Contractually Wed

Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T HREE WEEKS AFTER her discovery, Jia had come up with a hundred different plans for how she could tell Apollo and discarded them all. Her period had always thrashed her about like a ship caught in a storm, and it seemed her pregnancy was going to be more of the same. Despite that, she’d forced herself to consider the ugly prospect of leaving him with a clear mind.

What kind of a future would she be providing for her child? Apollo had helped her shed her rose-colored lenses about her family. She would be all alone in the world with a tiny precious baby to care for.

That was, assuming Apollo simply let her go.

Abandoning his pregnant wife was something he would never do.

And if she stayed...would things get better? Could her love simply wither and die if she didn’t nurture it? Could she one day forget that it even existed, flickering like a live flame inside her chest? Would it be so bad to make a family with him knowing he admired her, respected her, even cared for her, in his own way?

When the questions became too much, she floated through her days in a strange limbo. Like a flesh wound on her finger hidden away under layers of gauze, so she only felt it when she had to use it. Then it became a pulsing throb of pain.

Nights were easier to get through.

Especially like now, when she was in bed and waiting for Apollo to join her. She’d spent the whole day with so many doubts that all she wanted was his brand of possession.

In the dark intimacy of their bedroom, she forgot everything. In their bed, with his hard, warm body tangled around hers or pinning her down into the mattress as he drove them to sweet release, or as he cradled her from behind and drowned her in his caresses making sweet love to her, it was easy to imagine that Apollo adored her as much as she adored him.

A sudden ping on her phone had her scooting up on the bed. It was a text from her sister.

Reading it made tears prick her eyelids—what didn’t these days?—and laugh at the same time. But beneath the joy that Rina was getting married and the acceptance of her sister’s long, heartfelt apology, a dark envy lingered. If Rina, who’d always let their father and brother intimidate her, who’d never gone against the grain even in thought, could find true love, why couldn’t Jia?

With uncharacteristic frustration, Jia threw her cellphone across the bedroom. It landed with a loud thump on the rug. God, what was she turning into? It was almost as if the pregnancy and her love for Apollo were releasing all the petty and intense but valid emotions she had caged inside all her life.

“Jia?” Apollo stood under the archway to their bedroom. “Did you just throw your phone across the room?”

“Yes.”

“Feel better?”

“No.”

With moonlight coming in through the glass walls behind him, every angle of him was limned lovingly as if she herself had crafted him with her hands.

A broad chest, strong shoulders, tapering to a thin waist and abdominal muscles that she rubbed herself on without shame...he was everything she’d never even had the nerve to imagine. Just the sight of him made her heart flutter with dizzying pleasure, her body come alive as if it had been sleeping for years.

Powerful and yet kind beneath the grumpy exterior, a man who was a hundred times worthier than the man she called father...

Was he hers? Could he be hers forever? Was her love enough to sustain them?

Suddenly, Jia knew what she had to do. Her happiness, her spark for life, her very joy itself was already bound to this man. How could she leave him? She had spent all her life serving her undeserving family, hoping to earn a smile, a pat, approval from a man who didn’t even see her.

How could she do anything less for the man who had seen her messy, chaotic self from the first moment and only found it fascinating? For the man who had only tried to protect her when he thought she was being harmed, the man who encouraged her to scale new career heights, the man who was always telling her to never dilute her vision, to never lessen herself for anyone, including him?

A sudden rush of energy filled her at her resolution. Her lips curved. Her body thrummed with fresh need that wasn’t just about escaping her worries, but with new appreciation, for her own desire and for him.

“Jia?” Apollo said her name again. Only this time, it was heavy with frustration. With...pain even. He thrust a hand through his hair, making it stand up every which way.

Coming to her knees on the bed, Jia extended her hands to him. “Will you hold me, Apollo?”

He threw the towel he’d been holding and reached her in seconds with those long strides. Whatever she’d asked of him, however unreasonable she’d been with her own indecision, he’d held her through it, through the storm, without complaint. Without making her feel like she was a burden.

Even her own mother had thought her a burden at one time.

Jia threw herself at him, shuddering with relief brought on by her decision. It was right. She knew it in her bones.

His skin was warm, his muscles tense and hard as he wrapped those steely arms around her. She laid open-mouthed kisses on his bare chest, leaving little dents with her teeth, loving the rough bristle of his chest hair against her skin. The lacy top she’d worn rasped against her beading nipples, making the torment a thousand-fold.

“You’re shaking, matia mou ,” he said, his mouth at her temple. “ Again. Jia...” her name was both a mantra and a curse on his lips “...this...whatever this is needs to stop. We can’t continue...you can’t...”

“I know. I know,” she said, looking up.

His eyes caught her, trapping her in the midst of a maelstrom. A shaft of fear pierced Jia at what she saw there, even though she couldn’t put a name to it.

