Contractually Wed

Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE

A WEEK LATER , as he arrived at the Shetty mansion—an ugly showboat if he’d ever seen one, jutting out amidst the surrounding dense, thick woods like a sore thumb—Apollo could not believe that he had been married for two days.

He was actually married and it had only registered when he’d given the news to his mother. After years of begging/threatening him to marry and have a life outside of his work, she had been delighted.

Until he had told her that he had married the daughter of the man who had ruined her husband, who had broken their family in ways they hadn’t healed from.

But Mama was too gracious to voice her dislike. His sisters had jumped on the call and complained that he had deprived them of a celebration. It had been months since he’d returned to Greece, so he promised to bring his wife home and let his sisters throw them a grand reception.

His wife, Jia .

He couldn’t help testing the fit and shape of those words on his lips, couldn’t help the flare of intense satisfaction of such a complex woman bearing his name.

He wondered if the novelty of her numerous edges and contours would be enough to keep his interest aflame for an entire lifetime. Like showing up at the Manhattan city hall for their civil wedding in a lacy white silk tank top without a bra and skinny black jeans and fuchsia-colored stiletto heels.

With tiny diamond studs at her ears and dark red lipstick her only adornment. The thick, wavy strands of her gold-burnished brown hair had been hanging loose to her waist.

She had looked sensational and stunning and sensual enough that men turned to stare as she walked toward him. He had spied a thin, fragile gold chain when she’d neared him, a single, tiny sapphire pendant shimmering against her golden-brown skin. And as she played with it, turning it round and round while they signed the forms, Apollo knew that it was a talisman.

She had so bravely caught his interest away from her sister, achieved her goal, openly admitting to being attracted to him, laid down conditions for this marriage, and yet, she was nervous and alone and so...painfully young.

The whole time until the registrar announced they were married and they walked into the October sunshine, she had been waiting for someone. When he inquired, she made a show of looking like she didn’t care. Then she admitted that Rina had said she might come.

Tenderness and something more twisted through Apollo, emotions he didn’t want to feel, especially for his new bride. He still wasn’t sure of her motives, and he didn’t want to forget she was her father’s daughter.

She was an important acquisition. And he did need her healthy and functioning for the next part of his plan to come to fruition. Feeling uncharacteristically indulgent, he’d asked her where she wanted to have their wedding breakfast. And she, of the infinite surprises, had demanded a pretzel from a street cart.

Contrary to his expectations, he’d enjoyed the salty, buttery pretzel, chased by a grape soda and then, her lips stained purple from the sugary drink, the tip of her nose pink in the cold, she’d asked him if he intended to kiss her again, with noisy New Yorkers flowing around them without breaking stride.

Apollo had broken his natural distaste for PDA and kissed her. She had tasted like salt and sugar and everything in between. It was a miracle he had been able to break away from her, instead of dragging her up to his penthouse and ravishing her to his heart’s content.

He was absolutely going to enjoy the passion simmering between them but he wouldn’t let it control him, couldn’t let his fascination with her distract him from almost two decades’ worth of planning.

And now, two days later—more than enough time for her to have broken the news to her family—her silence was beginning to weigh on him. He was breaking his promise to her that he’d let her spend another month on this side of the pond, but after three unanswered calls to her cellphone, after she’d promised him to be available, and this strange unease in his gut, he’d had enough.

It was time to collect his asset.

He got out of his chauffeured car to find the illustrious Shetty family sitting out on the lawn, looking as if they were posing for a photoshoot featuring one of America’s richest families.

Except Jia.

Something about the picture bothered Apollo and it had been the same every time. Either Jia usually ran around taking care of logistics or stood outside the circle the other three formed.

Rina got to her feet as Apollo neared them, as did her father, though a bit slower. Her brother, Vik, lounged in his chair, his legs spread out far and wide—all useless posturing. Apollo had instantly disliked him at the first meeting six months ago. Now, knowing that he had willingly passed off Jia’s hard work and talent as his own, his assessment was spot-on.

“Where is she?”

Rina paled at his tone while Jay’s mouth flattened. “You had no right to turn her head. My lawyer’s preparing annulment papers even as we speak and if I were you—”

“But I would never be you, Jay,” Apollo bit out softly. “I would never steal intellectual property from a man I called friend and benefit from it while his family struggled. Apparently, stealing IP and passing it on as one’s own is a family trait.”

A paleness emerged beneath his skin. Hurriedly, Jay threw out an arm to stop his son, who’d shot to his feet.

