CEO's Unwanted Wife

Bella fell back onto the mattress, her body slick with perspiration and limp with pleasure. Spasms of her powerful release still violently racked her slender frame. Brian had disentangled, detached and distanced himself from her within seconds of their mutual o****m and lay on his back beside her, his breathing heavy and ragged. Bella turned on her side to lovingly trace his harsh profile with her eyes, yearning to touch and caress the smooth, silky and slightly tanned skin but knowing from experience that her touch would be rebuffed. His words, the ones that were always wrenched from him during his c****x, still hovered in the air between them and they still, after all these months, hurt more than they should have. "Give me a son, Bella..." With those five words, he inevitably killed the afterglow, destroyed the intimacy of the moment and relegated the act into nothing more than a biological imperative. After eighteen months of the same, Bella had finally realized that it would never change. It wasn't an abrupt realization, rather it was one that had been growing steadily since the very first time he'd said the words. But Bella had her own five words! They were words that had been on the tip of her tongue for months and should have been spoken long before now. They were words that she could no longer swallow back; no matter how much it killed her to say them. She sat up, naked, her body still trembling and drew her knees to her chest. She wrapped her arms around her legs, pressed her cheek to her knees and watched as his breathing steadied, his own shaking was subsiding slightly. He lay spread-eagled, also magnificently nude, his eyes were shut but she knew he wasn't asleep. No, he would take a few moments to compose himself before heading for the shower, where she always imagined him frantically scrubbing her scent and touch from his bronzed skin. She could no longer contain the words and they spilled from her lips with desperate earnestness. "I want a divorce, Brian." He tensed, every single muscle in his body went as tight as a coiled spring, before he turned his head to meet her watchful gaze. His eyes were hooded and his upper lip curled mockingly. "But I thought you loved me, Bella," he taunted with exquisite cruelty and Bella lowered her eyelids, trying to mask the shaft of pain at his words. When she was sure she had her emotions under control, she once again lifted her eyes to his dark gaze. "Not anymore," she managed, hoping the lie sounded convincing. "Hmmm..." it sounded deceptively like the purr of a cat. "What happened to 'I'll love you forever, Brian?" "Things change," she whispered. "What things?" He rolled onto his side and propped himself up onto his elbow, resting his head on his hand. He looked so much like a Roman gladiator in repose, that her throat went dry with desire. She swallowed painfully. "F.feelings change..." she stuttered haltingly. Again that husky purr of agreement but Bella wasn't fooled by his relaxed posture; he was as tense as a coiled snake. "I.I've changed..." "You look no different," he said assessed, his voice still terrifyingly tender. "Still the same Bella I married. The one who claimed to love me so much, she couldn't live without me. The one whose daddy made sure she got exactly what she wanted..." And that was when he struck, without moving, without so much as changing his voice. "The same timid little Bella, who can't even give me the only thing I've ever wanted from this pathetic excuse for a marriage." She flinched but she refused to divert her eyes. "A.all the more reason for a divorce," she tried for blase but failed miserably. "Maybe for you," he shrugged elegantly. "But I told you from the very beginning, Bella, there would be no easy way out of this marriage. Not until I got what I wanted from you and that day looks to be a long way off! Unfortunately, cliche though it may seem, you've made this bed and we both have to lie in it!" "I can't live like this anymore," she buried her face in her knees and fought to keep the tears at bay. "Neither of us has much choice..." he sat up and stretched languidly before getting up and walking, naked, to the en-suite bathroom. Bella heard the shower start moments later and took a few seconds to compose herself, swiping the hot tears from her face with the backs of both hands before dragging on a gauzy peignoir and heading toward the kitchen to make herself a hot drink. While she was sitting on a bar stool, sipping her hot milk, she felt Brian's presence behind her and the hairs in the nape of her neck stood on end. "You must be cold in only that skimpy little thing you're wearing..." he observed idly heading to the fridge and dragging out a carton of orange juice. His short black hair was damp and standing up in tufts where he had carelessly towel-dried it after his shower and he wore nothing but a pair of black boxer shorts. He looked as gorgeous as always and Bella hated him more than ever for that masculine perfection. "I'm fine..." she got up abruptly and headed toward the sink to rinse her mug but he grabbed her elbow to halt her movement. She tensed, shocked by the touch... Brian never touched her outside of the bedroom. In the eighteen months they had been married, this was the first time that she could recall him touching her without it being a precursor to s*x. He leaned closer to her and lowered his lips to her ear. She felt his hot breath on the side of her