An Heir to Bind Them

Chapter TWELVE


THEO SAW THE hurt Jaya made no effort to disguise and suppressed a flinch of guilt. At the same time, his heart pounded like a pile driver. He and Demitri had their moments, but he’d never been as close to getting physical with his little brother as a few seconds ago. Violence was wrong, but if Demitri had touched Jaya, had scared her...

Such a rush of complex emotions strangled him, his instinct was to turn around and walk out, find somewhere private to pull himself together and come back when he felt in control again.

Maybe if Jaya had been angry and accusing he could have walked away from her. Instead she had that vulnerable look about her, the one that wrenched his heart. Like she was exposing her throat and it was up to him to prove he wouldn’t rip it out.

“Zeph sleeping?” he asked.

“He went down twenty minutes ago.”

His wingman wouldn’t provide a distraction then.

He rubbed his face, trying to push his expression back into stoic when he was still unsettled by what he’d walked into. Amazing how he’d become addicted to entering cheerful disarray where a woman and baby greeted him with smiles, maybe some homey smells, and he had to pick a path across scattered toys, but always found a reward of physical affection at the end.

“Theo?” she prompted.

He squeezed the back of his neck. This was why he’d kept to superficial relationships for so long. One-night lovers asked surface questions with easy answers.

Still, the more time he spent with Jaya and Zeph, the more he craved. He liked hearing her sing in Punjabi to their son, liked the homemade food she cooked, liked the way she drew attention when they were out, pulling it off him as people took in her exotic beauty. She’d always been pretty, but with the professional styling taking her appearance up a notch, he had himself a knockout of a fiancée and couldn’t wait to have her legally tied to him as his wife.


He was surprisingly impatient to lock in that life and now realized what had subconsciously been driving him.

But to admit it all to her? Hell.

“It’s humiliating,” he said, tossing his key card on a side table and moving into the suite a few steps, then halting in frustration. He could feel her rebuff from here. An invisible wall sat between them, dense as lead and heavy enough to compress his chest.

“When?” she asked in a strained voice. “Since Bali? Because I never heard anything about you getting married while I was working there. I’m sure I would have.”

“It was years before that,” he dismissed

That detail seemed to relieve a fraction of her distress, but she still stared at him, willing him to provide more details.

“My father arranged it,” he forced himself to say.

“Arranged. But you were so disparaging when you thought I was quitting to go to France for an arranged marriage.”

“That’s why.” Everything in him ached for distance and privacy, but a different, unfamiliar compulsion kept him frozen here, longing to close the gap between them. He was learning the only way was to pick his path through the minefield of his past. He hated it, but for her, he did it.

“Did you love her?” The tentative edge in her voice told him how hard that was for her to ask.

“No,” he assured with a disgusted exhale. “She was a socialite, a party girl, the daughter of a well-respected New York businessman who was down on his luck. They wanted the connection to our family, my father wanted an heir...”

“You said you never wanted to be a father!”

“I didn’t,” he said, recalling such heavy dread it had stuck with him until he’d learned how it really was to have his own child. “But I didn’t have a choice.”

“Men always have a choice,” she said with resentment. “They’re never as helpless as women in these situations. She was probably under more pressure to go through with it than you were.”

“No, I don’t believe that.” He never went back over those memories, they made him feel too pathetic, but she forced him to with her accusation. “You’re right that I could have walked away from my inheritance,” he allowed, “but I couldn’t do that to Adara. Not after what happened to us once Nic was gone.”

No one would ever know how close he’d come despite that. He’d forgotten how his sister had been the tipping point for him. He’d been scared for her. If he hadn’t been there to protect her, no one would have been. His unhappiness with a marriage to a woman he didn’t care about had seemed like nothing against Adara’s safety.

Somehow, remembering his motive loosed the old shame off him. Yes, he’d been browbeaten and yes, it had been his choice to allow it. But he’d had a good reason.

“Demitri said he slept with her,” Jaya said.

“He did.” He felt nothing making that admission because the act had become the mortar he used to thicken and heighten the walls he used to protect himself. From then on, he’d held everyone even more firmly at a distance, even his siblings. Why in hell would anyone want to be close to him? He was second best to his outgoing, funny younger brother. Everyone preferred Demitri, given the choice.

Except Jaya. Maybe the seeds of his deep admiration had been born in seeing her deflection of men who came onto her, especially the ones who took for granted they could impress with a grin and a flash of money. She had smiles for everyone, but she reserved her warmest for grandfathers with arthritis or little boys who got off the elevator on the wrong floor.