“I’ll do better, Apollo,” she said, just as she had once promised her mother, so desperate to please and matter and love. But tonight, this promise to her husband wasn’t borne out of that same desperation. This promise was different. It moved through her like a rich, fertile sapling spreading its branches, planting roots deep inside her.

This wasn’t just for a reward or for approval or to earn love. As if anyone ever had to.

No, she wanted to make him happy. She wanted to please him, make him laugh, make him see who he was beneath all the layers he’d covered himself in. She wanted to love him as well as he loved her, even if he never said the words.

She stroked her palms over his shoulders, loving the tight stretch of his skin over muscles. Loving that she already knew his flesh so well. “You’ve been very patient with me and I’ve been an awful employee and an even more awful wife but I swear I will—”

“You think that’s what I care about?” he said, roughly tugging her up, until she looked into his eyes. He looked tormented. Unraveled, like she’d never seen him before. Angry, yes, but afraid too. And she’d never seen that in Apollo’s eyes. “That you’re not performing at peak efficiency at work? Or that you haven’t behaved like however a proper wife is supposed to act? Do you think so little of me, Jia?”

He hadn’t raised his voice but there was an edge to it that had her searching his face for answers. Alarm punched through her. He was right.

She’d been like one of those gothic heroines Rina was always reading about, walking around dark, edgy moors with tears running down her cheeks, her hair in a disarray, waiting for someone to save her. But she’d already saved herself, with Apollo by her side.

She just hadn’t known it. Worse, she’d been so deep in her head that she hadn’t wondered how it must have looked to Apollo. Clearly, he had been paying attention to everything she’d done and not done.

“No, of course not. But I know it’s not easy to live with a moping mess of a—”

“So what? How do you plan to suddenly not be that...woman?” His fingers were digging into her shoulders, not hurting but not gentle either. “What magical potion will you take to just transform all of a sudden?”

“I have been thinking of magical potions in the past week too. One I would sneak into your morning coffee so that I could have my wicked way with you, so I could make you give me everything I want. Whatever I want.” She moved her hand between their chests, grinning like a loon. “Made for each other.”

The cold frost in his eyes broke, and his mouth twitched. “You are insane.”

“I know there’s no potion, Apollo. I just made a decision, is all.”

His hand snuck under her top, and his palm felt abrasively delicious kneading her hip. “You don’t need one with me. You could simply ask.”

“And you would give it to me?” she said, feeling feverish and elated.

“Anything.”

She rubbed herself up against his chest, and groaned when her nipples peaked to hard points. “Before I tell you how I plan to leave behind that gothic heroine in the making...”

Distracted by the play of his muscles, she ran her finger down his pecs, over his hard stomach and over the seam of his sweatpants, and down, over the shapely outline of his growing cock. Need twanged between her thighs and she rubbed them for relief.

How could she have forgotten how real this heat between them was? How could she have forgotten that they had made this child, their child , in an act of complete surrender to each other?

It had to have been that afternoon after she’d barely recovered. When she’d screamed murder at him and he’d solved her problems for her in the flicker of a second. When he’d carried her to their bed in the middle of the afternoon and coaxed her to drink her soup and then made love to her as if he’d been starved for her. With the afternoon sun warming their already damp skin, it was the first time Jia had wondered about a future with him.

How could she have even imagined for a second separating him from their child?

“Jia?”

She looked up, colored at his scrutiny and went for his lips. He grunted with surprise when she bit his lower lip, nearly drawing blood and then when he let her in, she kissed him roughly, chasing his tongue, letting him take all her breath and her beats and all of her want. All the things she wanted to say to him and couldn’t, she poured into her kiss, hoping he would understand, hoping he would see how crazy she was about him.

His fingers tightened in her hair as he took control of the kiss. And the tenor of it only intensified.

He was angry , Jia realized as he nipped at her lower lip. He gripped her jaw with tight fingers holding her just so for his assault, then dragged his teeth down her jawline and over the arch of her neck, as he came back for her lips like a drowning man reaching for land. Over and over again.

When she gasped out a rough breath, he pulled back. “You’re like glass in my hands and I’m being even more rough than usual.”

“No,” Jia said, grabbing his hand and bringing it to her cheek.

“You have never lied to me before.”

“I’m not now,” she said, heat streaking her cheeks. “You were rough. But I want rough with you, Apollo. I want whatever brings you to your knees.”

Holding his gaze, she cupped his cock and squeezed him over the sweatpants, just the way he liked. A short grunt escaped his mouth before his fingers arrested her roving hand, and tugged it up. She flattened her palm against his chest, and scraped her nails over the taut muscle there, wanting to leave deep gouges in his skin.

God, loving him was making her bloodthirsty.

“Tell me first.”

