“I knew we’d be photographed once the news got out.” He straightened to draw her into his arms, pulling her hips into a light collision with his own, one that sent delicious sensations sloshing through her belly.
The press release had been very brief, stating only that Axel Severin had married American Joy Youngston on the heels of his broken engagement to Mira Braun.
“Won’t people assume I’m the reason you two broke up?” she asked, trying and failing to be as casually unaffected by their closeness as he seemed.
“Probably.” He brushed at the bangs she’d had trimmed into her hair after the color was adjusted to a more natural honey and molasses tone. “That’s why we must appear smitten.”
This was all an act for him, but it was nearly impossible for her to think when he touched her.
“What if, um, they find out that Otto is my father?” She dropped her voice to a near whisper. “Isn’t it PR 101 to stay ahead of something like that?”
“The only way they’d learn it is a leak from Otto or Mira. Otto isn’t likely to acknowledge you until he has to. He would have to admit to having an affair while his wife was pregnant. It then opens the question of whether you have any rights to his fortune. I don’t think Mira will say anything, either. She hasn’t made public yet that she’s not Otto’s daughter, probably because she’s exploring her own legal options. We’re at an impasse. Which suits me. It allows you and I to establish ourselves as a couple before Otto takes any shots at us.”
“Is that why you’re kissing me right now? Are you paying to have us photographed?” She tipped her head back and narrowed her eyes in suspicion.
“No. But I might have if I’d thought to do it. My mind has been on other things.” He was obscenely handsome when one corner of his mouth kicked up that way.
He’d relaxed significantly from the first time she’d seen him. She didn’t have to wonder why. After getting a little drunk over dinner last night, they’d bathed together, spending a lot of time tenderly washing their dirtiest parts. Afterward, they made love again, slept hard, then barely got through breakfast before they were at it again.
If he had suggested going back to the hotel right now, she would have gone. She was smitten. Or infatuated, at least. Sexually.
And disconcerted because, as much as he seemed beguiled by their sexual connection, she didn’t think he was anywhere close to as enthralled with her as she was with him.
“Didn’t you say I had an appointment?” she reminded him, trying to gather some of those brain cells he said they ought to keep hold of.
“You do.” He finished walking her over the bridge to a designer’s showroom.
The next few days were spent browsing exclusive boutiques, picking up everything from dance shoes to sunglasses. Everything. The lingerie purchase alone would have bought her a new car. A nice one.
Between shopping excursions, Axel wined and dined her at street cafés and high-end restaurants. They went out in the evening to art galleries and visited a nightclub and watched a musical production.
He seduced her constantly. He set his hand on her leg while they watched models parade their fashions. He kissed her nape when he seated her in a restaurant. There’d been a particularly erotic and clandestine grope in a darkened alcove when they were walking back to their hotel one evening, one that he ended while she was still tense and whimpering with need.
“If you can’t be quiet, I have to stop,” he scolded in a way that suggested he was denying her on purpose. “Otherwise, we’ll be arrested.”
She had thought Todd’s manipulation of her emotions had been bad. She was completely at the mercy of Axel’s whims. Even when she was anointing him with her mouth, trying to make him break, he was fully in charge of their play.
He cradled her jaw and the back of her head, thrusting with slow, hypnotic precision, saying, “Touch yourself while you do this. I want to come together. I’ll tell you when.”
She did. And it was so hot, she nearly crumpled to the floor afterward.
This was exactly what a honeymoon should be, she supposed, but on their last night, she pointed out, “I thought this was supposed to be a time when spouses got to know each other, but I don’t know much more about you than when I met you.”
They were in one of the small dining rooms of a converted four-hundred-year-old residence. The high ceilings wore decorative gilded plaster. Intricate tapestries covered the walls, and intimate light glowed from wall sconces and dripped from crystal chandeliers.
The staff had greeted Axel by name and welcomed her warmly, not giving them menus and bringing champagne without being asked.
“What do you want to know?” he asked, seeming to withdraw several degrees.
That was something she’d become very familiar with.
“I don’t know,” she mused.
She had learned a few incidental things. He didn’t care for seafood and rarely had more than one or two glasses of alcohol. He didn’t need much sleep. Twice, she woke to find him out of bed in the night, working. He had a villa on a Greek island, a vineyard in Portugal, a pied-à-terre in London and a unit in a Singapore building that he had helped design, getting in on the ground floor so to speak.
“I guess I’m curious about your childhood. What was it like?”
“Impoverished,” he said with a twist of his lips. “Is that not obvious?”
