A Debt Paid in Passion

Leaping up, he met her at the door. “You’re not walking out like this.”

“Oh, you expect me to stay here and put out so you can accuse me of using my body for leniency again?”

The muscles in his abdomen were so tight there shouldn’t have been room for his stomach to compress under a blow, but his gut knotted as though she’d kicked him.

He clenched his fist where he’d braced his arm across the closed door, aware that his wife was incredibly passionate, but the lack of inhibition she showed him was the result of weeks of building on their connection out of bed as much as in it. She still had morning-after blushes and charming as they were, they reminded him that physical intimacy was still new to her. She wasn’t capable of using sex for any kind of manipulation. It was purely joy and pleasure for both of them.

“No,” he bit out, shamed anew that he’d ever reduced her generous giving of herself to such a low transaction. He knew how much damage his accusation had done to her acceptance of his desire and need for her. Bringing it up again only pushed them farther apart than they already were and he felt a cold, anxious sweat break over him, not wanting to be here in this uncertain place. “I do expect you to talk this out like an adult, though. Not storm off in a fit,” he insisted.

“I’m the one reacting badly? Your first thought was that I’d stolen again! I knew you didn’t trust me when you set up my account without giving me access to any of yours, but to look at me like that, so blatantly accusing me—”

“You did it once before, damn it. Is it so surprising—”

“Once,” she cried, holding up a single finger. “One time I thought I’d lean on someone else’s resources instead of trying to do everything myself. It was wrong, I know that, but it was one time. Have I taken anything from you before or since? Not even a few bob for nappies from the change on your night table. But you can’t wait to find fault! Does it feel good? Does it justify the way you hold back your heart and don’t trust me? God, I knew it would be a mistake to get this involved with you!”

She turned away, so she didn’t see the way he was knocked back, as if her outburst had been a spray of bullets. He couldn’t even defend himself, aware that subconsciously he was waiting for a sign that his growing feelings for her were misplaced. She was coming to mean far too much to him. Every time he thought the level of emotion between them was as much as he could handle, his attachment grew. The more you cared, the more you risked and he was getting in so deep there was no self-protection left. He didn’t like it, he couldn’t deny that.

But to hear her call their relationship a mistake was a brutal blow. He hated seeing her shoulders buckle, hated knowing that she was only standing here in this room with him because he was barring the door.

“Look, the thing with the account I set up for you—”

“I don’t want to hear it, I really don’t. Would you let me take Lucy home? She needs her nap.”

“I’ll come home with you.” He moved to fetch his laptop. As he did, she walked out. Beyond the door, Lucy let out a sudden cry.

“I’m sorry,” the nanny said anxiously as he emerged to find Sirena trying to comfort the baby. “She scratched herself.”

An urgent call came in at that second and Sirena wound up leaving without him. When he managed to fight traffic and get home, he was relieved to find them there, even though Sirena was pale and frazzled. Mother and baby were both out of sorts. He was beginning to think Lucy had Sirena’s sensitive nature for undercurrents, because she was obviously unsettled by her mother’s tension.

He took over soothing the fussy infant and, despite his urgent need to sort things out between them, suggested Sirena take a bath. It was late when they sat down to a quiet dinner, just the two of them. Sirena picked at her food.

The silence built.

“Sin—”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I called her back,” he said, overriding her hostility. “Her housekeeper is sure she saw it on her dresser top after we left. It’s fallen behind some furniture or something.”

“So it’s not that you believe me. You believe the housekeeper.”

He drew patience into his lungs with a long inhale. “You barely wear the jewelry I give you and don’t spend half the money in the account I opened for you. I have no reason to believe you’d want or need that bracelet.”

Her mouth stayed pinched while she rearranged her food.

“I’ve put what happened behind us. Today was a slipup on my part, that’s all.”

“Fine,” she said in the way women did when they meant, Like hell, but he took her at her word, determined to get them back on the comfortable footing they’d been enjoying. When they went to bed, he reached for her as he did every night.