“Why would he do that? Just to prove he could or...?” She shook her head in bafflement. “To hurt you?”

He drew in a breath that burned. “It wasn’t just once for bragging rights. They had an affair. I don’t know who started it and God knows I won’t make excuses for him, but he was nineteen to her twenty-three. She happily drove to Manhattan and paraded herself through the lobby so all our staff could see them carrying on.”

And his father had berated him, like it was his fault when he’d been half a state away finishing exams. Such impossible expectations. He swore if Zephyr never aspired to anything more ambitious than flipping burgers in a fast food shack, he’d make sure the boy knew he was proud of him.

“What did she say when you broke it off?”

Here came the degradation, but it was losing its potency as they talked of this. For too many years, he’d let this make him feel weak. He been strong. Enduring. “I didn’t.”

“Didn’t break it off? But...Why not?”

The easy answer was, “I didn’t have to. Adara convinced our father the publicity was too damaging to go through with it. By then Gideon was on the scene. Her engagement let me off the hook.”

“You would have gone through with it?” She sounded appalled.

He was equally galled with himself, which is why he never revisited this ugly time, but he’d been a different man then. One who merely survived, not one who cared about thriving or his own happiness or anyone else beyond the one person who had always been there for him. Looking back, he barely recognized himself.

The turning point had been Bali, he saw now, and not because of Adara’s call—even though that had been a catalyst. No, he’d begun thawing toward his siblings after that, but he couldn’t have managed it if he hadn’t had that night with Jaya. She’d begun the melt in him with her kind acceptance of his weakness that night. He only recognized now that it was her influence because he’d changed so much since he’d seen her again.

Shaking himself out of the stunning realization, he tried to answer.

“All of my options were terrible. If I’d broken it off, my father would have done anything to hurt me, including going after my mother and Adara.” He’d make a different choice today. He was stronger. Because he had someone else in his corner.

Didn’t he? She was still struggling to understand why he’d kept this from her.

“But not Demitri,” she said. “I can see why you’re so loyal to Adara. She’s always had your back, but I don’t know how you tolerate your brother. Or is that your normal interaction with him? Are you two always hostile?” She nodded toward the door.

“No, we get along. The past is water under the bridge.” He forced himself to open hands that had clenched into fists as he recalled his anger when he’d come in to find Demitri with Jaya, her expression cross and distressed. “I wanted him to know there will never be any forgiveness where you’re concerned.” He leveled a stern glance at her. “You’ll tell me if he crosses any lines. I’m serious about this being a red one.”

“Because he did it once before.” She looked to her linked fingers.

“Because you have entrusted me to keep you safe. I’d die before I’d let you feel threatened by him or anyone.” He’d take on anyone for her, he realized. Not because he approved of violence, but because she was that precious to him.

“Theo.” Her head came up in alarm. “Don’t talk about dying.”

“Hey,” he deflected with a snort. “I hope it doesn’t come to anything drastic like that, but I bring so little to this relationship, Jaya.” The tiny flame in him that he barely acknowledged would never be enough for her. “At least let me give you this much.”


“That’s not true.” Tension distended her neck as she took his remark like a knife to the throat. Could she blame him for not bringing his heart to their marriage though, when his own had been so chronically kicked around? “You bring yourself. Stop thinking that’s not enough.”

The silence was so profound she couldn’t look up. Then, even from across the room, she heard his swallow.

“Is it?” he asked in a ragged voice. “Because you brought Zeph and he’s pretty damned incredible.”

“He is, isn’t he?” she said shamelessly. “But he’s half yours so—” She took a few faltering steps toward him, then hesitated, not sure if he was ready to close the distance. The things he’d shared had been hard for him. She’d had to pull the details like teeth and there wasn’t any anesthetic for things like this.

He met her halfway, his strong hands reaching out to take hers in a gentle grip. Her own clenched convulsively, grasping for something more than his steady strength, even though she knew she should be satisfied with that. It should be enough.

Pressing her trembling lips into a line, she searched his face.

He didn’t like it and looked away, obviously not comfortable with her need for reassurance. She dipped her head, suffering another wave of doubt that he’d ever open his heart to her.

“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly. “I should have told you myself, not left it so you’d find out like that. It was like what happened last night, when Gideon told Androu not to touch the light socket and that just made him more aware of them. I didn’t want to put the idea into your head.”

“That I could have an affair with Demitri? He floated that balloon years ago and I stabbed it with a pen.”

