The Wedding-Night Affair (Harlequin Presents)

by Miranda Lee

  ‘I’m on the pill, yes,’ she said stiffly. ‘But I don’t usually tell my men-friends that. I always insist they use protection.’

  ‘My, my, you are careful. Sorry, but I don’t have any condoms with me. Contraception wasn’t on my agenda for tonight. But I can stop at a chemist, if you like.’

  ‘I haven’t agreed to go with you yet.’

  ‘Make up your mind, then,’ he said, in a cold, hard voice. ‘Once we get closer to the city it’s hard to stop.’

  Fiona tried to keep her cool in the face of the most appallingly corrupting thoughts.

  ‘Fact is, Philip,’ she said firmly, and tried to mean it, ‘I don’t go to bed with men who think I’m a slut. Or who treat me like one Because I’m not! I’m not only discerning in my sexual partners, I demand respect from them.’

  ‘I respect you.’

  ‘No, you don’t. You despise me for some reason. Frankly, I’m not sure why. If it’s because I’ve been to bed with a few men for reasons other than love then you must despise yourself as well. I gathered from your mother that you haven’t been in love once since we broke up—till Corinne came along, that is—yet I doubt you’ve been celibate all these years.’

  He threw her a startled glance. ‘Good grief, but you’d make a damned good defence lawyer! You have a definite skill in argument. And you do have a point, even if my mother could do with keeping her own counsel instead of telling a virtual stranger her son’s private and personal business. Still, I stand corrected, and plead guilty to the crime of double standards. I will even apologise for any hasty judgements where you’re concerned. Now will you spend the night with me?’ And he flashed her a wickedly seductive smile.

  Fiona felt herself wavering. ‘I shouldn’t,’ she muttered. ‘You’ll probably regret it in the morning.’

  He laughed. ‘If you’re worried that I might fall in love with you again, then don’t be. I’m not a hormone-driven boy any longer. I know the difference between sex and love.’

  Fiona winced. ‘I just meant you might see things differently in the morning. You’re acting on impulse tonight. And in anger.’

  ‘Not entirely, Fiona,’ he admitted drily. ‘I’ve been thinking about having sex with you since I saw you leaning up against that pillar tonight. I married Corinne thinking about having sex with you. I promised to love, honour and cherish her while I was thinking how I’d like to lash you to that pillar, strip you naked, and keep you there for my pleasure for days on end.’

  ‘Don’t say things like that!’ she gasped, her face flaming while her body burned with darkly answering desires.

  ‘But it’s true. That’s what you do to me. You always did. You’ve no idea how much I used to want you, how nothing was ever enough, no matter how many times we did it, or how many ways.’

  ‘Don’t, Philip,’ she choked out breathlessly.

  ‘Yes, you’re right. I have to shut up or I won’t even make it to the bloody hotel. I’ll pull over right here and now. And that’s not what I want. Not at all. I want lots of room. I want you totally naked. And I want you more than once. The memory of you has tormented me for years, Noni,’ he ground out. ‘I won’t be tormented tonight.’

  She stared over at him and his angry face, his words echoing in her head. Masterful words. Erotic words. Exciting words.

  He isn’t himself, she reasoned. He’s upset.

  But then she thought...I don’t care. I want him too, in whatever way he wants to have me. Because at least it will be Philip doing it to me, not some ghastly substitute. And when the sun comes up in the morning it will be Philip’s face on the pillow beside me...

  She looked over at him and caught his eye. ‘How...how long till we’re at the hotel?’ she managed in strangled tones.

  He smiled a slow, sexy, almost smug smile. They were on the same wavelength now, it said. Wanting the same things, driven by the same goals. ‘Fifteen minutes, if we’re lucky.’

  ‘That’s a long time.’

  ‘You can wait, witch.’

  ‘Maybe. Just.’

  ‘This is going to be some night,’ he muttered.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, and looked away from him. ‘It is.’

  The next fifteen minutes passed in a haze of desire the like of which Fiona had never known. It glazed her mind while it stirred her body, making the blood thrum through her veins and rush to her head till she felt dizzy and disorientated.