“I could have you both in prison in an hour for IP theft. But Jia, probably the smartest of you lot, made a deal with me. As for an annulment, there will be no cause for that after today.”

The man flushed a deep red.

“Where is she?” Apollo repeated.

“She’s...unwell, Mr. Galanis,” Rina said, “or she—”

“So unwell that she couldn’t answer the phone? Or is she saving one of you from another mess?”

Rina blanched. “It’s just that—”

“Already missing me, darling?” came a soft, husky voice from behind him.

Apollo turned to find his new bride a few feet away, dressed in a black lace top and black jeans, her hair in a messy bun on top of her head, her expressive eyes hidden behind wraparound shades.

Whatever unease he had felt didn’t dissolve at seeing her. If anything, it intensified. Reaching her, he snatched the shades off her face. A deep, black-and-blue bruise shone under her left eye, stretching sideways toward her cheekbone where she had two butterfly stitches.

Rage swept through him. Was this the reason she had so readily made a deal with him? To escape from this?

Her eyes flared with apprehension at whatever she saw in his face and she took a step back. It was enough for Apollo to steady himself. One hand on her hip, he gently pulled her closer. Something in him calmed when she came without protest.

He ran the pad of his thumb under the bruise, careful not to touch the painful-looking boundary against unmarred skin. “What happened?” he said softly, loathing the presence of their audience, wishing he had never let her come back here.

“I tripped and landed my cheek on the leg of a table.”

“Hmm...right after we got married too,” he said, not missing the practiced, neat explanation. “This is the reason you wouldn’t answer my calls?”

“Rina took me to the ER and it took forever. I had to get stitches and then I had the worst headache for hours. I popped a couple of sleeping pills and slept for, like, twenty hours straight.”

Apollo didn’t push it, even though she wasn’t telling him the complete truth. One of the two men behind him were responsible for her bruise. If he pushed her, she would only double down on her lie. And he wanted her to trust him. “Why didn’t you text me?”

“I didn’t realize my phone battery had died. This morning, you kept video calling me.” She made a tsking sound, leaning closer. Her fingers played with the buttons of his shirt, and every swipe of her fingertip against his throat tightened the knot of desire in his gut. “The last thing I wanted was my new husband to see what a frightful sight I was and return the merchandise. I was feeling sad enough that I didn’t get a proper wedding night.”

Despite his simmering rage, Apollo’s mouth twitched. There was something almost adorable when she put on that hot-for-him act. He couldn’t wait to discover how much of it was real. “You’re a horrible flirt. Fortunately for me,” he said, just to tease her.

“Hey! You’re just not used to women coming on to you freely, are you? My generation believes in owning our desires. I foresee a lot of this age gap causing problems in our married life,” she finished with a sigh. “It could count as ‘irreconcilable differences’ when we—”

Apollo shut her up the only way he knew, and the only way he wanted to. He caught her mouth with his, and she was surprised enough that she gasped.

It was their third kiss and the fact that he was keeping count like a teenager betrayed more than he cared to admit. But not enough to stop him from deepening it when she opened up with a soft moan. Christos , she was sweet and hot and he was regretting not taking her back to the penthouse immediately after their wedding. Her father wouldn’t be threatening him with annulment and he would have had the chance to explore this fizzing need and bring it under control.

He gentled himself when she panted, even as his arousal heightened by the weight of her pressed up against him. For all her outward toughness, she was a skinny, almost fragile thing in his hands. Her fingers fluttered over his jaw and instantly, the kiss changed tenor, became softer, sweeter, as if she could magic out of it what she needed.

When she pulled back with another soft sigh and hid her face in his chest, Apollo wrapped his arms around her in what he would call a tender embrace. Which was another first for him because he wasn’t the man women flocked to for tenderness and understanding.

Her tight knuckles drummed against his chest as she looked up. He saw a flash of anger in her eyes, directed at herself and him, before she cursed. She hadn’t wanted that kiss to happen in front of her family.

Because she’d painted a picture of the suffering in store for her as his wife? Or because she felt exposed at her clear attraction to the family’s enemy? Or because she had a whole new scheme cooking in her cunning brain and he’d disturbed it by showing up ahead of time?

Dios mio , the sooner he took her out of this place and from among them, the better for both of them. He could stop feeling like a caged animal at the mercy of its base desires and return to the rationality he knew and needed.

He rubbed his palm over her back, marveling at the wiry, lean strength of her body. Marveling at his attraction to a woman who was such a study in contrasts. “Say goodbye. We’re leaving. Now.”

