Two-Week Wife

by Miranda Lee

  She was taken aback by his seeming control, he could see, her eyes wide on him as he undressed her with casual aplomb. The sight of her perfect little breasts with their large, hard nipples endangered more than his physical control, but he kept going, sliding the zip of her skirt down and easing the garment over her slender hips to pool on the white-tiled floor.

  Now all that separated her from total nudity before him was a scrap of pink satin and lace. He thought of where his fingers had already been as he peeled the panties down her athletic legs, of her hot, wet, pulsing core. It was almost too much for him. It was certainly too much for his repressed but aching flesh, which sprang to life, rearing up with primal urgency.

  Whirling abruptly from her, he strode over to turn on the shower taps, standing with his back to her while he adjusted the temperature and battled to get himself at least marginally under control.

  At last he felt sufficiently in charge of his emotions—and his body—to face her once more.

  Bianca was shivering by the time he returned to draw her with him under the hot spray. Not from cold. From a dizzying excitement. And an exquisite expectation.

  Yet beside her almost blind arousal lay a bitter resentment that Adam was not similarly turned on. She wanted to see him as mindlessly impassioned as she was. His cool composure seemed to be emphasising her own lack of control, her own wanton willingness to surrender herself totally to his casual and rather cold sexual demands.

  Where was the Adam who’d once followed her around like an adoring puppy? Who’d have lain his life at her feet if she’d wanted him to?

  Gone. She had to accept it. Replaced by this cool, enigmatic stranger who was at this moment doing the most wicked things to her body with a bar of soap, turning her this way and that beneath the heated spray of water, sending her mad with desire as he teased aching nipples, massaged trembling buttocks and throbbing thighs.

  She was shaking by the time he snapped the water off and began towelling her dry. He carried her back into the bedroom, for which she was grateful—she knew she wouldn’t have been able to walk. Her eyes clung to him as he laid her down on the bed, and for the first time she saw a spark of conscience, a moment of doubt over what he was doing.

  For Bianca, it was too late for that. She no longer wanted his conscience, or his doubts. She only wanted him, inside her, expelling this almost hateful need from her body. She’d never felt this strung up, or this desperate. Her hands snaked round his neck, her fingers interlinking as she drew his mouth and body down on top of hers.

  Her legs opened to wrap tightly around him, her buttocks lifting from the mattress till his flesh fell with driving hardness into the softness of her woman’s body. With a powerful thrust which took her breath away he was suddenly there, filling her completely. He cupped her face with his hands and stared down into her wild, wide eyes, watching her while he began moving with a voluptuous and powerful rhythm.

  Bianca squeezed her eyes shut against the shame of Adam seeing her so lost to everything but her body’s demands. Her mouth fell open as she felt her climax begin to build. She gasped her pleasure, then groaned her torment, grimacing when the knife-edge of tension tightened its grip on her nerve-endings.

  The knowledge that he wanted to coldly watch her come brought one last burst of defiance, and her eyes flew open. But she was too late, those tortured nerve-endings giving up the ghost, bringing a twisted cry to her lips as her flesh shattered into a thousand electric spasms. Her contractions were fierce and strong around his flesh, the pleasure unbelievable.

  The look of dark triumph on his face frightened Bianca at first, but then his mouth gasped wide with agonised ecstasy, his release as cataclysmic as her own.

  ‘Oh, God, Bianca!’ he cried out, collapsing on top of her, burying his face in her hair. ‘Bianca...’

  She had never heard her name called out with such emotion, or such despair. It moved her unbearably and she gathered him close, instinctively trying to soothe him. The certainty that he still loved her, despite his earlier denial, evoked the most incredibly warm feelings inside her. It made what they had just shared something much more wonderful than anything she’d ever experienced before.

  But no sooner had she hugged him tight than he was wrenching himself out of her arms and abruptly withdrawing from her body. The obscenity he used as he rolled over onto his back made her flinch.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, levering herself up on one elbow to look down at him. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he bit out, slanting her an angry glance. ‘I hope,’ he added viciously.

