Bridal Bargains

‘That was just sex.’

‘And you know so much about it to sound so dismissive?’

Nell didn’t answer. She was glaring at the ribbon of hard brown skin dressed with crisp dark hair showing between his gaping shirt and wishing with all her heart that her tongue didn’t tingle with a desire to taste.

‘We were talking about your mother.’ She slewed her eyes sideways to stare at the glinting pool.

‘She’s here to discuss some family business.’

‘Well, maybe she will be kind enough to give me a lift off this island when she leaves.’

‘You think I would allow it?’

Green eyes flashed into contact with his. ‘Would you like to repeat that bit about not hiding me?’

He went several steps further and lowered his dark head and kissed her, not hot and driven like before but slow and gentle with just enough passion to elicit a response. ‘That is why you’re here, agape mou,’ he murmured as he lifted his head again. ‘We are going to kick-start this marriage. Then let us see if you still wish to leave.’

Xander could say this in that tone of voice because she’d responded. He could say it because her fingers were already in contact with his brown skin. This beautiful, defiant, contrary creature might not want to want him but hell, she did want him, Xander thought grimly.

Letting go of her, he strode off, leaving her standing there knowing that he had won that little battle without her putting up much of a defence.

Waiting in the coolness of the foyer, he viewed Nell’s arrival in the open doorway through carefully hooded eyes and had to lock his jaw to keep other parts of him under control. Lit from behind by the sunlight, she looked like a sea nymph standing in the jaws of a hungry shark.

He was the hungry shark. If they had been alone here he would be closing those jaws and carrying her off to finish what he’d started out there. He’d laid down the gauntlet as to where this marriage of theirs was going to go from here and by the way she was hovering in the doorway he would say that she knew she did not stand a chance of changing that course.

She began walking forward. As he watched her come closer his head played a tempting little scene that involved him carrying her up the stairs and laying her on the bed then stripping away the few scraps she wore.

Though maybe he would leave the G-string in place, he thought darkly, seeing his mouth tracing its skimpy white lines with a chain of tongue-tipped kisses that would have her begging him to take it off.

That was how he wanted her—begging. He wanted her spreading those slender golden thighs and inviting him in. He wanted her arms around his neck and her eyes pleading and—

A frown clipped his brows together. ‘Go and make yourself presentable while I entertain our—guest,’ he instructed.

‘But your mother will think it rude if I don’t—’

His eyes made a glinting sweep over the now damp strip of Indian cotton that was doing so little to hide the brevity of what was beneath. ‘Trust me, you will feel better if you take time to change.’

A self-conscious flush mounted her cheeks. ‘You don’t look so presentable yourself,’ she still had the spirit to hit back as she walked by him.

Xander just grinned. ‘The difference being that I don’t care what other people think when they look at me.’

Only because he still managed to look fabulous even with bare feet and his damp shirt lying open down his hair-tangled, muscle-contoured, bronzed front, Nell thought as she took to the stairs without further argument.

If she’d looked back she would have caught him quickly fastening buttons and combing long fingers through his hair. And the expression on his face had changed from lazily indifferent to grim.

He could have done without this intrusion from his mother today of all days. When she had rung his apartment in Athens this morning with an urgent request to see him, only to be told he was coming to the island, the last thing he had expected was for her to promptly invite herself and he’d told her not to come.

Though in truth, now she was here, he had some things of his own he needed to thrash out with his mother, things he preferred to get out of the way before his single-minded seduction of his beautiful wife continued along its present course.

Thinking about that exciting creature he’d met in the cove an hour ago set his nerves on edge. Nell had turned the tables on him with her provocative performance, and what was bothering him was why she had done it.

As the aggravating witch had just pointed out, three weeks ago she had been leaving him for another man.

A man, no less, that she’d been trying to contact via the telephone in his study here ever since she’d arrived on the island, but, like himself and the small army of people he had out there looking for him, Nell had discovered that Marcel Dubois had effectively disappeared from the face of the earth.

Scared of the repercussions when he heard of Nell’s accident and knew that her husband was about to find out about them? If so, the Frenchman should have thought about those repercussions sooner—before he lured Nell into taking flight.

But that was not the point that was troubling Xander right now as he stood outside the salon door, grimly tidying himself. Nell was still trying to contact the cowardly swine yet she’d responded to him like a woman who’d been suppressing her desires for too long.