She looked up, confusion clouding her sparkling brown eyes. “Now? You said I had six weeks.”

“I didn’t realize that you needed a keeper.”

She stiffened, reminding him of his older sister’s cat. “It’s an accident, Apollo. Just a bruise.”

“Do you really want to get into what it is now, matia mou ?”

Her mouth turned down at the corners. “Give me at least until tonight.”

“You have fifteen minutes and it’s more than enough to collect your various electronics.”

She pushed back from him then, mistrust shining in her eyes. “Not to say a proper goodbye and it’s—”

“Now, Jia,” he said, letting her see the temper he was tamping down. “Before I forget all my promises or that I still owe you one.”

She straightened, shutting down whatever little vulnerability she had shown him. “If I’m using that one, it can’t be half-assed.”

He regarded her with an outside calm, even as he knew what she would ask. “What’s the full condition, then?”

“I don’t want to talk about this ever again.”

He didn’t need to ask her what she meant. He didn’t give his assent nor did she ask for confirmation. If she trusted him that much already, that was her problem. But no way was she getting what she wanted this time.

She belonged to him and he would destroy the man who had lifted a hand against her, whoever it was.

All through the flight to Athens, Jia kept wishing her husband was truly the closed-off, ruthless monster she’d made him out to be in her head all these months. A villain full of nefarious intentions and cutthroat tactics could have served her so much better.

His calling her his “asset,” his telling her father that there would be no annulment after tonight, his demand that she leave instantly at his command...all of it pricked like a thorn stuck under her skin. But it was no less than what she’d expected. He was a powerful man used to getting his way and she was an important pawn.

Just because he’d gotten angry over her bruise, or kissed like he meant to soothe her...didn’t mean much. The fortunate thing was that all her life, beginning very early on, she’d had a taste of everything but real love. Oh, her older sister, Rina, had been kind to her and loved her—even when it invited their father’s annoyance—but it was the same emotion that she showed a puppy that Vik had tormented when they’d been kids.

Her father’s begrudging acknowledgment and a little affection had come after she began showing real talent in architecture, after she’d won several contracts for the company, after she had repaid his generosity in letting her mother keep her.

Until then she’d been only a reminder of his wife’s infidelity.

So Jia knew not to mistake Apollo’s rage at her bruise for anything more than basic human decency, or his concern as anything more than another reason to hate her family. His demand that she leave her family behind was nothing but his need to make sure “their deal” was completed ASAP.

She was a willing pawn at worst, and an important asset at best. And in between, a weapon to be used against her father. Hopefully, her actions would count toward nullifying the last. Of course, her father had been furious, muttering that she’d ruined everything, ranting about an annulment.

Now, as she whiled away the hours on the jet, sitting across from Apollo, with a low buzzing ache at the back of her head that wouldn’t let her sleep, Jia wished she could enjoy the flight. Wished she could ignore him as easily as he was ignoring her.

Through the drive to the private airstrip and the two hours into the flight so far, he’d barely looked at her, his dark mood hanging over the luxurious space like a thunderous cloud.

“Do you need medical attention, Jia?”

Jia sat up at the sudden question. Every time he said her name, it felt like a caress and a reprimand rolled into one. And while she wasn’t going to go out of her way to please him, she didn’t understand his animosity. She’d handed him everything he’d wanted on a platter without making any demands. What was his problem?

“I’m perfectly fine,” she said, flicking an imaginary dust mote from her jeans. Clearly, he had been watching her the whole time.

“You keep rubbing your head and your neck.”

“I’m a little out of sorts,” she snapped and sighed. “You did drag me away from my family and my things and...”

“Your precious collection of lacy silk blouses and dark denim?”

“Exactly,” she said, not letting the smile that wanted to bloom touch her lips. He wasn’t allowed to be grumpy one second and then charm her the next.

He stood up and before she could take in a rushed breath, loomed over her, filling her field of vision. With his shirt unbuttoned to reveal olive skin at his throat, his corded forearms sprinkled with hair and his gray eyes focused on her...he was incredibly intimidating, to say the least.

She’d been confident they would lead separate lives for most of the year. Given he traveled a lot and would want her to continue her work for the family firm. She hadn’t expected to be around him so much so soon.

Something about him made her feel unbalanced. Which was why she’d played offense and admitted her attraction to him. Better to own it than let him turn it into a weapon.

He extended his hand toward her and that bubble of tension around them tightened. “Come.”