Theo snorted, thumbs stroking over her knuckles. “I don’t know why he has to behave like such an ass.”

“You and Adara hold your lives under tight control. If he turns things upside down he gains the upper hand.”

“Now how did you see that and I never have?” He leaned back to absorb that.

“You’ve spent so many years putting up shields, you can’t always see past them.”

He blinked in surprise, seeming disconcerted. “But you can.”

“Sometimes,” she said warily. “Does that bother you?”

He drew a deep breath. “It’s not comfortable.” His hands tightened on hers and he looked into her eyes, even though he winced as he did it, like it was a kind of torture to let her see inside him. “But...” He swallowed, then, “I trust you, Jaya. I know you’re not going to use anything I tell you to hurt me.”

His grip crushed her hands, but she didn’t think he was aware of it. She squeezed back, feeling they stood on a precipice that, if they took this leap of faith, they could land in new, rich, broad territory.

“I would never want to hurt you. Not ever,” she promised, then held her breath.

Bringing her hand to his mouth, he ran the knuckle of her ring finger along his lips. His breath clouded warmly against her skin as he spoke, making her wrist tingle.

“I think half the reason I still speak to Demitri after what he did is gratitude. Ultimately he got me out of a situation I didn’t want.”

“Really?” This didn’t seem the deep confidence she half expected. “Do you think he did it on purpose?” she asked, wondering if that was digging too deep.

“Hell, no. He’d never show that kind of forethought, but he created the excuse and I was glad. Swear to me you’ll never reveal that to him.”

A giggle escaped her, part relief, part joy that he was confiding in her a little. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

He took a deep breath and looked down on her with something like pride and...affection? His expression had softened into amusement and tenderness. It almost looked like happiness and made her warm all the way to the soles of her feet. He was solemn as he cradled her face and caressed her cheek with the pad of his thumb.

“I can’t wait to marry you.”

“Really?” She wanted to smile, but she was dissolving under his look and couldn’t seem to hold any part of herself steady. “Because I thought it was you at first, when Demitri came in. He made out with that woman right there in front of me and I thought for a horrible second it was you and we were finished. I was devastated,” she admitted.

His mellow smile faded. “I’ll kill him.”

Her turn to set a hand against his smooth cheek, freshly shaved and smelling of something tangy and fresh. “But then I realized it couldn’t be you because you’d never do that to me. I never expected I’d be able to trust a man this much, Theo. I wish I could tell you what a gift you’ve given me with that.” She slid her other hand up his chest and around his neck so her breasts pressed into the hardness of his chest and her damp lips touched his ultra-smooth jaw.

He gathered her in, crushing her close in tight arms and releasing a shuddering breath against her ear.

They sought each other’s mouths, colliding with practiced alignment, parted lips meeting and sealing, plunging her into a dark jungle of sultry heat and velvet sensations. Combing her fingers up the back of his head, she reveled in the short, freshly cut strands, the new haircut, exactly as he’d promised. The thought made her want to smile but he was kissing her too intently.

He rasped his tongue down her neck, one hand palming her breast, making intense sensations race into her loins. She clenched to contain the deliciousness there.

This was moving fast and a distant part of her wondered if she should be worried about that, but desire flowed through her veins in rivers of lava, making her burn for him.

“God, Jaya,” he groaned, stilling her rocking hips against the hard ridge of his erection. “The next two days are going to kill me.”

“Oh, Theo, I don’t want to wait anymo—oh!”

He scooped her up, his strength like a conqueror’s as he bounced her into a high clasp against his chest, his arousal evident in the flush on his cheekbones and the sheen on his feral half grin. “If you’re not going to stop me, then I won’t.”

She slid her hand from his shoulder to his ear, pulling herself close enough to kiss where his pulse pounded like a hammer in his throat.

As he started down the hall, two sounds halted him: Zephyr’s cry and a knock on the penthouse door.

He swore and she softly wailed, “Nooooo,” as he let her feet slide to the floor.

“That’s your family, isn’t it?” His gruff voice was rueful. “Better now than in five minutes when we would have been naked. I’ll get Zeph. I need to pull myself together.”

Snickering, she kissed his chin and started to walk away. He yanked her back for another deep swift kiss that included a taste of France. Dazzled, she bounced off the wall on her way to greet her guests.

* * *

Despite his sexual frustration, which was more acute than he’d ever thought he could bear, Theo was riding a natural high. Jaya still wanted to marry him.

