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“Atlas is his own person, Pappa. He’s not asking Grettina to controlyou, is he?” She managed to keep her voice steady even though her heart shook in her chest.
As her father looked fit to blow, Elijah stood. “I should get back to studying. I have an exam tomorrow. Let me take you home, Pappa.”
After a potent silence, Pappa threw his napkin over his plate. “In yournewcar?” He sent another scathing glance at Stella, who had purchased it for her brother so he could get to Grettina at a moment’s notice, if necessary.
Stella kept a look of equanimity on her face and rose to embrace her brother, thanking him for coming and, in a quiet look of understanding, for taking so much of the burden of their father on himself.
After Pappa was gone, the crackle of tension noticeably dissipated. They visited a little longer with Grettina. When they were preparing to leave, one of the twins shyly asked Atlas, “Can we visit you, too?”
“Of course. Do you like to swim? We have a pool,” Atlas said.
“Oh, dear,” Grettina chided. “I’ll never hear the end of it until we see it.” As she hugged Stella, she whispered, “I like him. I’m happy for you.”
“Thank you. And you don’t have to bring the twins,” she urged Grettina. “We could take them for a week and you could take time for you.”
“I wouldn’t know what to do with it,” Grettina dismissed.
Stella let it go, but would press her again when things calmed down.
“Thank you,” she said to Atlas when they were in the air, on the way to Australia. “I know that wasn’t pleasant, dealing with my father.” She was still mortified.
“My father hasn’t even spoken to you yet,” he reminded her, mouth thin with disgust.
“I worry that marrying you wasn’t enough to hold up my side of our bargain, though. You’re doing all these things for me, making it possible for me to look after my family. You’re ready to protect them yourself, but you don’t have what you were trying to get.”
“DVE? That’ll come.” He spoke with offhand confidence, but now he was looking at her in the way that made her skin feel too tight. “I definitely have what I wanted, though.” He leaned over and set a lazy, inciting kiss on her mouth. “Shall we go into the stateroom?”
They did, and undressed without ceremony, pulling back the covers to sprawl across the bed.
She released a sigh of pleasure at the simple act of lying naked with him, lazily kissing and caressing. She had thought their first few times were powerful and wonderful—often intense and mind-blowing—but it kept getting better. She was more confident now, sliding her thigh against the outside of his, arching and licking into his mouth, enjoying how he hardened against the thatch between her legs.
He knew how hard he could suck her nipple and that he could dominate her with the hot iron of his body pressed over hers. He knew how to caress her and when she was ready for him to push her legs open and thrust deep.
She gasped, eyelids fluttering at the electrified sensations.
“Too hard?”
“Perfect.” She danced her fingers along his ear and the back of his neck, tilting her hips so he was seated as deeply as she could take him. Then she opened her eyes, finding him watching her with a glittering look that was carnal and possessive.
“You could have had this without the ring,” she murmured. “It’s what I wanted, too.”
“I like the commitment.” The weight of his hips pinned hers while he trapped her hand to the mattress by weaving his fingers between her own, flexing his grip so they both felt the hard gold of her wedding band against her tender skin. “I like knowing you’re mine.” His mouth twisted. “That’s a primitive a thing to say, I know.”
“I think I was yours the moment I saw you,” she admitted, feeling defenseless as she admitted it, but it was true. She wasn’t just falling in love with him. She was deeply in love with him. Irrevocably. “It scares me how much I want to be with you. To be yours.”
He drew in a breath that swelled his chest, eyes glittering with satisfaction, but flashing, too. “Why does it scare you?”
“Because I fought really hard to support myself and feel secure and confident on my own. Now…” Now she was dependent on him in so many ways.
“You don’t trust me to look after you?” His expression grew taut with dismay.
“I do,” she said, but even she heard the hesitation in her voice.
His eyes narrowed.
“I believe I can trust you,” she amended. “Sometimes I think I’m losing myself, though. In you. Us. I don’t think it’s the same for you. That feels unequal. A lot of this feels unequal.” He possessed her heart, but he wasn’t offering his own.
He murmured something and let his head drop so he could feather his lips against the edge of her jaw, almost an apology.