She placed her cheek next to her palm, eager to hear his heartbeat. It was a thundering whoosh against her ears. “I want to feel you move inside me. I want to...lose myself in you.”

His fingers were at the nape of her neck, crawling upward and cradling her head. “I cannot believe I’m saying this. But you can’t use sex as an escape or as manipulation. Whatever is good about it will be lost then.”

She looked up, feeling both shame and shock. “I didn’t...” She held her answer as she looked into his eyes. The pain there stole her breath. Had she hurt him? Had she been so blind that she hadn’t seen what she was doing to him? “I wasn’t using it to escape or to manipulate either of us. I just needed the reassurance that things between us can be good.”

“They won’t be if you hide from me.”

She swallowed at the soft thrust, so close to the truth, and nodded. “I’m trying, Apollo. I really am. I needed to know that there was more than just an arrangement between us. More than—”

“So what suddenly caused the good mood, then?”

She pouted at his commanding tone. “Can’t we have sex first, please? And no, I’m not using it for anything. I want to celebrate you and me and...what better way?” When he only continued to consider her with that thick-lashed gaze, she sighed. “I will even go down on you and do that thing I’ve been preparing to do for three weeks.”

“Tempting offer, agapi ,” he said, running his knuckles over the gaping neckline of her top. “But no.”

“I just don’t want us to fight and then—”

“Then don’t do the thing that would make me mad and lead us to fight.”

“God, now you sound like the grumpy beast you were when we first met. Fine! At least we can have angry sex then.”

“Jia...” he said, elongating her name, telling her he was at the end of his tether.

“Rina’s getting married. I want to be there for the wedding.”

For just a second, Jia thought she saw him flinch. But why would he?

“When?”

She also had a feeling that his first impulse had been to say no and that he’d barely stopped it. “Next week. God knows where Vik is and my father’s definitely not attending. I don’t want her to be alone.”

“You were alone for our wedding.”

“I asked Rina but...”

“Right, you didn’t want anyone to see you going under the guillotine, even though it was for them.”

“First of all, it was a choice I made. So please stop calling it that. In fact, when things are better, I want to have a different...” God, was it any wonder he was looking at her as if she’d lost her mind? She was doing this all wrong. “I’m not going to spend the rest of my life being bitter about what they have done or not done for me. Especially now that Rina has apologized for ‘being naively useless’ and wants to start our relationship over. Even my father texted asking how I was, and he never ever texts.”

He raised a brow. Jia had the fantastical thought he looked like some apex predator waiting to pounce at the slightest hint of weakness.

“I just want to go for a short trip and I feel like I need to see them and...” Again, she swallowed her words. It was getting harder and harder. There was so much she wanted to tell him but...she knew the timing was wrong. And she needed just a little bit of courage. Courage she was hoping she’d find after one look at her old life. “I’m a little homesick, Apollo. Is that so hard to understand?”

The tension in his features eased just a bit and Jia knew she hadn’t imagined his flinch earlier. “We will leave in a couple of days. If you continue to be well.”

“If I continue... Wait, you...you’ll come to New York with me?”

“Is that a problem?”

“You hate my family. If she sees you at the town hall, Rina will probably faint straightaway.”

“That’s her problem, no?”

“But this is...” She straightened and pulled back, feeling a sudden snap of tension coil around them. Tight enough that her breath shallowed out. “Why does it sound like this trip is conditional on your coming?”

“Why is it conditional if I just want to attend my wife’s spoiled sister’s wedding?”

Jia fell back on her haunches and stared up at him. There was a curve to his mouth that mocked her. It wasn’t a sneer but it was there sure enough. That part of her that was used to going on offense flared up but she fought the impulse.

Something was off with him and she had a feeling in her gut that she was responsible for it. And she had this overpowering need to soothe it, to soothe him .

“When we left after the wedding, it was in such a hurry. You barely gave me any time and every assumption I made about you, and this marriage and about us...it’s been turned upside down. I just...want to see my old home, my family, my life as it was before, with this new lens I have now. I want to say goodbye to my mom for the last time. I...”

Apollo stepped back from the bed, his jaw tightening with each word she said. “You can do all that with me by your side.”

The tautly stretched cord snapped. She jumped from the bed, that sudden energy she wanted to use up driving him to the edge, fueling her anger. “This is ridiculous. You do realize that I don’t actually need your permission to leave, right?”

“And if I ask you to not go without me?”

She threw her hands up in frustration. “Why are you being so...stubborn? I’ve played along with everything you decided from the moment I stepped into your damned penthouse and I’m truly asking for one thing. One thing for myself, that you already promised me and you’re acting as if you don’t even trust me to—”

“I don’t. I don’t trust that you will return.”

