by Lynne Graham
‘Oh…’ Her teeth chattered together in reaction as he found the most sensitive spot on her entire body with his mouth. She shut her eyes tight, wild pleasure and erotic shock at that sudden intimacy travelling through her shivering length in waves. Hot liquid sensation pulsed through her for long, timeless moments. She was out of control and loving it.
He tumbled her back on the bed. Scorching golden eyes raked her with sensual ferocity. ‘I can’t wait…’
‘Take your shirt off…’
He hauled it off with such violence that buttons went flying.
Prudence feasted her eyes on him, wondered if she could wait until he got the rest of his clothes off and decided that she couldn’t. She opened her arms, arched her spine and shifted her hips in silent invitation.
His burning gaze flared with white-hot desire. ‘You tease…’ he ground out helplessly, coming down to her with flattering impatience, all fire, hunger and aggressive masculine energy.
He plunged into her tender flesh with a sweet force that made her cry out. Nothing had ever been as wild as the passion they generated in that fiery fusion. Her excitement was incredibly intense. He drove her to a shattering peak of passion and the intolerable pleasure took her by storm. The power of the experience left her dazed and full of warmth and emotion.
Nik lifted his damp, dark head, smouldering eyes raking her flushed face. His charismatic smile curved his mobile mouth and he claimed her reddened lips in a tender kiss. ‘You amazing woman…’
She wanted to tell him that she loved him but bit back the revealing words just in time. Even so she felt so happy she wanted to cry and she buried her head in his shoulder, breathing in the scent of his damp, tawny skin with blissful satisfaction. She felt as if he was hers now, wholly, entirely, absolutely hers.
‘I wonder if we made a baby this time,’ Nik murmured huskily.
Consternation tensed Prudence’s small frame. A spasm of pure, naked guilt travelled through her, because she had made no attempt to tell him that she was taking precautions against pregnancy. Of course, she had noticed that he had made no attempt to guard against that risk. She had, she was ashamed to admit, felt a tad superior in her knowledge that she was in full, if secret, control of her own fertility. But that had been right back at the beginning when she didn’t trust him and believed she wanted a divorce. Everything had changed since then. She knew that this was the moment when she should speak up, but it seemed to her that such a confession would make things very complicated and might even damage the new bonds they had formed.
‘You’re very quiet.’ Nik rested back on his elbow, watching her from below sinfully long black eyelashes, his lean, bronzed features achingly handsome. ‘I know how much you want a child.’
Prudence squirmed like a butterfly on a pin, torn by the knowledge of her deception. ‘Yes-er-well, but-’
‘I got used to the idea of having a family very fast. I like it,’ Nik confided, pure devilment gleaming in his clear gaze as he let a seemingly idle hand stray from her waist down to her thigh and linger there. ‘I like working on the project of making you a mother. I intend to devote an enormous amount of time and effort to that challenge…any objections?’
‘None…’ Even in the grip of shame over her craven lack of candour, Prudence could not resist that look and even less could she resist his touch. She would just stop taking the pills and he would never know, she thought weakly, quivering with anticipation and excitement as he shifted fluidly closer.
Prudence assumed lack of sleep was to blame for her low appetite at breakfast the next day. She also felt ever so slightly nauseous. Mid-morning they flew back to London. Prudence was so eager to see how her rescue animals had fared during her absence that she changed into practical clothes on the flight and asked to be delivered straight to the stable yard.
Five minutes later, the limo pulled up outside the abbey. As Nik climbed out he kicked over the handbag that Prudence had left lying on the floor. The soft caramel leather holdall he had bought her in Florence tipped out its contents onto the gravel of the driveway. His gaze arrowed in on the foil-packed strip that lay half-in, half-out of the bag. Bending down, he lifted it and fell very still.
CHAPTER EIGHT
WITH DOTTIE’S HELP, Prudence placed baskets for her elderly dogs, Sooty and Minnie, into a cosy back hall and settled them there, since the cook had made it clear that he was no fan of four-legged animals in the kitchen quarters.
