by Nikki Logan
And getting them totally wrong.
She swallowed her umbrage. There was only one path through shattered feelings: honesty, carefully trodden and clearly stated. But it was a terrifying path. Her heart pounded noisily. ‘This was about us, Flynn. You and me and the way the air thickens when we’re sharing it.’
The doubt in his eyes didn’t dissipate. ‘You don’t deny it?’
‘How can I? I feel it as much as you do, even if I don’t quite understand it.’
He scoffed, but his eyes were wary. ‘You’re making the assumption that it’s mutual—’
It would be easy to blush, to slip back into Bel-of-six-months-ago paradigm and let the doubt silence her. But then confidence—raw and sexual and new—surged through her. She suddenly became aware of every hidden corner of her body. ‘Two minutes ago we were exchanging oxygen.’ Her eyes meshed with his. ‘It’s mutual.’
He crossed his arms across his broad chest. ‘Maybe I’m just in this for a quick—’
‘With a Rochester girl?’ she cut in. ‘I don’t think so. That’s more a reason for not coming near me.’ She noted the way he stood, chest heaving, just millimetres from her. Glaring down at her. She lifted her chin. ‘Yet here we are, both panting like a pair of worn out gladiators.’
And here she was, desperate to feel that hard chest under her hands again. And desperate that he understood she was breathing heavily for him.
‘I’ll grant you there’s chemistry between us,’ he conceded. ‘But I’m no way near worn out. I’m just getting started.’
The lascivious look in his eyes—so full of promise, so full of the dangerously unknown—chased her off. She hadn’t put a halt to their heady kissing and offloaded her biggest secret only to leap straight back into his arms. She turned for the back of the house where the spare room was. ‘Well, you’re going to have to finish on your own then. I’m exhausted and going to bed.’
‘I’ll join you.’
She rounded back, laughing roughly. ‘That wasn’t an invitation.’
‘I know.’
Was he possibly that obtuse? ‘We’re not having sex, Flynn.’
‘I wasn’t offering sex, Belinda.’
She reeled. ‘Then what …?’
‘You’ve just admitted to this fatal attraction between us. I thought it would be worth … exploring. Testing.’
‘Testing?’
‘The parameters. See how far it goes. What if it’s just the magic of the day talking?’
Today was as far from actual magic as she could imagine being. A business transaction in the Twilight Zone. ‘Then we’d be better off testing it tomorrow.’ Not that she had any intention of that either. No matter what her hopeless heart wanted.
He glanced at the kitchen clock. ‘It is tomorrow. Just.’
‘Flynn, this is ridiculous …’ And way too calculated. And when did he get that close?
‘Is it?’ His breath blew the tiny hairs on her forehead to attention. ‘It wasn’t ten minutes ago. It felt pretty un-ridiculous then. Like something that’s been waiting to happen since we first met.’
‘I’m not interested in—’
‘Let’s find out, shall we?’
He hauled her against his hard body and lowered his mouth to hers.
Proving a point.
Making a statement.
Marking his territory.
It was nothing like his last kiss. Or their first one. She pulled herself free and wiped her hand across lips which tingled treacherously despite his presumption. He didn’t try all that hard to keep her.
‘You know I can see you as the bad-boy teenager every now and again,’ she panted, staring closely at the way the grey of his eyes simmered dangerously. ‘But somehow, deep down, it’s not quite convincing. Even now you look quite sorry to have just manhandled me.’
‘Maybe I just lack commitment to my own cause?’
‘Meaning?’
He stepped closer. ‘Meaning first I was the good-boy-that-turned-bad, then I was the bad-boy-that-came-good. Maybe all the time I should have just been a more balanced mix of both.’ He came to a halt a breath from her. ‘I should have just gone for what I needed and damn the consequences instead of endlessly apologising for imagined sins.’
She stared at him, not quite making the connection. ‘What do you need?’
‘Right now? You.’ This time his eyes backed him up.
