by Lynne Graham
‘And we’re not going to talk very much tonight or indeed for the remainder of our stay,’ Nik forecast, a breathtaking smile of intent slashing his beautiful stubborn mouth as he scooped her up into his arms and headed straight for the stairs. ‘I have other plans.’
‘Extensive, I hope,’ Betsy encouraged, turquoise eyes locked to his lean, darkly handsome face, true energy leaping through her for the first time in days because the desire he couldn’t hide in his possessive gaze restored her battered self-esteem.
‘Very extensive,’ Nik promised, laying her down on her bed, pulling off her shoes, flipping her over to unzip her dress and flipping her back to trail her out of its concealing folds to leave her exposed in a lacy bra and panties set. ‘You look amazing—’
Betsy shifted uneasily. ‘No, I don’t... I’m losing my waist—’
‘You do look amazing. I don’t say anything I don’t mean.’ Nik shrugged off his shirt, loosed the button at the waist of his shorts. ‘I’ve hardly slept this week. It’s been so hot and the nights are very long when you have a hard-on that won’t quit...’
Betsy watched his spectacular lean bronzed length emerge as the garments slid away. Her heartbeat was racing. He was fully erect and ready for action and her self-consciousness ebbed as though he had thrown a switch inside her. She sat up, unclasped her bra and skimmed off her panties with an eagerness she had never really dared to show him before. A predatory grin of appreciation slashing his mouth as she unveiled her succulent breasts, Nik came down on his knees on the bed.
‘Multiply amazing by ten,’ he advised, brushing his mouth across a straining pink nipple.
‘You’re just sex-starved—’
‘Totally,’ Nik agreed without shame. ‘I haven’t had sex since I got you pregnant...’
‘Or after leaving me,’ she reminded him, stroking an appreciative hand down the velvety length of his boldly aroused shaft in a way that made him jerk and suppress a moan.
Nik lounged back against the tumbled white pillows, the very image of sleek, dark, sexy masculinity. Blue eyes bright with hunger, Betsy bent over him. Silky blonde hair fanned his abdomen and brushed his lean, hair-roughened thighs, and his breath caught on a groan of pleasure. He wanted her so much. He had never ever wanted anything so much.
‘Enough,’ he urged hoarsely, tugging a strand of pale hair to restrain her. ‘Words can’t describe the pleasure of what you’re doing to me but I want to come inside you.’
Heat was already throbbing between her thighs and she could feel the moisture gathering there. He tugged her up into his arms and fastened his mouth to a lush rosy nipple, lashing the prominent bud with his tongue, and her spine arched and her pelvis brushed against his arousal. She came down with her knees either side of him and instinctively glided the neediest part of her back and forth over him.
‘Hot,’ Nik pronounced appreciatively, green eyes glittering like jewels in his lean, strong face. ‘Am I allowed to assume that you’ve found the nights long and unsatisfying too?’
‘You are,’ Betsy confided, quivering over him, alight with so many different sensations she was intoxicated by that physical contact.
He took her mouth, his tongue plunging deep, his hand knotted in her hair to hold her fast. His dominance excited her beyond bearing. His other hand was engaged in darting explorations of whichever part of her was within reach and she immediately shifted up higher on him, squashing her tingling breasts against the hard, solid wall of his chest, settling her hot, damp core down to ride astride a lean, powerful thigh, and attempted to rock away the tormenting ache of emptiness afflicting her.
‘Be patient...we’ve got all night,’ Nik growled urgently.
‘To heck with patience!’ Betsy almost sobbed against his wildly demanding mouth, her fingers biting into the satin-smooth width of his shoulders.
A disconcerted sound of amusement was wrenched from Nik. He reached for her and lifted her, rearranging her over him to realign their bodies. He angled up his lean hips, initially sliding against her before finding entry with a sudden precision that wrested a sob of wonder and pleasure from her parted lips.