He hadn’t consciously been aware of that niggling concern. She always responded so sweetly to him and even though they had their differences, they always seemed to work through them. Still, a voice inside him had kept harping that he wasn’t enough.

She thought he was a gift, though, because she could trust him. He swelled with pride knowing how hard-won that kind of reliance was for her. The determination to protect her ran through him on a current of reverence and resolve. In a few days he would pledge to uphold her faith in him and he’d do it with every fiber of his being.


Speaking of gifts...

Lifting his freshly diapered son to eye level, he took a moment to absorb the awe of fatherhood. While the magnitude of responsibility still scared him, and he wasn’t yet a hundred percent confident he’d be everything Zephyr needed, he was learning. For most of his life, he’d been driven by the need to be perfect so he wouldn’t catch hell. Now, he yearned to do well so he could be a better father than he’d had.

“That sets the bar pretty low, doesn’t it?” he murmured to his son before he kissed the boy’s forehead and carried him out to the main lounge.

Heated voices speaking Punjabi fell into a wall of blistering silence when he appeared. He’d picked up a few words from Jaya and was working on a speech for the wedding, but he wasn’t good enough with the language to follow any of what had been said even if he’d properly heard it.

He was the last man to judge a family for dysfunction, but Jaya had seemed to be making progress with them. Her tone had been growing lighter of heart when she’d spoken of them while travel and wedding plans had fallen into place. He had been counting on her finding some emotional fulfillment through her relationship with her mother and sister to compensate for his own lack. It was important to him that he not cheat her of love, that he give her every chance for it since he couldn’t provide it himself.

This wasn’t love, though. This was a tight army of angry young men backing up a grizzled bear with a thick gray beard. Two older women sat on the sofa, one in green, the other in blue. They bookended a young woman in yellow and a dazed older man. Their clothing seemed extra-colorful against the white leather of the furnishings, their expressions taxed. The women seemed to be trying to make themselves smaller while the young men puffed up their chests under crossed arms.

Jaya stood apart from all of them, her anxiety palpable. The way she dropped her gaze after an initial tense glance at him seemed almost apologetic.

Theo mentally swore. He might have been swimming naked through these sorts of shark-infested undercurrents all his life, but he’d never grown comfortable in them.

“Welcome,” he managed in Punjabi, then zeroed in on the woman beside the frail, confused looking man who must be Jaya’s father.

“Jaya has been eager to see you all.” He hoped that wasn’t overstepping. He hated it when people tried to talk for him. Forcing himself to move forward even though his joints felt rusted, he added, “This young man has been waiting to meet his Naniji, which is...Gurditta?”

He guessed correctly at the woman in the green sari.

Jaya’s mother gasped and stopped dabbing a tissue into her eye, dropping it away so she could pull Zephyr into her lap. Her tears turned to joy as she gathered up the wiggling boy like a bundle of laundry that wanted to drop socks.

Whatever dark cloud had been hovering broke into beams of sunlight for a second as Jaya drank in the sight of her mother holding her son. Then she glanced at the bearded man with a mix of defiance, resentment and—Theo’s heart took it like a stiletto—a remnant of shame.

Before he realized what he was doing, he had moved to her side and set a firm arm across her back. Belatedly, he wondered if his hand on her hip might be a familiarity that would repel someone with traditional views, but he needed her to know she wasn’t alone. They needed to know if they insulted her, they insulted him, and he was not a na?ve girl working in a call center.

“Thank you for coming,” he said, falling back on manners because it was one of his few fail-safe strategies in a passive-aggressive confrontation like this. “I imagine you’re tired from the flight. My sister has planned a reception for the families to meet this evening, but you have a few hours to rest.”

Jaya’s uncle, because that’s who the hard-ass old grouch had to be, said something in Punjabi.

Theo looked to her. She had said they all spoke at least a little English and that her father would be the toughest to communicate with because of his injury.

With a level stare that looked through the line of young men, she said, “They object.”

“To sleeping here? Because we’re not married? I’m staying in another suite,” he assured them. “My family owns the hotel. We have other rooms.”

A snort from one of the men almost overrode what Jaya said, her voice quiet and uneven. “It’s the marriage they don’t support.”

A quick blast of Punjabi came at her from her uncle.

She said something back, speaking firmly, but Theo could feel the tension in her was so acute she threatened to shatter.

“You’re too rich, man,” one of the young men blurted. “Look at my father. We can’t pay a dowry that would keep you living like this.” He waved at the opulence of the Makricosta Olympus suite. “Jaya should have known better than to agree. Are you that angry with our uncle you’d ruin him?” he demanded of her.