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying I didn’t use anything just then, dammit. And you made no move to stop me. Not once!’

  ‘Oh,’ she said softly, her stomach flipping over as she lay back down again. There was no use making excuses. She simply hadn’t thought of it.

  ‘Yes, oh!’ he growled, rolling over onto his side to glare down at her. ‘Hell, Bianca, I hope you’re not in the habit of getting carried away like that. I know you’re on the pill, but that’s not the point these days, is it?’

  Bianca opened her mouth to tell him that actually she 4wasn’t on the pill. But she quickly closed it again, sensing that there was nothing to be gained by the admission. The odds of her falling pregnant on this one-off occasion were so remote as to be almost negligible.

  But she had a feeling Adam wouldn’t be too pleased with the news of even the slightest possibility. He didn’t look too pleased all round.

  ‘You always said the reason you never told your boyfriends you were on the pill was because you wanted them to always use a condom,’ he ranted. ‘You’ve always claimed to be fanatical about safe sex. What just happened rather proves you’re not infallible when it comes to being Miss Protection Perfect, wouldn’t you say?’

  Bianca could feel her own blood pressure rising, but she battled to remain calm. ‘I have never, ever not practised safe sex before tonight, Adam,’ she stated firmly. ‘And, contrary to your opinion of me, I have not had that many lovers over the years. Barely a handful. Can you say the same?’

  ‘Maybe not, but I can assure you practising safe sex is an automatic way of life with me.’

  ‘You’ve always used a condom?’

  ‘Too darned right I have.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you tonight?’ she counterchallenged.

  He pressed his lips tightly together, his eyes seething with resentment at her attempt to make him admit he’d got as carried away as she had. ‘I guess at the back of my mind I knew you were on the pill,’ he muttered at last. ‘And maybe, at the back of my mind, I just didn’t damned well want to!’

  ‘And maybe I had the same damned good reasons!’ she threw back at him. ‘But be assured I want you to use something in future, because I don’t trust you any more than you trust me, Mr Protection Imperfect!’

  Bianca was shocked when Adam started smiling down at her. It was a wickedly knowing smile, which sent a prickle of apprehension down her spine.

  ‘What are you smiling at?’ she snapped. And where had his anger gone to, dammit? She liked him angry. It made her feel safer than when he was...like this.

  ‘At you, Bianca,’ he drawled, and reached out to play idly with her nearest nipple.

  Bianca was shocked when it sprang to attention with appalling swiftness. Stunned, she knocked his hand away and sat up. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she asked shakily.

  ‘What you just gave me permission to do,’ he said, sitting up as well.

  ‘I did no such thing.’

  ‘Yes, you did. You asked me to use protection in future, which suggests you’re expecting a repeat performance. I think the future, my darling wife of the next fortnight...’ he murmured thickly as he reached out to play with both her breasts at the same time. ‘The future...has already arrived.’

  Bianca gasped when he took her shoulders and pushed her back against the pillows, straddling her and effectively pinning h
er to the mattress. Her cry of outrage was muffled by his kiss, her eyes rounding when Adam used his hands to find her body’s most electric and seductive places.

  ‘Hush,’ he said when she moaned a pained protest. ‘You don’t want to wake your mother, do you?’

  He kissed her again for an interminable time, only removing his mouth when she no longer had the will to scream—and when he had other uses for her lips.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ADAM carried the breakfast tray into the bedroom, his mouth tightening as his eyes lit upon Bianca’s still naked form sprawled face-down across the bed. Her lovely long black hair, no longer confined in that purple thing, was spread out in tangled abandon against the cool, creamy sheets. She looked the picture of erotic decadence—utterly spent from an orgy of sensual delights.

  If only her mother could see her now...

  But Mrs Peterson was still safely asleep, that sleeping tablet doing a good job. Not that it was all that late. Only eight.

