His Trophy Mistress
Page 15
“When we’re married,” Paige amended hastily, “and starting now! What is your problem?”
“I told you,” he said unconvincingly. “But also—” he’d seen the threatening look on her face “—it was bought with your other husband’s money.”
“My money.”
“From his insurance. It doesn’t feel right.”
“It seems to have felt perfectly all right until now.”
“I didn’t know then. And I haven’t been living here. I can’t,” he said stubbornly. “Why do you think I’ve been trying to get you to my apartment since that first night?”
Exasperated, she said, “You can’t be jealous of Aidan, Jager. He’s dead.”
“I’m not jealous.” He scowled.
“Are you sure?” Paige reached up and smoothed back a strand of hair from the scowl. She hesitated, not wanting to denigrate Aidan, but decided to be honest. “I loved him, I won’t pretend I didn’t, but…it never felt the way it does with you.”
The scowl lifted. “I’ve tried not to mind,” he said. “I know I don’t have any right.”
She saw it had hurt him, but in time the hurt would ease. And she wouldn’t let him ride roughshod over her. “I’m going to keep the cottage.” She hoped he wasn’t going to make it a bone of contention.
“You can. But I want our home to be my territory. Ours. Can you understand that?”
Yes, she could. He was sensitive about providing for her properly this time, showing her parents, with their old-fashioned values, that he could.
It might be a long while before he was utterly sure of her love, truly secure. She had a whole lifetime to prove it to him. Paige surrendered. “All right, I’ll move into your apartment. But we could come here at weekends, maybe?”
“Done,” he said promptly. “And I’ll leave my cell phone behind. It’ll be our secret hideaway, our love-nest in the suburbs.”
She laughed softly. “Maddie said this room was like a love-nest.”
“I’m glad I helped to create it,” he said. “All that stripping and scraping away the years of covering up and neglect was worth it in the end.” He looked around the room. “You’ve got rid of the accumulated rubbish and made it new and fresh again. Now—” he returned his attention to her, and lowered his mouth until it just touched her lips “—can we get on with what we’re here for?”
He opened her mouth under his, and she arched into him, kissing him back without restraint, returning every caress, matching him in every way.
And when he gave her the ultimate physical delight and emotional fulfillment and she cried out against his mouth, and heard his answering groan, muffled in his throat, she knew that at last she had all of him, that he was wholly hers as she was wholly his. His wife again. Until the end of time.
ISBN: 978-1-408-93923-9
HIS TROPHY MISTRESS
© Daphne Clair De Jong 2001
First Published in Great Britain in 2001
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