The older woman was defensive on Prudence’s behalf. ‘Oakmere is your home. You should just tell that fancy chef that he has to put up with the dogs!’
‘The kitchen’s his territory now and thank goodness that it is. I hate cooking,’ Prudence reminded her equably. ‘Not everyone approves of animals indoors.’
Prudence had never lived without at least a couple of dogs at her heels. She was keenly aware, however, that Nik had grown up without pets and was not accustomed to sharing accommodation with them. Dottie took her leave. Prudence was eager to explore the house and see how the renovations were coming on but it was getting late. Still muddy and more than a little bedraggled from the evening routine of watering and feeding, she hurried upstairs to shower and change before dinner. She also felt incredibly tired and thought that perhaps it was time she had a medical check-up. After all, she reminded herself, her menstrual cycle still seemed to be out of kilter and that was unusual.
Twenty minutes later Prudence emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel and with her wet hair combed back from her brow. Nik was stationed by the tall bedroom windows. Her eyes lit up and eager words about how well the sanctuary had fared during her absence were bubbling on her lips. But when Nik swung round, she saw the grim darkness of his gaze and the forbidding cast of his strong, dark features and her tummy flipped in alarm.
‘What’s up? What’s happened?’ she questioned.
In answer, Nik tossed the packet of pills at her feet.
Prudence gulped and folded her lips, her guilt and dismay unconcealed. ‘Oh, dear…’
‘Is that all you’ve got to say to me?’ Nik countered grittily.
Prudence floundered and sidestepped that direct question. ‘The packet was in my handbag…how did you get hold of it?’
‘I tripped over your bag in the limo and it fell out.’
Her colour high, Prudence stopped trying to evade the confrontation. She drew in a steadying breath. ‘I had already decided to stop taking them-’
‘And when did you take that momentous decision?’
Prudence reddened because she knew that her answer would not impress him. ‘Last night…’
His thunderous aspect remained undiminished. ‘When did you organise contraception?’
She told him.
‘So, you’ve been lying to me from the minute that we began living together as husband and wife.’
Prudence squirmed but sought to defend herself. ‘That’s a very emotive way of putting it-’
His dark gaze flashed gold and his dark, deep voice was dangerously quiet. ‘And how would you suggest I put it?’
‘As it was…rather than how it is now-’
‘That’s not relevant-’
‘It is. I made that decision in the past-’
‘What’s at stake here is trust,’ Nik delineated.
‘Yes, but the circumstances-’
‘Don’t count.’ His lean, bronzed face was unyielding. ‘You should have told me you were using birth control. That was a matter for us both to discuss. But then that isn’t what this is about, is it? You preferred to go behind my back and deceive me.’
Prudence could feel the outrage he was containing. It was there in the rigidity with which he was holding his lithe, powerful body, in the burnished gold in his eyes and the prominence of his hard, classic cheekbones. She wanted to scream with frustration and regret. Everything had been so wonderful, so perfect, and the future so promising. He need never have known that she was taking those wretched pills. Why on earth hadn’t sh
e immediately disposed of the evidence?
In the midst of that train of thought, she was shocked by other, sneaky ideas travelling through her head. Hadn’t she always believed in complete honesty? What had happened to that? Nik had come back into her life and Nik was more important to her than anything else. That was why she had fallen off the straight and narrow path so fast her head was still spinning. She had wanted to preserve their relationship, not tear it apart.
‘In spite of all the time we were together in Italy, you said not a word about the fact that you were using contraception,’ Nik ground out in the rushing silence.
‘I didn’t think about it, not properly,’ Prudence said defensively. ‘I’ve just been so busy being happy with you-’
‘Really…happy?’ Nik framed in his slick, dark drawl that could be so incredibly sardonic in tone. ‘It was a great act. You wanted a baby, but there was no damned way you were about to risk that baby being mine!’
‘That’s not true and I wasn’t acting-’
‘A couple of months ago, you were willing to go to a sperm bank and choose a stranger to father your child…but I wasn’t good enough-’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ she gasped. ‘I just wasn’t ready to talk about this with you-’
‘You weren’t going to tell me at all. Do you think I don’t realise that?’