Her pulse lurched.
‘Especially now that I understand what it is about you that drives me so crazy. I can get past it. Get to more … productive … aspects.’
‘Productive?’
He moved closer in the darkness. She felt the heat coming off him long before his words breathed across her ear. ‘Pleasurable.’
His lips pressed hotly against her jaw and roamed their way across to her mouth. Bel forced her frozen body to move again before he felt the way it had locked up. The way he’d locked it up. Blood raced through her startled arteries. Exulting.
‘Flynn—’
‘You were right about the attraction between us. It’s real. It’s there. Despite everything.’
Despite her being so much like the brother that he’d had a fractured relationship with? Despite them being on opposite sides of the court case? He rested his forehead against hers and her head swam with his nearness.
‘I’m not having sex with you, Flynn,’ she whispered. The more she said it, the more likely it was to be true. Right?
‘That’s not what I’m offering,’ he murmured, stroking her hair. ‘I’m talking about bed. Sleeping. Together. On our wedding night.’
She lifted her face. ‘You want to literally sleep … together?’ God help her but the idea was seductive. Even more so when he referred to it in terms of offering. That was dangerously suggestive of respect. And choice. And the ability to say no.
Which would mean robbing herself of the chance to nestle in next to him, wrapping her arms around all that masculine heat.
He started moving around the living room, extinguishing each candle with a kiss of air. ‘I’m bushed, Bel. I’ve been up for twenty-two hours. You wouldn’t be getting me at my best, anyway.’
As if …
‘What?’
Her head snapped up. Had she said that aloud, too? She really had to get a muzzle for her subconscious. ‘I said, I don’t think it’s a good idea.’
‘Bel … You’re a virgin and five months pregnant with twins, I’m not going to risk hurting any of you. I just want to sleep.’
He blew out the last candle, leaving the room lit only by the orange stain of the glowing fire. The low light threw a shadow, tall and ominous up along the far wall and turned Flynn into a dangerously delectable silhouette.
She swallowed as best she could. ‘I can get one of the dogs down here if it’s body heat you’re after.’
The silhouette moved towards her and slid its strong, warm hand into her clammy one. ‘Hilarious.’
‘Where are we going?’ He tugged her down the hall.
‘My bed’s bigger.’
‘I haven’t agreed yet.’ She cringed at her own slip. Yet …
‘You will. Your body wants to.’
She put the brakes on, way too late for her own dignity. ‘My body doesn’t know what it wants.’ Lies. Damned lies. It was screaming for more contact with his.
‘Then let’s find out.’
‘Flynn, this is ridiculous …’
‘Just something small. Just sharing a bed. No strings.’
The idea perked up and whispered in her ear. Yes … something small. A test. Just a test. There was no harm in just sleeping, was there?
Pure delusion.
‘Tell you what, if you hate it then you’re welcome to sneak back into your own bed the moment I’m out cold.’
There was no way on this planet she was going to hate it. But that was the problem. ‘Wouldn’t a glass of warm milk be more beneficial?’
‘No. I need you.’
Three s
imple words.
Not the ones she’d truly love to hear, but close enough. And had she really expected more? They tugged deep down in her soul. Flynn was choosing her—inexplicably, and after a lifetime of being overlooked. The man who had every reason to hate her was asking her to trust him. To test the waters of whatever this was between them. To end the hostilities.
He spun around and looked down on her. ‘I’m so tired of being tired, Bel. I don’t think I’ve slept well since the day you arrived.’ He cupped his hand behind her head and traced her jaw with his thumb in the darkness. ‘But if you seriously don’t want to then I’ll take you to your own room. And I’ll lock the door myself.’
She gave it two and a half seconds’ thought. Curl up alone in her cold bed while the sexiest man she’d ever known tossed and turned restlessly a thin wall away, or follow her heart and share a bed with the man she wanted so very badly! The man she wouldn’t be able to sleep for thinking about anyway. The man whose wife she wanted to be.