  Adam placed the tray carefully on top of the bedside table, sat down on the side of the bed and stared down at the delicious curve of Bianca’s spine. He could not resist the temptation, and bent to kiss the small of her back before running his tongue-tip slowly upwards.

  ‘Don’t,’ she groaned, arching away from him and then rolling over, her arms flopping wide, her eyes still shut.

  His gut contracted as his gaze raked over her beautifully formed, perfectly toned little body.

  Bianca had always bemoaned her small breasts and her lack of height, but to him she was just right. He adored the shape of her slender curves, loved the way each breast fitted neatly into the palm of his hand, revelled in the fact that she was so much smaller than he was. And correspondingly less strong.

  His heart lurched as he thought of how he’d forced the issue with her last night, through his superior strength alone. He wasn’t proud of that fact, but, damn it all, she hadn’t objected for long. She’d been more than willing to give him what he wanted in the end.

  And he’d wanted so much—all those things he’d thought of doing with her over the years and never been able to. Well, he’d done most of them now, and it hadn’t dampened his passion for her one bit. Or his love, for that matter. He loved her more than ever. Wanted her more than ever. Hell, he wanted her to be his for forever. Wanted her to be his real wife.

  But he knew Bianca would never be his, or any other man’s, for forever. He was damned lucky to have got this far with her. Her abandoned behaviour with him last night was nothing out of the ordinary, not even those bittersweet moments of total surrender, when any man who didn’t know her might have thought she must love him to allow such torrid intimacies.

  But Adam knew the truth. A set of unusual circumstances had allowed him to tap into Bianca’s Achilles’ heel—sex—and she was simply running true to form.

  Once sexually attracted to a man, she always quickly became infatuated, even obsessed. She lived and breathed that man. Nothing was too good for him, in bed and out.

  But only for a time. Eventually she would begin to find flaws in what she’d once thought was a perfect male specimen. Sometimes it was the man who opted out first, probably because she’d begun to pick him to pieces. At other times she did the breaking up herself.

  Oddly enough, the longest lasting of her lovers had been one who hadn’t treated her very well at all. The bastard had actually boasted to Adam one day that his success with women was because he lived by the adage ‘Treat ’em mean, keep ‘em keen’.

  Adam personally found that theory distasteful. But, damn it all, it seemed to work. Where had being the good guy ever got him with Bianca? Bloody nowhere. Yet as soon as he’d started standing up to her, and treating her as if he was a selfish, macho stud with nothing to lose, she’d fallen into his hands like a ripe peach. It was perverse in the extreme, but who was he to question the road to sexual success?

  And he was being sexually successful with her. His loins leapt as he thought of the number of times he’d had her the previous night. Hell, he’d lost count.

  Having her body might not be everything. He’d always wanted the complete woman—body and soul. But sex with Bianca went a long way to making him feel infinitely better about all the years he’d wasted futilely trying to win her heart.

  He saw now that she was not capable of loving a man that way. Any man. Her relationships were based on lust. Once the intensity of her desire began to fade—which was inevitable—the relationship was dead in the water. Adam knew that this new desire of hers for him would not last. It never did.

  But, meantime, he aimed to take full advantage of that desire.

  He would have to be careful never to hope for more, however. Bianca had hurt him more than enough for one lifetime. To set himself up for added pain would be insane.

  No, he wasn’t going back to being stupid old Adam, boring best friend and doormat. He was going to stay being the man who’d shocked her into responding to him last night, the selfish stud who took without asking, who came and went without getting permission, who kept secrets from her and never, ever allowed himself to be taken for granted.

  ‘Wake up, Bianca,’ he said brusquely.

  Her eyes fluttered but remained sleepily shut while she yawned, then stretched with voluptuous sensuality. Bianca’s naked body had been bad enough. Her naked body moving like that was too much for Adam. He scooped her up and set her down on the carpet, smacking her hard on the bottom as he propelled her towards the bathroom.