After staring at it for a few seconds, she placed her hand in his with a tremble she couldn’t hide. He pulled her up and shuffled them toward the rear cabin, telling the flight attendant that they weren’t to be disturbed.

Jia flushed at the idea of the entire flight knowing what they were up to, and when dampness bloomed between her thighs, she flushed a little more. God, a one-word command from him and she was melting like an ice cream cone on a summer day.

You told yourself you’d enjoy this, remember , a voice whispered and she scoffed. She had done that. Out of this whole miserable deal—for which one party hated her and the other didn’t trust her—hot, fun sex with the sexiest man she’d ever known was the one highlight she’d imagined could happen.

Theory was one thing and reality a whole other.

She was trembling by the time he closed the privacy curtains on them. What if she didn’t please him? What if he was...?

“Take off your clothes,” he said, once they were inside the luxurious rear cabin.

“What?” she said, whispering the word past the deafening pounding in her ears.

“Your clothes, I want them off. Do you need help?”

A sliver of mockery had crept into his voice and it made her spine straighten. That little twitch at the corner of his mouth...it reduced him to earthly dimension, made him look deceptively adorable.

Rolling her shoulders back in a conscious movement, Jia shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

She licked her lips, searching for a reason to ask for the lights to be dimmed or to just put this off for now. The twinkle in his eyes said he was expecting her to do just that and damned if she was going to let him box her like that.

“I thought you were very excited for all the sex we were going to have,” he added, sitting down at the edge of the bed and loosely caging her between his legs. With his hands pressing into the bed, head tilted up, he looked like an emperor assessing his latest gift. “Don’t tell me all of that was a pretense to trap me.”

Jia’s heart gave a thud against her rib cage. “Of course not,” she said, swallowing past a swarm of butterflies in her throat. It was so much easier to make bold statements than actually be bold in front of him in such an intimate setting. “But I was expecting some foreplay at least.”

“My eyes on you won’t turn you on?”

Heat streaked her cheeks. “I don’t know,” she said, opting not to lie.

“You’re of the generation that likes to try everything, ne ? So let’s see if stripping for me does anything for you.”

Her mouth twitched at how cleverly he used her own words against her. She played with the lacy hem of her tank top, without meaning to be coy. His gaze slid there and away. “And you? Ordering me around turns you on?”

He grinned then, and somehow it felt more real than anything she’d seen in his expressions. As if she’d caught him by surprise once again and he liked that. A lot. “Not simply ordering you, Jia. But seeing you fight the instinct to give in definitely turns me on. It’s quite...alluring.”

How easily he read her...

He raised a brow, his arctic gray eyes sparkling. “But I don’t want to develop a reputation as a miserly husband. I’ll give you as much foreplay as you need, if this doesn’t work.”

Jia took her blouse off and then shimmied out of her jeans, which was quite the feat with him looking on, because they were tight and she wasn’t full of grace, like him. She stood in front of him in a strapless bra that pushed her small breasts up and matching panties in blush pink, her pulse going haywire all through her body. His gazed moved over her like some kind of laser pointer, with such leisure that she felt swirls of heat everywhere it landed.

A tiny flare of heat in his eyes when it stayed on her tattoos—her half sleeve with a bird flying out of a cage, the one on her lower belly, right above her pubic bone, of a heart, was the only sign that he liked what he saw.

Goose bumps erupted on her skin.

“Turn around,” he said, packing a catch and a command, in just those two words.

She wished she didn’t like how it pinged over her skin, how it made dampness bloom between her thighs. But God help her, she did. She liked the little lick of heat in his eyes, how his gaze lingered over her tattoos, the way the space around him seemed to crackle with tension. She even liked the taut set of his shoulders as if he was stopping himself from pouncing on her.

Pounce away , she wanted to say, but the words never left her throat.

When she didn’t budge, he did a rotating motion with his index finger, his nostrils flaring.

Legs trembling, she turned. When his fingers landed on her hip bones, and he gently tugged her back, she thought she might faint at the dizzy pleasure that claimed her. His warm breath coasted over her back in arousing trails. She could feel his gaze run up every dip and curve of her flesh, up the long, toned length of her legs to her buttocks barely covered in pink panties, lingering on the butterfly tattoo over her lower back and then up toward her shoulder blades where she had a small one of a starling. His scrutiny was thorough and intense enough that her breath shallowed out.

Slowly, she turned back, her own skin feeling two sizes too tight, anticipation inflating her chest.

