She would have been lying to herself if she had not admitted she was relieved not to have to leave what little heat the bed provided. This was one of the advantages of having a husband with Old World tendencies, she guessed. He expected to take care of her in a situation such as this.
Nick built the fire and ignited the tinder and kindling. Then he disappeared into the kitchen, only to return shortly afterward with a steaming cup of what she initially supposed was hot chocolate.
“No, it’s a hot toddy, actually,” Nick announced. “Tea laced with brandy. The best thing in the world to warm you up quickly. Also good for colds—and for preventing them. I don’t want you to get sick, so drink up, Caro.”
While she gulped the toddy, grateful for its warmth, he took up the poker to stoke the fire, then added another log, so the blaze was soon burning nicely, beginning to dispel the chilliness of the bedroom. After that, before Caroline realized what he intended, Nick shrugged off his robe and climbed into bed with her.
“What do you think you’re doing, Nick?” she cried softly.
“Sharing body heat. Here, are you finished with that?” He took the empty cup from her hands. “Good girl. Snuggle up, now.” Burrowing beneath the blankets, he gathered her into his embrace, then reached over and flicked off the lamp, so only the glow of the crackling fire illuminated the bedroom, casting dancing shadows on the walls.
Despite the anxiety and strange anticipation she felt at lying with Nick in the same bed, Caroline had to admit that at least she was now warming up. Unlike hers, his body was like a furnace, generating heat. The brandy in the tea had helped her tremendously, too. Cradled against Nick’s broad, furry chest, his strong arms wrapped securely and comfortingly around her, she felt pleasantly safe and drowsy, no longer cold.
“Better?” he asked softly.
“Yes, much.”
“Good, I’m glad.”
Later, Caroline blamed the brandy, even though in her heart of hearts, she knew nothing and no one but herself was responsible for not uttering a single word of protest when, after a time, Nick began gently to kiss and caress her. She understood what motivated him, because far from drifting back to sleep as she had grown warmer, she had instead become increasingly aware of him beside her, holding her. Of the feel of his bare chest beneath her cheek and the palm of her hand. Of the steady, reassuring beat of his heart against her ear. Of the strength of his body corded by powerful muscles. Of the fact that he was awake—and aroused.
However their marriage had come about, Nick was her husband, and no matter what, she did want him, Caroline thought. It was the chemistry they had talked about, pure and simple. How much longer could she go on fighting her feelings for him? A day? A week? A month? If she were honest with herself, she knew that in the end, she would undoubtedly weaken and give in to temptation. This past week had shown her how difficult it was going to be to live with him—and not succumb. So why not surrender now and get it over with? Then maybe she could get him out of her system. The fact that she might only want him more, might lose her heart wholly to him, she determinedly shoved from her thoughts.
It was the brandy, she told herself, that had muddled her mind and confused her thinking so. But deep down inside, Caroline knew that was not true as she yielded to the onslaught of Nick’s seductive mouth.
His tongue parted her lips, thrusting into the warm, moist cavern of her mouth. His hands tangled in her hair as he half turned his body, so she was shifted on to her back, his leg riding between her thighs. The silken folds of her negligee rubbed sensuously against her legs as his body moved against hers, one hand sweeping down to stroke her breasts, her belly, her soft mound, flitting here and there like a butterfly, lingering nowhere, lightly touching, taunting, arousing her wildly and leaving her aching for more.
Caroline whimpered against Nick’s mouth as he continued to kiss and caress her, and the sound seemed to inflame him. He groaned and deepened his kisses, his body abruptly covering her own, his hands at the short, puffed sleeves of her negligee, roughly hauling them from her shoulders, sliding them down her arms until she was naked to the waist. Her breasts were soft and full, swollen with rising passion, their dusky crests taut beneath his slowly circling palms. His thumbs skimmed the flushed, engorged peaks.