Prudence was so tense that her spine was hurting. ‘You’re not being fair, Nik-’
‘How fair were you?’ Nik countered in a wrathful undertone, his impassive façade starting to crack to reveal his cold, seething anger. ‘How fair were you being when you let me believe that we were trying to start a family? I wanted that child for your sake. I could have waited. I didn’t want a child until I realised that that was your biggest dream. Is this how you repay me for trying to give you what I thought you wanted? With lies and deception?’
And that was the precise moment that Prudence truly grasped how much damage she had done to their marriage and she was horrified. The halter she had had on her own emotions snapped beneath that pressure. ‘What choice did you give me at the beginning? I had no idea what to expect from you,’ she protested. ‘You forced me to make our marriage real and I had to protect myself as best I could. I had to think ahead-’
‘Theos mou…was everything we shared a complete con?’ Nik launched at her rawly. ‘Were you just pretending to be happy as well?’
Her sense of panic increased, for she felt as though she was being boxed into an ever tighter corner. ‘No, of course not. But I didn’t know how things were going to turn out between us before we went to Italy and that’s why I started taking birth-control pills. I couldn’t take the risk of falling pregnant. If I’d had a baby with you, it would have given you even more of a hold over me.’
‘You could have told me that upfront-’
‘I didn’t think about it at the beginning and, by the time I did, it seemed too awkward and controversial-’
His lean, powerful face had hardened. ‘Maybe it gave you a kick to put one over on me.’
Prudence was too worked up to pick and choose her words. ‘Yes, once or twice it did…’
Beneath his bronzed skin, Nik lost colour at that unexpected admission. He rested raw dark eyes on her, aggression leaping from every taut inch of his magnificent body. ‘You are not the woman I thought you were-’
Prudence felt her tummy flip as if she was teetering on the edge of a dangerous chasm. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have admitted that and I’m certainly not proud of it but I have feelings, too. I was very angry with you at the start, but I was scared as well-’
‘Scared?’ Nik interrupted wrathfully. ‘You have never in your entire life had cause to be scared of me!’
‘How about when you told me my animals could go hang if I didn’t agree to give our marriage a trial?’
Nik shrugged an elegant shoulder and spread expressive lean brown hands in denial of that reminder. ‘It was just an empty threat, part of the negotiations. I knew right from the start that you would give in. Believe me, I would never have allowed any harm whatsoever to come to your animals.’
‘I’d like to say that I believe you, but I can’t. You’re not the world’s most compassionate person, Nik. Once I wouldn’t accept that side of you. I idealised you and it was very foolish of me,’ Prudence confided unhappily. ‘After all, your reputation always said you were a bastard…and when I crossed you, I discovered that you were much more callous than I had ever wanted to appreciate.’
In receipt of that ringing indictment of his character, Nik had gone very still. He was shocked; he had enjoyed her romantic view of him as almost perfect. A very faint darkening of colour demarcated the slashing line of his fabulous cheekbones and then it faded, leaving him unusually pale. ‘That’s not how I am-’
‘It’s the only way you know how to be. You’re tough and incredibly domineering, Nik. You just lay down the law, you demand, you expect-’
Nik rested brilliant dark eyes of reproach on her. ‘That is not how I behaved in Italy. That is not how I treat you, thespinis mou.’
The hostility in the air and the taste of her own fear for the future scared Prudence but she refused to back down. ‘I agree…but that still doesn’t change how this marriage started out last month. Why are you trying to ignore the facts? You coerced me into doing what I didn’t want to do…just as my grandfather once did…and there was no way I was going to sit back and take that again!’
‘That’s not an excuse for taking contraceptive pills to ensure that you didn’t have my baby,’ Nik condemned roughly, his Greek accent raking round every syllable of that abrasive comeback.
‘Everything’s changed since I took that decision.’
‘But my sins have come back to haunt me. Some would say that is very appropriate and deserved,’ Nik said quietly.
