The Marriage Demand

by Penny Jordan

  ‘Come on,’ Nash had urged her gently all those years ago when the storm had finally died away. ‘It’s gone now. You can go back to your own bed.’

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ Faith had protested. ‘I want to stay here with you.’

  And she had clung to him as she spoke, silently willing him to let her stay. Against her ear she had heard his heartbeat, accelerating as she moved, and her own heart had lurched yearningly against her ribs as she’d prayed that he would let her stay, let her show him how much she loved him, how grown up she was…how ready to be his.

  But instead he had shaken his head and told her firmly, ‘You can’t stay here, Faith—you know that…’

  And then, before she’d been able to say another word, he had picked her up in his arms and carried her back to her room and her own bed, for all the world as though she was still a little girl and not the fully grown woman she had wanted him to see her as.

  Another crash of thunder engulfed the house, blotting out even the sound of her own scream. Frantically Faith reached for Nash’s pillow, pulling it over her head.

  Safe beneath its darkness as the thunder momentarily abated, she realised that the pillow carried Nash’s scent.

  As she breathed it in a huge wave of feeling rolled over her. Tears filled her eyes. Things could have been so very different between them if only Nash had believed her, trusted her, loved her. Her mind stepped back to the night that had destroyed her dreams…

  She had visited Hatton the previous weekend and Nash had told her that he was going away. It had simply never occurred to her that there was a hidden agenda behind the questions she had been asked at school about whether or not Nash would be there.

  ‘No,’ she had replied, never dreaming what was being planned. It had only been by chance that she had actually found out. Another girl who had over-heard a snippet of conversation had alerted her to what was going on.

  It was three miles from the home to Hatton, and she had run all the way, arriving with a stitch in her side, terrified that she might be too late to warn Philip of what was going to happen.

  The front door had been open—evidence, it had been claimed later, that she had been the one to organise everything and that Philip had unsuspectingly let her in. She had heard voices coming from Philip’s study. When she had rushed in she had found Philip collapsed on the floor with the gang ransacking his desk and, most sickeningly of all, one of them standing over him, holding his wallet.

  Frantic with shock and anguish, Faith had gone to protect Philip, getting between him and his attacker and snatching his wallet out of her hand as she’d done so. And it had been whilst she had been crouching protectively beside him that Nash had arrived.

  At first she had been too relieved to see him to realise what interpretation he was putting on the situation.

  Even when the ringleader of the gang had deliberately lied to him, claiming that she, Faith, was the one responsible, the one who had organised their break-in, it had never dawned on her that Nash would believe it.

  The ambulance and the police had arrived together, and Faith had become almost hysterical with shock and disbelief when she had realised that, far from being allowed to go in the ambulance with Philip, she was going to be taken to the police station with the rest of the gang.

  Once there she had pleaded to be allowed to see Nash—so sure even then that she would be able to make him see the truth, so sure that there had to have been a mistake, that it would be totally impossible for him to believe that she would do anything to hurt Philip.

  But Nash had refused to see her, refused to believe her.

  Virtually overnight she had grown up, become the woman she had so much wanted to be—and that woman had made a vow to herself that the love she had felt for Nash was going to be totally destroyed, ripped out of her…

  Faith gave a gasp as the whole house seemed to reverberate with the intensity of the thunder, bringing her back to the present and reality. She was too terrified now to scream, too terrified to do anything but lie frozen with fear in Nash’s bed, her only source of comfort and strength his familiar scent.

  Nash cursed as he opened Hatton’s front door. The storm was virtually overhead now, and it was, as the reporter on the local radio station had just said, the worst to strike the area in over twenty years.

  Calling out Faith’s name, Nash checked Philip’s study and then the kitchen, before racing up the stairs two at a time. Her car was outside so he knew she was in the house, and he guessed that she would have taken refuge in her bedroom.

  The door to it was open but the room itself was empty. The bedclothes were half on the bed and half off it, indicating that Faith had, at some stage, gone to bed. But where was she now?

  No light shone beneath the door of the bathroom but Nash checked it anyway, still calling her name. Fear of the kind he knew Faith suffered allied to a storm as bad as the one they were having was a dangerous combination. If she had panicked and perhaps run outside she might have fallen, be lying somewhere terrified…hurt…It was pitch black outside, and as he’d come in it had started to rain.

  ‘Faith…?’ No reply.

  Had she been panicked into leaving the house? There was a flashlight in his car but he would need a more protective coat.

  As he reached his bedroom and realised that the door to it was open Nash felt his heart lurch against his chest wall.

  Ten years ago, in the middle of a summer storm, Faith had sought refuge with him in his room. But things had been different then. His room was the last place she would go now in search of sanctuary and safety—wasn’t it?

  Hardly daring to breathe he stood still, his breath leaking from his lungs in a long, slow, painful rasp as he saw the almost impossibly small bump she made in the middle of his bed.

  She had curled herself up so tightly that her outline beneath the bedclothes was almost that of a child.

  As his eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness of the room he saw his pillow and the way she was clutching it tightly to her, her face buried beneath it.