Jaya started to respond, but Theo gently squeezed her into silence, his fury nearly blinding him. It took everything he had to remain calm and civilized. He hated confrontation, but he’d been serious about fighting to the death for her.

“Dowries are illegal. I brought you here because Jaya wished to have her family at our wedding. If you leave, that will hurt her. I can’t allow that.” He held first her brother’s gaze, then her uncle’s.

Into the silence, her father said, “Jaya?” He patted Zephyr’s leg and smiled.

Jaya drew a sharp breath and said, “Yes, he’s mine.” She drew Theo forward and crouched to the floor so it would be easier for her father to see her. She spoke slowly in Punjabi to him, something about their wedding and then she introduced Theo as her groom, straightening to stand beside him with pride.

Theo drew her close while the old man studied them. He felt on trial as he used the Punjabi he was still learning to ask her parents for their blessing.

She tilted her smile up to him, her pride in him almost too much to withstand.

When her father nodded, Jaya dissolved into happy tears, first kissing her father then wrapping her arms around Theo so tightly he could barely breathe.

He looked over her head at her brother, still twitching at all the animosity hovering in the room, but bearing it, for her. “I intend to take care of your parents. Leave if you wish, but if you’d like to hear the arrangements you should stay. Now, Jaya.” He coaxed her to show her damp face. “Would you please introduce me to the rest of your family?”

* * *

As the days of celebration raged, Jaya agonized over whether it was too much for Theo. They hadn’t gone with a full-out Indian wedding, but there was enough to be overwhelming.

That’s why it surprised her he spent an hour with her male relatives without telling her. Then she was even more annoyed when her brother told her it had been about his arrangements for their parents.

“Every time Uncle raised an objection, Theo said, ‘I thought of that, but...’ Uncle underestimated him. We all underestimated you.” He eyed her like he couldn’t imagine how his disreputable sister had landed such a catch.

She quizzed Theo later on when he’d turned into a chauvinist and why he’d kept her from a meeting that impacted her.

“Two reasons,” he said without apology. “First, I wanted your uncle to know that he can’t manipulate you with guilt or fear any longer. You won’t be padding his life with your earnings because I will provide your parents with their own home and income and a care aid for your father. If your uncle finds himself suffering financially, and needs to ask you for help, that will be at your discretion. You have the power now, not him.”


“Oh.” She was too overwhelmed by the sense of shackles falling off her body to know what else to say. “And the other reason?”

“I’m so angry with the way he treated you, I don’t want you in the same room with him.”

She didn’t cross paths with her uncle much. All of them were so busy with the nearly two hundred guests that swelled the hotel to capacity. Cousins from both sides took over the two lower floors, work associates of the Makricostas’ flew in from all four corners, and friends of Jaya’s arrived wide-eyed with awe from Bali and Marseilles. Quentin and Bina were the last to arrive and Theo arranged for them to stay with his family, knowing there might be awkwardness with Jaya’s.

It was a heart wrenching moment when Jaya’s aunt, Saranya’s mother, greeted Bina with open arms. Jaya grew tearful during the reception, recalling the way the little girl had broken down in her grandmother’s arms, both of them united in grief. Bina had missed out on so much living in Saranya’s exile, but her family connections were being restored now. Saranya would have been so happy.

“Jaya,” she heard near her ear just before a broad hand settled on her waist and Theo’s wide shoulders loomed to block out the Grand Ballroom. “Are you okay?”

She nodded and smiled through her tears. “Just wishing Saranya could be here to see how happy you’ve made me. You’ve given me back my family, Theo. They’re healing rifts that have broken us apart for years. Thank you.”

“I wanted that for you.” His smile was so tender, she barely felt the knife of knowing he deliberately surrounded her with love from other sources so she wouldn’t miss his.

“But you didn’t expect all this, did you?” she said, sheepish at how she’d taken him at his word and put together a wedding that married their two cultures as well as themselves.

He glanced around the room draped in red silk curtains. Gold beads dangled in strings from the ceiling like sunlight caught in raindrops. Children were trying out the bride and groom’s thronelike chairs under the floral covered mandap. Brilliant saris competed with designer gowns as people danced and stole exotic treats from the circulating waiters.

“This is definitely more socializing than I can typically swallow, but I’m not sorry. Everything is very beautiful.” His gaze came back to her, his admiration evident in his slow, studied perusal. “Especially you. I don’t know why I never pictured you like this, so exotic. You’re breathtaking.” His gaze paused on the pendant of her maang tikka dangling off the line of pearls in the part in her hair.

