Marriage Made in Blackmail

by Michelle Smart

  Another tear rolled down her cheek. She brushed it with her thumb before lying down on the sand. ‘I am so sorry, Luis.’

  ‘Sorry for what?’

  ‘For conspiring with Benjamin against you. I should have known it had never been a deliberate act on your part...’

  He wished he could say the same for his brother.

  ‘Hush.’ Laying himself down next to her, he gently took her chin and turned her face to look at him. ‘Your brother had good reason to think we ripped him off. I regret not handling it better when he confronted us about it but what’s done is done. All we can do is put things right for the future.’

  ‘But we have caused such damage, and after everything you’ve already...’

  He put his lips to hers and slid a hand down the curve of her neck. ‘Damage our marriage will repair.’

  She burrowed her fingers into his hair and gazed intently at him.

  The lights from the stars glittered from her tear-filled eyes, desire mingling with her pain, all there ringing at him. Another solitary drop spilled down her cheek.

  Suddenly unable to bear looking into those depths any longer, he kissed the tear away then plundered that beautiful mouth with his own, taking her pain away the only way he knew how.

  Her response was as passionate as it always was, their desire for each other a simmering flame that only needed the slightest coaxing to bring fully to life.

  It was so easy to lose himself in her softness and her passion. There was such openness in her lovemaking; no pretence, no artifice, nothing hidden, just a celebration of the joy their lovemaking evoked, there in her every touch and moan.

  As he pulled her dress off and kissed the breasts he just could not get enough of, it came to him that he’d changed as a lover. The pleasure he gave Chloe was far more intoxicating than the great pleasure she gave him, never an exercise in ticking boxes until the time was right for him to take his pleasure but an erotic, heady experience all of its own.

  When it came to giving pleasure there was nothing he would not do for her.

  And it was the same for her too.

  Chloe was the most unselfish lover he could have dreamed of.

  Trailing his tongue down her soft belly to the pretty heart of her femininity, he used his tongue in the way he knew she loved, enraptured with the melodious mews that escaped her throat and the scraping of her nails on his skull. He savoured her special, inimitable taste, the downiness of her hair, the silky texture of her skin, all unique to Chloe. Blindfold him and he would know her from the imprint of her mouth and the scent of her skin alone.

  The nails scraping into his skull pulled at his hair, urging him on, her moans deepening, her breaths shallowing until she was crying out, his name spilling from her tongue and echoing through to his marrow.

  Chloe sighed happily and gazed up at the stars while the stars Luis had set off in her twinkled with equal joy.

  His touch alone was enough to soothe her. When he made love to her nothing else existed but them and the moment they were sharing.

  So many moments. So many memories to take with her when they were over...

  A pain sliced through her chest so sharp she gasped.

  Luis, his wonderful mouth making its way back up her belly, must have assumed it was a gasp of pleasure for he took her breast into his mouth and encircled her nipple with his tongue in the way they had discovered she liked so much.

  Fresh sensation building back up in her, Chloe closed her eyes and welcomed the pleasure, let it drown out the fleeting pain. When he reached her lips she kissed him greedily and looped her arms around him, needing to feel the solid warmth of his skin beneath her fingers.

  She could have had the ton of lovers she’d once lied about but nothing would have compared to what she and Luis had. She didn’t need to be experienced to know what they had was special and unique and belonged only to them.

  She could drink his kisses for ever.

  And, when he was finally inside her, fully sheathed, filling her completely, she wound her legs tightly around his waist and let go of everything but this most beautiful of moments.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  TINY SHARP PRICKLES dug into Chloe’s cheek, as she roused into consciousness.

  Absently running a hand over her face, she found sparkling grains of sand clinging to the pads of her fingers.

  She smiled sleepily and rolled over, memories of Luis making love to her under the twinkling stars on the beach awakening other parts of her...

  Luis shuffled in his sleep and groped for her hand.

  She laced her fingers through his and stared at him. The sun had almost fully risen, its light filtering through the curtains. Luis’s features were clear and strong. Thick dark stubble had broken through his skin since he’d shaved the morning before. When he had made love to her that stubble had scratched her breasts in a way that had been half pain and half pleasure.

  Everything about them was like that. Half pain. Half pleasure.

  So much had been revealed between them in the days they had spent on this island.

  She felt wretched about the hand she had played in Benjamin’s revenge.

  It had been her revenge too, she had to acknowledge painfully.

  Luis had never set out to cheat her brother.

  He had kidnapped her and blackmailed her but that all felt like a lifetime ago, actions done to and conducted by two different people.

  The man she had once believed herself in love with did exist.

  And if he did exist then didn’t that mean...?

  That their marriage could be for real...?

  ‘You’ve got that look on your face that tells me you are thinking,’ he whispered, his voice thick with sleep.

