Читать книгу In Bed With...Collection - Emma Darcy, Emma Darcy - Страница 33

THE moment they were in their suite with the rest of the world shut out, Bryce turned her into his embrace. Sunny didn’t mean to stiffen up, but she couldn’t quite feel right, pretending nothing had happened to colour things differently. Her hands pressed nervously against Bryce’s chest, holding her bouquet between them, her heart thumping painfully instead of happily.

‘It’s worrying you, isn’t it…all that Kristen said?’ Bryce quietly probed.

‘Not…not all of it.’ She fiddled with his boutonniere, wishing Kristen hadn’t turned up. But there was no joy in hiding her head in the sand, now that she was more aware of circumstances.

‘Tell me what’s preying on your mind, Sunny. Let me fix it.’

‘You didn’t tell me about her.’

‘She was irrelevant to us.’

No, she wasn’t irrelevant, Sunny thought, and such a ruthless wipe-out of a woman he’d planned to marry—without any second chance offered—did not sit well with her. It was too…too uncaring.

‘You were still engaged to her until this morning,’ she reminded him, shying away from Kristen’s accusation of him being a cold, calculating pig, yet calculation had to have come into his actions, given his need for a wife and the time pressure involved. To give up Kristen before he had secured Sunny’s consent…had he? Had he really?

‘Technically I was still engaged to her, yes,’ he answered. ‘In my heart, no.’

‘In your heart, Bryce?’ She lifted her eyes to scan his, to see how much he meant by that.

‘When I asked you to marry me last night, you had completely obliterated any possibility of my ever marrying Kristen. I could never have gone back to her after you, Sunny.’

He looked and sounded genuinely sincere.

His grimace held a wealth of distaste as he added, ‘I called Kristen at seven o’clock this morning, making it absolutely clear that everything was ended.’

She frowned, remembering similar words he’d spoken much later. ‘I heard you talking on the phone to someone just as I was coming downstairs.’

‘My lawyer. He had to be notified.’

‘Because of the…the prenuptial agreement?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why did you do that with her? Was it the only way for you to get a wife and child…to buy them?’

His mouth twisted in a fleeting expression of bitter self-mockery. Then his whole face seemed to harden, his eyes reflecting a deep inner cynicism as he replied, ‘Prenuptial agreements are quite common in the States, Sunny, especially since divorce has become a national pastime and a boon to lawyers who are out to get their cut. In a financial sense, such agreements offer both protection and security.’

They weren’t common in Australia. Or perhaps they were amongst the very wealthy. Not having ever moved in those circles, she simply didn’t know.

‘If that is your practice here, Bryce, why didn’t you offer one to me?’ she queried, the bargain basement bride tag nagging at her sense of self-worth.

He didn’t have a ready reply. Sunny had the disturbing impression that the wheels had just fallen off his train. The silence reeked of a massive recalculation being made. It totally unnerved her. She broke away from him, frightened now of this marriage she had entered into, feeling hopelessly alienated by an attitude of mind she could never be sympathetic to.

She dropped the pretty bridal nosegay onto an armchair. The rings he’d placed on her finger glinted up at her, mocking the ‘forever’ sentiments she’d given them. Her heart bled for the dream he wasn’t giving her and she cursed herself for having been so hasty in choosing this man to be her husband.

‘Do you want a financial agreement, Sunny?’ he asked in a flat, weary tone. ‘I’ll see to it right now if it will make you feel more secure.’

Secure! That was such a black joke she might have laughed if it had involved anyone but herself. ‘No!’ she exploded, wheeling on him as a turbulent rush of emotion demanded he at least understand where she was coming from. ‘I would be the whore Derek said I was if I let myself be bought like that, and don’t you dare treat me like one, Bryce Templar.’

He frowned. His hands lifted in appeal. ‘I thought…you seemed upset that I hadn’t brought it up with you.’

‘If you had, I would never have married you,’ she shot back at him in towering contempt. ‘It’s looking for the out before you’re even in. It makes a mockery of the commitment that marriage is supposed to stand for. Especially when children are planned. Especially!’ she repeated with passionate conviction.

‘That’s precisely why I didn’t bring it up, Sunny,’ he declared, his concern clearing.

‘Is it?’ she hotly challenged. ‘Or am I the windfall that won’t cost you as much as Kristen Parrish would have? The bargain basement bride!’

He flinched.

For one heart-cramping moment, Sunny thought she had hit the nail right on the head.

Then he exploded into violent rebuttal, his arms slicing the air in scissor-like dismissal. ‘I will not have you thinking that of yourself! Nor of me!’

