Bridal Bargains

‘In what way?’ She couldn’t even find the energy to open her eyes as she asked the question.

His tongue teased her kiss-swollen bottom lip. ‘You put me out of my misery when you could have damned me forever by letting me take you without knowing the truth.’

‘Whether you are my first lover or not should make no difference.’ She could not resist sliding her tongue across the tip of his.

‘I am not built for innocence, agape mou.’ He made a move with his hips so she could understand what he meant. He was still inside her, a thick, pulsing entity that filled her. ‘I hurt you anyway, but not as much as I would have done without your generosity to keep me in check.’

‘And your arrogance is showing again.’

‘Ne,’ he acknowledged lazily. ‘But admit it—I did not disappoint.’

The remark was to remind her of her cutting little quip at the cove. Nell gazed up at him, watched him return the gaze with a dark-eyed, warm-lipped, wryly knowing smile. Beautiful, she thought helplessly, so indolently masculine and sure of himself. Her heart gave a hopeless little squeeze to let her know how much she still loved him despite every attempt she’d made to shut the feeling out.

Did he have any idea that the sex wasn’t enough for her?

No, she was sure of it. He saw power in his undoubted physical prowess but wouldn’t think to look beyond it for something deeper than that.

So what had she gained here?

Nothing, the hollow answer came back. If, that was, she didn’t count intimacy wrapped around the kind of physical pleasure she never knew it was possible to experience.

For that alone she reached up to kiss him on the mouth. ‘You didn’t disappoint.’ She was willing to grant him that much. ‘Now all we have to do is wait to see if I disappoint …’

A frown grabbed his eyebrows, muscles flexing as he levered himself up on his forearms so he could narrow a questioning look into her face.

‘You did not disappoint.’ It was rough-toned declaration that vibrated across the walls of his cavernous chest and set her breasts tingling.

He was about to recapture her mouth when she added, ‘I was talking about your other goal …’

‘Goal?’

‘To make me pregnant.’ She spelt it out gently.

The comment acted like a cold douche on his lingering passions. He withdrew then rolled away from her. ‘That was not my intention,’ he denied.

‘No?’ Sitting up, Nell came gracefully to her feet then walked towards the bathroom on legs that felt too trembly and weak to carry her there, leaving that questioning little no hanging in the sultry air she left behind.

CHAPTER SEVEN

WATCHING her go, with her hair tumbling down her slender back helping to hide her nakedness from him, Xander wondered grimly how the hell she had walked him into that silken trap.

His body responded to tell him how. He hadn’t used anything. He had not so much as glimpsed the distant idea of using anything to protect her from the risk of pregnancy—and not because of some fixed agenda he had been working towards, though he allowed Nell the right to believe that had been his ultimate motive. No, for the first time in his long sexual history he’d found himself too locked in the thrall of how she’d made him feel.

And if anyone from now on ever dared tell him that a condom did not stunt the pleasure of sexual intercourse then he would know they had never experienced what he had just experienced.

‘Theos,’ he breathed, turning it into a sigh as he threw himself flat against the bed then glanced down at his body, where the length of his shaft lay tight and proud against the flat of his abdomen, impatiently demanding more of the same.

It knew the difference. He knew the difference. He turned his head to glance at the closed bathroom door and wondered what Nell would say in response if he went in there and informed her that she had not been the only one enjoying a virgin experience in this bed.

Not one of his better ideas, he thought ruefully as that highly active part of his body gave another impatient tug. A confession like that would still not alter the fact that his intoxicating wife might be a virgin no more but her cynical view of him was still very much in tact.

And—hell, what could he say to make her believe that he’d harboured no deliberate intentions but had simply lost his head? The way his body was acting, it was not going to back him up. It wanted more—and more of what they’d just had. Prolific, rampantly free and potently unprotected sex shared with the beautiful, excitingly responsive woman who’d just left this bed.

Not just any woman—his woman.

His wife …

Sensation flipped a running ripple down his body. Turning his head on the pillow, he stared up at the ceiling where the lines of sunlight reflected on it filtered in through the slatted shutters then released a deep sigh of satisfaction at how good those two words sounded and felt.