His lips scorched her throat, seized one upthrusting nipple, imprisoning it. His tongue darted forth, licking, laving. Caroline arched against him, waves of delight and excitement rippling through her body. She clung to him, her fingers tunneling through his hair, digging into his shoulders as he continued to torment her, his breath hot and rasping against her naked flesh. Slowly, he drew his tongue up the valley between her breasts, captured her lips once more, his tongue delving deep, taking her breath. His mouth burned across her cheek to her temple, her ear. He bit her lobe gently.
“Caro,” he muttered thickly. “You haven’t said anything…not one word. Do you want me to stop? Because if you do, you had better tell me now. Otherwise, I warn you, I am likely to forget that I’m a gentleman and remember only that you’re my wife. So…do you want me to continue or not?”
“Yes…” Was that really her voice, so soft, so breathless? Caroline wondered, shocked. She must be mad or drunk, she thought, to have told him to proceed. Still, she couldn’t seem to call the word back, not even when, hearing it, he inhaled sharply, then swiftly but smoothly stripped off her negligee and panties, as though he feared she would change her mind. Then he divested himself of his boxer shorts—they were silk, Caroline noted dazedly, then averted her eyes, blushing as the evidence of his desire for her was revealed.
His physique was as magnificent as she had imagined, his belly a washboard of muscle, his sex hard and heavy. He drew her into his arms again, so their naked flesh met, and dimly, in some dark corner of her mind, she realized she wasn’t cold at all anymore.
“Oh, baby.” Nick sighed deeply with pleasure as his mouth and hands roamed over her body, igniting it much as he had the fire he had built earlier. “You don’t know how badly I’ve wanted you. It’s been hell for me all week, wondering how I was going to stand being married to you and not really having you as mine. Caro, you’re sure this is what you want?”
“Yes,” she whispered, trembling against him with the passion he had stirred in her.
“You’re not going to regret it in the morning?”
“Probably, but it doesn’t matter. Make love to me, Nick. Please.”
“Yes, I will…all night, if you want. Spread your legs for me, sweetheart. Yes, like that. You’re so beautiful, so soft….”
His hand found her, cupped her mound, rested there gently for a moment. At his touch, Caroline’s breath caught in her throat, and then a low moan issued from her lips. Nick kissed her hungrily again, swallowing the sound, her breath. His tongue plunged into her mouth as his fingers slid deep inside her, only to withdraw, then push into her again. And again. And all the while, his thumb moved on the little bud concealed in the fragile petals of her, stroking, teasing, making her long to be filled by him.
Instinctively, Caroline writhed and strained against him, unable to think anymore, a mass of sensation, giddy, breathless. She clutched Nick to her, her palms slipping down his sweat-sheened back and buttocks, tracing the strong curve of muscles that bunched and quivered beneath her palms. Wordlessly, she tried to tell him of her need, bucked against his hand. But he ignored her silent plea, continuing to torment her. Lowering his head to her breast, he took her nipple between his lips, sucking greedily, while his hand continued to fondle her.
An unendurable pressure built steadily within her, higher and higher, until it was a flood that could no longer be contained and burst inside her, rushing through her in wave after wave of pleasure that left her gasping and crying out.
Only then did Nick poise himself above her, the powerful muscles in his arms flexing as he entered her, drove down into her, piercing her to the core. For a moment, he was still, his heart beating violently against Caroline’s o
wn, their uneven breathing mingling in the silence broken only by the cracking and sparking of a log on the fire. Smiling down at her, he kissed her mouth, then languorously licked away the sweat that trickled between her breasts.
After that, he began to thrust in and out of her, his hands grasping her buttocks, arching her hips to meet his own. She wrapped her legs around his, enfolding him, taking him deep inside her as she felt the tide start to surge once more within her, pounding, breaking, the combers sweeping through her body. Knowing she had achieved her peak, Nick sought his own, rough and urgent now, his fingers tightening upon her bruisingly as he shuddered long and hard against her. Then he collapsed atop her, his face buried in her hair, his breath coming in harsh pants in her ear.
“Wasn’t it freezing in here a little while ago?” he asked after a long minute.
“Yes…but that was before you came in and heated things up,” Caroline murmured sassily, her heart still thrumming.