face before he spoke. "There'll be no more talk of divorce, Bella... ever," he told her with a sickening air of finality. "You can't stop me from divorcing you, Brian," she responded bravely. "You really want a divorce, Bella?" He asked tauntingly and she nodded stiffly. "If you get that divorce, your cousin loses her business and she can't afford that now, not with a new baby on the way. She and her husband need all the capital they can get." Somehow she hadn't expected that. She should have but she hadn't. Brian had loaned her cousin, Nancy, the start-up capital for her bookshop. Bella didn't know what the specifics of that loan were but she had always assumed that it was something he had done out of generosity. Staring up at him now, she couldn't believe her own naivete. Brian did nothing out of sheer generosity and that loan was merely another weapon for him to use against her if he needed to! "You wouldn't," she responded with nothing but bravado. "Nancy has done nothing to deserve this." "Bella, I will do whatever it takes to get what I want from you." "I have money too I can help her..." she began desperately. "No, you have a rich father and he had the opportunity to help Nancy when she was looking for the start-up capital for her bookshop but he made his contempt of the idea more than obvious to everyone at the time and you know that he would never support you through a messy divorce, Bella." "I still don't believe you would do it! You have a reputation to uphold, you're an honest businessman, you wouldn't destroy a small business just to prove a point. What kind of message would that send?" she asked bravely. "That I'm not to be trifled with," he shrugged. "Do you honestly think I care what people think of me, Bella? Do you think I care what you think of me? I never have and I never will. You're weak and spoilt..." "I'm not..." she tried to defend herself but he made a scoffing sound in the back of his throat before continuing on as if she hadn't spoken. "You'll get your divorce eventually but there's something I need to get from you first! You wanted this marriage, remember? You begged for it... So if you want a divorce right now, it'll come with some heavy penalties attached to it, are you willing to gamble with your cousin's future?" He knew she wouldn't do it! He knew he had her exactly where he wanted her. There would be no divorce. Not when so much hung in the balance. But there would be changes... Bella Chloe Noble De Lucci was done with being a doormat! She said nothing, choosing to turn and walk away instead. He watched her go, she could feel his gaze burning into her slender back but he did not call her back. She did not return to the bedroom they had been sharing since the first day of their marriage, opting instead to head for the library, knowing that she could not sleep another wink. Not in that room, not anymore... He came downstairs, hours later, for breakfast. It was a Saturday morning and he usually didn't have any early morning meetings to rush off to on a Saturday, instead he tended to linger over his newspaper and coffee and largely ignore Bella. That morning was no different. It was as if their early morning argument hadn't happened at all. They usually ate their casual weekend meals in the kitchen and the homey setting lent a false sense of domesticity to the scene. But while Bella was uncomfortable and tense in the intimate setting, Brian always remained as cool as the proverbial cucumber. Then again, that was nothing new, as he rarely showed emotion. In fact the "discussion" of that morning was the most heated she had ever seen him. He kept his feelings under wraps but had always made his contempt of her more than clear. It was in the way he refused to meet her eyes, the way he could make love to her without kissing her on the mouth, the way he could talk past her when he had something to tell her... while eternally optimistic, stupid Bella, had never been good at hiding her feelings from him. Not from the very moment she'd met him, nearly two years ago. How hopelessly infatuated she had been! How quickly she had fallen in love... She shook herself, refusing to think about things she could not change and instead tried to focus on changing her present. Breakfast passed with agonising slowness, the silence broken only by the sound of his newspaper as he carefully perused the business section. She barely ate and hated him for being so unaffected by the tension that he could finish a hearty meal. She picked up her dishes and headed to the sink. "You have to eat more than one slice of toast," his voice suddenly growled unexpectedly. "You're getting much too thin." The fact that he had noticed what she'd eaten, despite having hardly glanced at her over his newspaper, startled her. "I'm not that hungry..." she responded softly and placed her dishes in the sink. "You barely eat enough to keep a sparrow alive," he lowered his paper and met her eyes for a few seconds before diverting his gaze back to the mug of coffee on the table in front of him. The direct eye contact was so unusual, that Bella barely restrained a gasp. "I eat enough," she responded half-heartedly, normally she would have let it go but she wanted to see if she could goad him into meeting her eyes again. No such luck, he merely shrugged, neatly folded his newspaper and dropped it onto the table beside his empty plate. He gulped down the last sip of his coffee before getting up from the table.