Читать книгу Modern Romance May 2015 Books 1-8 - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 33
ОглавлениеIN MARI’S DREAM someone was knocking on the door and calling...not her...not her name...and they were speaking a foreign language. It was fluid and nice to listen to but growing louder. Mari pushed free of layers of sleep and lay there smiling, feeling good, feeling... She stretched and muscles complained.
‘Ouch!’ She lifted a hand to smother a yawn and as the sheet, which was the only thing covering her, slid down she realised that she was naked... Naked, and where was she? The rush of recollection coincided with the door swinging inwards and then a woman’s voice, the voice in her dreams, calling.
‘Sebastian! Sebastian!’
Mari, now fully awake, responded to the emergency in the time-honoured fashion. She buried her head in the literal sense by sliding down to the bottom of the bed and heaving the covers that lay there in a tangled mess up over her unruly curls, tucking in her feet, her knees, her elbows...in an effort to disappear.
And that was it. Too late now to reconsider her actions—she was committed and also very uncomfortable.
In her concealment she held her breath, her heart thudding even faster at the thought of humiliating discovery. The muffled sound of heels on the floorboards got closer and the imperative tapping sound louder and louder. She held her breath in anticipation.
Totally convinced she was about to be discovered, Mari waited with the resignation of a condemned woman, wondering if it would be any less humiliating to reveal herself before her undoubted exposure. Should she test the theory and find out if a person really could die of humiliation, always supposing she didn’t suffocate in the meantime?
Her oxygen-starved brain conjured up several versions of the headlines before she decided there probably wouldn’t be any. Sebastian would hush it up to spare further embarrassment to the family name.
She was fast approaching the point where she had to breathe properly, even if that meant she was discovered. Just as her autonomic nervous system kicked in and she opened her mouth to gulp in air, the sound was muffled by the creak of a door opening.
‘Mamina!’
She huddled down, knees drawn up to her chest, trying to make herself as small as possible, into what she hoped would be mistaken for a bundle of bedclothes by anyone who glanced that way. So long as she didn’t do anything like... Do not think about coughing, Mari, she told herself sternly.
It was hot. Sweat broke out over her skin, making her situation even more miserably uncomfortable, and still they carried on talking... Didn’t he appreciate her predicament? Her teeth clenched, she focused on breathing shallowly while, the longer the conversation went on between Sebastian and the woman he had called Mamina, the worse the skin-crawlingly awful prospect of discovery became.
How humiliating would that be?
Just when she thought it couldn’t get worse, the muscles in her calf bunched, and she had to bite down hard on her lip to stop herself crying out. The torture of the cramp became so intense that she was on the point of revealing herself when the pain in her calf that extended all the way to the arch of her foot began to diminish at the same time she realised the flow of Spanish had stopped and the tapping sound was moving towards the door.
A final word from the strong-sounding female voice and the door closed.
‘You can come out now.’
The pile of bedclothes moved, the sardonic smile on Seb’s face deepening into a broad grin as her head emerged, her hair gloriously tousled, her face deeply flushed a clashing shade of pink. She looked a long way from the sleeping angel with the cut-glass features and perfect profile he had reluctantly left to sleep, and even more touchable.
Indignation aside, Mari felt a lurch in her chest. If he smiled more often she’d be in serious trouble... What was she thinking? She was in serious trouble. She managed to keep her scowl in place as he levered his broad shoulders from the wall.
‘My grandmother.’ Keeping his eyes on her, he nodded towards the door.
‘I figured that part out. What I couldn’t work out was why you kept her talking for hours. You had to know that I was...’
He arched a sardonic brow. ‘Hiding under the covers?’
When he put it like that...
‘What was I meant to do?’ she fired back. Struggling to retain a modicum of dignity, she held the sheet at shoulder height and eased herself up carefully into a sitting position, keeping her legs tucked underneath. She flexed her toes to ease the discomfort in the leg that had suffered the cramp attack.
‘Well, let me see...how about introduce yourself?’ he drawled.
‘Oh, yes, that would have been fun! I’m your grandson’s wife. I didn’t know if she knew, or what story you’d told her!’ she flung back.
Mari’s bitter thoughts mingled with lustful ones as her wilful gaze roamed over him. He’d obviously stepped straight from the shower; presumably that was why he had not heard the knocking from the adjoining bathroom.
