Bridal Bargains

‘Not a cat in hell’s chance,’ he teethed out, reading her like an open book.

Stark, blinding, beautiful naked, he stepped into the bath.

‘We are not going to let this war continue,’ he informed her as he came down on his knees to straddle her. ‘You are my wife and you are having my baby.’ His hands took possession of her warm, wet, slippery breasts with their tightly distended, lush pink nipples. ‘As these beautiful things tell me you want me, agape, and as I am so majestically displaying I most certainly want you, why fight it?’

Why indeed? Nell thought helplessly as she, like a captured rabbit, watched him lower his head. It was like being overwhelmed by Poseidon again she likened helplessly as he took charge of her mouth, her body and the rest.

A few minutes later and she was slithering beneath him into the water with her arms clinging to his neck. They’d made love in a bath many times but for some reason this hot and steamy, oil-slicked occasion that was permeated with his scent tapped into another dimension. Water sloshed as they touched and caressed each other, she was so receptive to everything about him that she found she didn’t care if her face sank beneath the surface and she drowned like this.

His arms stopped it from happening. The way he was smoothing small, soft, tender kisses over her face kept her breathing slow and deep. His eyes kept capturing hers and filling her with dark liquid promise, when he slipped a hand between her thighs she arched her body in pleasure and captured his mouth.

They kissed long and deep, they moved against each other slowly and sensuously. When with a lithe grace he changed his position, stretching out above her and murmured huskily, ‘Open your legs,’ she even made the move with a slow erotic invitation that set him trembling as she clasped his face in her hands so she could pull his mouth back to hers as he entered her with a long, smooth, silken thrust.

And the whole thing continued to a slow, deep, pulsing rhythm. His supporting arms stopped her from drowning in the water, while inside she drowned in a different way. When she fell apart she even did this slowly and deeply and the pulses of pleasure just went on and on and on.

When he lifted her out of the bath she clung to him weakly. Even when he dried them both she didn’t let go. She was lost, existing in a place without bones or muscles; the only solid thing was him and the thickly pumping beat of his heart beneath her resting cheek.

‘If you ever let another man see you like this you won’t live,’ he rasped out suddenly.

Nell just smiled and pressed a silky kiss to his hair-roughened, satin-tight chest. ‘Take me to bed,’ she breathed.

With a muffled groan Xander lifted her up and carried her into the bedroom, still clinging. She was still clinging when he settled them both in the bed. She fell asleep like that—clinging. Xander lay beside her wondering how long he should wait before he woke her up again.

He used up the time recalling the looks on the faces of the ten men in his boardroom when only half an hour after battle recommenced he’d stood up and brought the whole thing to an abrupt end.

‘When you are ready to negotiate like adults let me know. Until then this meeting is over.’ He smiled as he saw himself making that announcement because—there he was, being the hard-hitting, cool-headed, totally focused, ruthless dictator. Wouldn’t they like to know that beneath the incisive veneer he’d brought that meeting to a close because he’d been aching so badly for this …

His wife. This sensational woman with a silken thigh lying across his legs and her slender arms still looped around his neck. On a sigh because he knew he should not give in yet, he reached up to claim one of her hands then carried it down his body to close it gently around the steel-hard jut of his sex.

‘You’re insatiable,’ she murmured, letting him know that she was already awake.

‘For you,’ he agreed. She stroked him gently and the whole deep, drugging experience began all over again.

Afterwards he went off to raid the fridge and came back with a bottle of champagne and two glasses, one of which he handed to Nell—already filled.

‘What’s this?’ she demanded, frowning into the glass when it became obvious it wasn’t champagne because he was only now easing the cork from the bottle.

‘Sparkling water,’ he supplied. ‘Pregnant women don’t drink alcohol.’

‘What would you know?’ she protested.

About to take a sip at the water, since it was all that was on offer, she found her eyes pinned instead to the way he’d suddenly turned into a concrete block. The lean face, the black eyes—nothing moved.

‘What have I said?’ she gasped in surprise.

‘I just remembered something I needed to do.’ He seemed to need to give himself a mental shake before he could bring himself to pour out his champagne. ‘Here,’ stretching out beside her, he offered his glass up to her lips, ‘a sip can’t hurt, and a baby is something to celebrate …’

The odd little moment slid by.

Maybe she shouldn’t have let it. Maybe Nell should have listened to the little voice inside her head that told her he was hiding something. If she had done then what happened the next morning would not have come as such a crushing blow.

Xander was already in his office and working at his desk by the time Nell sauntered out of the bathroom wrapped in a fluffy white towel. She was aching a little because Xander had been so unquenchable last night. Gentle though, she recalled with a soft smile, unbelievably gentle, as if his knowing about the baby had brought out in him a whole new level of tenderness.

Her inner muscles quivered, her expression taking on a far-away look as she allowed herself the luxury of reliving some of those long, deep, drugging kisses they’d shared, the fine tremor of his body and the look in his dark eyes just before he’d allowed her to take him inside.

If that look didn’t speak of love then she’d been dreaming it, she thought as she went over to her suitcase, which Xander had thoughtfully placed open on a low cabinet by the window.

There again it could be just that, having forced herself to accept that since she did not have the power to resist him she might as well stop trying to fight him, maybe she was justifying that by misreading the look.