His Wedding Day Revenge

Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘S ORRY I WAS so long.’

The young woman uncurled her legs and stood up from the sofa she had been ensconced in. ‘You weren’t, and Mattie has not made a sound. He is fast asleep. You have eaten? You didn’t get lost?’

Jane struggled to smile back. ‘Your directions were excellent.’ It was her instincts that were not at all excellent. Her instincts were all wrong. ‘I think I will just make myself a tea and go to bed,’ she said, feigning a realistic yawn.

An hour and two teas later her yawn was real, but her mind was still painfully active.

This had been a massive mistake. The only question was should she cut her losses now or see it out to the grim end?

She changed into a nightdress and looked at the bed but didn’t climb in. The idea of lying there tossing and turning was not a tempting proposition. Instead she did another tour of the nursery suite, looking inside the playroom for the first time.

It really was magical, she decided as she opened one of the cupboards at the end to reveal floor-to-ceiling shelves stacked with games and toys. Wandering over to the twin cupboard beside it, she noticed this one had a key. She turned it and these doors folded back to reveal, not shelves of toys, but a bathroom twice the size of the one she’d used earlier with twin sinks, a massive copper bath and a shower cubicle still emitting a cloud of steam into the atmosphere.

She wasn’t looking at the impressive fitments but at the man who was standing stark naked and wet in the middle of the room.

Draco, his face hawkish, the skin drawn tight against the perfect bones, returned her stare with one that glittered with bold challenge. A small, dangerous smile played around his sensual lips, his dark olive skin gleaming gold, the moisture clinging to the dusting of body hair, his long eyelashes.

Her eyes dropped. She couldn’t help herself—he was so beautiful, like a statue brought to warm, vibrant life. There was not an ounce of excess flesh on his lean frame to hide the perfect definition of each muscle.

Her heart thudding, her helpless glance slid down his chest, his corrugated ribbed belly and lower. Her breath caught and snagged in her chest as she struggled to breathe. Draco had always represented the epitome of raw masculine power and he was aroused.

Very aroused.

She tried to kick-start her brain and managed a stuttered, ‘S-sorry.’ She took a step back, only it wasn’t. The signals had got crossed in her head and she took a step forward, drawn towards all that magnetic potency.

‘I’m sorry, I had no idea that the door...’

He dropped the towel in his hand and turned to fully face her, totally at ease with his naked state. ‘It was locked on your side. You opened it, tesoro .’

‘I didn’t know...this is...’ She stopped and thought, Why aren’t I closing it?

‘Because you don’t want to?’

She swallowed. ‘I said that out loud? ‘This is...’

‘Come here, Jane.’

She shook her head. ‘I won’t... I can’t. This is a massive mistake.’

He swore. ‘We are very good at making massive mistakes together, I think,’ he returned sardonically. ‘We both know we would have ended up here.’

She shook her head in helpless denial and ran her tongue across her dry lips. If he touched her she’d be lost to all sense and all sanity.

So instead she touched him.

She laid a hand against his chest, feeling his damp warm skin under her splayed fingers and holding his eyes.

She watched his eyes blacken, saw the muscle beside his clenched jaw tighten and felt the pulse of excitement between her thighs. Desire was a thudding presence in her head.

He bent down, his breath on her face as he slid a slow kiss across her lips, a butterfly kiss that left her wanting more. Draco always left her wanting more.

She took his hand and guided it to her breast, then some tiny flicker of sanity pierced the sensual thrall she was on the brink of surrendering to and she shook her head.

‘Mattie?’

‘Leave the door open and—’ He reached out to a shelf and located a control pad. Pressing a button, he raised his hands. ‘It activates the intercom in here too.’

‘You can listen to me?’

‘I love listening to you when you make those little mewling noises in your throat, that little...’ He swallowed and reached out, whipping the nightdress off in one smooth action. It fell on the damp floor in a crumpled heap.

She felt relief and then, when his stare slid lower, a moment of panic. She was too thin, she was—

‘Beautiful!’

The throaty declaration made her confidence surge and her own gaze lift.

As they met flesh to flesh, kissing wildly, sparks struck and flamed. Jane plastered herself against him, her small breasts flattened against his chest as she lifted herself on her toes. And when his hands came to span her waist and her toes left the floor she wound her legs around his waist as he carried her into the next room.

A bedroom—the only detail she noted was the big bed.