  The storm had reached its crescendo: lightning so intense that it actually hurt his eyes to see it, followed almost immediately by a burst of thunder so loud that even Nash himself winced.

  The small tight bundle that was Faith shook so much the whole bed shook with her.

  Pity and an emotion far too dangerous for him to name arced through him.

  Sitting down on the bed, Nash reached for her.

  At first Faith thought she was dreaming, that in fact she had actually been killed by the thunderbolt and that she was now in a place where dreams, fantasies, somehow came true. How else could she be here in Nash’s arms whilst he tenderly wrapped his bedding around her shivering body, at the same time telling her that she was safe and that there was nothing to worry about because the storm would soon be over?

  ‘No, don’t look,’ she heard him commanding her as she stared towards the window and saw the greedy darting flicker of lightning, as quick and as deadly as a serpent’s tongue.

  Overhead the thunder still pounded the house, but Nash was gently pushing her head into the curve of his shoulder, holding her, his actions unbelievably tender and more than distracting enough to take her mind off what was happening outside.

  ‘The storm will soon be gone,’ he was telling her again soothingly, his arms tightening around her as she flinched against another roll of thunder.

  Ten minutes later, with the sound of the rain outside louder than that of the dying growl of the thunder, Faith tried to persuade herself that he was right.

  ‘I would have been here sooner but there was a tree across the road,’ Nash was telling her.

  He had thought about her…come back because of her?

  The warm Nash smell enveloping her was so much stronger when it came from Nash himself, and its almost magical ability to comfort her was making her reluctant to move away from him. The very thought of going back to her room, where she knew she would lie awake all ni
ght dreading the return of the storm, made her shake inside with anxiety.

  All those years ago when the storm had died away Nash had insisted on returning her to her room. Now Faith could feel him starting to move away from her.

  ‘No.’ She clutched immediately at his sleeve. ‘Don’t make me go back go my own room, Nash,’ she begged him. ‘The storm might come back.’

  ‘You want to stay here?’

  It was too dark for her to see his expression but she could hear the sombreness in his voice.

  Under more normal circumstances pride would have driven and dictated her answer, but there was no room for pride inside her now.

  ‘I want to stay here,’ she admitted, taking a deep shuddering breath before adding, ‘And I want to stay with you. I want to stay here with you, Nash,’ she reinforced, as though she was afraid he might not understand her need. ‘Just until the storm’s gone,’ she whispered. ‘Just for tonight.’

  As he exhaled slowly and carefully into the darkness above her downbent head, with the soft warm weight of her in his arms, Nash gave in.

  ‘Just for tonight,’ he agreed huskily.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘YOU won’t go to sleep and…and leave me awake on my own—will you?’

  Faith’s anxious question reached Nash across the darkness that separated them, her little-girl nervousness tugging at his heartstrings. He had managed to persuade her to relinquish his pillow and to allow him to go to her room to get two more, but by some unfortunate mischance whilst he’d been gone the storm had made a dying rally, returning to shake the sky, and he had found her virtually paralysed with terror as she crouched on the bed.

  The discovery that she was naked beneath the bedclothes she was holding in a death-like grip had made him wish he had thought to bring more than just her pillows from her room, but when he tried to move away from her to go back she refused to let him go, clinging to his arm with the fingers he had gently removed from the bedding.

  ‘I have to get undressed, Faith,’ he told her ruefully. ‘I need a shower and a shave.’

  He saw her head turn in the direction of his en suite bathroom.

  ‘If it makes you feel any better you can come with me,’ he offered teasingly, trying to distract her from her fear.

  Reluctantly she let him go.

  ‘You won’t be long, will you?’ she urged him as he headed for his bathroom.

  ‘No. I shan’t be long,’ he assured her.

  Like her, it was his habit to sleep naked. But tonight…A little grimly he wrapped a towel around his lower body before heading back into the bedroom.

  Faith was exactly where he had left her.

  Now, lying in the same bed with her, so close to him that he could feel her breathing as well as hear it, Nash wondered wryly if she had any idea just how unlikely it was that he would be able to sleep. Perhaps it was as well that she didn’t!

  The storm had gone, leaving the air cooler and fresher. Faith stretched sinuously, luxuriating in the pleasurable warmth of the large bed and her body’s awareness of the protective presence of Nash. A sleepy, sensual and wholly womanly smile curled Faith’s mouth as her relaxed senses responded to the knowledge of Nash’s proximity.

  Instinctively Faith snuggled closer to him, her hand curling possessively round his arm, the breath leaving her lungs on a long sigh as her lips nuzzled the warm flesh of his throat.

  In her half-asleep state it was easy for Faith to abandon the barriers she had put up against her feelings and allow her deepest and most sensual self to have its way.

  This was Nash as she had so much longed for him to be all those years ago, and subconsciously her body registered that fact, pouring through her veins a soothing reality-diffusing elixir that was a mixture of emotion and desire and one other very powerful ingredient which her deepest self knew and recognised.

  ‘Mmm…’

  As she stroked the bare skin of his arm and gently tasted the warmth of his throat with her half-open lips her whole body was washed with a sweetly languorous wave of female pleasure.