  She blinked, reopening her eyes to find his gorgeous hazel gaze fixed on her.

  You don’t want to know what I’m thinking.

  Or maybe he did.

  Maybe it wasn’t just the desire they shared.

  Oh, what was she thinking?

  She would still be entering a marriage based on revenge.

  But that had been agreed before they’d made love and before they’d opened up to each other.

  Before she’d accepted that she loved him.

  And even if his feelings for her were as strong as hers were for him, that didn’t mean they had the basis of anything that could last.

  Luis was a twin. He and his brother had a bond she could not begin to understand and it pained her to know that even if she and Luis were to have a proper future together, she would always come second to Javier.

  This was a dream she didn’t dare hope for.

  ‘I’m just thinking it’s been a few hours since you made love to me,’ she whispered back, putting her hand on his cheek.

  Her brain hurt from sleep deprivation and too much conversation. Now she was hallucinating thoughts.

  Love?

  No, that was taking things too far.

  She felt a lot towards this man, but love...?

  Proper, uninterrupted sleep was needed. Then, when her brain and body were refreshed, she would be able to think properly.

  But first she wanted the closeness she felt when he was deep inside her.

  Snuggling into him, she welcomed his arms wrapping around her, a blanket in their own right, and closed her eyes to the heady power of his intoxicating kiss.

  Sleep. Everything would look different after she’d had some.

  * * *

  Everything was the same.

  Everything.

  Chloe was lying on her back in the calm sea, Luis’s arm acting as a float.

  After making love and then falling into a deep, pure sleep, she had woken with the urge to swim. He hadn’t questioned it—she didn’t allow herself to think too deeply about it either—just led her to
the section of beach where the water was calm and so clear she could see the tiny pebbles on its bed.

  The most important part, he’d reiterated seriously, was being able to float. And to be able to float, she needed to relax in the water.

  They had taken it slowly.

  ‘Are you ready for me to remove my arm?’ he asked.

  The patience he’d shown in getting her to this stage filled her heart with the buoyancy she needed to stay afloat.

  She trusted him. To not let her drown. To keep her alive.

  With her heart.

  For the better or the worse she did not know but loving Luis had changed something fundamental in her.

  When he looked in her eyes she almost dared hope she saw the same reflected as shone from hers.

  And if it wasn’t there yet then she had to take the chance that one day it would be.

  She had allowed her father to destroy her fragile heart for too long.

  She had carried his rejection every day for seven years... No, she’d carried his rejection her entire life.

  He was the reason she had kept men at arm’s length, she’d come to realise. Her father had rejected her twice, the first time while she had still been in the womb. The second rejection had been the one that had destroyed her and shattered any trust she might have. She’d always told herself it was men she didn’t trust but the truth, as she could now see clearly, was that her father’s rejection of the almost fully grown-up Chloe had left her feeling inherently unlovable. If her own father couldn’t find anything to love about her then why would anyone else?

  Tomorrow she would exchange her vows with Luis. If she didn’t take the chance and trust the passion and friendship that had grown between them then she would never find it with anyone else and she would grow into a lonely old woman.

  There would never be anyone else for her.

  She looked into Luis’s eyes and smiled.

  His eyes sparkled. ‘Is that a yes?’

  Her smile widened.

  She couldn’t speak. Not with words.

  She loved him.

  He let go.

  She floated.

  * * *

  When Luis opened his eyes into the duskiness of early morning he thought for sure he was still sleeping. This had to be a dream. A wonderful, heady, sensuous dream.

  Dreams of Chloe were nothing new. He’d woken with erotic dreams of them simmering in his blood so many times over the past few months that it was more a surprise when he didn’t have them. The intensity of them had only grown since they had become lovers.

  They never felt this real though.

  He closed his eyes and hooked an arm above his head with a sigh.

  Dios, that felt good.

  Chloe was underneath the sheets, between his legs, pleasuring him with her tongue.

  He groaned as she slid him into her mouth, groaning even louder when she cupped his...

  Dios.

  This was incredible.

  In his dreams he was always left unfulfilled but now he could feel telltale sensations tugging at his loins.

  And then she stopped.

  This time his groan was one of frustration that was cut off from his tongue when she pulled the sheets off him and crawled over him.

  Putting her hands either side of his face, she stared down at him with a soft gleam in her eyes. ‘Good morning.’

  And then she sank down on his burning erection.

  Luis gasped.

  There had been a very real danger then that he would have come undone with one thrust.

  But, Dios, this was like nothing he had ever felt before. This was something new.

  They had never made love without a condom before.

  He had never made love without a condom before.

  He could not have comprehended how different it would feel being completely bare inside her or the sensations that would course through his blood and loins.

  Adjusting herself so she was sitting upright with him fully inside her, she rested her hands lightly on his chest.

