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‘Because it’s true!’ she insisted.
He shook his head, raising his hand to stop her, and then let it drop before he turned away.
‘Wait, nowyoudon’t want to talk?’ she demanded, stepping over a piece of broken door frame. ‘You literally kick the door down and you’re walking away?’
‘I do not wish to say something I will regret.’
‘I think it’s a little late for that, don’t you?’ she hurled at his retreating back.
Inside, Javier was shaking with impotent fury. That he’d kicked the door off its hinges was terrible enough. But he’d been so mad, so infuriated that she would run from him again. Leave him with all thesefeelingsand nowhere or way to get rid of them.
He clenched his jaw, forcing stillness through his body. This kind of hysterical behaviour, it was too much like his mother. A shiver of self-disgust tripped down his spine and turned his stomach. He had more control than this, he needed to have more control than this.
He stalked into the master bedroom, forcing the buttons of his shirt through the water tightened holes, sorely tempted to rip apart the fabric. Instead he yoked his feelings in time to hear Emily’s footsteps enter the room that he’d woken in that morning with such a sense of peace.
He peeled the soaking wet shirt from his shoulders and it hit the floor with a soggy slap.
‘Wedoneed to talk.’ Her voice from behind him was low, a whisper almost, resonating with an emotion that was so close to the wrong kind of surrender it turned his stomach.
He clenched his jaw to stop the denial roar from his throat. Because he knew she was right. Unable to turn until he had better control of himself, he nodded once decisively. It was enough.
‘I will meet you downstairs once I have changed.’
His hands went to the button of the trousers that clung claustrophobically to the skin on his legs. Too tight. Everything was too tight.
‘Javier—’
‘Once I have changed,’ he growled, turning to pin her with a stare that allowed no argument.
But he wished he hadn’t turned. Because the insecurity in her vivid blue gaze, the way she held herself, a foot tucked behind an ankle, as if making herself as small as possible... A knife cut into his lungs. He had never wanted to see that in his wife: uncertainty, doubt.Hehad done that. He had made her feel those things. And more, his conscience taunted him.
You left me long before I even thought about leaving you.
He wanted to grip his head and make the words stop, but he wouldn’t. Because he needed to hear them. He needed to know what had happened if he was going to save his marriage. If he was going to be better than his father. No. Unlike the man who had given him life, who had walked away in shame after failing his family, Javier was going tofight—and, no matter how Emily felt about it, shewashis family.
Emily shifted in the doorway, yanking his attention back to her.
‘Put on some dry clothes, or you’ll catch a cold,’ he commanded before turning to the en suite bathroom and closing the door behind him. But no amount of separation would remove the imprint of her seared into his mind. She had wrapped a throw around her shoulders, but it did nothing to disguise the way that water had clung to her thighs in droplets he wanted to lick from her skin. His fingers had touched and delved, but not nearly enough.Cristo, his need for her was like a madness in his blood. Even now, when they were emotionally as far from each other as they could conceivably be, he wanted her. He wanted to taste her on his tongue, to feel her writhe beneath him, to watch her find her pleasure. He could describe every single change that happened to Emily when she orgasmed.
The way that her head would fall back, her mouth would open on gasps that climbed higher and higher as she did, the way that she had learned to find ecstasy in her own sighs and cries and moans, the way that the closer she came, her breath would get caught in her lungs and she would reach for him, she would find him, her muscles quivering around him, gripping him and she would take him with her as she flew through her own orgasm.
He flicked the snap of his trousers angrily, releasing an erection he’d brought on himself from the confines of his trousers.Por Dios, he was supposed to be trying to fix his marriage, not lust over his wife like a naughty schoolboy. He shoved the trousers from his legs and rinsed off in the shower before grabbing a towel and hoping to hell that Emily had left his room by the time he emerged.
After he changed into clean and, more importantly,dryclothing he would turn his focus to the matter at hand. The goal? Convince his wife to return. Nothing else mattered.
Emily stood at the sink, gently dipping the herbal tea bag in and out of the hot water in her mug, strangely comforted by the way that Diabla wound herself back and forth through her legs. And she needed that comfort because the longer and longer that Javier took to come down from the bedroom, the worse her nerves became. It was as if six years’ worth of ignoring everything had built up such a mass of tension and jumbled hurts and pains that she couldn’t quite see right and she was genuinely worried at what might come out of her mouth.
All she knew was that, one way or another, things had to change. It was just that she couldn’t see her way through to anything other than...
‘We will not divorce.’
Javier’s pronouncement startled her as much as the cat and, with a screech and a hiss, Diabla disappeared in a flash.
Hot water sloshed over the side of the mug and down the back of her hand and a stifled cry caught in her throat. Javier cursed and came to her, taking the mug from her hand and turning on the cold water tap. Ever so gently he placed her hand beneath the stream, holding it when she would have flinched away, with all the care she knew him capable of. It was one of the reasons she had fallen so hard and so fast for the Spaniard. He had an innate sense of nurture he didn’t know he possessed.
He placed her palm against his own, warming her hand from beneath so that the frigid water didn’t bite as much. She was surprised when he huffed out a little laugh. ‘Gabi did this once. She was trying to make me coffee and she burned her hand.’
She was distracted by the way his fingers encased her hand as if it were something truly precious. ‘What did your mother do when she found out?’