‘Never say I can’t take a hint,’ Nik teased breathlessly, settling her over him and driving deep and then finally, with a revealing sound of frustration, he eased her over and pinned her flat to the mattress under him. ‘Better?’
He thrust into her hard and she felt every inch of him and the delicious friction of the movement sent tiny convulsive tremors rippling through her womb.
‘Perfect,’ she told him, barely able to find her voice.
And it was, absolutely perfect in every way. With every driving stroke of his possession he unleashed a storm of pleasure on her eager body. She lifted her hips and bucked beneath him, matching his insistent rhythm while the consuming, tormenting delight grew and soared to a blinding high of raw excitement. Her heart thumping like crazy in her ears, she flew higher than ever before, carried by the wild throbbing pleasure to a stormy climax that lit her up inside and out with joy and sweet release.
‘So, Cinderella shall go to the ball,’ Nik mused huskily into her damp, tumbled hair. ‘In fact if this is your response to the chance of attending a family party, I will find a party for you every night.’
A choked giggle escaped Betsy. He rolled onto a cooler patch of the bed, taking her with him, draping her over his sprawled powerful length with careful hands, fingers smoothing down her slender spine. It was a long time since anything had felt so right to her as the peace she experienced in the protective circle of his arms. She was tempted to tell him that she loved him but she swallowed the words that she had once offered so freely and with such trust, impervious to the reality that he did not return those words. She was not so naïve now. She rubbed her chin against a broad bronzed shoulder and drank in the hot, musky scent of him like an addict, happy, content but frightened that she was being foolish and short-sighted about the future.
Could she dare to trust Nik Christakis again? Could he be persuaded to make more of an effort this time around? Perhaps she should negotiate with him before she agreed to a proper reconciliation. Sometimes she thought Nik understood business deals much better than he did human relationships. If she laid out her needs as terms and conditions, would he listen then? What could she offer him in return? That second chance he had mentioned and as much sex as he could handle? Hot-faced, she grinned against his shoulder, struggling to pin her dizzy feet to planet earth again and be sensible. She had to learn to be as logical as Nik was and address future problems in a positive rather than critical way.
CHAPTER NINE
NIK STUDIED BETSY as if she had gone insane without him having noticed, with wonder and disbelief and, yes, unfortunately, just a little amusement. ‘Let me get this straight...you want to negotiate the terms of our marriage before you’ll consider making a reconciliation permanent?’
In the background the hum of the jet engines provided a surprisingly soothing backdrop to Betsy’s ears. Nik was a trapped audience when he was airborne. He couldn’t walk away, make an excuse about pressing business or lose his temper because he would dislike the risk of the cabin crew overhearing him arguing with his wife.
‘Yes. I think it’s the practical approach. We failed the first time around, so we should try to foresee the potential problems there might be and endeavour to avoid them this time,’ Betsy responded doggedly, lifting her chin as Nik sprang restively out of his seat and frowned down at her.
‘But we didn’t have any problems the first time—you decided you wanted a baby, I knew I couldn’t give you one and it all went downhill from there,’ Nik recited drily.
‘It only went downhill because you decided that you couldn’t tell me the truth about your vasectomy,’ Betsy contradicted.
His green eyes glittered with challenge and his strong jawline clenched hard with
tension. ‘How many men want to tell a woman that they can’t give her the one thing she most wants in the world?’ he demanded in a harsh undertone. ‘How do you think I felt when I stumbled on the baby clothes you had hidden in a bag at the back of the closet?’
Betsy was taken aback by that bold and unusually emotional question. It made her appreciate for the first time that Nik’s macho spirit had been crucified by her desire for what he had known he could not give her; she had made him feel inadequate. When he mentioned the secret cache of baby items she had bought as a gesture of continuing hope and then shamefacedly hidden, she didn’t know where to put herself. She was deeply embarrassed by that revelation, did not even want to think about how that discovery must have made him feel, and her face burned with discomfiture.
‘I didn’t know you’d found those clothes... Why didn’t you tell me?’ she pressed weakly.