He laid her in it and knelt beside her as he lowered her head, admitting with a wicked grin, ‘I didn’t think I’d make it this far.’

‘I love touching you,’ she husked as her greedy hands explored the hard contours of his chest, his back. She pressed her lips to his chest, only stopping when he tangled his fingers in her hair and pushed her head down onto the bed.

She whispered his name as he kissed her, his hands moving over her body leaving trails of fire and screaming nerve endings. Her fingers slid into his dark hair, holding his face at her breasts as she writhed beneath the caress of his tongue and mouth.

He lifted his head. ‘You look like an angel, the wanton wild variety.’

She moaned and bit down on her lips as he slid his hand between her legs, his finger slipping into the hot moisture of her body.

He only stopped when her finger slid across the velvet hardness of his tip, her hand closing as she tightened her grip around his shaft. Wriggling beneath him, she reversed their positions and moved down his body, tracking a line on his damp skin with her tongue.

A wild animal groan was torn from the vault of his chest as he dragged her up his body until their faces were level, his hands cupping her bottom.

The raw need etched in his face was beyond exciting.

‘You taste of me,’ he slurred against her mouth as they kissed. ‘I need...’

She saw what he was about to do and said quickly, ‘No, it’s okay, I’m not... I have it covered.’

A strange expression flickered across his face but a moment later it was gone and he nodded. ‘I’m safe too. Tested. And when I am inside you there is no one else.’

She could have wept. There had only ever been him. Did he really think she could think of anyone else? ‘I need you inside me,’ she whispered, sliding her tongue along his lips and then inside his mouth.

As his control broke he tipped her onto her back.

‘I have to have you now.’

She silently nodded and strained up towards him as he slid a knee between her thighs, nudging the aching moisture between her legs. She pushed against him to ease the ache, the need.

Then as he slid into her in one thrust she yelled his name, her fingernails digging into his back for purchase.

‘You’re like silk,’ he groaned against her neck and the pulse inside her built and built until they were both on fire.

Then she hit the peak and shuddered, feeling the heat spill deep into her.

‘What are you doing?’ A heavy arm was flung across her. ‘What time...?’

She pressed a finger to his lips and wriggled sinuously from under his arm.

‘I have to go.’

He sat up, looking gorgeously rumpled but suddenly very awake.

‘It’s the rule.’

‘Whose rule?’

She ignored the appeal of his white devilish grin, along with the lazy, slumbrous invitation in his eyes as he lay there, his hands tucked behind his head, in a pose that said, I’m yours...come and get me.

She wanted to but this needed saying.

‘Mine. Look, if this is going to happen again it will be on my terms.’

His eyes narrowed speculatively as he raised himself on one elbow to look at her. ‘Is this because you feel guilty, disloyal that we had sex?’

It would have hurt less if he’d said made love.

There had never been any pretence of love, yet there had been tender moments. A touch, a look that had had the power to bring tears to her eyes, a reaction countered by the longing to hear him voice the feelings that she now knew had been nothing but a product of her own wishful thinking.

She would not make that mistake again. She would accept the reality and enjoy it while it lasted.

She lifted her chin. ‘I am not the woman I was... I won’t...’

‘Say what you imagined I want to hear... Yes, I get that,’ he said sardonically. ‘And it is why... I like that idea. I like the idea of sex as equals, no emotional barriers. You are grieving, but we still have needs... Sex is a natural human urge, and I think a lot—I think a lot of being inside you,’ he admitted throatily, allowing himself to admit that his desire for her was utterly insatiable.

That had not changed, but his sense of self-preservation made him refuse to acknowledge that her vulnerability hurt him—he always had considered empathy something to avoid.

Nothing that had happened had made him change his mind, except that ship had sailed. He couldn’t even pretend an indifference to her feelings.

The silence pulsated.

‘Is this why you connived, and if you deny it I won’t believe you, you connived, pulled strings and, well, the stuff you do in your sleep, Draco, to have me here in your bed?’

‘I did not have to drag you here, cara .’

‘No, but—’ She took a deep breath, planting both fists against her chest as she pushed out, ‘There are rules. Don’t look like that. This is not a joke to me,’ she flared.

‘All right, what are your rules?’

Her lips tightened at the suggestion he was humouring her. ‘Well, for starters, this stays private.’

‘I was not about to invite an audience.’

Jane slung him a look, annoyed that he didn’t seem to be taking this seriously. ‘You know what I mean, no public displays of...’

