More Than a Convenient Marriage?

Rolling her eyes at her decline into maudlin self-pity, she switched off the shower and dragged a bathsheet around herself. It wasn’t as if her mother would be any use in this situation so why bother getting weepy? Olief would have been solicitous, though.

Shaking off wistfulness, still deeply chilled, she closed the lid of the toilet and sat down to pat herself dry. The door swung open again.

“Really?” she demanded, instinctively curling her feet in and closing a hand over the knot of her towel. She was in a high enough state of turmoil without Nic accosting her with his potent male energy every ten seconds. He’d already got her all bewildered on the beach, and then seen her naked in the shower. Sitting on a toilet in a bathsheet, shaking off a near-death experience, put her at the worst disadvantage ever.

He hesitated at the door, but it wasn’t with doubt. She had the impression he was gathering himself. Bracing for a challenge.

Odd. She searched his expression for more clues, but he revealed nothing beyond a clinical interest in her hands as he set bandages and disinfectant on the counter. “You scraped yourself on the rocks, I assume?”

“Good work, Holmes. I should have consulted government-issued safe work plans prior to retreating from the tide, I assume?”

A pithy look, then, “It’s a wonder your mother didn’t drown you at birth. Do you want help or not?”

She grudgingly held out a hand. “I don’t even know why you want to help me.”

“I don’t,” he replied flatly, going down on one knee and reaching for supplies. “But I am an adult, and adults take responsibility rather than doing whatever selfish thing they want.”

“Is that a dig? Because I’m almost twenty-two. A fully-fledged adult.” Even to herself she sounded like a petulant child and, really, reminding him it was nearly her birthday was the last thing she ought to do.

“All grown up,” he said, with an ironic twist to the corner of his mouth. Renewed tension seemed to gather in his expression as he smoothed a bandage against her wrist.

“Yes,” she claimed pertly. Her pulse involuntarily tripped under his dispassionate caress, making her subtly catch a breath.

His gaze came up sharply, the blue like the center of a flame.

She was transported back to the feel of his arms as they’d stood wet and trembling on the beach, his arousal hardening against her. Heat flooded into her, chasing away the last of her chill, cooking her alive. She should have felt appalled and disgusted, but to her eternal shame she was energized by the crackle of sexual awareness in the air.

“All grown up,” he repeated, with flint in his tone, and lifted her hand to press his lips against the bandage, a cruelly mocking glint in his eye.

She flinched and pulled her hand away, even though she’d barely felt the pressure of his mouth. That so hadn’t been kiss-and-make-it-better!

Derisive amusement darkened his eyes. “No? That’s not like you, Ro.”

Her heart took a long plunge of disgrace. At the same time she felt herself begin to glow with heated longing and other weakening sensations, even as uncertainty and intrigue muddled her mind. Desperately she reminded herself of how unaffected and ruthless he could be.

“What are you doing, Nic?” she asked, trying unsuccessfully to clear the huskiness from her throat. “Offering a clumsy seduction in hopes of getting what you want out of me?”

“Oh, I’m far from clumsy. I know exactly what I’m doing when it comes to seduction.” The hard tone was coupled with a look that might as well have swept the towel from her body and left her as nude as she’d been in the shower.

Had she really wished over the years for him to notice her? Really notice her? This was a horribly defenseless feeling! Every single occasion of testing a flirty glance or enticing him with a smile came back to her as mortifyingly obvious behavior that was now giving him the chance to get the better of her.

“You’re having a go at me,” she accused, as much to remind herself as to let him know she saw through him. “I’m sure other women wither at your feet when you bring your best game, but I’m not one of them. Act solicitous all you want, but I know you don’t care. You don’t want me. You don’t even like me.”

He took a moment to smooth a plaster over her second palm, finally asking with detached interest, “Do all of those things have to be in place at once?” He met her gaze with a look of cool consideration.

She pressed her lips into a tight line, stung by the implied agreement that he didn’t like her. Yet still wanted her. That shouldn’t excite her, but her blood seemed to slow and thicken in her arteries, making her feel hot and full of power.