  ‘Hey, that hurt!’ she protested, rubbing those gloriously pouty buttocks of hers as she glared over her shoulder at him.

  ‘Good,’ he pronounced. ‘Now get that butt of yours into the shower. It’s after eight and I’ve brought you some breakfast.’

  She half turned, an incredulous smile on her face. ‘You brought me breakfast?’

  Adam made a mental note never to do such a stupid thing again. ‘If you can call muesli and orange juice breakfast. But don’t get used to it. I thought you might need an energy boost after last night,’ he finished drily.

  ‘Oh...’

  The memory of the night flickered across her face, bringing with it a faint trace of worry, he thought. Or was it shame?

  No, not shame, Adam conceded ruefully. Bianca would never be ashamed of what she did in bed. She thought of sex as a beautiful and natural expression of the attraction between a man and a woman. There were no taboos in her mind. She was always scathing of people who tried to make sex into something wicked and dirty. Sick, she called them.

  That momentary cloud quickly cleared from her wide blue eyes, replaced by a soft look which twisted Adam’s heart. Damn, but she was so good at that, looking at him with the innocence of a child. There again, she was a child in some ways, always wanting fun and excitement, never wanting the things a grown woman wanted—except in one department.

  ‘Adam,’ she said softly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘For what? Breakfast?’

  ‘No. For coming back last night. You...you did it for me, didn’t you? You wouldn’t have had any idea Mum was already here. You left that Sophie female and came back to help me out.’

  Well, of course he had! But he couldn’t tell her that, could he? If he did, soon she’d start thinking of him again as good old Adam—loyal life-saver and breakfast-bringer.

  He let his eyes drift over her with lazy amusement. ‘Actually, Bianca, I hate to disillusion you, but I came back last night to pick up my books to take to the races today. I can’t operate my system without them.’

  She blinked her surprise before hurt darkened her eyes. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh, I see.’ She stiffened, and suddenly seemed to realise she was standing stark naked before him, her hands moving to cover herself. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered unhappily. ‘My mistake.’ And she hurried into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

  Adam steeled himself against the automatic selfhate which flooded his heart. So he’d hurt
her. Deliberately hurt her. So what? This was selfsurvival, here. He could not afford to wear his heart on his sleeve with her any more. He had to distance himself from this futile loving which had obsessed him most of his emotional life.

  Lust was what he was going to concentrate on from now on, for in the long run that was all Bianca responded to. Real love she scorned as weakness. He could not afford to be weak with her if he wanted to keep her sexual interest. Which he did. Hell, a man would have to be mad not to want a repeat performance of last night. There were other Bianca fantasies he hadn’t lived yet as well, and he aimed to live every one of them in the coming fortnight.

  Oh, yes...his days of being a push-over were well and truly gone!

  Bianca found herself crying under the shower. She had never felt this confused before. Or this vulnerable. Or this hurt.

  The reason, of course, was Adam. Not the Adam she’d known and loved all her life, but the stranger sitting on that bed.

  Last night, when he’d made love to her that first time and called out her name, she’d been so sure he still loved her. Even afterwards, when his lovemaking had become incredibly daring and increasingly demanding, she’d still felt confident that it was lovemaking and not just having sex. She could have sworn she’d felt a very special passion in every kiss, every caress.

  Now she wasn’t so sure. My God, the way he’d looked at her just then, the way he’d spoken to her.

  He’d made her feel so...unloved.

  More tears streamed down her face, which wasn’t like her at all. The thought that she might have fallen in love with Adam at the same time he’d fallen out of love with her was distressing in the extreme.

  And so frustrating.

  It just wasn’t fair!

  But when had life—or love—been fair? she wondered with a degree of cynicism. Her own mother had married a man she’d loved to death, only to have him be chronically unfaithful to her. Bianca had always believed she was tarred with the same brush as her father, because she’d imagined herself deeply in love several times, only to fall out of love within a few months. She’d obviously always confused sexual attraction with love.