Awaken to Pleasure (5 page)

“Sooooo mad.” She had to tilt her head back to look up
at him. The position made her vividly aware of his size and power. He was so hot and alive. So male that it made the woman in her whimper for things she knew nothing about.

The moment stretched and she saw desire begin to warm those Italian-dark eyes. Involuntarily, fear shivered through her. His tenderness last night hadn’t been enough to destroy scars she’d carried since childhood. He removed his hands, his face tensing, all angles and harsh shadows.

“If we marry, I won’t force anything on you.” He paused, as if making a decision. “But, I do wish for something from this marriage.”

“What?” At last, she thought, a reason behind this improbable proposal.

“A baby.” His eyes were fathomless. “If we can beat your fear and have sex, I don’t want you using protection.”

Taylor was momentarily silenced, stunned by the request. Despite the newly awakened desire between them, why would he ask this of her, a woman who could barely allow him a kiss? Maybe he didn’t understand the extent of her fear. She would marry him to keep Nick but she wouldn’t trick him. He had to know that her problems ran deep.

“I may never be able to give you what you want. Are you willing to never father a child?” She had to make him understand that this wasn’t something that would pass easily. It might never pass. Even if they managed to overcome her fear of intimacy, having children terrified her for a much more painful reason. After witnessing her mother’s despair, she wasn’t sure if she could ever make herself that vulnerable to a man. Even a man like Jackson.

At that moment, Jackson felt dark, nameless emotions rock his soul. Taylor was asking him to make a choice—her or a child. It was a choice that he’d made easily standing over Bonnie’s grave, but applied to this honest blue-eyed woman, it seemed terribly wrong. “You are
right, I am not.” The words were torn out of him. “How about we give ourselves a year? If there is no child, then we will part.”

It hurt him to say that, going against all of his vows that he would not have marriage after short marriage like the rest of his family. But he’d buried one child who’d never had a chance to be born. He needed to replace that memory with one of a healthy
bambino.
The problem was, in his imagination, all his children had Taylor’s blue eyes. How could he possibly walk away from her if she didn’t allow him to touch her? And yet, how could he not?

Taylor’s next question was subdued, as if she hadn’t expected the time limit. “And Nick?”

“I think we can fix things so that Lance has no chance, even if we’re not together.” He looked at her and said bluntly, “Tell me the reason behind your fear of sex.”

Taylor put her hands on his hard chest, dismayed at her disappointment. She should’ve been celebrating a husband who only wanted a child from her, not love. Or had she cherished some hidden dream of a far more romantic proposal? If she had, it had been a girlish fancy. A bargain like this was far safer. Romance and love died but Jackson Santorini would never renege on an agreement.

“It’s not you. Please know that,” she said, at last.

His scowl made him look more like a mobster than ever. “Was it someone your mother brought home?” His voice had dropped an octave into the deep and menacing range. He put his hands around her waist again, and this time the warmth and weight of them calmed her.

She swallowed. “It was a maintenance man.” Her voice shook as she revealed something she’d never told anyone. There was more, much more, but she didn’t have the courage to tell him the whole truth at once.

“What did he do?” Jackson’s voice rasped and the hands
on her hips pulled her closer, as if he couldn’t stop the protective movement. She went, glad to be near his warmth.

“I…developed around fourteen. That was when he started staring at me. I didn’t know what that look meant then, hadn’t learned.” It mattered that Jackson understand, that he didn’t look at her with those icy eyes when she couldn’t respond beyond the most innocent caresses, because she cared what he thought of her. “He followed me to the laundry room. I thought he was going to fix a broken machine.” Even now, she could feel her fear when she’d finally realized that he was just standing there in the corner, watching her, eyes slimy.

“When I tried to go up the stairs after I loaded the machine…he stalked me until I starting backing up. I dropped the basket and tried to get away but he—he grabbed me and pushed me hard against a linen closet down there.” Tears streaked down her face and she was that terrified young girl again. “I was so scared. He said he could understand my fear. He’d teach me not to be afraid. He’d make me like it. And you know what made it worse?”