‘Affection?’ he inserted when she stumbled searching for the right word.

She refused to let his sarcastic interruption put her off. ‘This is sex, not commitment.’ She almost felt stupid pointing this out, but the rule was for her own benefit as much as his. The best way to avoid heartache was by killing dead any irrational expectations before they took root. ‘And most importantly you need to understand that, for me, Mattie always comes first.’

The silence that had grown heavier as she spoke stretched.

Draco was not questioning her words, but his own reaction to them, which ought to have been living the dream...? Sex with no expectations of it becoming something else, no romantic gestures or pretending to feel what he didn’t.

He was not normally on the receiving end of rules, which might account for the irrational surge of dissatisfaction underlying his response.

‘It sounds workable,’ he finally responded coolly.

There was nothing cool about the smouldering expression in his eyes as he dragged her down to lie on top of him.

Every cell in her body wanted to relax into him, meld her curves to his hard frame, but one cell of sanity enabled her to draw back. She just prayed he would never know how hard it was for her to roll away. He made no attempt to prevent her.

‘I need to get back to Mattie.’

‘I will be away tomorrow,’ he heard himself say in some sort of reflexive response to the rejection.

Fine.

With her hand halfway to Mattie’s mouth with a spoonful of baby gunge Jane was telling him was super-delicious, her own mouth fell open.

She might even be drooling.

‘I thought you were away today?’

Her accusatory tone was aligned with the fact that Draco was not away. He was here, radiating an electrical charge of energy that sent her nervous system into shameful overload.

‘You decided to eat in the nursery,’ he said, not addressing her comment or his presence. He surveyed the table. ‘Except you are not eating.’

‘I have had coffee and some fruit.’ She blinked as someone in uniform appeared with a trolley bearing waffles and scrambled eggs. At least those were the items she could identify.

‘I didn’t order these.’

‘No, I did. You sit and eat. I will feed the baby.’

‘You...?’

He arched a brow. ‘You think me incapable of managing this task?’ he challenged, wondering if she might be right.

Jane, who would have actually paid to see him manage this task, put the spoon down and, lips twitching, stepped away. ‘Feel free.’

‘When you sit down and eat.’ He pulled out one of the chairs beside the open window and gestured.

After a gentle push she took the seat and, actually, the smell wafting up from the bowl of fluffy scrambled eggs was not unpleasant.

She had eaten a plateful and two slices of toast dripping with butter when she broke down, laughing, as the expression of fierce determination on Draco’s face vanished when a lump of mashed baby food landed in his eye.

He pulled out a spare chair and straddled it, wiping his face with a napkin. ‘I think he has finished.’

‘All it took to bring a sex god down to earth was an eight-month-old baby. Who knew?’ she mocked, grinning.

‘A sex god...you think?’ he mused, sliding her a self-satisfied look that made her oversensitive stomach flip as he poured himself some coffee. ‘There are limits to my willingness to become an object of mockery. I have fed him. You can remove the food that did not land in his mouth.’

‘You gave him the spoon.’

‘Good for developing his dexterity and self-reliance,’ he came back glibly.

‘Seriously, Draco, I thought you were—’

‘My plans changed,’ he cut in, not quite meeting her eyes. ‘So I decided to check on you. Does that break any of your rules?’ He found himself really beginning to resent those rules.

‘I don’t think... No, probably not.’

‘I normally begin my day with a swim. Would you care to join me?’

‘Mattie—’

‘It is my understanding that it is never too soon to introduce a baby to water, and if you are worried about exposing his delicate skin to the sun we have an indoor complex as well as the outdoor pools.’

‘Of course you do,’ she came back drily. ‘Oh, why not? That would be nice, but he might not like it,’ she warned.

Draco had managed fifteen minutes of laps, pushing his body to the physical limits, before Jane appeared, and his body reacted independently of his brain to the sight of her standing there in a plain black relatively modest swimsuit, revealing that he had not reached his physical limits at all.

Actually it turned out that, after a first startled, wide-eyed look, Mattie did like the water. So did Jane but who wouldn’t?

The indoor pool was Roman themed, decorated from floor to ceiling with mosaic tiles of varying shades of blue all set against a background of gold, which gave a shimmering, breathtaking effect. The murals on the walls were classically inspired.

‘You want to swim? I could take him?’

‘You want to take Mattie?’

Want, Draco privately conceded, would have been overstating it.

‘Any instructions? Keep his head out of the water, is that right?’ he teased.

