A Baby to Bind His Bride

Susannah looked up from where she sat in the bright sunlight, wrapped up against the cool breeze in an oversize sort of shawl that looked as if it could double as a duvet, thrown over the flowing, casual dress she wore. Her blond hair was twisted back into the makeshift chignon she preferred, looking messy and yet somehow as impossibly chic as she always did, as if it was effortless.

He thought he couldn’t want her more. Every day he thought this. Every night, he was sure.

And then she did something unforgivable, like sit out in the sun on a cold winter’s day to read a book with her sunglasses on and her bare feet exposed. What defense was he expected to have against such a thing?

“Comfortable or not, a cage remains a cage,” she replied, almost merrily. The same way she always did. As if it was all a joke when he knew very well it was not.

None of this was any kind of laughing matter at all.

The anger that had beat at him all through that last call he’d hated making didn’t disappear, but the sight of his wife somehow…altered it. She reminded him that no matter who had acted against him or why, she had stepped in and saved him.

He reminded himself that she was what mattered to him. Susannah and the child she carried. This, right here, was all that mattered.

And someday he would find a way to bring back that dancing sort of light he’d glimpsed in her only briefly, now and then. Usually while they were naked. He would make her happy, damn it. Leonidas was always successful at what he did. He would succeed here, too.

Susannah wanted to keep a part of herself separate, and he couldn’t abide that—but he could wait. He told himself that he could wait her out, wear her down…and no matter that he was finding that harder and harder to tolerate.

Everything had changed.

She’d kissed him that night and altered the world again, and for the most part, he liked it.

He liked an end to the charade of separate beds. She stopped the pointless theater of marching off to the guest suite every night and took her place in his rooms instead. She stopped giving him her icy silent treatment and simmering anger at every turn.

And she gave herself to him with a sweet fire and wild greediness that might have humbled him, had he let it.

“I am your husband and you are my wife,” he had said that first night, after he’d reduced her to a boneless heap. He’d carried her into his expansive bathroom to set her in the oversize tub set in an arched window to look out over the quietly seething Ionian Sea. “And I have no intention of being the sort of husband who creeps down the cold hallway when he wishes the company of his wife. I do not believe in twin beds. I don’t believe in anything that gets in the way of you and me, not even a damned nightgown.” He’d watched her as she’d settled in the steaming water. “I trust we are finally in accord on this.”

“I don’t think you know what you believe about marriage,” Susannah had retorted, though she’d been sleepy and satiated and had watched him as if she might like to take another bite out of him. He’d climbed into the tub with her, then had shifted to pull her against him, her back to his chest. “Since you’ve only been married to one person in your lifetime and I remember more about those years than you do.”

“I intend for both of us to remember this part of our marriage,” he’d murmured into her ear, raking his teeth over the tender lobe to make her shudder. “Vividly.”

And there had been no arguing after that. He didn’t bother with that anymore. He picked her up when things got a bit fractious, then expressed his feelings about whatever minor disagreement it might have been all over her delectable body. He showed her exactly how little space he wanted between them. Over and over again.

She had spent seven weeks filling in the gaps in his memory. Now, having met her parents, he took it upon himself to fill in any gaps she might have had in her own life thanks to the things they’d obviously not given her. Such as nurturing of any kind. He tended to her headaches. He made sure she ate. He took care of her.

He’d never taken care of anyone in his life, not directly, but he took care of Susannah.

And he taught her that she’d been very silly indeed to imagine that one stolen afternoon in a faraway compound meant that she had the slightest idea what sex was. Because there were so very many ways to tear each other apart.

And Leonidas happened to know every last one of them.

She learned how to take him in her mouth and how to make him groan. She learned how to crawl on top of him where he sat, and settle herself astride him, so she could take control and rock them both into bliss.

Sometimes when they were lying an exhausted heap, barely able to breathe, he would slide one of his hands over her belly and hold it there. And allow himself to imagine things he’d never imagined he’d want. Much less this badly.