“You must feel like you’ve married a stranger.” She lifted a hand to check her red-and-gold headscarf hadn’t slipped. His gaze followed the sound of her abundant gold bangles clattering against the red and faux ivory ones anchored on her wrist. She felt like a pack mule, she wore so much heavy, ornate jewelry.

He looked striking himself, not wearing a turban or pyjama, but he was carrying a sword over his white morning coat.

“Thank you for including Adara and Rowan in the henna party. When they heard it was supposed to be only for the bride’s family, they were devastated.”

“They’re my friends. Of course I would invite them.” In truth, they were quickly becoming as close as sisters to her. “Did they tell you I could barely make it through having my feet painted?” All the women had bonded with laughter when it turned out Jaya’s feet were so ticklish, she’d had to keep stopping the artist and making her work on others until she could withstand another few minutes of torture.

“They said my initials are hidden somewhere in the design. I can’t wait to look for them.” His smoky voice poured a wash of electric tingles over her.

She ducked her head, embarrassed by how badly she was anticipating being alone with him. Naked. It had been almost two years and so much had changed, her body, her feelings for him. They ran so deep now. If the henna artist was right about the color representing how intense her feelings for her husband were, her tattoos should last years.

He caressed the sensitive skin beneath her ear and along her nape, leaning in to ask, “When can we leave?”

A punch of unfettered desire clenched her middle. Her shoulder burned under the weight of his hand resting there. When he grazed his lips against her cheek her throat locked, she was so overcome by hunger.

“You’re killing me,” he said in a loaded voice. “Tell me. An hour? How much longer?”

She couldn’t speak, could only lift her face so he could see how helpless she was to the feelings he incited in her. A muted ringing filled her ears and she realized it was her, trembling amid all this fine gold.

His tormented expression hardened into fierce excitement. “Now.”

If he had swung her into his arms, she wouldn’t have felt more swept away. He turned them toward the room and she wished they could disappear without speaking to anyone. This passion between them was nothing she felt shame over, but it was too personal and concentrated to endure a gauntlet of teasing over it.

Before they could move, Demitri lurched in front of them, unkempt, wearing a smear of lipstick on his cheek. “Hey, I’m ready to claim my dance with the bride.”

“Too late,” Theo said with only a hint of smugness. He waved away whatever Demitri tried to say. “Redeem yourself by making our excuses. We’re leaving.”

She thought Demitri might have tried to say something, but Theo stole her out a side exit. From there they broke into a run like schoolchildren and were both laughing and breathless when they tumbled into the elevator.

“We should at least say goodbye to Zephyr,” she protested as Theo crowded her into a corner, his grin so boyish and lighthearted she grew dizzy.

“If there’s any male getting more attention from women than my brother this week, it’s our son. He won’t miss us.”

Curling his fists against the walls of the elevator, caging her in, he inhaled deeply without actually touching her, then growled in frustration when the elevator stopped, jarring them both into a small stagger.

“I know I’ll appreciate the privacy once we get to Rosedale, but right now it’s too damned far away.” He pushed back and held the doors for her.

The wind had come up and whipped around them as they crossed to the helicopter. A uniformed pilot touched his cap as he helped Jaya up the stairs.

“You’re not driving?” she asked Theo.

He gave her a look as he settled beside her in the passenger cabin. “We call it piloting,” he drawled, accepting a glass of champagne from the flight attendant that he passed to Jaya, but declined for himself. He picked up her free hand and set a playful bite on the knuckle of her ring finger. “I knew I’d only be thinking of you at this point. Not the right headspace for getting us anywhere alive. This is Nic’s crew. They make the trip all the time. Plus, all the pre-flights are done.”

She saw the advantage to that as they lifted off the second her seat belt clicked into place. The attendant moved to the copilot’s seat and lowered the lights. Minutes later they were high enough and far enough away that the city and sky blended into a blanket of pinprick lights. The moon sat fat and smiling a bluish glow.

Theo touched her chin, bringing her around from staring into the silver-laced waves and captured her mouth with the velvet heat of his. She opened to his pressure, tongue seeking the dampness of his, their union   growing deep and wet between one startled breath and the next. Her hand sought the back of his head, urging him to kiss her harder as waves of delicious heat rolled down to the center of her, flooding sensations between her thighs, making her ache.


