Bridal Bargains

‘It’s my wedding night,’ Claire reminded him softly. ‘And I want you. Will you make love to me, Andreas—please?’

Had she said it to protect his pride so he didn’t have to lower it to ask her the same question? Claire wondered later. Or was it just that she was responding to her own needs?

Whichever it was, at least he didn’t reject her—as she knew he was very capable of doing. Instead he released a muffled curse then was fiercely claiming her mouth.

Standing there with the moonlight shining in on them, he caressed and stroked and kissed the nightdress from her body, then stood back a little to sombrely rid himself of his own clothes.

He wasn’t happy with himself for wanting her like this, and Claire wished she had the experience to remove his clothes for him in a way that would make him lose touch with himself, never mind his reservations. But she was no femme fatale, and with one near-useless hand she knew she wouldn’t be able to pull it off with any grace. So she had to content herself with watching his moon-kissed, satiny flesh appear as his shirt was removed before he bent down to remove his shoes and socks.

Yet he stopped right there. Claire frowned at him as he reached for her again. ‘You haven’t finished,’ she whispered.

‘I will,’ he promised. ‘But later …’

Later turned out to be after he had carried her to the bed and laid her down on it. Later was when he had driven her into a mindless state of unbearable arousal that left not a single inch of her flesh untouched by his touch. Later was after she had driven him almost over the edge by trailing her mouth over his chest and had learned the intense pleasure in toying with a small, tight male nipple.

Later was when she had grown bold enough to move on downwards, utilising the expertise with which he had aroused her to arouse him. But when her sensual journey was halted by the waistband of his trousers he stopped her from taking them from him by pulling her beneath him, and, ignoring her small cry of protest at his frustrating tactics, he began the whole wildly erotic process of arousing her all over again.

So by the time his idea of later arrived she was so lost in the sensual haze he had created that she didn’t even notice him ridding himself of the wretched trousers until he came over her and she felt the power of his naked arousal just before he pushed urgently inside her …

This time, it really should not have happened.

‘Don’t say anything,’ she warned him.

She was sitting at Lefka’s huge scrubbed kitchen table, hugging a mug of hot coffee in her hands as if her life depended on it. There was no colour in her face whatsoever, and her hair was a tangled mess around her shoulders, her body cloaked in a towelling bathrobe that covered her from neck to feet.

He, by contrast, was fully dressed in fresh trousers and a polo shirt. He looked neat, clean, perfectly presented. But then, he’d shot off into his bathroom so damned fast that he could have had ten showers before Claire had recovered enough to move!

After he had lifted his weight from her, of course—quickly, like the last time. Body still shuddering—like the last time.

‘I—’

‘I said don’t!’ she choked out.

The silence screamed. The tension, the bitterness. Like an action replay of last time.

Then he sighed and moved away, walking wearily across the kitchen. Checking the coffee-pot with his hand, he poured himself out a cup then came to sit down at the table.

Claire flicked him a glance. He was staring down at his drink and his shoulders were hunched over. The strain of the last twelve hours was so severe in his face now that he looked like a man who was having to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.

She looked away before she started feeling sorry for him again. He might look like Atlas, but he isn’t, she reminded herself brutally. He is just a man—an ordinary man with ordinary appetites. And an extraordinary way of dealing with the aftermath.

‘Do you have a mistress?’ she shot at him.

His head came up, dark eyes very guarded. ‘What?’ he murmured warily.

‘Desmona did warn me that you had a mistress tucked away somewhere, but with everything else I forgot to ask. So I am asking you now.’

‘Desmona said that?’ He frowned. ‘When?’

‘At the betrothal thing.’ She refused to call it a party. ‘She pointed out a couple of candidates and suggested I choose.’ Her eyes flicked up again, catching him without his guard, and his expression was—

She looked away again quickly, not wanting to acknowledge what that expression was telling her because it had the power to shatter the brand-new shell of protection she was hugging closely around her.

‘You haven’t answered the question,’ she prompted huskily.

‘There is no one,’ he said.

Eyes fixed on her cup, she tried to decide if she could believe him when the man found it so easy to be economical with the truth.