out and weak as she felt. The slam of his heart was still hitting her breast and her own pulse felt as though it would remain unsteady and panicked forever—because that had been every bit as intense as their only other time together, and it had happened after only a bit of groping and necking. Surely that terrified him as much as it did her?
She lifted her head off his shoulder and thunked her head against the wall.
He made an admonishing, concerned noise and eased his hold on her until she found her feet. He stayed pressed tight to her and caged her with his forearms on either side of her head. He kissed her again, lazy and thorough, until she nearly sank into a puddle on the floor. Only the unrelenting press of his body held her up.
“That,” he said in a feral rasp beneath her ear, “is what our marriage will be like.”
“We might not survive,” she said in a shaky attempt at humor. “Dare we risk orphaning our son?”
“Heh.” His cloud of warm breath pooled against her cheek, causing a final pleasurable shiver down her spine.
He drew back enough to swipe the edge of her gaping robe across her stomach and his own, then he pushed the garment off her shoulders.
“Laundry,” he said with a quirk of his mouth as he let the robe dangle from his hand. He ate up her naked breasts with his gaze. “I’d join you in the shower, but...” His growl was hungry and possessive. The kiss he touched to her mouth, however, was surprisingly tender.
Her lips clung to his, begging him to linger. He drew back long before she’d had her fill.
“Thank you. That was every bit as incredible as I remember,” he said throatily.
For some reason, she wanted to cry. She wasn’t sad. That had been incredible. She had loved every second of it and wished they could fall into bed and do intimate things to each other all night long. She wanted to build on this connection until she didn’t feel things were so tenuous between them.
She was also aware that he could have dragged an officiate into the room right now and she would have spoken any vows he told her to repeat through these buzzing lips. She didn’t have an excuse to leave or a promise to someone he hated. She had no guardrails at all against slipping straight over the edge into falling for him completely.
Which was terrifyingly dangerous because she couldn’t imagine him ever feeling the same toward her.
Javiero entered the gala without any self-consciousness over his appearance. Most people had at least seen pictures of him by now and he’d caught a bit of sun the last few weeks. The claw marks had faded, no longer standing out nearly as horrifically as they had in the early days.
Besides, nothing could bother him while he was riding this smug, endorphin high after his fervid tussle with Scarlett.
He had only meant to kiss her, but they’d both lost control. He ought to be scared out of his skin by that, but it was amazing how omnipotent he felt when he made her come. If he thought too long about the way she had clung to him and sucked his lip and fairly dissolved the silk between them with her wet response, he would embarrass himself with a fresh bulge behind his fly.
Crazed as the experience had been, he’d needed it. Sexual frustration had been approaching lethal concentration in his bloodstream. Her too, he suspected. They were both tossing and turning every night.
Not that deprivation had fueled that madness. That was how they reacted to each other and he liked it.
Thankfully, they were proving to be compatible in other ways, as well. Scarlett was fitting nicely into his life. The cool English cucumber she’d always been made a perfect foil for his more passionate, forceful personality at events such as these.
A deeply primal and gratifying mine rang in his head as he wove their fingers together and felt the warm gold of her engagement ring dig into his skin.
She caught him looking at her and must have read his thoughts because a pretty, shy blush hit her cheeks.
A strange thing happened in that moment. One of those odd musical pauses occurred, leaving space for a familiar voice to carry.
“...had to come see Beauty and the Beast myself, but which one is which?”
It was a savagely cheap shot that elicited a few titters from the group where Regina was holding court a short distance away.
Scarlett stiffened and would have pulled her hand from his if he hadn’t tightened his grip on reflex. The people they’d been speaking with widened their eyes in appalled horror.
Javiero turned his head and saw Regina comprehend she’d been overheard. She didn’t waste time looking remorseful. She slapped a wide smile over her gaffe and braved it out.
“Querido, it’s so good to see you again.” She wove toward them through the pockets of people who fell into a watchful silence.
The music rose again, sounding overloud now that everyone had closed thei
r mouths to blatantly eavesdrop.
“Introduce me to your frien—”
“Fiancée,” he corrected sharply. “We won’t keep you. I’m sure you’re on your way to the door.” He was not the host of this gala, but it was a banishment.
Regina paled as she realized she had lost social cache that would never be recovered.
“You must be Regina? I’m Scarlett.” She shot out her free hand. “Javiero and I were about to dance, but I’d love to chat properly after. I hope you’ll stay a little longer?”
“I would love to,” Regina said with a wary glance at him and a weak shake of Scarlett’s hand.
“Excellent. Querido?” Only he heard the facetiousness in Scarlett’s use of the endearment Regina had used. She squeezed his arm and brushed against his stiff body, trying to draw him onto the dance floor.
He resisted, watching Regina until she swallowed and looked down. Then he followed Scarlett and whirled her into his hard arms.
“Why did you do that?” He demanded through his teeth. He wanted to crush Regina.
“Oh, I wanted to spit in her face, believe me.” She didn’t look it. She wore an unbothered smile. “But I won’t start the sort of grudge match with your old flame that your mother and Evelina still cling to. Who has the time or energy?”
He did. Animosity and resentment drove him pell-mell through this endurance event called life. He had axes aplenty to grind and regarded setting them aside as quitting.
Recognizing that vengeful side of himself was a disturbing moment of self-reflection, one that made him glance down at the glimmer of despondency beneath Scarlett’s outwardly serene expression.
Concern rushed through him. “Are you tired? Do you want to go home?”
“No,” she said after the briefest hesitation. She found a fresh smile. “People would say she put me on the run, and they’re gossiping enough about me as it is.”
“Are they? I never even notice anymore.” Of course he and Scarlett would be the subject of askance looks and talking behind hands. It was inevitable. But between Niko’s perfidy and the money troubles Javiero had inherited from his grandfather, his family had always been a bottomless well for chinwags. Scarlett—his estranged father’s PA, who had birthed his son—provided a fresh buffet of speculation, but he hadn’t given it any notice.