  Luis gazed at her, now quite certain that he wasn’t dreaming and that this was real, that this was Chloe waking him in such a pleasurable way, Chloe, the woman he would be marrying that day.

  He raised a hand to cover one of her breasts. Dios, he loved her breasts. Loved her soft, rounded belly. Loved her supple thighs currently squeezing against him. Loved the raven hair falling in waves over her breasts and down her back.

  And then he loved when she began to take her pleasure from him, finding a rhythm, leaning forward to stare deep into his eyes as her breasts gently swayed with the motion.

  He couldn’t take his eyes from her face. Her eyes had darkened in colour, becoming violet, her cheeks slashed with the colour of passion. Harder and deeper she ground against him, tiny moans flying out of those gorgeous lips that became louder when he grabbed hold of her hips to steady her and drive himself up into her.

  Colour heightened on her cheeks and then he felt her orgasm build inside her as vividly as he felt his own, her muscles thickening and tightening around him as, with a loud cry, she fell against him at the exact moment he lost all control of himself.

  For long moments the world went white.

  * * *

  ‘We didn’t use a condom,’ he said a short while later when they had finally caught their breath.

  He didn’t know if it was an oversight on her part or if she had meant it.

  He didn’t know which he hoped the answer would be.

  Since they had become lovers they had only ever used condoms, which he’d armed himself with from the numerous boxes he had thrown into his suitcase on a whim before he had kidnapped her. He made sure to always have some handy wherever he went, their passion for each other often finding them making love in the most unlikely places, like on the beach in the middle of the night.

  Neither of them had mentioned her being on the pill since he had confronted her with the packet.

  She was still on top of him.

  He was still inside her.

  She nuzzled into his neck. ‘I know.’

  Then she raised her head and put her chin to his.

  The look in her eyes was one he had never seen before. ‘I trust you, Luis.’

  He forced a smile to lips that had become leaden.

  The euphoria of the moment died as a klaxon set off in his guts at this declaration of trust that instinct told him meant much more than had been said.

  In truth, he had felt that klaxon warming up since he had taken her swimming the day before.

  There had been a moment when he had been encouraging her to try and float when she had looked in his eyes and he’d felt as if she had seen right down to his soul.

  The only thing that made him certain she hadn’t seen right down into it was that she hadn’t run away screaming.

  His yacht was on its way to the island, the captain and crew preparing for the ceremony that would make him and Chloe husband and wife. The press release had been prepared, the champagne was on ice, everything that could be controlled taken care of.

  And yet he felt his control over the situation slipping through his fingers and he didn’t know how to claw it back.

  * * *

  Luis pounded along the beach, stretching his legs as he jogged, running as he hadn’t run in too many years to count.

  He hadn’t wanted to swim. He’d needed to do something physical that didn’t remind him of the woman he’d left burrowed under the covers, her lips curved in a beautiful smile as she slept.

  The sun rising over the Caribbean like an enormous jewel was a glorious sight but not one he could appreciate. The knots in his stomach were too tight for him to appreciate anything at that moment.

  In a few hours he would be a married man to the most beautiful
woman in the world.

  Their marriage was supposed to be an exercise in damage limitation.

  It was not supposed to feel like this.

  He was not supposed to let her get close to him.

  A short, entertaining marriage that fixed all the problems she had helped create. That was all it was supposed to be.

  He was not supposed to feel her presence like a pulse.

  How the hell she did it he did not know but Chloe had a talent for drawing things out of himself that he’d hardly acknowledged to himself. She was better than any priest for making a man want to bear his rotten soul. Not even Benjamin knew he’d been his father’s whipping boy.

  He had never had to physically drag himself away from a woman before.

  After running for an hour he headed back and went straight in the shower without checking in on her.

  The knots in his stomach hadn’t gone.

  Almost ten miles of pounding his legs and he felt as out of sorts as when he’d set off.

  Only when he had dried and dressed did he check his phone and find a missed call from his brother.

  As if he didn’t feel crap enough as it was.

  Javier had ignored his calls since that disastrous video conference with the Canadian. He’d messaged him a few times about the business but voice-to-voice conversations had been blacklisted.

  His brother really could be a cold bastard when he wanted. Add injured pride—and Javier’s pride had been enormously injured by Benjamin stealing his fiancée away from him and in such a deliberate and public manner—and his brother was a tinderbox primed to explode.

  Luis wanted to help him but had learned through their thirty-five years together that there was no point in putting pressure on his twin to see reason. When he was in a mood like this it was best to keep his distance and wait either for Javier to open up or for the darkness to pass.

  With a heavy sigh, he stepped out onto the balcony and called Javier back.

  ‘Why are you with Chloe Guillem?’ Javier asked, not even bothering with a cursory greeting.