  ‘Mmm…’

  Faith moved even closer, her body touching Nash’s as her fingertips gently explored him.

  Nash had barely slept, unable to snatch more than a few seconds of rest before forcing himself back awake just in case…Just in case what?

  Certainly not just in case Faith started doing what she was doing right now. No…What he had been afraid of was that he might be tempted to…

  After the accusations she had flung at him on their wedding day he had told himself that he would never allow himself to be tempted to touch her again, no matter how much he might want to do so. Lovemaking wasn’t something he wanted to feel he was forcing on her—it was something that should be shared, like love itself.

  He tried to grit his teeth against the raw moan of pleasure her touch was commanding.

  Helpless to stop his body’s reaction to the stroke of her gently explorative fingertips, he did the only other thing he could, reaching out and taking hold of her arm, lifting her hand away from his body. As he did so the naked warmth of her breasts brushed against his skin.

  A long, slow uncontrollable shudder of reaction ripped through him, the groan he was unable to silence causing Faith to open her eyes.

  She was in bed with Nash! Wonderingly she gazed at him, her eyes soft with emotion, her body still far too powerfully affected by the hormones his proximity had released to listen to any cautionary warnings of her mind.

  Had she any idea just how powerfully sensual the way she was looking at him was? Nash wondered despairingly as he felt his self-control melt beneath its heat.

  ‘Nash.’

  As she whispered his name Faith leaned forward, her lips parting in a deliberate and irresistible invitation to be kissed. When he hesitated, the look in Faith’s eyes deepened and darkened, and she moved even closer to him, the top half of her body resting on his as she brushed his mouth with hers.

  A virgin she might have been, but when it came to tempting a man she most definitely knew how to be all woman, Nash acknowledged as he closed his arms around her and opened his mouth over hers.

  Faith felt as though she might melt from the sheer intensity of the heat engulfing her as Nash kissed her.

  His eyes, like hers, were open, focusing on her, hypnotising her into a state of physical and emotional responsiveness that totally swept away her inhibitions.

  She might be completely awake now, mentally completely aware of what reality was, but her body was still lost in the sensual spell that this night-long proximity to Nash had woven around it.

  ‘Nash…’

  As he lifted his mouth from hers she raised her hand and gently touched his lips. His body moved against her. One of them was shaking. It had to be her. She felt as though she was sinking, drowning in the depths of Nash’s gaze.

  His lips caressed her fingertips, his tongue-tip stroking each one individually before his fingers curled around her wrist and his mouth moved downwards into her palm, making her quiver, then along her arm, lingering on the sensual spot just inside her elbow and making her tremble almost violently as his touch generated a response that threatened to devour her.

  She could feel it right down to her toes, all the way up her spine to where the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck were lifting in a sensual signal as old as time itself.

  In the shadowy light she could see the pale curve of her breast and the darkly flushed tensely aroused peak of her nipple, already aching with its need to feel the erotic suckle of Nash’s mouth.

  Beneath the bedclothes her belly tightened, her hips moving, lifting as she pressed herself closer…closer; and an almost violent spasm of pleasure racked her as she felt the hard, hot pressure of Nash’s arousal.

  And all they had done was kiss…just once…And she wanted more…all of his kisses…all of him…

  Nash tried reminding himself of all the reasons why he should not give in, but his mind was listening to a very differe
nt kind of argument, one that said she was his, they were married, this was his destiny—this and whatever might result from their intimacy—and that the debt of responsibility he would owe the child they might conceive would outrank the debt of responsibility he owed his godfather.

  They might conceive? But it was too late for his brain to issue an urgent warning, his body, his heart, his soul, were already in thrall to a far more elemental urgency.

  Faith felt as though she finally understood what it was to experience ecstasy, to reach a place that made her feel immortal and, even more awe-inspiring, made her feel that she and Nash were finally meeting as equals.

  There were no more barriers between them. They weren’t just touching naked flesh to naked flesh, but naked soul to naked soul. And instinctively, immediately, she knew, in the very heartbeat of time, that it had happened. She felt the fierce, final surge of Nash’s desire within her, carrying her forward to her own sharp high plateau of infinite pleasure, and knew that this time they had created a new life.

  Nash couldn’t sleep. Anger, guilt, despair and a helpless longing for things to be different denied him the peace that Faith was enjoying.

  Like her, he had been sharply aware of the soul-baring intimacy of what they had shared. Like her, too, a part of him had experienced the awesomeness of the beating wings of destiny hovering over them. But now that moment had gone he was once again facing the same emotion-churning dilemma he had faced so many times before. He was still unable to reconcile what he felt for Faith in terms of his love for her with what he knew cerebrally he ought to feel—because of what she had done.

  If he allowed himself to love Faith he would end up hating himself. If he forced himself to hate her he would—

  Restlessly he got out of bed. All his adult life he had made his own decisions and stuck to them. Now, though, he acknowledged that he needed help. Now he needed the wisdom and compassion that had been Philip’s.

  He showered and dressed, leaving the house whilst Faith still slept. He needed to be on his own to wrestle with his own demons. Being with Faith distracted him too much, made it impossible for him to think of anything other than how much he loved her.