“Since when did you even think about me before you decided I was in the way of something you wanted?” she managed, trying to ignore the internal signals bouncing with anticipation inside her.

His shoulders went back and his jaw hardened. “One has nothing to do with the other. I may want you to sign some papers, but that has nothing to do with physical chemistry.”

“Chemistry that cropped up today of all days?” she scoffed, flushing with anger because her reaction to him had been torturing her forever. “It certainly wasn’t there two years ago, was it?” she prodded, thinking, Shut up, Rowan.

“You want to go back to that?” With a flash of the tested anger he’d shown her then, he reached forward to cup the back of her wet head and pulled her forward to meet the crush of his mouth over hers.

“N-n-n...!” She almost got the word out, but it turned into a whimper of surprise, then disintegrated under the assertive rake of his very knowledgeable mouth.

No champagne or the romance of a windswept beach this time. This was raw, unapologetic and incredibly beguiling. He kissed with the same command and purpose that emanated from the rest of his being. He was in control. He would take what he wanted. Their last kiss and the biting lecture that had followed had been a warning she should have heeded. Nic was a powerful, dangerous man.

Who knew how to level a woman with a kiss.

She brought her hands to his wrist and shoulder, overwhelmed yet helpless to the enthralling press of his lips over hers. There was no fighting him as he took her mouth—not because he was stronger, but because he made it so good. She could practically taste his contempt, his selfish demand that she give up everything to him, but there was skill here, too. A wicked appeal to the primitive in her. He drew her into the kiss even when she knew she shouldn’t let herself be drawn.

Her inner being expanded toward him, tendrils of heated pleasure reaching for connection. She moaned, unfamiliar imperatives climbing with primal force in her. This was Nic. He didn’t want her. He was messing with her. But this was Nic. She’d fantasized about him for years.

The light scrape of his teeth suffused her with heat. The proprietorial thrust of his tongue, the captivating taste of his mouth over hers, stabbed excitement through her, nudging her into a dark world of wild sensations and ravenous desire. Her limbs curled toward him like stems toward the sun, wanting more. It was crazy. Distantly she recognized this possession of her mouth had a purpose: arousal. He intended to take her all the way.

Her heart skipped. She shouldn’t let this happen, but she wanted to. And he wasn’t a force to be stopped. He reached to her lower back and pulled her hips toward him, forcing her knees to part and bracket his waist. Her shin struck the register. A ringing pain slashed through her wanton stupor, making her jolt in shock. Her towel slipped.

Oh, God, what was she doing?

* * *

Nic checked the urge to overpower Rowan’s recoil and drag her back into the kiss. Into the bedroom or onto the floor. Anywhere. She was flushed, and her breath was stuttering from between glossy kiss-swollen lips. Her eyes were still cloudy with desire, the honeyed taste of her sexual appetite still tangible on his tongue.

The beast ran hard in him, fighting against being steered back into its corral. Nic’s chest heaved and the hot coil of pressure behind his fly demanded release. He had one hand braced on the wall and used the other to reach for her jaw, ignoring the mental warnings trying to penetrate his fog of carnal hunger. This time he’d let it happen.

Before he could tilt Rowan back into the direction they’d been headed, her pale expression and the flash of a worried look downward stopped him. She leaned cautiously to examine her leg, her hand pressing the middle of his chest to push him back.

He followed her gaze and the sight froze him. Not the scrape on her knee. That was little worse than a tumble off a bicycle would produce, but the scars down her shin were horrific.

“What the hell?” He sat back on his heels, physical arousal taking a backseat to shock. The depth of her injury, communicated by the crisscross of thin white lines, revolted him. He reached one hand behind her knee and had to school his clenching muscles to take care as he lifted her ankle in the other hand, studying the full extent of the damage.

Her shin wasn’t the only issue. She had old scars all over her feet, framing knobbly toes with cracked nails that were only partially healed.