“Tell me,
piccola.”
One big hand was stroking her hair, while the other was pressed flat on her lower back.

“I kind of had a crush on him before that. He was a university student working part-time. Good-looking. Smart.” She pressed her cheek against Jackson’s chest, wrapping her arms around his waist. “I didn’t think he’d be vicious like Lance was to my mother. God, I was a fool.” She took a gasping breath and admitted the most horrible part of it. “It was my first kiss. He split the inside of my lip. The bruises on my arms and back didn’t fade for weeks.”

“Taylor.”
Jackson’s voice was gruff, giving her permission to end this if it hurt too much.

She couldn’t stop now. “He was pressed up against me and I could feel him…being aroused. I fought but he was too
strong. I thought he’d keep hurting me but then someone came down the stairs. He’d forgotten to lock the door.”

“You had a chance to escape?”

“Yes.” She’d thanked God over and over while she’d thrown up in the bathroom.

“Did he touch you again?” The quiet rage in Jackson’s voice somehow soothed her.

She shook her head against him, unwilling to lose the steady sound of his heartbeat. “He watched me but I stopped going anywhere in the building by myself. I encouraged the children in the other apartments to tag along everywhere. Gra—the maintenance guy couldn’t risk offending their families by scaring them off. Some of their parents wouldn’t have thought twice about taking care of him.”

“Grant? Grant who?” Jackson demanded.

“I won’t let you get in trouble.” She set her jaw.

“I promise you I won’t. But I need to do something—you didn’t let me have Donald.” There was such ferocious anger in his request that she worried about him.

“No!”

“Cara mia,
please.”

She bit her lip, undone by the softly spoken endearment. Sometimes she forgot that Jackson’s father was Italian, but right now, she could very well believe that this man came from a land that believed in vengeance and an eye for an eye. “I can’t prove it.”

“You don’t need to prove it to me other than by your words and I am the only one who matters.” He was holding her so close, so very close, but she wasn’t afraid. There was just some part of her that refused to place him in the same category as other men. Did that make her a fool, or was she being given a precious chance to fight the lessons of the past and seize something glorious?

“Grant Layton.” It was too hard to resist the temptation to tell the one man who’d ever cared about her.

“Thank you,
piccola.
Thank you.” His embrace tightened, his potent masculinity surrounding her.

Close contact didn’t scare her. It was only when anything sexual happened that she was that fourteen-year-old again, backed up against the door of the cupboard, with the handle digging into her back. Her mind had been black with fear and betrayal as the object of her teenage crush had destroyed her innocence before it had a chance to blossom. But perhaps her childhood heart might’ve recovered from that, if something worse hadn’t happened.

Jackson’s hand moved up and down her spine, soothing strokes that relaxed her. “Thank you for telling me.”

“You had to know,” she whispered. “I won’t steal your happiness to find my own. I’d run with Nick before I’d do that.” He deserved better than a woman so damaged she’d resigned herself to a lifetime of loneliness.

“You’re traumatized.” He kept stroking her. “We can get you counseling if you want.”

She started shaking her head before he could finish. “The thought of exposing my thoughts for a stranger to pick through…no. I’d rather trust you with my secrets.”

He was silent for a long time and she thought that she’d asked too much of this man who guarded his emotions so carefully. He’d offered her a pragmatic bargain. There had been no mention of gentler, softer feelings.

“I am honored.” His heart thudded under her cheek. “But, I might not be the best choice. I want you.”

“Will you force me?”

“Never.”

“In my heart, I’ve always known that.”

Jackson was stunned by that calm acceptance of his promise when he was starting to see that Taylor had experienced
only fear and violence from the men in her life. She hadn’t said anything to indicate further abuse, but if the young maintenance man had noticed her developing beauty, what had other, older men noticed? And what had they done to his sweet Taylor? He stifled his questions for the moment, aware that she was emotionally wrung out. “How?” he asked instead.

A pause, then, “You might hurt me with indifference and coldness but you’d never physically abuse me.”

He winced at her honest response. “I’m not indifferent to you.” But he was a cold man. He’d had to become one to survive his solitary childhood and then Bonnie. The last blow had been the loss of his child.