Another sweep from beneath his lashes and then he gave her a nod. When she met his gaze, whatever desire she’d imagined seemed to have melted away, leaving a cold indifference. “Glad to know you aren’t hurt anywhere else.”

“What?” she murmured inanely, past the pinprick of hurt ensnaring all her senses. Then goose bumps rolled all over her bare skin. Her arms shook as she managed to stop herself from wrapping her arms around herself. She was not ashamed, of her body or of the desire she felt for him.

“I needed to make sure you do not have any other bruises,” he said, coming to his feet.

“So you made me strip? Under false pretenses?” she said, thanking the universe the tears she felt crawling up her throat didn’t coat the words.

“Would you have told me the truth if I asked?”

She opened her mouth and closed it, like a fish gasping for air on land. A draft from some hidden vent in the cabin blew over her skin, making her shiver. Before she could reply, he was in her face again, crowding her with his broad frame, draping the duvet around her shoulders with a gentleness she couldn’t abide.

Jia shook it off, merciful anger coming to her aid. “I’m not some...victim you have to rescue.”

“No? Because I’m beginning to wonder if your eager proposal wasn’t an escape hatch.”

“That would only work if I mistook you for a hero, Apollo. But you aren’t. So please, don’t let it go to your head.”

“As long as we’re—”

“Far from being a hero, you’re a villain, to prey on my family’s company, on my family. To use my desire for you to mind-fuck with me is only another step.”

His chin tilted down, a flash of anger in his own eyes. But with a control that was miraculous to watch, he tamped it down. “I didn’t mind-fuck you.”

“No?”

“I used what I had in hand to achieve what you won’t give me. How do you think I’ve crawled up out the muck your father left us in to where I am today. If that makes me a villain, then yes, I am one.”

“Whatever it is that you’re imagining about my family, about me, is not true,” Jia said, losing her temper.

Fingers on her jaw, Apollo tilted her chin up with such gentleness that tears scratched at her throat. This is pity , she chanted in her head but something in his eyes, or her projection of what she wanted it to be...made it so damned hard not to see it as more.

“So your father or brother didn’t cause this?”

“No one punched me. I wouldn’t have let it go so far.”

His fingers tightened infinitesimally, brackets of tension around his mouth. “Did one of them cause this, Jia?” he repeated.

She leaned forward until his exhale stroked her lips, until she could see into the fathomless gray of his eyes and imagine drowning there. Until she could feel the tension emanating from his hard, solid body. And his mouth...a tightness pinched it that had nothing to do with his perpetual grumpiness.

He had played with her, but it hadn’t been without cost to him. And Jia needed that equalizer between them more than she needed air. She stepped back and faced him, her body still shaking with anger and unmet need. “You have no rights to my secrets or fears or wants. Whatever little trust was there between us, you’ve broken it.”

He released her. “I see that I’ve made a mistake.”

“What...what do you mean?” she whispered, already missing his feather-like touch.

“Rina was the right choice for me.”

It was meant to hurt and so automatically, shouldn’t, but God, it did. How foolish was she?

She tried to shake it off, used to that kind of casual rejection all her life. When she looked at him though, her belief that he meant to hurt her faltered. He truly believed her sister was the better choice. Or that they were interchangeable, except for her talent. And while there were any number of real, valid reasons Rina was a better choice for any man, she wasn’t a masochist to try and find out his.

“Of course Rina’s the better choice,” she said with a scoff.

“As for gaining control of your talent, I could have done it through the board in a year or two anyway. You distracted me,” he said, almost to himself.

The admission soothed the little hurt he’d dealt seconds ago. God, the man was giving her whiplash. Or her reaction to him was doing it. “What will you do? Return me with the packaging and the tag intact? Get an exchange deal?”

His mouth curled in distaste.

An uncontrollable shiver went through her again.

“As villainous as I am,” he said, magicking a robe out of somewhere, and with firm but gentle movements, pushing her arms through the hole, “I protect my assets at any cost.” He tugged the silky flaps closer and tied the sash at her waist, like he was dressing a recalcitrant child.

His gaze found hers and it was like two stars colliding somewhere in the cosmos, leaving an explosion and rubble behind. Only it was in her body. “Especially valuable ones. Even if it’s from themselves.”

Jia glared at the exit long after Apollo vanished. Shoving her legs roughly into her jeans, she cursed him and herself. She didn’t need his damned pity or his honor. And, really, he’d done her a favor by...playing with her desire. He’d shown her that, for him, it was only another form of currency, another weapon.

At least now it wouldn’t be hard to resist the damned man.