  Perhaps she looked calm, sitting there, staring silently out at the city streets whizzing by, but she was anything but. Her head spun, and so did her thoughts. How could she do this to herself? How could she?

  Because you want to, came the terrible truth.

  You want to...

  The Jag sped down the amazingly quiet Pacific Highway, and negotiated the Harbour Bridge with ridiculous ease. It was as though the fates were conspiring to hurry her to her doom, lest she change her mind and tell Philip to take her home. Or the devil himself making sure there was no other escape from the sexual tension which already had her in its tenacious grip; no escape but placing herself in Philip’s impassioned hands once again.

  Fiona feared that spending the night with Philip would break down the defences she’d built around her heart where falling in love with him again was concerned. By morning, she suspected, she wouldn’t want just Philip’s body but his heart as well.

  But the Philip sitting beside her had a wounded heart, too wounded for anything remotely like falling in love with her in return. He wanted sex, not intimacy. Vengeance, not caring. He was being driven by lust, not love.

  She was on a one-way ride to misery.

  Ahh, but the wild excitement of that ride!

  That was what was holding her in thrall, why she made no protest when the Jag screeched to a halt at one of Sydney’s plushest inner-city hotels and Philip propelled her inside with almost indecent haste.

  The honeymoon suite was on the top floor, a breathtakingly beautiful group of rooms decorated in pale blue and gold, with breathtakingly beautiful views of Sydney Harbour from every window.

  Perversely, once Philip had her all to himself and the door was safely locked behind them, his sense of urgency seemed to dissipate. He walked slowly through the rooms, inspecting them for she knew not what. There seemed to be everything any honeymooner could possibly desire. A private balcony. An elegant sitting room. A cute little alcove set up for meals. A bedroom straight out of the Arabian Nights. A bathroom fit for a king, with a sunken circular spa bath, marble floors and benchtops, and the most exquisite gold taps.

  ‘Philip,’ she said at last when they’d returned to the sitting room. ‘What are you doing?’

  He looked up at her and smiled a wry smile. ‘Calming down.’

  ‘Oh...’ Nothing was going to calm her down. Not inside, where her heart was racing madly and every nerve-ending she owned was on red alert

  ‘Shall we take this into the bedroom?’ he said, pointing to the bottle of champagne which was sitting in a silver ice bucket on the coffee table, along with a fresh fruit platter and two fluted crystal glasses.

  ‘If you like,’ she murmured, though all she wanted and needed in the bedroom was him. To use Corinne’s favourite word, he looked utterly gorgeous, standing there in that beautiful black dinner suit.

  Fiona couldn’t wait to take it off him.

  ‘You bring the glasses,’ he told her, and scooped up the bucket.

  Dropping her handbag by the table, she reefed off her jacket, picked up the glasses and hurried after him.

  He opened the champagne and filled the glasses, before taking them from her hands and placing them on the bedside chest next to a very pretty gold lamp.

  ‘What are you doing now?’ she asked impatiently when Philip turned it on then walked round to turn on the matching lamp.

  ‘Turn off the overhead light,’ he ordered.

  She did, and the room was immediately plunged into a romantic half-light, only the bed well lit, the blue satin quilt glowing under th
e golden circles of light from the lamps.

  ‘Now, come over here.’ He beckoned from where he was standing at the foot of the bed.

  Her heart tripped. At last, he was going to make love to her. She felt self-conscious under the intensity of his gaze as she walked slowly towards him, and very aware of her own body: her breasts lushly full beneath her dress, her stomach tight in anticipation, her thighs trembling.

  ‘Turn around,’ he ordered when she was within an arm’s distance.

  She did.

  She would have done anything he asked.

  His fingertips brushed over her bare shoulders and she almost cried out.

  She tensed even further as he took his time taking off her necklace, and then her earnings. ‘I said I want you naked,’ he murmured, his breath hot in her hair and over her neck.

  ‘The...the zipper,’ she told him shakily. ‘It’s at the back. Hidden.’

