The Christmas Marriage Mission

‘Oh, I remember, all right,’ he said with more than a touch of sarcasm. ‘I remember everything about that first lunch with you, believe me. It will be engrained on my memory till my dying day.’ He pulled her towards him suddenly, wrapping his arms round her as if to bind her to him. ‘A defiant scrap of nothing with flashing eyes and a skirt so short I was rock-hard for a week just thinking about it.’ He shook her slightly, his voice holding a faint note of self-derision. ‘I knew when they came and told me you’d flown the coop I should cut my losses. I didn’t need aggravation in the form of a red-haired siren who was intent on telling me to go to blazes. But you’d got under my skin, even then.’

She stared up at him, unable to say a word. His eyes were very silvery in the light of the one bedside lamp he had clicked on, the blue almost non-existent. She knew what was happening; the dark magnetism that was at the heart of his charm had reached out yet again to convince her black was white and white was black. She knew the sensible thing would be to end this right now, but standing here locked in his arms, with his anger dying and being replaced by something very different, logic and reason went out of the window.

But she had to try. She tensed, pulling back a little. ‘This is crazy,’ she whispered. ‘It can’t work, you must see that. We’re too different, Mitchell.’

‘I’m getting too close. That’s the real problem, isn’t it?’ he said softly.

She took a deep breath. ‘Yes,’ she said bravely, ‘in a way. It…it wasn’t part of the deal that you’d get to know my family. And I am grateful, really,’ she rushed on, ‘for all you’ve done, but…’

Anything else she might have said was swallowed up as his mouth descended on hers, his kiss fierce and hungry. Kay found herself clinging to him with desperate urgency, pressing closer into the hard male body as he kissed her with a raging passion that sent the blood rushing through her veins more warmly than the hot mulled wine they’d had earlier.

The thought came that she had to stop this, that it went against everything she had been thinking and talking about, but she couldn’t bear to move away. She wanted him, she needed him, and if it had to finish soon, so be it, but she could have this one night in his arms, couldn’t she?

She felt weightless and light-headed, enchanted and quivering with the sensations spiralling through her body. She was barely aware he had moved them over to the bed, but then she was lying down on the soft covers and he was bent over her, his hands and his mouth creating a yearning she felt she’d die from if it wasn’t properly assuaged.

‘You’re so beautiful, Kay. Far more beautiful than you realise, my darling.’ He was kissing her eyelids, her cheeks, her lips, her throat, his mouth moving over the delicate freckled skin at the swell of her breasts and then lower. She was lost in whirling desire, the ache in her body needing his to appease it.

She hadn’t felt her blouse being undone, and even when his mouth and touch re

gistered on bare skin the sensation was too sweet to stop. Right from when she’d met him her nights had been invaded by torturous longings and wild dreams, too erotic to dwell on in the cold light of day. But now her imaginings were coming true and he was everything she’d known he would be, knowing exactly where to touch, to kiss…

Why hadn’t she known it was possible to feel like this, that the mediocre sex life she had experienced with Perry wasn’t the real thing? She had read in novels about a woman’s body becoming a warm, pulsating, mindless energy but she had thought that it was fiction, clever writing to titillate. But this wasn’t fiction, this was real.

He was stroking the silky skin of her abdomen and as her hands clasped him to her, her fingers moving under his shirt and finding the hard range of planes and muscles beneath, he groaned softly. She could feel the hard pulse of his desire and it created such a fierce excitement she didn’t recognise herself.

She opened drugged eyes to see him bending over her, his face harsh and dark with passion and different from the Mitchell she knew. There was no trace of the cool, controlled entrepreneur or wry, mordacious man about town now. He wanted her, badly. She reached out to fumble with the belt in his jeans, desire making her all fingers and thumbs, and it came as a drenching shock when his hands moved over hers, stilling them.

‘No, Kay.’

‘No?’ It was the barest of whispers, all she could manage.

He groaned, the sound wrenched from the depths of him. ‘Don’t look like that,’ he growled huskily. ‘Don’t you think I want to? Hell, I’m going insane and it gets worse every time we’re together, but I don’t want it to be like this. That bozo you were married to; I only had to touch you once to know he had never awakened you. You responded to me like a virgin, unsure, overwhelmed by your feelings—’

‘Mitchell, I have two children.’ She had gone white then scarlet before hauling herself into a sitting position on the bed, desperately aware of the state of her clothing and feeling more humiliated than she’d ever felt in her life. She had thrown herself at him and he had refused her. It was the one refrain beating in her head. ‘I’m no virgin.’

‘Not physically maybe.’ He watched her as she groped with the buttons of her blouse, her frantic haste adding to her clumsiness. ‘Kay, when we make love—and we will—it will be a decision of your mind and not just your body. You will know exactly what you are doing.’

‘How civilised,’ she said with an attempt at derision that didn’t come off at all.

‘If you want to put it like that.’ His voice was cold now, contained. ‘Whatever, you won’t have any regrets because you were swept away by emotion or curiosity or anything else. It will be your first time—in everything that counts it will be your first time,’ he added as Kay went to protest again, ‘and you will make a conscious decision as a grown woman to let me love you.’

Kay’s eyes jerked to meet his at the last words. If only, if only he had meant that in the real sense of the word. But he was talking about sex, not love. ‘And if I don’t?’ she said shortly, forcing iron into her voice to combat the trembling she was trying to hide.

‘You will.’ It was supremely confident, and for a moment she actually hated him. ‘You will come to me of your own volition and I will make you into the woman you were always meant to be. It’s fate, kismet.’

‘It’s wishful thinking.’ She didn’t know where she was finding the strength to act as though her heart hadn’t been just torn out by the roots, but she was grateful for it.

‘Still fighting,’ he said softly.

His eyes had gone to her hair and now Kay snapped, her fragile cool deserting her. ‘Don’t you dare mention the colour of my hair or, so help me, I’ll hit you. And could you please leave my room? I was brought up to think that when one was a guest in someone’s home it didn’t automatically mean the host had visiting rights.’

He ignored the slur but she had seen his eyes narrow momentarily and knew he hadn’t liked it. It was a poor comfort in view of all that had gone on, but better than nothing.

‘Goodnight, Kay.’ He walked over to the door, his tall, lean body more relaxed than it had the right to be, she thought tightly. Here was she burning up inside and knowing she would toss and turn for hours in an agony of sexual frustration, whereas he looked as cool as a cucumber. ‘Dream of me.’

She glared at him. ‘A very remote possibility,’ she lied icily.

“‘Satire should, like a polished razor keen, Wound with a touch that’s scarcely felt or seen.” That was written by a woman over two hundred and fifty years ago,’ he said silkily. ‘Do you think Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had such as you in mind?’