Even for just one night.
Even if it was make-believe.
She slept with Flynn all night and into the morning, curled hard into the shelter and strength of his body. He’d shed his wedding suit and donned some modest and inexplicably sexy track pants before tugging her behind him down into the pillowed heaven of his enormous bed as though it were the most normal thing in the world to do.
Never mind the fact she’d not shared a bed with someone since she was four years old.
They’d started out careful, giving each other respectful space. But as minutes ticked into ten she’d forced her body to relax and let it merge with the heat of his, tucking back into his welcome, trusted hold.
What she’d been dying to do for … who knew how long?
She’d let the smell and feel of him wash over her and when she felt his breath on her neck morph into the half-asleep press of his lips to her throat she didn’t pull away.
She’d rolled towards him.
His lazy kisses had stirred her blood—roaming, exploring—and his silent hands traced her entire body as if memorising it. Worshipping it. She’d done the same, pressing into his furnace-hot body and letting her skin discover his. But neither of them escalated things further, too tired in body or maybe in spirit. Or was it simply that they both knew, deep-down, that having sex really wasn’t the most productive—or moral—way to take their minds off their troubles.
Dr Cabanallo would still have his miracle birth and Bel would walk out of this room today with everything she’d had when Flynn led her into it.
Except perhaps her heart.
She pulled away carefully now, and looked at the sleeping man next to her.
His face, normally so carefully composed, was relaxed in sleep, like the boy he must have been back when the Bradleys first came to Bunyip’s Reach. It wasn’t the incensed face that had slapped a court order onto the hospital glass, or the stern one that had glared at her at thirty thousand feet. Or the cold one that had given her a script of lies to recite to his family that day in the Oberon coffee shop. It wasn’t even the carefully unreadable face she’d lifted her eyes to as she slid the white gold ring onto his finger yesterday or the tortured, pained one that had pulled her in here last night.
Her husband.
The man she’d given her emotional virginity to, if not the physical one.
Her heart tore free from her chest and tumbled, uncontrolled, into the pit of her stomach on a disorienting physical lurch and she curled her hands into fists on the cool sheets to steady the wild tilting.
Exactly when, or how, or why was a total mystery, but the sensations in her body and the swelling of her heart as she’d stretched up to Flynn in that cave and pressed her lips to his in a silent I do was evidence enough. She really didn’t need the overwhelming sense of emotion and rightness last night had brought to convince her …
Another Rochester woman had fallen for another Bradley man. Every bit as deeply and irreversibly as the first.
Against all odds.
When exactly had it happened? When had she realised that he was as good a man as his brother and quite possibly better? There was no time she could remember suddenly lifting her head and realising that he was meant for her. She couldn’t even pick the moment she’d stopped dreading the sound of his footfall and started anticipating it. But she never would have allowed him to sweep her into his bed if her soul hadn’t recognised the mark of its other.
Grumpy, protective, wounded … but one hundred per cent right for her.
And so she’d let Flynn kiss her into virtual unconsciousness and then snuggled in contentedly when he had pulled her tight beneath his chin, into his hot, unsatisfied body, and gently stroked both of them into a deep, gratifying sleep.
And now it was morning.
And his eyes were going to open any moment.
And conversation would be required.
What on earth was she going to say?
‘Stop thinking so loud,’ a deep, rumbly voice croaked.
She flinched and then dragged her focus from the place between his pectoral muscles where she was doing her thinking back up to his. His eyes were barely open, more of a grey squint, but they were locked hard on her.
‘Good morning,’ she stuttered.
He twisted his head towards the wall clock and then let it fall back to the pillow. ‘Actually, I think it’s afternoon.’
‘Oh.’ She pushed to a half-sitting position, mortified at their sloth. ‘What will your parents think?’
‘They’ll think we wore ourselves out in here last night. Not too far from the truth, just not what they’ll be imagining.’