His words were so hollow that Jia wondered if she was imagining them. But one look at his tight mouth told her she wasn’t. Her stomach made an alarming swoop. “You don’t trust me to...return? You think I’m using this trip as an excuse to...” She rubbed a hand over her chest. “What? Leave you? Run away from you? How can you say that?”

“You’re pregnant. Pregnant with my child, our child . And you haven’t said a word about it. You’ve turned yourself inside out, you have made yourself sick, you don’t eat, you don’t sleep, you...stare up at me with those eyes at night. Three weeks, Jia! ” The more agitated he became, the quieter his voice got and each word landed like a stone pelting her flesh. “You have known for three weeks and you have made me watch you torment yourself. I’ve never felt so powerless and this is counting that I found my father’s dead body.” He drew in a sharp breath, and paced around the bed, like a caged tiger. Tension poured out from every inch of his body. “And now, suddenly, you make this one-eighty today. You tell me things are going to change. You tell me to give you one last thing. How do I know you’ll return? How do I know you won’t take my growing child with you and disappear? Can you honestly tell me that you didn’t consider it for one second?”

Jia opened her mouth and closed it, feeling a cold fist in her chest, spreading like a crack in ice over a lake.

He’d figured it out. Of course he’d figured it out. God, how stupid was she? What had her fear and cowardice brought them to?

Instead of telling him the truth, instead of sharing her fears, instead of having faith in the best thing that had ever happened to her, she’d broken the little, tenuous trust that had formed between them. “I did think that. But that’s because—”

He flinched, and stepped back. As if she was a thing that could harm and hurt him. And Jia’s heart broke alongside his. “And yet you throw it in my face that you don’t need my permission? Of course you don’t need my permission to go anywhere or to see your damned family. But if you’re leaving me, with my child in your belly, have the courage to say it to my face.”

“I’d never have run away like that,” she said, willing him to hear the conviction in her voice. “Never. But leaving you, yes, I considered it. And discarded it, all in a minute. Not telling you was...” she said, getting off the bed.

He stared at her as she walked toward him as if she was his nightmare come alive.

“Killing me. If you saw the torment, you know the reason now. I wanted to share it with you, I wanted to make plans with you, I wanted to tell you that...”

He clutched her wrists when she wanted to wrap her arms around him, and stared down at her, some dark, hungry thing in his eyes.

It was his faith in her, in them, flickering out, Jia realized, on its last breath. All along, it had been there, brilliant and alive and she had nearly doused it with her fears and foolishness.

“But you did not,” he said, releasing her. As if he couldn’t bear to touch her. “Every moment of you not telling me, every breath felt like torture. Like torment. And then all of a sudden, you say you have a solution. You say you will be better. You want to leave for bloody New York. What do you think that leads me to believe?”

“I know. And I’m so sorry, Apollo. I wanted that trip to be a goodbye to the old me, the stupid, scared, pushover me. I wanted to come back to our life, to this life with a free, fresh perspective. I wanted to beg my father to—”

“I don’t want you to have anything to do with your blasted family.”

“I don’t want anything from them either,” Jia said, her own voice rising now. “Why do you think I’ve been pushing you to forget about this damned revenge? Why do you think I offered to sell my stock to you even though it was the one thing I swore to myself I wouldn’t do?”

“I don’t want your stock. I told you—”

“How can you not see how that makes me feel? I wanted you free of this obsession with him, with that company. I wanted us free of the thing that brought us together. I wanted a fresh start with you. And I knew seeing them and my old life would only show me how far I’ve come. Would give me courage.”

He shook his head and Jia knew he wasn’t listening. That her hiding the truth had taken him out at the knees. That his feelings for her, the very feelings she’d been afraid he didn’t have, made it possible for her to hurt him.

He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, a rattling groan making his powerful body shake. “You should have told me that you’re pregnant. You had so many opportunities, so many nights, so many—”

“I was scared that when you found out about this pregnancy, you would want me only for the baby. Never for me. I wanted you to want me for just myself, Apollo. And I’m sorry that I made you doubt me, that I...” Jia closed her eyes, wondering if she’d left it too late. If she’d burned down the little trust between them completely.

When she opened her eyes, he was gone. And that felt like a body blow to her.

After what felt like an eternity of waiting for him to return, she went back to the bed, grabbed the pillow and buried her face in it. Only a faint whiff of his scent was left in the fabric.

Fear clogged her throat, but she forced herself to breathe past it. She spent a few minutes talking to the bean in her belly, that their papa was angry but that she’d sort it out. All she had to do was wait out his very justified anger and tell him how much she loved him. At least she knew her own heart now.

She wanted a life with him, this wonderful, aching, real life with him. And she hoped he’d give her a chance to prove it to him. Because she knew now, beyond doubt, that he was happier than he’d ever been before, with her, that her pain had hurt him too, and that he loved her, even if he wouldn’t admit it for the rest of their lives.

She had to have faith enough for the both of them.