More Than a Convenient Marriage?

The sheer lonesomeness of what he was saying gouged a furrow into her heart. She might have a stilted relationship with her younger brothers, but they would be there if she absolutely needed them. She unconsciously tightened her hand on his and saw a subtle shift in his stony expression, as if her instinctive need to comfort him had the opposite effect, making him uncomfortable.

“You never talk about your mom. She was a single mother? Constantly working to make ends meet?”

His face became marble hard. “A child. I have a memory of asking her how old she was and she said twenty-one. That doesn’t penetrate when you’re young. It sounds ancient, but if I can remember it, I was probably five or six, which puts her pregnant at fifteen or sixteen. I suspect she was a runaway, but I’ve never tried to investigate. I don’t think I’d like any of the answers.”

She understood. At best, his mother might have been shunned by her family for a teen pregnancy, forcing her to leave her home; at worst, he could be the product of rape.

A little chill went through her before she asked, “What happened after you lost her? Where did you go?”

His mouth pressed tight.

Her heart fell. This was one of those times he wouldn’t answer.

He surprised her by saying gruffly, “There was a sailor who was decent to me.”

“A kindly old salt?” she asked, starting to smile.

“The furthest thing from it. My palms would be wet with broken blisters and all he’d say was, ‘There’s no room for crybabies on a ship,’ and send me back to work.”

She gasped in horror, checking her footstep to pause and look at him.

He shook his head at her concern. “It’s true. It wasn’t a cruise liner. If you’re not crew, you’re cargo and cargo has to pay. If he hadn’t pushed me, I wouldn’t be where I am today. He taught me the ropes—that’s not a pun. Everything from casting off to switching out the bilge pump. He taught me how to hang on to my money, not drink or gamble it away. Even how to fight. Solid life skills.”

“Does he know where you are today? What you’ve made of yourself?”

“No.” His stoic expression flinched and his tone went flat. “He died. He was mugged on a dock for twenty American dollars. Stabbed and left to bleed to death. I came back too late to help him.”

“Oh, Gideon.” She wanted to bring his hand to her aching heart. Of course he was reticent and hard-edged with that sort of pain in his background. Questions bubbled in her mind. How old had he been? What had he done next?

She bit back pressing him. Baby steps, she reminded herself, but baby steps toward what? Their marriage was broken because they were broken.

She frowned. The future they’d mapped out with such simplistic determination five years ago had mostly gone according to plan. When it came to goal achievement in a materialistic sense, they were an unstoppable force. A really great team.

But what use was a mansion if no patter of tiny feet filled it? Without her father goading for expansion, she was content to slow the pace and concentrate on fine-tuning what they had.

She wasn’t sure what she wanted from her marriage, only knew she couldn’t be what Gideon seemed to expect her to be.

Where could they go from here?

The sweet scent of orange blossoms coated the air as they wandered in silence between the rows of trees. Gideon lazily reached up to steal a flower from a branch and brought it to his nose. A bemused smile tugged at his lips.

“Your hair smelled like this on our wedding night.”

Adara’s abdomen contracted in a purely sensual kick of anticipation, stunning her with the wash of acute hunger his single statement provoked. She swallowed, trying to hide how such a little thing as him recalling that could affect her so deeply.

“I wore a crown of them,” she said, trying to sound light and unaffected.

“I remember.” He looked at her in a way that swelled the words with meaning, even though she wasn’t sure what the meaning was.

A flood of pleasure and self-consciousness brimmed up in her.

“That almost sounds sentimental, but the night can only be memorable for how awkward I was,” she dismissed, accosted anew by embarrassment at how gauche and inexperienced she’d been.

“Nervous,” he corrected. “As nervous as you are now.” He halted her and stood in front of her to drift the petal of the flower down her cheek, leaving a tickling, perfumed path. “So was I.”

“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.”