  ‘Ahh, yes, I see.’ She held her breath as he peeled it slowly down, her hands automatically clutching the dress up over her breasts when the back parted wide and threatened to fall.

  ‘Let it go, Fiona,’ he commanded.

  She did, sucking in sharply when she was left standing there with nothing on but her pantyhose and high heels, a pool of white chiffon around her ankles.

  ‘Step out of the dress carefully and walk over to the doorway,’ he said in a low but firm voice. ‘When you get there turn round, take off everything, then slip your shoes back on.’

  Her pride screamed at her not to let him do this to her, reduce her to some kind of mindless sex object, to be displayed for his pleasure, positioned this way and that to satisfy whatever desire came into his mind.

  But then she thought that maybe being a mindless sex object was safer. Maybe this way she wouldn’t surrender her heart to him as well as her body. If she kept things to just sex, then she might survive this night with her self-esteem intact and her soul still her own.

  So she did what he wanted, pricklingly aware of his gaze glued to her every step of the way, watching her strip naked for him, then slide her feet back into her high heels to stand there like some call girl.

  ‘No, stay there a minute,’ he rasped when she went to walk back towards him. ‘I want to just look at you while I undress.’ And he yanked his bow tie undone.

  Fiona watched him watch her while he stripped. She wasn’t sure which excited her the most, seeing his body slowly unfolding, or displaying her own nudity so shamelessly.

  He was more beautiful than she remembered. And more awesome.

  ‘Now you can come here,’ he said, after he’d tossed all their clothes aside and sat down on the end of the bed.

  She almost couldn’t obey him, her legs suddenly like jelly. She forced them to move and finally made her way shakily towards him. Once she got there he directed her to straddle his thighs but to stay standing.

  By this point she was beyond denying him anything, and in truth she found the position dizzyingly exciting, with her legs wide apart, his hands gripping her thighs and his mouth on a level with her fluttering stomach, so close she could feel the heat of his breath in her navel.

  His hands released their firm grip to run with tan-talising slowness over her body, starting at the back of her knees. Up her legs they travelled, taking their time on her taut buttocks before finding the small of her back. Once there, he trickled his fingertips around her waist, skimmed up over her ribs, then briefly over the tips of her breasts, before trailing back down across her tensing stomach.

  Fiona sucked in a sharp breath as he drew close to the curls at the apex of her thighs. But he bypassed that area and finally returned to her knees, touching her everywhere but where she desperately wanted to be touched. By the time he’d repeated this torture several times, her stomach was like a rock, and her nipples like nails.

  But, inside, she was a melting, quivering mess.

  When his hands finally slipped between her legs her gravelly moan told of the intensity of her arousal and frustration. When his thumbs brushed against the bursting bud of flesh which was burning in erotic anticipation for any kind of touch at all, she gasped, and her knees began to go.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he commanded sharply, and she really tried not to. But when he started further serious exploration of everything which made her a woman, she wanted to scream and writhe and beg him to stop. She bit her bottom lip and willed herself to be silent and still. But it was becoming unbearable. She was going to come. She had to. She...

  He stopped, and a tormented sob broke from her lips.

  Philip made a similar sound as he grabbed hold of her already wobbly knees and yanked them down onto the bed on either side of him, the tip of his stunning erection perfectly positioned to probe at the heated heart of her. Fiona could not wait a moment longer, sinking down onto him with a long, low moan of pleasure. When she also presented one of her aching nipples to his lips, he willingly obliged, suckling on it like a starving infant.

  Wrapping her arms around his head, she began to ride him, feeling all primal woman with her man both at her breast and deep inside her body, his exquisitely swollen flesh stroking her insides as she rocked up and down.

  She’d hardly started when she came with a rush, gasping as the spasms hit. Philip groaned and bit down on her nipple, grabbing her hips and urging her to continue moving all through her orgasm, and further.

  Fiona was astonished to find the pleasure not draining away as it usually did when she climaxed. The rapture rolled onto another level, where the sensations became even more addictive and electric. When Philip finally exploded within her, she came again. Violently.