Not a conventional wedding night, by any means. But since when had they done anything conventionally?
It was impossible to know from his still half-asleep manner whether he was as uncomfortable as her. Whether he regretted what the accusations of last night had led to. One part suppressed tension, one part emotional upheaval, two parts blatant desire … A recipe for more than disaster.
‘I should go back to my room …’ She swung her legs over the edge of Flynn’s king-sized bed.
A strong arm coiled around her waist. ‘Stay.’
One word. That was all it was. But it was rich with intent and overflowing with promise. The delights of the night before rushed back to her, blazing a warm trail through her cheeks. The things they’d done … While only kisses, the idea of him doing those things with anyone else—as he must have—made her literally feel sick.
Or it could just be the babies.
She forced herself free of his hold and sprinted for the en suite bathroom. But she was at least spared the humiliation of vomiting just metres from him as the wave of morning sickness settled. She drank a glass of water and splashed the rest on her face and clutched the towel she dried it with to her chest as if it would cushion the ache there.
‘Are you okay?’
She turned towards the doorway and her whole body leapt at the sight of him standing shirtless like a golden Adonis with track pants slung low on his hips and bare tanned feet curling into the bedroom carpet.
‘I’m fine. These morning dashes have been getting rarer as the weeks pass. I think it might just be all the … um … activity last night. Stirring everything up.’ That probably wasn’t even possible. Her own inexperience screamed at her. Heat poured back into her blanched cheeks.
Flynn smiled and leaned on the door frame. ‘You’re beautiful when you blush.’
Her heart began to hammer. Somehow the physical intimacy they’d shared last night, even the angry moments in between, paled against the implied emotional intimacy of a statement like that. Just hours ago he’d told her that the very things that were part of her nature bothered him. Challenged him. Too much like his brother. And then he had her on her back on the sofa.
Now happy families in the bathroom.
Which is it, Flynn? A question she could rightly ask herself, too.
The coldness of the autu
mn day finally registered and she pushed herself back upright, shivering. Flynn dragged the rumpled quilt off the bed and threw it round his shoulders, then held it open to invite her in. It closed around her like an envelope of warm air and she was back pressed against the furnace of Flynn’s chest.
Where she’d really been very happy all night.
‘You’re uncomfortable,’ he rumbled.
On the contrary. Standing within the circle of his arms, toasty-warm from his radiated heat was about as comfortable as she’d been in years. The nausea more fully dissipated. She glanced up at him, trying to read his expression. ‘This isn’t weird for you?’
How often had he done this? Stood might-as-well-be naked in a bathroom with a woman in his arms. Bel was afraid of the answer.
‘Not weird. Surprising, maybe.’
Very.
‘This wasn’t something I planned, Bel.’
‘I know.’
‘But I’m not going to apologise for it, if that’s what you’re waiting for.’
She lifted her eyes again. ‘I’m not waiting for anything. I just don’t know what to do now.’
That made him smile. He stroked the hair from her face. ‘Now? It’s easy. We dress, we eat, we go see what the rest of the world is up to.’
She nodded mutely. We pretend none of this ever happened. An awful sinking feeling consumed her.
‘Or …’ he drew her with him backwards out of the chilly bathroom ‘… we go back to bed and do all of that tomorrow.’
‘We can’t sleep all day, Flynn. We both have work to do.’
‘We got married yesterday. No one is going to expect us anywhere today.’
‘But …’ But what? It was such a sensationally good idea. And bad. ‘Should we push our luck?’ Every minute they were horizontal together was a minute closer to consummating this marriage. All it would take was a momentary lack of resolve on either of their parts …
‘Do I strike you as someone who doesn’t like to take a few risks?’ His smile was sexy enough to melt her resolve before she even hit the sheets. He raised his right hand. ‘Scout’s honour, Bel. I promise your virtue will be safe.’
‘Why?’
He stared at her. ‘Why what?’