She didn’t melt her body into his the way he’d come to expect.

He wanted her. Badly. This break in their connection needed to be reestablished with the physical joining that brought him a kind of pleasure and sense of accord he couldn’t even articulate. But while she didn’t outright push him away, she didn’t open to his kiss and heat to his touch the way she usually did.

With urgency riding him, he slowed his touch, trying to reassure her and himself that nothing had changed. He knew all her trigger points and lightly stimulated them: the dimples at the small of her back that made her shiver, the tendon in her neck that turned her to pudding when he scraped his teeth against it, the underside of her arm that was ticklish, but also made her turn into him and twine her leg around his waist.

When she moaned softly and combed her fingers into his hair, he shuddered with relief, but kept the pace gradual and thorough, wanting her to know how much he revered this bond between them. He didn’t know how else to express his feelings for her. They were too deep and disturbing to even try to voice. Surely when they were like this, she felt it and understood?

Her hand moved restlessly on his shoulder and he kissed his way down the inside of her arm. Her wrist was sweetly feminine, the fine pulse beating frantically against his tongue, her fingers trembling against his mouth. He lightly sucked one, then another, anointing all her sensitive places, biting into the mound below her thumb until he’d imprinted himself on her lifeline.

She arched, the seeking signal enough to blast through his control, but he was determined to have every inch of her before she had one inch of him. He rolled her onto her stomach and used his leg to pin hers, then stroked her body with his. Her skin was soft and smooth, her form lovely with its curves and nectarine-scented skin. He kissed his way down her spine as he stroked her legs and buttocks, intensely turned on as she gasped and lifted into his touch and moaned his name.

Pushing the mane of her hair away from her neck, he settled on her, letting her feel how aroused he was. The slam of his heartbeat was like a piston trying to stamp into her. He slid a hand beneath her, cupping her breast then moving lower to the wet heat that was all his.

“I can’t get enough of you,” he admitted in a hot whisper against her bared ear. “I think about this all the time, giving you pleasure, feeling you melt for me.” She was close to shattering, straining beneath him, making gorgeous noises that had the hairs all over his body standing up as he fought losing it without even entering her.

Easing away, he rolled her to face him.

She was trembling, her arms shaking as she tried to draw him over her. Her thighs fell open, but he only kissed down her breastbone to her navel.

“Raoul, I’m dying,” she moaned, trying to draw him back up to her.

He was hanging by a thread, but took his time settling on her. Easing into her was like immersing himself in heaven. He went slowly, savoring every heartbeat while fighting the threatening eruption. Catching her inciting hands in his own, he held them still and let her feel him in complete possession of her.

“I will never be careless with you,” he told her, deeply aware of the effect he was having on her, the twitch of her thighs scissoring his waist, the clasp of her sheath, the shaken breaths sawing between her lips. “This is too important to me.”

He swallowed her gasp as he covered her trembling lips with his, wanting to crush her with all the passionate hunger in him, but venerating her instead, doing everything in his power to transmit that she was pure sweetness, utter joy to him. Perfect.

But he wasn’t superhuman. The connection so vital to him was also his lifeblood and he needed to stoke it. The withdrawal and thrust sent a wave of intense pleasure down his back, pulling him tighter and harder, making the need to drive himself into her unbearable. He basked in the sheer magnificence of her, moving with gentle deliberation as he savored the effect she had on him, the way she responded to his strokes.

Their struggle was long and slow and deep. Impossible to give up and impossible to prolong. When the high keening noise came into her throat and her teeth closed on his earlobe, when her climax was only a breath away, he let himself fall, his wife clutched firmly in his arms.

CHAPTER TWELVE

AS RAOUL KNOTTED his tie, he wasn’t sure if he should feel smug or sorry. Over his reflected shoulder, Sirena was motionless on their ravaged bed, deeply asleep.