“Believe me, if I’d known this was what would happen, I’d have broken the furnace myself the first day we got here,” Nick declared, grinning insolently at her. Withdrawing, he rolled over on to his back, pulling her into the cradle of his arms. “So much for an annulment. You’re stuck with me now.”
Caroline wasn’t sure how to take that, what he intended by it, and she was afraid to ask, afraid to discover he was only joking. So she said simply, softly, “I guess I won’t mind too much. I mean, at least I know I’ll be kept warm during our long, cold Minnesota winters.”
“Count on it,” he rejoined, his arm tightening around her possessively.
After a while, when the fire had begun to die down and the bedroom to grow chilly again, Nick rose to toss more logs onto the blaze, until it once more burned brightly. Then he returned to bed to set Caroline herself aflame again—until she felt like a wildfire, burning out of control.
Twelve
When Caroline awoke in the morning, she thought at first that she had only dreamed about Nick making love to her so passionately last night. She was alone in bed, and there was no blaze burning in the fireplace. Then, after a moment, she became aware that she was totally naked and that the hearth was filled with cold ashes. So she knew her marriage that was supposed to have been in name only had indeed been consummated.
Nick must have got up early. There wasn’t even an indentation on the pillow on his side of the bed to show where he had slept. And strangely, the bedroom door was closed. That fact puzzled and unsettled Caroline, as she had not been in the habit of closing it at night, in case Nick should require the bathroom. For an instant, all sorts of wild imaginings ran through her mind. The chief of these was that having seduced her, making an annulment impossible, he had returned to Minnesota without her—to gloat over her gullibility, his bonus money for wedding her, and whatever else he hoped to get from their eventual divorce. She wondered if before boarding the corporate jet for their honeymoon, he had ever signed their prenuptial agreement.
Abruptly, Caroline felt cold and sick inside. What if she was right and Nick was worse than Paul Andersen had ever been—and she had made a total fool of herself again? She didn’t want to believe any of this about her husband, or herself, either. Still, she could not think why he would have left her alone after last night, shutting the bedroom door behind him—so she wouldn’t hear him sneaking from the cabin, no doubt!
Oh, God, why had she ever drunk that brandy-laced tea last night, let him make love to her? Her grandmother would be so furious and disappointed in her, her father angry and disapproving.
Shaking a little, Caroline rose from the bed to make her way to the bathroom. There, a vast sense of relief flooded her being when she spied Nick’s toilet articles on the counter. If he had vamoosed, he surely would not have left those behind. Hard on the heels of her relief came shock when she glimpsed her reflection in the mirror. She looked like a…a wanton, she thought, like a woman who had not only been made love to recently—but also thoroughly and well.
Her long, sable hair was a mass of tangles around her face. Crescent smudges from lack of sleep shadowed her eyes. Her mouth was still slightly swollen and red from Nick’s kisses. Faint marks on her throat, breasts, hips and thighs, made her blush as she remembered how he had kissed and stroked every part of her last night, driving her wild.
Until now, Caroline had always considered herself somewhat shy and reserved in bed, afraid of not being gorgeous or sexy enough to please. Maybe Nick hadn’t made good his escape, but he hadn’t hung around for more this morning, either, she thought glumly. Maybe she hadn’t lived up to his expectations. She couldn’t help but remember that when she had shoved a drunken Paul Andersen out her door for the last time, he had shouted terrible insults at her—the primary of which had been that she was frigid and lousy in bed. Maybe Nick had found her so, too. Why else would he have closed the bedroom door against her?
Reaching into the shower, Caroline turned on the taps, then stepped inside, feeling as though she might burst into tears at any moment. She was so lost in her miserable reverie and the running water was loud enough that she didn’t hear Nick come into the bathroom. So she jumped, startled, when he opened the shower door and joined her—as naked as she.
“Nick! What’re you—what’re you doing?” She was stunned by his appearance and made a halfhearted attempt to cover herself.