He had paused to pull on a towelling robe. His skin, still dusted here and there with moisture, looked vibrantly gold against the black fabric. Loosely belted around his middle, the robe ended midthigh, and Mari’s glance lingered a fraction of a second too long on the hard, hair-dusted columns of his heavily muscled thighs, triggering a tactile memory that pressed down on her as heavily and as hotly as his thighs had pressed her down into the mattress last night.
His dry voice cut into her carnal recollections. ‘I thought you had a head-on approach towards most situations.’
Mari shook her head, the physical action helping to free her of the last clinging strands of the mind-numbing sensual fog. Adopting a cool expression, she lifted her chin and admitted, ‘What seems a good idea at the time can seem a major mistake in the cold, clear light of day.’
An ice age could not have been more unexpected or as total as the frigid hauteur in his regard.
‘So you have decided to draw a line under last night and call it a...mistake?’ He sketched mocking inverted commas around the word as he bit it out through teeth bared in a hard, contemptuous smile.
Mistake? Wasn’t that a pretty good analysis of the emotions that he’d been struggling not to analyse—his own ‘head under the blanket’ moment—as he’d stood accepting the sharp arrows of an icy-cold shower that had washed the scent of her off his flesh but not the memory of the sex, which seemed to have penetrated to a cellular level?
The light was not cold, but it was clear as it shone on her upturned features.
The fact that calling it a mistake was exactly what he’d been doing did not lessen the sense of outrage he recognised as totally irrational.
The confusion on Mari’s face lifted. ‘No...last night...’ Did she regret it? ‘I’m not talking about last night. I meant the wedding crashing. Last night was...’ Her voice trailed away. She couldn’t say special to a man who had enjoyed God knew how many last nights... Just sex? For her it had felt like making love. She gulped past a ridiculous desire to weep. She should be glad that her first time had been so special. She knew a lot of people who hadn’t been so lucky, and some of the stories had not made her regret her abstinence.
But then, she hadn’t known what she was missing; now she did. Oh, God, what had she done? She had no answer, just a total aching certainty that if she had the opportunity to do it again she would.
‘One would not have happened without the other.’
Unsure what to read into this statement, she nodded cautiously and eased one leg out from under her.
‘And you’d still be a virgin.’ Just saying it gave Seb the same gut-punch feeling he’d had last night.
Of course, he’d have been lying if he hadn’t acknowledged that the fact he had been her first, that he had taken her to places no other man had, aroused him on a primal level. And though they were damped down, he could only assume that it was those fundamental male instincts that were now responsible for the uncharacteristic possessiveness he felt when he looked at her and the anger he had experienced when he had thought she could dismiss the previous night with a shrug of her elegant shoulders.
In order to hide the depth of her discomfort, Mari rolled her eyes and sighed. ‘Oh, are we going to have this conversation?’
‘I’m sorry if you find this boring, but yes, we are.’
She scanned his lean face and tilted her head in an attitude of astonishment. ‘You’re mad at me for being a virgin?’ The discovery drew a laugh from her parted lips.
‘I’m mad at you for not warning me sooner,’ he rebutted grimly. He swallowed and dragged a hand over his wet hair, slicking it back from his bronzed forehead. ‘I could have hurt you.’ Passion was one thing, but to be as full on as he had been with someone totally uninitiated sent a heavy slug of fresh guilt through his body. It should have been gentle and tender...
Tender. Hell, it shouldn’t have happened at all!
He looked at the top of her shiny head; it was all he could see. Her chin had dropped to her chest and her hair had fallen in a silky curtain across her face. It made him think of how it had felt. The ends had brushed his chest as she had slid down his body... He inhaled. No, he would not go there, and last night was a one-off. He had not been thinking with his brain, but that would change.
He was totally clear in his mind about this when her head lifted. She parted the hair that had fallen across her face with both hands and looked up at him through the fringe of her long lashes with eyes that shone like sapphires and whispered huskily, ‘You didn’t.’
As her soft full lips quivered into a slow smile that was both sexy and vulnerable, Seb felt his heart crash into his chest wall like a sledgehammer. Utterly unprepared, he had no protection from the powerful feeling.
‘That’s...’ Without warning, a moaning gasp was wrenched from her lips. The sound pierced Seb like a dull blade as he surged forward in response to the cry of pain.
‘What’s wrong? What is it?’ He sat on the side of the bed where Mari had her knee drawn up to her chest in an awkward tangle of limbs and sheet, and was clutching her calf.