‘I knew I was in way over my head, so it was easier and safer to avoid the subject,’ Nik admitted grimly. ‘There was no way out for me that I could see. As far as I knew then the vasectomy was irreversible and no matter what I did you were going to break your heart for what I could never hope to give you...’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Betsy whispered feelingly, finally recognising what that troubled phase of their lives had cost him as well. Her desire for a child had become an obsession that had ruled her existence and his and he had been trapped by a truth that he could not bear to share with her.
But now everything had changed, she reminded herself impatiently. Against all the odds, she had conceived that much-wanted baby and what she was fighting for now was the need for them to create a viable blueprint for their marriage to thrive in the future.
‘These terms you mentioned...’ Nik prompted softly but she wasn’t fooled by his tone. He stood straight and tall, lean, darkly beautiful face taut as if he was daring her to suggest conditions that he would find unacceptable.
‘You were always travelling and I was home alone. That would have to change,’ Betsy told him ruefully.
Nik viewed her in astonishment. ‘But I wasn’t away on pleasure trips. I was travelling for business reasons—’
‘I know, but you were never at home and I got very lonely,’ Betsy forced herself to admit with bald honesty. ‘I was lucky to see you one week a month. It wasn’t enough.’
Nik was sharply disconcerted. ‘As a husband my most basic function is surely to be a good provider for you?’
‘That would sound very impressive and I could forgive your absences if your business was in trouble or you weren’t already richer than Croesus. But you don’t have either excuse. Ideally, I want a husband who thinks that his most basic function should be to make me happy,’ Betsy confided valiantly. ‘And it would make me much happier if you were at home more, particularly once the children are born. You need to be on the spot to be a good father.’
Nik was broodingly silent. It had never occurred to him that she could be lonely when he wasn’t around. After all, in the first years of their marriage she had never once complained about the amount of time they spent apart. It was true that she had once said that loneliness had initially led to her desire for a child, but he had assumed that that was a momentary source of unhappy frustration, more of an excuse on her part than an actual fault that could be laid at his door.
‘A long time ago, my grandfather taught me that the only person you can really trust in business is yourself and you’re asking me to delegate important functions to subordinates,’ he informed her heavily. ‘I don’t know if I can do that...’
He was so serious, so very serious. She had asked him to travel less, stay home more, but the way he was reacting she might as well have asked him to give her a daily pint of his blood or sacrifice a limb. Her hands knotted by her sides to prevent her from reaching out to him because until that moment she had never appreciated just how deep his distrust of others went or that that distrust had been fostered in him at an early age by a close relative.
‘But you could try,’ she pointed out gently. ‘Try and see how it goes because if you don’t try another way of living I can’t see how I’ll ever be happy with you.’
Nik was taken aback by that underwritten threat. He knew men who would be grateful to learn that their wives wanted to see more of them. He knew even more how grateful he had always been to come home to Betsy, even during the baby-obsessed phase of their marriage. Then, quick as a flash, another acknowledgement gripped him. In a few months’ time they would have two young children in their lives and that fast and that easily Nik understood where his first priority should lie. He could not protect children whom he rarely saw. He could not be a good father or a good husband without making compromises. But, as always, when sudden change threatened, Nik froze, filled with sudden dread and disquiet at the prospect of his careful routine being disrupted.
‘What’s wrong?’ Betsy queried.
‘Nothing,’ Nik declared instantly, veiling his gaze and breathing in slow and deep in a control exercise he had been taught to utilise at the tender age of ten. No child of his would ever be similarly afflicted. The knowledge that he would do everything possible to protect his children soothed him.
Betsy moved forward, painfully aware that Nik was locked in an intense introspection that took hold of him occasionally and shut her out. She ran her palms up over his shirtfront, exulting in the heat and hard strength of him, wishing he would share what was troubling him. ‘You and I...it can work,’ she told him steadily. ‘We can make it work.’
