Page 24 of The Return of Her Billionaire Husband

She pulled her lower lip partway into her mouth, releasing it again, her eyes still troubled. ‘Break-up sex? Or...something else?’

It was the million-dollar question Joe didn’t have an answer for. He kept his expression casually indifferent when inside he was mentally holding his breath. ‘What else could it be? You came here wanting a divorce.’

A small frown pulled at her forehead and her finger brushed over his lower lip. ‘I came here determined to get you to sign those papers. It was my goal. My mission...but now...’ She gave a tiny sigh and her hand moved to the back of his neck, bringing his head closer. ‘I want you to make love to me. I know it’s probably wrong or inconsistent of me when I’ve been waving divorce papers in your face, but it’s what I want for now. Just while I’m in Italy.’

A break-up fling with his soon-to-be ex-wife.

But Joe wanted her any way he could have her. ‘I want you to stay until after the Paris fundraiser.’ He knew he was taking a risk using such a commanding tone but did it anyway.

Her eyes flicked to his mouth and her tongue darted out to lick her lower lip, tightening the ache in his groin another unbearable notch. ‘Okay. I’ll go with you to Paris.’

‘Good. But as long as we’re both clear on what this actually is.’

Was he clear? The only clarity he had was that this felt right. Having her here in his arms. The trouble was...how was he going to let her go when it was time for her to leave? Or could he dare to hope she would stay? But that would mean resuming their marriage and look at what a rubbish job he’d done of it the first time around.

‘I want you, Joe.’ Her voice was as soft as her touch.

‘I want you so badly.’ Joe covered her mouth and lost himself in the hot, sweet temptation of her lips. His tongue met hers and a lightning bolt of lust shot through his groin. He gathered her in his arms, their legs tangling in a way that was achingly familiar and yet no less thrilling. It was like discovering her body for the first time—the dips and slopes and contours, the honeyed secret of her centre, the taste of her mouth and the feel of her breath mingling intimately with his.

He left her mouth to kiss his way down the scented hollows of her neck, over the delicate scaffold of her collarbone, all the way to her breasts. He took each nipple in his mouth, rolling his tongue over the tightly budded flesh, his blood thrumming with excitement. Her soft breathless groans, the arching of her spine, the folding out of her knees to welcome him made his heartrate spike. No one could turn him on like her. No one got him so worked up and ready to explode. No one.

He slipped on a condom and, putting a hand under her left hip to tilt her towards him, entered her with a deep thrust that made the hairs on his scalp stand up and a shudder ripple through him. She welcomed him with a gasp and began moving with him, her smooth slim legs in a sexy tangle with his. It was too hard for him to slow down as he’d planned. Too hard to resist the magnetic pull of her silken body. He thrust and thrust, his blood racing like rocket fuel through his veins, his skin tingling from head to foot. He placed his hand between their rocking bodies to caress her.

She threw her head back, writhing and whimpering as her orgasm took her away and carried him with her. The tight rolling spasms of her body sent him flying into the stratosphere. He buried his face into the side of her neck and groaned and shuddered and shook as his release powered through him in pulses and waves and ripples, taking him to a place beyond thought. Beyond the ugly divorce word, beyond the lonely emptiness of a future without her in it.

Beyond anything but mindless, magical bliss.

CHAPTER NINE

JULIETTE WOKE TO find herself spooned in Joe’s arms. One of his legs was flung over hers, his head buried against the back of her neck, where she could feel his deep and even breaths stirring her hair. One of his hands was resting on her ribcage and he murmured something unintelligible and glided it up to cup her breast. She shivered with longing, her inner core contracting with the muscle memory of their passionate lovemaking during the night.

He groaned and sighed like a satisfied lion and propped himself up, turning her so she was on her back, his dark gaze smouldering. He brushed her hair back from her forehead with a touch so gentle it made something in her chest spring open. ‘So here we are. The morning after the night before.’ His tone was playful but she sensed an undercurrent of gravity.

She pushed back his hair from his forehead with her splayed fingers. ‘You probably need to find a better way of getting through your birthday without drinking on your own or having one-night stands with strangers.’

He circled her mouth with a lazy finger, his gaze suddenly inscrutable. ‘Is that what last night was? A one-night stand with a stranger?’

Juliette lowered her hand to his jaw, stroking his lean cheek with a feather-light touch. ‘You don’t feel like a stranger to me now. Not after we talked about...stuff.’

A frown flickered on his forehead and his gaze became wary. ‘Is that why you slept with me? Out of pity?’

She pulled her hand from his face and jerked her chin back in shock. ‘How could you think that? I wanted to make love with you. I practically begged you to.’

He placed a firm hand on the flank of her thigh to keep her moving further away, the heat of his touch sending a fizzing current to her core. ‘There’s probably a lot of stuff I should have told you before. But I try to forget about how I came into the world. I don’t like thinking about it, much less talking about it.’

Juliette slid her hand back to rest against his cheek, her thumb stroking back and forth over his prickly skin. ‘It must be awful to not look forward to your birthday. It must have been so painful growing up without a mother, especially feeling so guilty about how you lost her. But it wasn’t your fault. Your father should’ve made that absolutely clear.’

His gaze flickered with shadows, as if he was leafing through his childhood memories like fanning through the pages of a thick book. ‘He was grieving for a long time. I didn’t understand that until I was much older. He was like a zombie walking through life. He was only a young man. My mother was the love of his life—they met in primary school. They married at twenty-one.’ His mouth twisted and his eyes briefly squeezed shut as if he was experiencing the most excruciating pain. ‘And she was dead at twenty-two. She didn’t get to live the life she’d planned. She didn’t get to reach her potential, to do the things most people dream of doing.’ He swallowed and continued in a strained tone, ‘I hated going to visit her grave. I felt sick to my stomach, because I knew I was the one who put her there. Who robbed her of everything: the man she loved, the future she’d dreamed of, the family life she longed for. I took it all away from her.’

Juliette blinked back tears. ‘Oh, Joe, I wish I’d known all that before. I feel so annoyed at myself for not pressing you to tell me more about yourself. Is that why you found my pregnancy so unsettling? I sensed you were staying away longer and longer, the further along the pregnancy went.’

He took one of her hands and brought it up to his chest, holding it against the steady thump of his heart. ‘I wanted to support you—that’s why I married you, to provide for you and the baby. But when I saw your belly growing bigger each week, a vague panic set in and I could only quell it by distracting myself with work. I don’t think I was entirely conscious of it at the time—why I was feeling like that. I just felt compelled to work as hard as I could. But I see how you would’ve read that as something else.’

Juliette swallowed a knot of emotion in her throat. ‘When you got to the delivery suite... I thought you looked relieved... I hated you at that moment. I couldn’t believe you were being so brutally insensitive.’

A flash of pain went through his eyes and his fingers on her hand tightened. ‘I was relieved. Relieved you hadn’t died.’ His voice sounded rough around the edges, raw and uneven. ‘I didn’t think about the baby at that point. All I could think on my way into that room was, Has it happened again? Have I killed my mother and now my wife?’

Juliette bit down on her lower lip until she was sure it would draw blood. She couldn’t believe how blind she had been. How blinkered she’d been to think he hadn’t cared about her and their child. She pulled her hand out of his so she could hug him around the neck. She rested her cheek on his chest, her throat so tight it was aching. ‘I’ve made so many mistakes. I’m sorry for misjudging you.’

---