He needed Taylor’s fire as his anchor against the coldness swallowing him alive, needed her to be the candle in the darkness that brought him back home. And though he’d never let her know, he needed her love. Because he did, he fought for her. “I will always be there for you, but I know of a therapist who specializes in sexual trauma.” He’d made it his business to find out that information earlier today.

Taylor tensed. “I don’t know…”

“Can you try,
cara?
She might help you in ways I have no knowledge of.” His need to encourage her spirit overcame his desire to
be
her strength. Faced with her pain, his first instinct would be to reassure and shield, possibly thwarting her recovery. The therapist would be far tougher, forcing Taylor to use the courage that had let her successfully raise a child, to heal herself.

This time, it was her hand that stroked his spine. “I’ll try…we can learn together.”

What was she offering to teach him? He didn’t care. He’d take whatever she could give him. It was a disturbing thought.

T
aylor awoke in Jackson’s guest bedroom on Sunday morning, wearing his big white shirt. Rain beat overhead, a rough lullaby that signaled the return of the storm. Warm and comfortable, she had no desire to rise.

A sharp knock on her door made her scowl. “Come in.”

Jackson pushed the door open and stood in the doorway, clad all in black. “We have to talk.”

She yawned and pulled out one hand from her cocoon to pat at the bedspread. “Sit.”

There was an inferno in his caressing gaze.
“Cara mia,
I am only a man.”

Her heart thundered. “Please?” Why was she making him do this? Was she testing his promise that he wouldn’t force her to do things that terrified her?

Sighing, he came and sat beside her. “Happy?”

“Maybe,” she teased. “Where’s my engagement ring,
Jackson Santorini?” She was trying to be lighthearted, for what right did she have to demand anything?

To her surprise, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a finely made gold ring with tiny shards of diamond embedded in the beautiful scrollwork. Despite its simplicity, she knew it was no ordinary ring. Her hand trembled as he slid it onto her ring finger, under the rain-drenched sunlight falling through the skylight.

“Jackson, this is so lovely.” Her voice was barely a whisper as, sitting up, she stared at the ancient gold.

His smile was slow. “The ring was my paternal grandmother’s. Her name was Gia and she was married to my grandfather Josef for over fifty years.”

Her eyes smarted with tears. No one had ever given her something so precious, so from the heart.

“Why are you crying?”

“I’m not.” She rubbed at her eyes with her free hand.

“Piccola.”
He reached out and pulled her from the blankets and onto his lap, pressing her cheek against his chest. Instead of fear at the intimacy, she felt a fierce sense of belonging. “Why do you cry like this?”

The sudden change in the cadence of his voice startled her. “You sound so Italian.”

“I
am
Italian.” He stroked her hair in that way of his. She’d never imagined that such a big man could be so incredibly tender. “Have you stopped crying?”

“Yes.” She kept her head against his chest. “Thank you for the ring.” She wanted to ask if Bonnie had ever worn it but couldn’t find the courage. After all, despite the hurt that his first wife had caused him, he’d loved her when they’d married. It hadn’t been just a bargain.

“The ring has been sitting in a vault for ten years. You will bring it to the light once more.”

The words made her heart swell. Maybe it was selfish, but
she wanted a part of him that Bonnie hadn’t seen and hurt. She didn’t know the details of what they’d done to each other, but she knew that the results had devastated the man holding her so very carefully. The feel of his hard body made her want to luxuriate in him, but the slight tension in his muscles reminded her that this wasn’t fair.

She moved off his lap. “I’ll meet you downstairs for breakfast—I’ll cook.”

“I’ll look forward to it.” He rose at once, and with a pang in her heart, she knew that he’d been waiting for the moment when she’d set him free.

Twenty minutes later, she watched Jackson pick up a fork and use the edge to cut the corner off a pancake. She watched his lips as he forked in the bite, and somewhere along the way her desire to know if he enjoyed her cooking was overcome by the urge to taste his lips. To try and see if she could come out of sexual deep freeze.

“Good.”

The short accolade snapped her out of her sudden, sensual need to explore the man she was going to marry. Quickly, she choked down some of her own breakfast.