They were in another world, a bubble of white noise and shadow, straining against their belts as they twisted to be closer. She brushed at the lapel of his jacket, burrowing to his vest and seeking a way past it only to be thwarted by the silk of his shirt.

He groaned and skimmed his hand from her knee up her thigh, over her waist and cupped her breast, thumb circling over silk to tease her nipple. She wriggled in her seat, the erotic sensations building in her loins so intense she gasped and pulled away.

“Please stop.”

“Damn, I’m sorry.” He sat back, his face stark with self-recrimination as he closed his hands into fists on his armrests. “I misread you.”

“No, you didn’t.” She threw her arm across him, face tilted against his shoulder so her whispered words could reach his ear over the din of the helicopter blades. “I’m afraid I’m going to...I can’t. Not here, like this, with people right there who might know.”

Theo’s hands opened to clench into the ends of his armrests. She could feel the strain and flex in his biceps and across his chest as he nearly rent the crash-proof seats apart. His head tilted back and the sound he made was animalistic, somewhere between fury and helplessness.

When she started to pull back in alarm, he trapped her hand against his chest where his heart slammed. They sat like that until the bird landed on the lawn of a dark estate. An English mansion waited with stately patience, seeming out of place on this Greek island, but who cared? It was Nic and Rowan’s home, a gift of privacy for their wedding night, but Jaya barely saw any of it as Theo whisked her up the steps, past a housekeeper who said something about calling if they needed anything and practically booted her out the door.

“Are you cross? You seem angry,” Jaya said, backing away from him in the dimly lit lounge.

“Because I almost lost it up there along with you? Hell, no, I’m going insane.” He dragged at his clothes, shedding sword and bowtie and shoes as he stalked her. “Are you afraid of me right now?”

“What? No, not really, but—oh!” She came up against the bottom stair, surprised he’d steered her this way. “You seem really, um... What if the housekeeper comes back and finds your clothes all over the house like this?”

“She won’t come back uninvited.” His vest hit the floor. “Keep going.” He jerked his chin at the upper floor, urging her to back up the stairs.

“You’re kind of being, um...” She didn’t know what the word was, but he was making her nervous. Not genuinely afraid, but she knew what a small animal felt like when stalked by a cat.

“Aggressive?” he prompted. “Impatient? I’m trusting you, my lovely bride. Keep going. One of these bedrooms is made up for us.”

“Trusting me? To what?” She hurried down the hall ahead of him, sending anxious glances over her shoulder as he followed at an implacable pace. “What do you mean? Oh! It’s so nice of them to do this...”

She entered an expansive bedroom where the scent of the sea wafted in through open balcony doors with the sensual push of each wave reaching for shore. Tea lights floated in glass globes of colored water, bringing a magical glow to the white sheets and sheer curtains around the canopied bed. An array of treats awaited on a side table beneath silver covers, but she didn’t lift the lids, too aware of the half-naked man, his hands lowering his fly as he stepped through the door and left it half-open.

The low light burnished his muscled chest and flat stomach, accentuating his abs. She found herself shaking too much with excitement to be able to remove so much as her grandmother’s heavy ring from her forefinger.

Theo moved toward her like he was a missile finding its target. His chest filled her vision and his aggressive masculine scent filled her nostrils, making her dizzy. Without thinking, she impulsively smoothed the narrow line of hair that arrowed down the center of his torso to his navel and lower to the exposed skin behind his loosened fly.

“I, um, don’t know what you mean about trusting me,” she said.

He sucked in a breath that pulled all his stomach muscles taut. He cupped the side of her face and made her look at him.

“I’m trusting you to tell me if I’m coming on too strong. Have you reached your limit? You’re shaking.”

“No! I want to touch you and be naked and feel you all over me but look at me! I can’t get out of any of this on my own and—”

He kissed her, hard and fierce, the thrust of his tongue forceful, but so welcome, so good. She sucked on him, wanting to eat him alive. They’d been kissing and fondling and teasing for weeks. Her dreams had been full of how he felt thrusting inside her. She couldn’t wait any longer. Modesty didn’t enter into it. Instinct took over.

With a grunt of hunger he backed toward the bed and sat, pulling her to straddle his legs, gathering her sari and underskirt as he pulled her into his lap. She knelt with her knees parted to hug his hips. The position put her eye to eye with him, mouth to mouth. They never stopped kissing and she couldn’t stop soaking in the feel of his skin with her splayed hands. Tiny noises escaped her, like an abandoned kitten then more of a purr when his hot hands slid up to cup the globes of her buttocks. She wriggled in his hold, loving the intimacy of it, wanting him to know how much pleasure his touch gave her.