His lean, powerful length tensing for a different reason as his body’s natural instincts took over from his brain, Nik stared down into anxious azure eyes and a hundred memories threatened to entrap him: Betsy struggling to hide her difficulty in reading the menu at their first dinner date; Betsy laughing in the rain when her umbrella broke and she got soaked; Betsy teaching Gizmo to return a ball rather than chewing it to pieces; Betsy telling him he had got her pregnant. She was both fearless and frank with that take-it-or-leave-it honesty that he had always cherished. It was a shame he couldn’t match that honesty, couldn’t tell her what had happened to him, but he believed that the truth would only weaken him in her eyes and ultimately frighten her and she depended on him to protect her. He was caught between a rock and a hard place.
‘Betsy...’ he husked not quite evenly, fingers lacing into her silky blonde hair to brush it back from her cheekbone.
‘We can make each other happy. We can make it work,’ she repeated with dogged conviction.
‘Shut up,’ he told her in Greek and he kissed her with urgent claiming force.
It was a kiss filled with lust and frustration and it was hotter than the fires of hell, burning through Betsy like a flaming arrow that ignited a wanton ache between her slender thighs. She fell into that kiss like a falling star and burned up. When he gathered her up in his arms and carried her through to the sleeping compartment, she looked up at him with her heart in her eyes, warmth and fear and longing all tangled up together, but she still didn’t give him the words of love she had once given so trustingly. Once she said those words, she couldn’t take them back again, couldn’t impose any distance between them and couldn’t make the same demands. Once she said them he would know her for a fake; he would know she wouldn’t turn her back or walk away. Not because she didn’t want to but because she simply couldn’t...
CHAPTER TEN
BETSY GRIMACED AT her reflection in the mirror. She was getting ready for Belle’s party but her thoughts were far removed from frivolity.
If Nik had loved her, she was convinced she could have buried every atom of her insecurity for ever. As it was, unhappily, she was convinced that her husband had only returned to her because she was pregnant and that knowledge was a humiliation that would only fester with every passing year. Her troubled blue eyes dampened. Blinking ferociously fast, she quickly grabbed up
a tissue to soak up the tears before she could smudge her mascara.
But it was a fact that Nik didn’t love her and never had loved her. He lusted after her like crazy, a chemical connection that had evidently kept him true even while they were separated. Be grateful for what you have rather than yearning for what you can’t have, Betsy urged herself in frustration. After all, some people would kill for the power to ignite such high-voltage passion in a partner. It should be enough. It had to be enough.
It was barely twenty-four hours since they had returned to Lavender Hall and a good deal of that time they had spent in bed. Her face burned at the recollection. She couldn’t stop wanting Nik, couldn’t put the brakes on the wild, greedy hunger he invoked every time she looked at him. But if she continued to be so easily available, how long would it be before Nik recognised that he had her exactly where he wanted her? In the palm of his hand to treat as he saw fit. A position of such weakness and vulnerability could never be a good starting point, particularly for a shiny new reconciliation.
Pale blonde hair, freshly washed and dried, swung in a silken bell round her shoulders as she walked back into the bedroom. Almost simultaneously, Nik strode out of the dressing room, fully dressed and immaculate. In a designer jacket teamed with close-fitting black trousers that enhanced his height, narrow hips and long, muscular legs, he looked absolutely gorgeous, all dark and sleek and the very ultimate in raw sexual power.
Heat pooled low in Betsy’s pelvis and she fought that sizzle of awareness with every fibre she possessed. After all, there was no point trying to play it cool with Nik to keep him on his metaphoric toes while at the same time falling into the nearest bed with him at every possible opportunity. Wasn’t that what she had been doing? Whenever she looked at Nik, she could barely keep her hands off him.
Nik studied her with unconcealed appreciation. ‘Blue is definitely your colour, kardoula mou.’
Betsy’s midnight-blue evening dress was fitted at breast and hip and the sleeves and skirt were made of lace. Her pale skin gleamed with the shimmer of a pearl through the mesh and her bright eyes reflected that rich blue like a mirror.