Sunny quivered in shock as he came at her, not having expected to stir such a storm of emotion in him. A calculating man surely stayed in control, but there was nothing at all controlled about his wild gesticulations or the passion pouring from his voice.

‘Money didn’t once enter into my wanting you. You, for yourself, Sunny. I sat there in that conference room yesterday morning, watching you give your presentation, and the whole vibrant warmth of you called to me so strongly…’

‘Then?’ she squeaked. ‘You wanted me then?’

‘Yes! So much I was planning to ask you to join me for lunch! Anything to have more of you!’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘No. Because when you stepped off that podium I saw the engagement ring on your finger. Which meant you belonged to someone else. And I didn’t think you were the kind of woman I could buy away from a man you were committed to.’

She shook her head, stunned by these revelations.

‘You made me hate the thought of marrying Kristen.’ His mouth curled around the name in savage disgust. ‘Kristen, who kept putting a higher and higher price on having a child in the prenuptial agreement she insisted upon.’

He tore off the silk cravat and unbuttoned his collar as though it were choking him. ‘Then…then I was on my way out of the hotel and I saw you confronting some guy at a blackjack table. I saw you take off your ring and hand it back to him.’

‘You saw?’

‘It stopped me in my tracks. I watched you come towards the lobby and all I could think of was…I can have her. I will have her.’

She hadn’t been mad for thinking what she had in the lobby—Bryce Templar determined on claiming her as his woman.

‘If that feels wrong to you, I’m sorry, but it felt very right to me. And I acted on it. What’s more…’ He hurled off his coat and his fingers attacked the buttons of his vest with speedy efficiency. ‘…I’ll keep acting on it.’

The vest went flying. In an instant he was right in front of her, grasping her upper arms, his eyes blazing with the need to burn away anything standing between them. ‘You came with me, Sunny. You wanted me last night. You wanted me this morning. You agreed to marry me. You’re my wife.’

It was all true. She stared back at him, overwhelmed by the passion he was emitting. Somehow it didn’t matter that there had been ruthless calculation behind everything he’d done, because it was for her…because he wanted her.

‘My wife,’ he repeated, his voice throbbing with fierce possessiveness. ‘And that’s how it’s going to be.’

He kissed her, and his need poured from his mouth to hers, igniting her own need to have all the worries of this day obliterated, to simply lose herself in the primitive heat of being one with him, as she had been last night, as she could be now…

With a low, animal growl, he scooped her off her feet, carrying her with him, clutching her to his chest, raining kisses on her face and muttering, ‘I’ll make it right. I’ll make it right.’

The frenzied refrain pounded through Sunny’s heart, making it swell with a wild kind of joy. She clung to him, kissing him back as feverishly as he kissed her. Nothing had to make sense. This frantic desire had a momentum all its own.

Beside the bed they had shared before, Bryce stood her on her feet to peel off her clothes, and he slowed himself down, taking care, his eyes glittering over her as he removed each garment. ‘You are so beautiful to me. Do you know that? Have I told you?’

His hands caressed, sending delicious quivers of anticipation through her. He knew how to touch. He knew how to do everything.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. You’re beautiful to me, too, Bryce.’

And she did the same to him, stripping off the rest of his clothes, taking the time to glide her hands over his marvellous male body, revelling in his perfect musculature, the gleaming tautness of his skin. She exulted when she felt little tremors running under it, knowing he was as excited by her touch as she was by his. It was especially wonderful to run her fingertips up the impressive strength of his thighs, to hold and stroke and feel the power of his sexuality.

‘Sunny…’ It was a furred breathing of her name, threaded with barely contained longing. His hands spanned her waist, lifting her up, sliding her body against his. ‘Wrap your legs around my hips. I want to feel you hugging me, wanting me…’

She did, with both her arms and her legs, holding his head to the soft cushion of her breasts as he dropped an arm to support her where she was, instinctively balancing both their bodies so he could join them, the insertion so slickly smooth, so incredibly satisfying, so intensely right, Sunny closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of utter bliss.

His arms slid up on either side of her spine. ‘Lean back. I won’t let you fall.’

There was no question of not trusting his strength to hold her wherever he wanted to hold her. She leaned back and his penetration went deeper, increasing the sense of intimate union so exquisitely, Sunny was unaware that angling away from him left her bare breasts tilted perfectly to be reached by his mouth. The heightening of pleasure was enormous when he started kissing them, swinging her body from side to side as he moved from one to the other, creating arcs of intense sensation and building such a rapid escalation of excitement, she was swamped in huge rolling waves of it.