“We’ll marry within the week,” Jackson said after she’d taken a few bites, his tone matter-of-fact.

Her mouth felt fuzzy with nervous tension, but she managed to ask, “Won’t a sudden marriage look odd?”

He raised a brow. “We’ve been secretly seeing each other for months, not wishing to be dogged by paparazzi.”

“Clever.”

He acknowledged the compliment with a wry smile. “Valetta did something like that when she decided she was ready for marriage. That lasted about six months—a record even in my family.”

“How is your sister anyway?”

“I don’t know. Haven’t seen her for months.”

“Don’t you care?” She couldn’t hide her disapproval.

“My family is not close like you and Nick.” His clipped response didn’t encourage further conversation on that topic. Strung taut as she was, she didn’t have the inclination to pursue it today. “I believe we can be married by Tuesday.”

“Tuesday.” She put down her fork. “Registry?” A twinge of pain arrowed through her heart. Despite the nature of their bargain, she didn’t want this marriage to start out so very practically, devoid of any hint of hope.

“Only if that is what you wish.”

“What do you mean?” She looked up, wondering at the change in Jackson’s speech rhythms. As usual, it had happened without warning. At first, she’d thought it was caused by strong emotion, but that couldn’t be true, because he was very calm. Whatever it was, the more Italian he sounded, the worse her self-control became.

“There is an isolated farmstead about an hour out by helicopter. It is often used as a wedding venue. I’ve checked and we can have it for Tuesday if we want.”

“But it’s Sunday today! We couldn’t organize everything by then…could we?” Hope blossomed.

His beautifully shaped lips gentled into a smile. “If we could, do you want the farmhouse?”

“Of course. I’d like to invite some friends.”

In the next few hours, Taylor learned about the power of money and charisma. Shops opened just for them, caterers called in relief staff, florists ordered shipments of flowers in special air packages and a couturier flew in from a weekend retreat to show her his wedding collection.

“Come in, come in.” The little artiste waved them through to his upstairs showroom.

Flustered, she looked up at the darkly beautiful man who was her companion. “Jackson?”

“Hmm.” He bent his head a little, hand on her lower back. She’d always guessed that he was a possessive man and he’d let her see that side of him today. No one who met her was in any doubt that she was now Santorini’s woman.

Taylor felt ambivalent about the claiming. Part of her was delighted. But, another part of her, the lost, lonely, abandoned girl, was terrified. Yes, he was claiming her now but there was a time limit on their relationship. If she didn’t give him what he wanted, he’d abandon her, just like everyone else. The brutal truth was that this was nothing more than a business deal.

Faced with the couturier, she was lost. “What am I supposed to do?” she asked Jackson, her voice a whisper. She had never been a rich girl, in spite of Lance’s wealth. He’d never treated them to any luxury, and had begrudged them every penny he did spare.

Jackson’s hand curved over her hip, blatantly proprietary. “You’re a very valued customer. Take only what appeals.” The caress in his voice touched her deep within, even though she tried to remain unmoved. How could she hope to resist the one man who’d never let her down?

“But he came all this way for us.”

“He knows I’ll remember that when we need a wedding dress for one of the new movies in the works. Don’t worry,
cara,
he will get his payment.”

Bolstered by his confidence, she started to look through the many beautiful creations brought out for her inspection. Jackson spent a lot of time on his mobile phone, checking on security details for their wedding. It was while he was standing by the window, phone to his ear, that she found the dress she wanted.

“How very lovely.” She picked up the smooth satin-silk fabric, which looked like it had been embedded with pearls crushed to the consistency of the finest white sand. The dress had a cowl neck which would drape softly over her breasts,
before the sleek material swept gracefully down her body. The bias cut ensured it would hug her curves and swish gently around her ankles.

“I’d like to try this on.” She glanced over her shoulder to ensure Jackson wasn’t looking her way. “I don’t want him to see it before the wedding.”

The little man was delighted to help in her conspiracy. “Use the back fitting room and if you like it, I’ll box it up out of his sight.”