‘I wouldn’t…’
But Nik was no longer focusing on her. His striking gaze seemed to be looking inward and the sombre cast of his features struck a chill into her bones.
‘Don’t be like this-’
Nik rested brooding dark eyes on her. ‘How else do you expect me to be?’
Prudence moved towards him and made a tiny placatory gesture with one hand, before hurriedly squeezing her fingers together and letting her hand drop back to her side. In such a mood he would reject her and all bravery deserted her in the face of that prospect. ‘Don’t think that I don’t appreciate that you’ve had to be tough to survive,’ she told him awkwardly. ‘Your whole family depend on you and I know that you had to be a hard-hitter to break away from my grandfather and still stay in business.’
Nik bit out a harsh laugh, for she had not the slightest idea that once again he was fighting to stand firm against the might of Demakis International. But that was how it should be in his opinion: it was his duty to protect her from such worries. He cherished the memory of her happiness in Tuscany. ‘Is this my wife making excuses for me for being a bastard? Don’t waste your time. I’m not ashamed of what I am.’
Prudence could feel the hostile distance in him and that was when she realised how much damage had been done to their marriage. He was Greek and he was very proud. At the end of the day, family meant everything. She knew that the belief that she did not want his child must have cut deep. ‘I didn’t want to tell you about the pills, because I knew they would create a stupid misunderstanding.’
Nik shrugged a broad shoulder with magnificent cool. ‘What’s to misunderstand? As I said, I didn’t want a child until I made the error of assuming that you were desperate for one. Keep taking the pills with my blessing,’ he urged. ‘Look, I have to go into the office. A lot has been happening on the business front while we were sunning ourselves in Italy.’
Dismay and disappointment assailed Prudence. Just when she had given him her trust, just when she was ready to openly admit to him how very much she wanted to have a child with him, Nik had withdrawn the possibility and shut the door in her face. Even worse, his use of that
word ‘desperate’ in relation to her feelings about babies sealed her lips on any protest. She did not want to figure as desperate in Nik’s eyes, not when he made it so plain that he had only ever been willing to consider fatherhood for her benefit.
‘Is that really how you feel?’ Prudence prompted tightly, with tears burning the backs of her eyes and her throat aching.
Nik opened the door. ‘How else would I feel?’
In considerably less demand than a sperm bank, he thought to himself in answer to that question when he was safely on the other side of the door. He wanted to punch a hole in the wall. He needed to vent the explosive emotions attacking his usually clear thinking processes. That violent urge shook his view of himself, but Prudence had deceived him and he had fallen for it hook, line and sinker. His destructive thoughts raged on: how did he know that she had ever planned to use a sperm bank to have a child? Had he given her the divorce she had so badly wanted, would he then have discovered that Leo Burleigh was destined to become the father of her children? A sperm bank? Prudence, who was so conventional? Had that ever been a credible tale?
Once again, it seemed, he had underestimated his wife. She had seen through the façade and realised that he was a callous bastard. Nik raked long brown fingers viciously through his black hair and then studied his hand with a frown, for it had developed a slight tremor. What was the matter with him? At a time when he was fighting for survival in business he needed all his wits and his strength. Never had he been unequal to a challenge, he reminded himself fiercely. At best he had been on trial during their honeymoon. At worst Prudence was planning to walk out on him for another man. Why else would a woman who had been so keen to have a baby now guard so carefully against the possibility?
By the time Prudence got dressed and went off in pursuit of Nik, it was too late: he had gone. Panic threatened to take her over. She lifted the phone to call him and then hesitated. Wouldn’t it be wiser to wait until he came home? She could then talk to him with calm and sense. At present, she acknowledged, she felt neither calm nor sensible. In fact, she felt frantic and tearful and furious and hurt and terrified. Nik had been honest: he didn’t want a baby. She thought it was wonderful that he could admit that while censuring her for practising birth control. But the reflection was of little consolation to her. What really mattered to her was that she had hurt his pride and disappointed him and she blamed herself bitterly for not being more honest with him in Italy.