“Taking a shower with my bride. God, I thought those two maintenance men would never finish fixing the furnace and get the hell out of here! I don’t know which one was worse—the old one who practically talked my ear off, or the young one I caught staring into the bedroom at you. He’s lucky I didn’t tear his damned Peeping Tom head off—and if you hadn’t been covered up, I would have!”
“You—you mean that’s why you left me, why you closed the bedroom door on me?”
“Of course. Why? What other reason would there have been?” Nick gazed down at her curiously, pushing a strand of hair back from her face.
“I don’t know. I thought…I thought maybe I might have…disappointed you in some way,” Caroline confessed softly. “That you had found me—frigid or something.”
He swore at that—in Russian—but still, she knew it was a curse word he uttered. Putting his hand under her chin, he tipped her face up to his. “This is something that damned fool Andersen said to you, isn’t it? Isn’t it, Caro?”
She nodded mutely.
“That bastard! I’d like to teach him a well-deserved lesson! Now, you listen to me, baby—and you listen good. There are no frigid women, only incompetent, insensitive men—and I don’t think I’m one of those. Last night was wonderful…for both of us, I thought. I had hoped you felt the same.”
“I did. I do,” Caroline murmured.
“Then, let’s see, exactly where did we leave off last night?” Pressing her up against the shower wall, he slowly lowered his mouth to hers, his eyes darkening with passion, his arousal plain as the warm water continued to pour down upon them both.
After they returned home from Maplewood Lodge, Caroline and Nick spent the rest of the weekend moving most of her clothes and favorite possessions into his house on the lake. This process was marred by their first quarrel, when she insisted on separate bedrooms.
“Damn it, Caro!” Nick’s dark eyes were puzzled—and even hurt, she thought. But of course, her refusal to share his bed must be a blow to his ego, after their honeymoon. “I thought we had settled all this.”
“Why…because that hot toddy you fixed me muddled my senses? Look, Nick, I’m not saying that what…what happened between us wasn’t wonderful—because it was. It’s simply that with everything that’s occurred and how fast, I’m—I’m just not sure of my feelings at the moment, that’s all. I—I need some time, some space, to try to sort things out in my mind. Ours was supposed to be a marriage of convenience. Our so-called honeymoon changed all that in a way I wasn’t expecting. I didn’t plan on…on becoming involved with you, and I’m just not cut out for a—a casual affair. Und
er the circumstances, what we did was extremely careless and irresponsible.”
“Careless? Irresponsible? In what way?” He raised one brow inquiringly. “What do you mean, Caro?”
“Well, we didn’t…” Her voice trailed away awkwardly. She wasn’t used to discussing such intimate details with a man. But he had to know. Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to continue. “Nick, I’m sure you probably assumed…well, that I’m on the pill or something. But I’m not, and we didn’t…do anything for birth control….”
“So what you’re trying to tell me is that you could be pregnant now. Is that it?”
“Yes.” She nodded, biting her lower lip anxiously at the thought. “Nick, as soon as your problems with the INS are worked out, we’re going to be divorced. You know that. I know it. So a child would be a terrible complication, an innocent victim in all this. We just can’t take that risk. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us—and most of all, it wouldn’t be fair to a child.”
“Yeah, you’re right, of course,” he said slowly after a long moment, a muscle throbbing in his taut jaw. “I’m sorry, baby. I just didn’t think.”
“Please don’t imagine I’m blaming you for that, Nick, because I’m not. I’m as much at fault for what happened as you are. After all, you gave me a chance to draw back, and I didn’t take it. But I am now. I’m sorry, too, but I think it’s best if we…if we just forget about what happened up in Canada.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“It…it is,” she lied, turning away so he wouldn’t see the tears that stung her eyes. Because what she truly wanted was for theirs to become a real marriage, filled with love and children and family holiday traditions. She hoped he would take her in his arms and tell her he wanted that, too. But he didn’t.
Instead, he said quietly, “Okay, Caro. You got it. I understand.” Then he carried her luggage upstairs, turning right at the top of the steps, so she knew he was taking it into the bedroom at the opposite end of the hall from his own.
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