He heard her breath hiss in as though he’d stabbed her.
“I need to make some calls. I’ll join you later.” He walked downstairs.
* * *
It took Joy a long time to fall asleep.
She hadn’t meant to react so strongly to what had actually been a fair question, given they were married and having sex, but it was a very touchy subject for her and not just because of how temporary their relationship was.
The question of children had always been a sharp jab against her skin with a two-pronged fork. She wanted children, and she also wanted a career in dance. It wasn’t impossible to have both, but she knew that each was taxing and demanding and required a devoted level of commitment. Both also had a biological clock, one reproductive, the other related to joints and tendons and whatever muscles she might sprain or injure during hours of training and performing.
She still had time to pursue both, but this marriage was eating a year.
It was buying her a year of dance, she reminded herself, which gave her a second chance at the career she’d nearly given up hope on having.
That made Axel asking her to put that aspiration aside and start a family rankle, especially when his reasons had seemed so mercenary.
At the same time, the idea of having Axel’s baby was incredibly appealing. One of the reasons she had finally left Todd was the stark realization that she didn’t want to have his children.
Axel had all the qualities of strength and health and a well-built nest that would shake awake anyone’s ovaries. The ache of yearning went deeper than biology, though, to the part that she had alluded to when she had said she wanted to be loved. She wanted her baby born into love. She wantedhislove.
Because she was tipping toward that emotion herself.
They were still new, she hurried to remind herself, as though that would stop this flailing sensation inside her. She couldn’t expect declarations of love, especially when that emotion was so very sharp-edged for him.
For Axel, making love didn’tmakelove the way it did for her.
That was what was happening to her, though. She grew more enamored and more vulnerable to him by the day.
Which made the fact that he held all the power in terms of ending their relationship all the more pointed. And made his casual suggestion that they could have a baby and stay married tear at the scab on her heart, the one she pretended wasn’t there.
She didn’t remember falling asleep but woke in the night to an awareness of him beside her.
The distance across the mattress was mere inches, but it felt like an intolerable chasm.
She slid closer, not wanting to wake him but seeking contact. Reassurance at a very basic level.
“Cold?” He was awake and rolled toward her, drawing her into the heat of his body.
He always slept naked while she usually pulled on a short nightie over a soft sleep bra, even if they’d made love. That was what she wore now. She laced her bare legs with his and her lips met the hollow of his shoulder without her even thinking about it.
At the brush of her lips against his skin, the shift of his hand against her back stilled. He was hardening against her stomach and started to draw back.
“I don’t want to fight,” she whispered into his throat, touching her lips under his jaw. She let her thigh stroke higher against the outside of leg, so her nightgown rode up to her hips.
His breath hissed in, and his hand roamed lower, catching under the lacy hem and pushing it to her waist as he rolled her beneath him. He kissed her. Not rough but hard. Greedy. As though they hadn’t seen each other in months. Years. As though he had felt the distance and hated it as much as she did and was determined to close it.
His tongue swept between her lips, telling her what he wanted.Now.
There was an urgency in him that tensed all his muscles and made her feel pounced upon, but not in a bad way. There was something exciting in the way he pushed her legs apart with his hard thighs and dragged his mouth to her breast, raking aside lace and cotton as though he’d been waiting too long to feast on her.
He was lighting a fire in her that was more of an explosion, alarming but thrilling.
He wet his finger and pressed it into her, rasping something she didn’t catch because her senses were under assault. What she had thought would be tender makeup sex was more of a claiming; one she encouraged by arching herself in offering.
He slid beneath the covers to lick fire into the very core of her, making her twist against the weight of the blanket and the strength in his arms as he hugged her thighs. She couldn’t get away and didn’t want to, but his caresses were almost too much to bear. Deliberate and demanding.
For the first time, he did not seem to be in control, though. Not to the extent that he usually was. Each of her responses made him growl or dig his fingers into her thigh muscle or hold her tighter.