Jane handed him over with an eye roll, trying not to lust too obviously over Draco’s streamlined muscular frame and failing dramatically as she handed the baby over to his care, without, despite her reluctance, a qualm.

She always felt safe, at least physically, with Draco and she totally trusted him with Mattie.

She had managed a few lazy lengths of the middle pool—there were three—when she flipped onto her back, floating as she watched Draco, in the shallowest pool, swirl Mattie around before splashing him gently, resulting in the baby’s loud gurgling chuckle echoing off the ceiling.

An expression of sadness slid across her face and her heart tightened as she thought of the things that would never be.

One day Draco would make an incredible father.

Despite her belief in his fathering qualities, Draco was not involved in the soothing of the fretful baby post swim or the changing, feeding and settling.

Jane joined him again, very conscious of the heavy achy feeling low in her pelvis, aware as she lowered herself into the warmer shallower pool that his eyes were watching her every move.

‘I need to make some calls.’

She nodded and told herself the bubble of disappointment was irrational. She had made the rules after all.

‘Enjoy your day,’ he said, levering himself from the pool.

Jane averted her eyes from the tall dripping figure as he slicked back his dark hair. ‘We will,’ she promised.

‘You have plans?’

‘I’m playing it by ear.’

It was mid-afternoon when the prickle on the back of her neck alerted her to the fact she was no longer alone.

‘He’s asleep?’

Without turning, Jane put a finger to her lips and tiptoed out of the room, aware that Draco had followed her. She felt his hand on her shoulder and found herself leaning back against him.

‘Is this,’ he began, the throaty rasp of his voice against her ear sending electric shudders through her body, ‘when I am allowed my moment?’

With a deep sigh, her green eyes glowing with slumbrous invitation, she turned in the circle of his arms, straining up to brush her lips against his. ‘You are allowed anything and everything,’ she husked, her lips moving across his mouth before she slid her tongue between his lips, pushing away the thought that there was a time limit on this bliss. These moments were too few, too precious—she wouldn’t allow anything to spoil them.

Her fellow attendees seemed an eclectic bunch and during the introductory talk several came over to say hello to Mattie. At the coffee break Jane sat at an empty table and positioned Mattie’s buggy at her side, catching the toy he threw before it hit the floor. She gave it back to him and turned back to her coffee and the screen of her phone, scrolling through the bewildering list of classes on offer, glancing up when a young couple approached.

‘Mind if we join you?’

Jane smiled.

‘I’m Luciana, this is Joe.’ Before Jane could respond she added, ‘And we know this is Mattie, he really is a star, and you are...’

‘Jane.’

‘You made your choices on classes yet?’ Luciana asked, casting a knowledgeable eye at the screen of Jane’s phone.

‘So far I haven’t even figured out what most of them are... I really think I might be out of my depth,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘What does NZSD stand for?’

It was the young man who responded. ‘Net zero and sustainability development.’ He saw Jane’s surprised expression and grinned. ‘I know I look Latin but I’m Liverpool through and through. When in doubt I use the “close your eyes and stick a pin in” methodology. Or, better still, get engaged to a local like I did and let her decide for me.’

‘Are you calling me bossy?’ Luciana retorted, extending her hand to show the sparkling ring on her finger.

Jane made the appropriate admiring noises.

‘So you are staying in the palazzo?’

Jane nodded and wondered if that was her role for the next three weeks.

The woman staying in the palazzo.

‘I think the idea is Mattie doesn’t keep people awake at night.’

Into the second week of the course, on what had been scheduled as a free day Jane sat down to breakfast. When, for the first time, Draco did not appear to share breakfast with her and Mattie, she realised that without intending to they had settled into a kind of routine.

Recognising that his no-show left her feeling a sense of something approaching loss, Jane realised that her rules were not a guaranteed method of protecting her heart from damage.

‘Rules aren’t much use if you don’t follow them, are they, Mattie?’ she told her uncritical audience as she popped him in his stroller, struggling to retain her cheery attitude when she realised that very soon there would be no breakfasts and no anything else with Draco.

She took Mattie for an early morning swim alone, determined that she would enjoy the day, which she had not planned to spend with Draco anyway. She had signed up for the trip to the local town.

It would be more relaxing without Draco around, she told herself. Their shared sexual awareness could make even the most mundane action breathtakingly intimate and made it hard to remember the rules were there for a reason, let alone what they were.