Her whole body was filling with heat and excitement, blossoming like a flower coated in dew and sunlight.

With a ragged moan, he snapped her underpants, surprising her into gasping and lifting in surprise. He tugged them away and threw them to the floor then freed himself. She reached for the thrusting flesh he revealed, circling him with tentative fingers, reacquainting with the warm satin over hot steel.

The world contracted to this small circle of light where one man and one woman consummated their marriage, harsh breaths mingling as she helped him roll on a condom.

Wordlessly he guided her to lift and be open for him. She let her eyes drift closed as he guided his straining head to rub and tease. Soft gasps of anticipation escaped her and she dug her nails into his shoulders.

When she started to take him in, he gathered her swollen, aching breasts in two hard hands and bit through her sari at her nipples, making her cry out and arch, desperate for penetration. As she let her weight sink down, as her wet, ready sheath swallowed him, he dropped his head back and snarled at the ceiling.

Smiling, she scraped her nails across his chest and worked herself to find the tightest fit against him, heart expanding with joy at each pulse of his hard muscle inside her. He dug his hands through silk to snug her tighter and tighter still, causing delicate explosions as the right place was touched again and again.

They kissed, deep, sumptuous kisses, rocking themselves into ownership of each other’s body. Soon their movements exaggerated, pulling away and coming together with more force. She had never ridden a horse, but she rode her husband, using her thigh muscles to rise and fall on exquisite impalement, feeling the strain in him as he balanced on the edge of the mattress, sweaty and strong beneath her, holding himself steady to let her set their pace. His breaths rang with strain and his chest and shoulder muscles bunched with tension. When her stamina began to fail, his hands grasped her hips and kept her rhythm steady so they approached the crisis together.

“Theo! I’m—” Her world was coming apart at the seams.

“Me, too. Now, Jaya. Let me feel you—ah, yes. Like that. Ah, yes, yes!”


She imploded then expanded like a supernova, his pulsing completion within her shooting her into a realm where they were one experience, one person. One.

* * *

Draped naked on her stomach across the bed, she lay acquiescent as her husband kissed and stroked his way around the henna on her feet and lower legs. Every few minutes he ran a playful fingertip down the sole of her foot or nuzzled too softly at her ankle—he almost got a reflexive kick in the eye for that one—but he was enjoying himself so she tried to withstand the tickling.

“Here,” he finally said, kissing hotly inside her calf.

“Are you sure?” She sat up, scooping the edge of the sheet for a shred of modesty, then studied the scrolled T.M. “Should I have it tattooed there permanently?”

“Would you?” he asked. He was so sexy with his rakish stubble and relaxed grin, propped on an elbow and completely at ease in his nudity. He took her breath.

“If you’d like. Unless you have a different favorite spot?” The flirting came naturally after hours of physical contact that bordered on debauchery. They couldn’t seem to get enough of each other, whether they were in the bed, against the shower wall, or on the sideboard. Morning was firmly coming alive outside. Birds sang and the air had gone from crisp to soft. The helicopter would be returning them to Athens by late afternoon, but they were very much still on their one-night honeymoon.

Lazy brown eyes perused her from hairline to toenails. “It’s all my favorite.”

“I never thought I’d be like this,” she admitted. “Naked and comfortable with a man. I thought I’d have hang-ups forever. Thank you for making this so good for me.” She tilted forward to touch her mouth to his.

“I’m not being too demanding? You would tell me if you’re tender, wouldn’t you? I look back on our night in Bali and it was incredible, but damn, I was stiff the next day. You should have told me to back off.”

“Why didn’t you put on the brakes?”

“Because I didn’t want that night to end.”

She smiled, feeling secretive and womanly and desired. “Neither did I.”

“I’ve never had second chances before.” He smoothed her hair behind her ear. The somber gratitude reflected in his eyes warmed her heart. “Don’t let me screw this up. Tell me what I need to do to make this work, okay?”

Love me, she thought, feeling a pinch in her heart, but it wasn’t something either of them could control. It would happen or not. Still, when he took his time caressing and kissing her, when their bodies writhed together in sensual perfection, she felt loved.

Seeking that, she eased onto her back, pulling him with her. “I’m the inexperienced one,” she reminded. “You’re supposed to be the one who knows how to make this work.”

He flashed a grin, brief and endearingly playful. “If this is all I have to do, our marriage will be a cake walk.”