‘Oh…oh…oh…’ she heard herself gasping, totally beyond doing anything active herself. It felt as though she were absolutely possessed by him, enthralled by the sweet havoc he wrought inside her, and wanting more and more and more of every fantastic sensation he imparted.

He lowered her wildly palpitating body onto the side of the bed, still holding her pinioned to him, and the voluptuous roll of him inside her changed to a fast plummeting rhythm that brought surges of sheer ecstacy, a fierce tumbling of pleasure that engulfed her, and the deep inner beat of him went on and on until suddenly it ebbed into a delicious sea of peace.

She was hopelessly limp when Bryce gathered her to him and moved them both fully onto the bed, turning to lie on his back with Sunny half sprawled on top of him. She could feel his heart thumping under her cheek and it seemed to pulse through her own bloodstream. Into the haze of her mind slid the thought…This is my husband…and a sweet contentment accompanied it and lingered.

Sexually, what more could she ask for in a partner? He excited her beyond anything she had ever felt before. And she loved his physique. It was such a pleasure to look at him, feel him, and he was now hers to have and to hold—a fantasy come true—so she had every reason to feel content.

‘I think, if you want to save this bridal coronet of flowers, I’d better unpin it,’ Bryce gruffly remarked.

‘Mmm…’

‘It’s got a bit bruised, but it did look fantastic on you with the rest of you naked, Sunny. Still like a bride.’

Sexy pleasure in his voice—visual satisfaction as well as physical. Sunny smiled as she felt his fingers move gently through her hair, removing pins. She must have looked like some kind of pagan bride. Which led her to the thought that probably in primitive times, mating for life was all physical. The choice of instinct. Survival.

She certainly would have picked him out of any bunch of men. Why should it be any different now? The saleslady at the bridal boutique had it right. She’d won the prize.

Though, in a way, she’d won it because the sleekly glamorous status-holder, Kristen Parrish, had defaulted in the marriage stakes, demanding too big a bride-price. A child-price, as well. Which was particularly offensive to Sunny’s way of thinking. In fact, it was a cold, callous calculating thing to say—I won’t have your baby unless you pay me big bucks.

If anyone was ‘the pig’ in this agreement, Sunny decided it was Kristen.

Which raised a niggly little question.

‘Bryce?’

‘Mmm?’ Having removed the coronet of flowers, he was busy gently massaging her scalp where the pins had been.

‘Would you have married Kristen if you hadn’t met me?’

His chest rose and fell as he deeply inhaled and breathed out a heavy sigh. ‘She’s gone, Sunny. This is us,’ he said emphatically.

She hitched herself up to assure him she wasn’t being jealous or going down some negative path. ‘I know. And I’m glad it’s us. Truly I am.’

‘Good!’ He looked and sounded relieved.

‘I just want to know if you would have gone through with it, lacking me to replace her?’

His face tightened. She saw a flash of grim ruthlessness in his eyes. ‘Yes, I would have married her. But given the fortune she was demanding, I would have insisted on getting uncontested custody of any child we had.’

His child. Sunny believed him. In his world, his father’s marriages had come and gone, so Bryce probably didn’t set much store by them, but a child—his child—meant a great deal. And she understood he much preferred a wife who wanted to be a mother to his child, simply because being a mother was important to her, having a value beyond money.

His expression softened as he lifted a hand to her face, gently stroking the contours of it. ‘I know you’d never hold a child to ransom, Sunny. You want to share. You care what happens. You want what’s best. You’d ensure our child has…’ He smiled. ‘…emotional security.’

‘Money doesn’t give that, Bryce.’

‘I know. I want to give our child emotional security, too. Are you willing to throw your pills away now, Sunny?’

Decision time.

It had been a whole day of decisions.

There seemed no point in hesitating over this last one now.

‘Yes,’ she answered firmly. ‘It’s what we both got married for, isn’t it? To be parents.’

He laughed, his eyes twinkling wickedly. ‘Well, there are some fringe benefits, wife of mine.’ And he rolled her onto her back, exuding happiness as he began kissing her again. ‘I’m going to love every minute of every effort needed for us to make a baby.’

Sunny had no doubt she would revel in the process, too.

‘Though the sooner I get you pregnant, the better,’ Bryce murmured. ‘I want to take that load off my father’s mind. And give him a grandchild.’

His father… Bryce’s whole motivation for marrying.

A dark concern sliced into Sunny’s mind.

What if she didn’t get pregnant?

What if she couldn’t have children at all?

Everything hung on it.

Everything!