It was a perfect fit, as if it had been made with her in mind. The couturier gave her a shimmering gossamer veil to go with the dress, and even found a pair of shoes. Jackson simply raised a brow at her secretiveness but paid for the purchase with a gold card.

“It’s costing you a lot,” she said, in the car.

“It’s my choice, Taylor. It’s my wedding, too.”

That didn’t make her feel much better. “I don’t understand,” she burst out, raw from the evidence of his wealth and her lack of it. “What do
you
get out of this? There are so many women out there who wouldn’t hesitate to bear you a child.” Women who weren’t flawed, she thought. Women he wouldn’t have to rid himself of after a year.

“I get you and I get Nick, two people whose loyalty will be mine without question. In this business, loyalty like that is priceless.” His tone was forceful. “And, I may get to father a baby, who I
know
will have a good mother—there aren’t many women whom I’d trust with that responsibility.”

Jackson could see that Taylor wasn’t convinced, but he knew that she wouldn’t protest. Not when Nick’s future was at stake. He barely understood his own need, need which had been hidden for so long that it was starving for a taste of her. He just knew that he had a chance to make Taylor his and he was taking it.

She saw herself as without passion, damaged. He saw in her the promise of a magnificent woman. He wasn’t a saint and he wanted her. But neither was he a brutal man who would force compliance. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to find the sensual woman in Taylor, the one who made him feel things he hadn’t felt for so long he’d thought them dead.

It had pained him to admit that the ache to father a child was so great he would give her up if she couldn’t bring herself to bear his touch. Yet, it was the truth. He’d never wanted much in his life, but he wanted to hold his child in his arms. How could someone as innocent as Taylor understand his need to find redemption by creating a life where Bonnie had destroyed it?

Taylor spent that night at home. She rose at seven the next day and was ready an hour later to go and pick up Nick, who would be dropped off at the school with the other children. Jackson was on her doorstep just after eight.

The sight of him rattled her. She’d just spent hours dreaming of him and none of the dreams had been comfortable. It was as if her own mind was taunting her with what
could
be. “I don’t know if you should come,” she finally said. “I know I invited you but it might be too sudden.” Her worry was genuine but she also needed time alone to sort out her tumultuous feelings.

“He has to know. And we have to see how he reacts to me.” Taking the bag she’d packed in anticipation of spending the night before the wedding at his house, Jackson touched her on her lower back, a subtle pressure that reminded her she now belonged to him.

Her feelings of confusion intensified but she didn’t move away, because while Jackson might be the most disturbing thing in her life, he was also the safest. “I don’t want him to know why we’re marrying.” She couldn’t bear it if Nick thought she was sacrificing something for him, because she wasn’t.

“I agree.”

As they drove to the school, Jackson said, “Don’t worry. He’s met me before so it won’t be a total surprise.” The fleeting touch on her cheek was unexpected but welcome.

Dutifully chaperoned by his camp counselor, her brother was waiting for them by the gate. When the sleek black Mercedes stopped in front of him, she saw his eyes widen. She stepped out and felt Jackson follow. While she went to hug Nick, after thanking the counselor, he picked up her brother’s bags and dumped them in the trunk.

After a quick hug that apparently embarrassed him from the speed with which he pulled away, Nick looked up at the man beside her. “Hi, Jackson.”

“Nick.”

Nick was a smart boy. He looked from her to Jackson. “What?” Speculation turned his blue eyes sky-bright.

Taylor didn’t want to tell him right now but realized that she didn’t really have a choice. “What would you say if I told you that…me and Jackson…”

Nick started to grin. “Are you gonna marry my sister?”

Her jaw dropped. “How did you know that?”

The boy shrugged. “I dunno. ’Cause Jackson likes you?”

Flustered, she looked at Jackson, who just said, “Smart kid. Jump in the car—we’ll talk on the way.”

Nick scrambled in, already asking his first question. “Are we going to live with you?”

“Yes,” Jackson answered.

A short silence. “Will I always stay with you?”

Taylor frowned, not understanding. But Jackson evidently did. Stopping the car at the side of the street, he looked over his shoulder. “Yes. I went to boarding school and I would never send a child of mine there.”