His wife in fact and at last now in body. Why not enjoy sowing the seeds of that union? Why not tie the beautiful if cynical Helen to him so tightly she would never be free to attempt to leave him again?
See her walk away from their child-to-be with her Frenchman, he challenged grimly and felt hot, grinding jealousy stir in his chest. Who the hell was the guy that he believed he could poach his wife from him in the first place? What the hell did he have that made Nell want to go away with him so badly that she planned her escape a whole week before she crashed her car?
Then worse came, shifting him restlessly on the bed. Had the lily-livered swine chickened out at the last minute and Nell had been driving so fast because she’d been nursing a broken heart?
Did she love the guy?
Had she only let him make love to her here because she was thinking, what did it matter now?
It did not matter, he told himself. The Frenchman did not get her. He, Alexander Pascalis, did. Their marriage was consummated at last and whatever else came after this day, the one thing that would never change was that Nell now belonged to him right down to the last silken strand of hair on her beautiful head.
He settled back against the pillows, a look of grim calculation glinting behind his slowly drooping eyelids. The agenda was real. His cynical wife would have to get used to it because he was going to keep her barefooted and pregnant and too damn busy making love with him to pine for some fickle Frenchman who’d dared to break her heart.
That decision made, he relaxed his body, the sunlight glinting through the slats soothing in the soft, drowsy heat. In a second or two he would get up and join her in the shower he could hear running—consolidate his place with some very passionate seed-sowing and at the same time he would make Nell fall in love with him again. He could do it. She had loved him once. All it would take was some of his famous, single-minded ruthlessness to make her love him again …
Wrapped in a bathrobe, Nell stepped back into the bedroom to find the man of her dreams lying spread out on the bed and fast asleep. Her tummy muscles quivered at the picture he presented of bronze-muscled abandonment with his quietened sex still very much a daunting sight.
She’d half expected him to barge into the bathroom and demand she believe him that he had not deliberately set out to make her pregnant just now. Well, of course he hadn’t. Any fool—even this fool called Helen Pascalis—could tell when a man was being ruled by his desires and not his intelligence.
Take note, darling Vanessa, she thought grimly. This man wanted me so badly that he couldn’t stop himself from having me without the protection he stops to apply with you in bed. Now he sleeps on my bed with my kisses still moist on his skin and wearing the scents of my body on his warm golden flesh.
You’re out, Vanessa, and I am most definitely in and with no intention of ever letting go. What I have right here, this time I keep.
It had taken her a whole year to recognise and understand that she had to fight for what she wanted instead of hiding away like some distant shadow waiting for Xander to remember that she lived.
Well, now she had him and she had no intention of letting him go. A man who could tremble in her arms the way Xander had trembled was hooked and she knew it with every single fibre of her female being. And if she had to learn sensual wiles that were probably going to set her hair on end only to imagine them, then she was willing to use them to keep her man.
Before too long, Xander was going to find himself chained so tightly to her that he wasn’t going to be able to take in a breath without her knowing about it. Instinctively her hand went to her cover her abdomen, inside which the seed of her lover was busily performing its potent magic—or if not yet it would be before too long.
A baby. Their baby. The next Pascalis heir. Eat your heart out, Vanessa, because this is one thing you will never have, she thought with grim satisfaction.
Ex-lover, she then corr
ected as she moved quietly towards the bed with a new deeply felt sensual pulse to her movements as she began to remove the bathrobe to begin her very first seduction of any man.
A sound coming from beyond the shutters diverted her attention; dropping the bathrobe to the floor, she crossed to the window to press a gap between two wooden slats and glanced down to see that Yannis was carrying out one of his daily duties and cleaning the pool.
Something else caught her attention. For a few short seconds she stood frowning, trying to decide what was different out there. Then her eyes alighted on Xander’s helicopter where it stood anchored to its concrete deck—and alone.
A strangled gasp broke from her. She suddenly remembered the swirling, whipping noises as she’d lain in Xander’s arms. Those sounds were not the sounds of the whirring, pulsating heat of their loving—they had been the sounds of his mother’s helicopter leaving the island!
‘Oh!’ A blast of mortification at the way they’d left Gabriela kicking her heels downstairs while they made love up here had her whirling round to run to the bed.
‘Xander …’ It was necessary to put a knee on the mattress so she could reach his shoulder to give it an urgent shake. ‘Wake up!’ she insisted. ‘Your mother has gone! You have to call her up and bring her back here. You—’
The snaking hook of a long, muscled arm toppled her onto him. ‘Mmm,’ he murmured sleepily. ‘I was dreaming about you.’
‘Will you listen?’ she insisted, trying to fight him off and not to respond to the seeking warm brush of his mouth. ‘I said your mother has gone!’
‘I know.’ The arm curved her closer. ‘I heard her leave—didn’t you?’
Nell flushed at what she’d believed the helicopter noise had been. ‘You have to go and invite her back,’ she said anxiously. ‘She must be terribly offended to just go off like that.’
‘You cannot offend my mother.’ He was kissing her shoulder, the tip of his tongue gliding a sensual pathway towards her throat. ‘Beneath the perfect gloss beats a heart of pure steel.’
Like the son; Nell frowned at the cool way he’d said that. ‘Don’t be cruel …’
‘You taste of fresh water and soap.’