Kate Walker - His Revenge Seduction - The Mélendez Forgotten Marriage / The Konstantos Marriage Demand / For Revenge or Redemption?

He rolled onto his back, his chest rising and falling as he tried to steady his breathing. He turned his head as he felt the mattress shift. Emelia had rolled away with her back to him, huddled into a ball. He reached out and stroked a finger down her spine. ‘Emelia?’

She flinched and moved further away from him, mumbling something he didn’t quite catch.

Javier sat upright and, taking her nearest shoulder, turned her onto her back. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

Her eyes flashed at him like lightning. ‘I think you know what’s wrong.’

‘I’m not a mind reader, Emelia. If you have something to say, then, for God’s sake, say it.’

She continued to glare at him but then her eyes began to swim with tears. ‘Don’t ever make love to me as if I was your mistress,’ she said, her voice cracking over the words. ‘I am your wife.’

Javier felt a knife of guilt go between his ribs. ‘I got carried away,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. You said you liked it like that in the past.’

She gave him a cutting look. ‘Did you ever think I might have been saying that just to please you?’

He sent his fingers through his hair before he reluctantly faced her. ‘I am not sure of what you want any more, Emelia,’ he said. ‘It’s like I have a different wife from the one I had only a month or so ago. It’s going to take some time to adjust.’

She looked at him through watery eyes. ‘Was our relationship about anything but sex?’ she asked.

He got off the bed as if she had pushed him. ‘Now that some of your memory has returned you should know how much I detest these sorts of discussions,’ he said with a harsh note of annoyance. ‘I laid out the terms of our marriage and you agreed to them. Now you want to change things.’

She pulled the bedcovers over her. ‘Why don’t you just answer the question? Did you ever feel anything for me other than desire? Did you love me, even just a little?’

Javier tried to stare her down but she held firm. He let out a savage breath. ‘My father told me he loved me but it didn’t mean a thing. It was conditional, if anything. He wanted me to be a puppet. As soon as I wanted to choose my own path, his love was cut off.’

‘That was wrong of him,’ she said. ‘Parents should never withhold their love, not for any reason.’

He made a scoffing sound in his throat. ‘My father loved his wives, all four of them, and they apparently loved him back, but look where that ended—an early death and two, almost three, very expensive divorces.’

Her brow wrinkled with a frown. ‘So what you’re saying is you don’t believe love can ever last?’

‘It’s not a reliable emotion, Emelia. It changes all the time.’

‘I’m not sure what you’re saying in relation to us…’

‘The things that make a relationship work are common ground and chemistry,’ Javier said. ‘A bit of mutual respect doesn’t go amiss either.’

Her expression was crestfallen and he felt every kind of heel as a result. Was he incapable of loving or just resistant to being that vulnerable to another person? He couldn’t answer with any certainty.

‘Don’t push me on this, Emelia,’ he said into the silence. ‘Our relationship has been through so much of late. This is not the time to be saying things neither of us are certain is true.’

‘But I know I love you,’ she said. ‘I know it with absolute certainty. I loved you from the first moment I met you. I didn’t tell you because I knew you didn’t want to hear it. But I need to tell you now. I can’t hold it in any longer.’

He pinned her with his gaze. ‘You speak of loving me and yet you were leaving me, Emelia, or have you not remembered that part? You had given up on our relationship. You wouldn’t be here now if you hadn’t been injured and lost your memory. You would be back in Australia. You were in that car with Marshall because he was driving you to the airport.’

Her teeth sank into her bottom lip until it went white.

‘Why don’t we wait until all the pieces are in place before you start planning the future?’ he said when she didn’t speak. ‘Unless we deal with the past, we might not even have a future.’

‘You…you want a divorce?’ Her voice sounded like a wounded child’s.

‘I don’t believe we should stay shackled together if one or both of us is unhappy,’ he said. ‘We’ll give it a month or two and reassess. It is early days. You’ve only just come out of hospital after a near-fatal accident. You’re damned lucky to be alive.’

Her mouth went into a pout. ‘No doubt it would have been much better for you if I had been killed.’

Javier ground his teeth as he thought about that moment when Aldana had informed him there was a call from the police in London. His heart had nearly stopped until he had been assured she hadn’t been fatally wounded. ‘My mother died when she was three years younger than you are,’ he said. ‘She didn’t see my first day at school. She didn’t hear the first words I learned to read. I didn’t get the chance to tell her how much I loved her or if I did I was too young to remember doing it. Don’t you dare tell me I would rather have you dead and buried. No one deserves to have their life cut short through the stupidity of other’s actions.’

She sent him a defiant glare. ‘Maybe it suits you to have me alive so you can pay me back for daring to leave you. I bet I’m the first woman who ever has.’

Javier drew in a sharp breath. ‘You’re the one who moved the goalposts, not me.’

‘I can’t be the sort of wife you want,’ she said, her eyes shining with tears. ‘I can’t do it any more. I’m not that sort of person, Javier. I want more from life than money and sex and endless hours in the gym or the beauty salon. I want to be loved for who I am, not for what I look like.’

He snatched up his trousers and zipped himself into them. ‘I care about you, Emelia. Believe me, you would not be here now if I didn’t.’

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