The City-Girl Bride

‘Undress me, Maggie. Take me to bed, show me that you want me. Be the wild wanton woman I know you can be, the woman who isn’t afraid to put love first in her life.’

His hoarse words filled her heart with a hot vocal torrent of fiercely moaned desire, challenging her to meet and match his need.

‘Right now nothing is more important to me than you…and this,’ Finn was telling her roughly. ‘Kiss me, Maggie. Show me that you want me,’ he begged her, but before she could move he was kissing her, taking her mouth with shockingly intense hunger.

The darkness, for so many years her dreaded, hidden and feared enemy, had suddenly become a welcome sensual cloak within which she could hide from any danger of exposure, be free to respond with every bit of the rich sensuality of her true nature to what he was demanding of her.

They made love quickly and passionately, tearing at buttons and fastenings, the raw broken sound of their frantic breathing interrupted by the sharp moan of pleasure Maggie gave when Finn lifted her onto the worktop and sank into her. Until she had felt him there even she hadn’t realised how much she had longed for the fulfilment of his possession, how much her body had ached for the feel of him within it.

His own release followed hers, flooding through her as the final shimmering pulsations of her orgasm died away.

As he lifted her off the worktop Finn crooned her name between gentle kisses whilst Maggie tried to stop her body from trembling with the shocked aftermath of what had happened.

‘Maggie, Maggie…’ Finn was cupping her face, stroking his thumbs over her cheekbones, still damp with the release of her orgasmic tears. ‘I want…’

They both blinked as the power suddenly came back on. Maggie could see scratches on Finn’s bare shoulder, which she must have inflicted in the heat of their passion. The kitchen floor was strewn with discarded clothes and the air smelled of passion—and Finn. She was appalled by the ferocity of her longing to beg him to stay. To tell him that she would do anything, be anything, in order to share her life with him. The intensity of her emotions made her feel physically weak. She wanted to crawl into bed and pull the covers up over her head. No, what she really wanted was to go to bed with Finn and to curl up there against his body whilst he held her and told her how much he loved her.

But he didn’t love her.

Unable to endure looking at him, she quickly pulled on her scattered clothes and told him disjointedly, ‘You can’t stay here. I want you to leave…’

Like her, Finn had finished dressing.

‘Maggie—’ he began, but Maggie couldn’t bear to listen; she was so close to breaking down completely and begging him to let her into his life. Skirting past him, she walked into her sitting room.

Finn followed her, mentally cursing himself beneath his breath. No wonder she wanted him to leave after the way he had behaved. Why the hell hadn’t he taken things more slowly? Did he really need to ask himself that? The sight of her, the scent of her, the reality of her had turned the final screw in the already over tightly coiled ferocity of his need and he had totally lost control. Even now, just thinking about the way she had felt when he had sunk into her, the receptive warm wetness of her, the…

She was walking across the sitting room, heading for the hallway, obviously determined to make him leave.

‘Maggie…wait…I’ve got the draft lease here for you to look at. Tina gave it to me earlier. And those photographs I was telling you about…’ As he spoke Finn was reaching for his briefcase and opening it.

Reluctantly Maggie turned round and watched him. In his desperation Finn accidentally dropped the case, spilling its contents. Maggie watched in silence as he gathered up the spilled papers

and then tensed as she saw the estate agents’ brochures. ‘You’re thinking of buying a London flat?’ she demanded, unable to conceal her shock.

For a moment Finn was tempted to lie and tell her he had got them for a friend, but what was the point?

‘I was,’ he acknowledged, giving her a grimly wry look. ‘Like I’ve told you before, Maggie, a part-time relationship with you isn’t what I want. I thought it was better to let you go completely rather than be forced to life on the fringes of your life, fitted in between business deals, always knowing that I came a poor second best, that my love for you came second best. But the way I’ve been feeling these last few weeks has changed my mind, and one of the reasons I came to London was to see you and to tell you…to ask you…if it would make any difference to…to things if I were prepared to spend a couple of nights a week in London. That way—’

Maggie didn’t let him finish. ‘You’d do that for me?’ she asked him quietly. ‘You’d buy a flat in London just so that you could see me…?’

The tremor in her voice and the look in her eyes made Finn’s heart ricochet against his chest wall. ‘To have your love, Maggie, I’d—’ He stopped and drew a deep breath before admitting huskily, ‘I’d do whatever it takes. Living in the City might be one kind of hell as far as I’m concerned, but living without you is every kind of hell there is and then some, all rolled into one unbearable pain.’

‘Oh, Finn.’

He gave a small grunt as he exhaled when she threw herself into his arms, but he still had the presence of mind to lock them around her and to kiss her with fiercely sweet passion before asking her hoarsely, ‘Will you do it, Maggie? Will you let me into your life, share your time and yourself with me?’

‘For two nights a week whilst you’re in London?’ Maggie questioned him, gravely looking up into his eyes.

The hope and the pain she could see there tore at her own heart. He might not have said the words ‘I love you’, but he didn’t need to; she could see his love in that expression.

‘Yes. Will you?’ he repeated thickly.

Very slowly Maggie shook her head.

‘No,’ she told him quietly.

‘No…’ He had gone white with shock, anguish written—no, carved into his face, Maggie recognised on a wave of sweetly tender love. ‘Maggie…’ he began, but she stopped him, placing her finger against his lips.