  Afterwards, they collapsed together back onto the bed, Philip clasping her to him, muttering something into her hair which she could not make out.

  For ages she lay sprawled across him, feeling dazed and disorientated. She could not remember ever having come twice like that, even back in the old days.

  Of course, Philip was an even more skilled lover now. She could see that. And maybe she was a little more needy. In the last decade no man had ever really fulfilled her in a sexual sense. She’d held herself much too distant from them emotionally to really let go in the bedroom. Only with Philip did she feel this abandon, this total lack of pretence.

  Which was why he was so dangerous to her.

  Suddenly he opened his eyes, and smiled up at her. ‘Recovered yet?’ he said, before abruptly rolling over and scooping her under him. ‘God, but you’re so incredibly sexy,’ he muttered, stroking her hair out of her face and planting a kiss on her mouth. ‘I could just eat you up. But not right now. Right now I’m going to go run us a spa bath. And fix us up with some refreshment. I’d forgotten how making love to a goddess took it out of a guy. Now don’t go away!’ he commanded as he withdrew and clambered off the bed.

  Fiona’s glazed eyes followed him lustfully. She was beyond going anywhere. She was beyond anything except blind obedience to his will.

  ‘I feel very decadent,’ she murmured ten minutes later, leaning back against the bath, sippmg champagne and eating a strawberry from the fruit platter Philip had brought in from the sitting room.

  He grinned from his position opposite her.

  ‘You look very decadent,’ he said, his eyes raking over her breasts which were just on show above the bubbles.

  She didn’t blush. She was way beyond blushing too.

  ‘How’s your murder case going?’ she asked, and he shot her a disbelieving look.

  ‘You want to talk about my work? Now?’

  ‘Just curious. What happened?’

  ‘We won. The jury acquitted her.’

  ‘I knew you would,’ she said, and his eyebrows arched.

  ‘Such confidence! To what do I owe that?’

  She sipped some more champagne. ‘To my having faith in your abilities. And your passion.’

  ‘My passion? What do you mean by that?’

  ‘You are the only man I’ve met who feels things as strongly as y
ou do. You don’t let anything or anyone sway you from doing what you want to do.’

  ‘You could be right. But I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.’

  ‘It can’t be a bad thing.’

  ‘That depends. But let’s not get serious. I haven’t come here tonight to be serious. Drink up.’ He slid over and topped up her glass, then slid back again. ‘I want you nice and tipsy by the time we get out of this bath.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘I seem to recall you’re wonderfully willing to please when you’re tipsy.’

  Fiona drank up, telling herself that getting drunk was good. Drunk was unthinking and uncaring. Drunk had nothing to with depth and everything to do with superficiality.

  ‘Fill ’er up again,’ she said, and held out the empty glass for restocking. To be honest, she was already on the way to a nicely intoxicated state. She hadn’t eaten much all night, and was probably a bit dehydrated as well. The champagne was certainly hitting her bloodstream hard, making her light-headed and just a tad reckless.

  Which was a pretty funny thought. How much more reckless could she get? A giggle escaped, and Philip frowned at her.

  ‘I want you tipsy,’ he warned, ‘not paralytic.’

  ‘I’m a long way from being paralytic, Philip. Trust me.’

  ‘That’s usually the man’s line.’

  ‘If you want me to stop, then just say so,’ she said. ‘I’m yours to command tonight.’

  ‘Only tonight?’

  Her eyes danced at him over the rim of the glass. ‘Let’s take one night at a time, shall we?’

  ‘In that case, I think it’s time we got this night on the road again, don’t you?’

  Getting out the sunken spa bath and getting dry was a true test of Fiona’s level of intoxication. Not nearly drunk enough, she decided when Philip took one the huge fluffy blue towels and gently dried every inch of her.

  His unexpected tenderness started things happening inside her which were worryingly emotional as opposed to strictly sexual. Her heart contracted when he told her how beautiful she was—and when he stroked the towel softly down her back, kissing her spine from top to bottom. By the time he handed her the towel and asked her to reciprocate she was in a state of turmoil.