Her lower lip was clamped between her teeth; she was as white as paper. ‘Cramp!’ she managed through clenched teeth.
‘Is that all?’ His relief was mingled with sympathy. He knew from experience how incapacitating a cramp could be, especially if you were a mile off shore when it hit; fate in the shape of an off-course kayaker had been on his side that day.
‘All?’ she choked. If she could have thrown something at him, she would have.
The pain that had earlier been limited to her calf now involved her foot, as well. Her toes had been pulled upwards by the strength of the muscle contractions and she had grabbed them in an attempt to ease the agony.
‘Maybe I’ve got a pathetically low pain threshold but it hurts!’ she wailed, ashamed of the weak tears that were leaking from her eyes.
‘I know, believe me I do. Let me.’
‘I can’t.’ She shook her head, refusing to release her grip on her foot.
‘You can.’ He calmly pulled her leg across his knees and began to work on the knots of muscle; the action of his long fingers immediately lowered the level of pain.
‘Let go, Mari.’
He’d said that last night and it had worked out okay then; also his air of cool competence was reassuring. Still tensing at every fresh wave of pain, she fell back against the pillows, arms crossed on her forehead, eyes squeezed shut.
His hands on the smooth skin of her calf, he watched the sheet drawn across her chest rise and fall, thinking about what was underneath... He had apparently been taken over by a teenager.
Her eyes opened wide in protest, and she gave a little grunt of pain. ‘Hey, that hurt!’
‘Just relax.’ It was advice he struggled to follow. What the hell had he been thinking of last night...and what was he meant to do today? Pretend it never happened? The memory of his reaction when he had thought that was what she was suggesting was still fresh in his mind.
Relax. Easy for him to say, she thought, closing her eyes again as he pressed harder on a knotted muscle, smoothing the kinks.
She complained again with a mumbled, ‘Ouch!’ But she kept her eyes shut. The compulsion to tense was lessening as his clever fingers worked up and down her calf and into the arch of her foot until her calf was relaxed and the spasms in her toes had stopped.
‘That’s good,’ she breathed. A cupped hand above her eyes, the other now unfurled on the pillow above her head, she forced her eyelids apart and looked at him through glittering blue slits. ‘You can stop now.’
He didn’t, though. He carried on massaging her legs, his hands running up the silky soft insides in a slow advance-retreat pattern.
Feeling the sigh that rippled through her body, he raised her feet to his lips and pressed a soft kiss to the blue-veined arch of her narrow foot. Who knew that a foot could be sexy?
Who knew, she thought, feeling herself sink into the mattress as delicious tingles zigzagged across her skin, that you had erogenous zones there?
‘So how come you’ve never had a lover?’
She looked at him through her lashes. ‘I have trust issues after a really terrible experience when I was being seduced. Actually, I was quite looking forward to it when this man appeared out of nowhere and called me a slut in front of the entire hotel.’ She opened one eye to look at him in time to see a look of astonished comprehension flash across his face.
‘I suppose he did me a favour, but I found it hard to think of it that way. It’s bad enough discovering that the man you had spun romantic fantasy around was actually a sad serial seducer, but to have everyone there think I was some sort of slut who slept with married men...’
Seb closed his eyes and grimaced, seeing her face as it had been, no longer seeing the seductress mankind needed saving from but an innocent victim.
‘He sounds a bit of a bastard,’ he husked back throatily, as the things he had said came back in painful detail.
‘Oh, they both were.’
‘But six years, Mari...’ he clenched out with a groan.
‘Did I not say? I’ve a low sex drive.’
At her initial explanation his fingers had stilled. They moved again now, and the sound of his deep throaty laugh filled the silence, making the muscles low in her belly quiver.
‘Oh, when you put it like that it’s kind of obvious.’
She struggled to free her foot...but actually not so very hard, just a feeble kick, because his fingers were sliding higher now up the soft pale skin of her inner thigh, stroke then retreat, each time getting higher, but not high enough to satisfy the throbbing ache between her thighs. Her head turned on the pillow and she released a long, slow, sibilant sigh; the mixture of pleasure and frustration was exhausting.
‘What the hell did you see in that creep?’
‘I was eighteen, Seb. He singled me out from day one, encouraged me, took a real interest. A man had never done that before and I was flattered,’ she admitted. ‘And then one day I could see something was wrong. I waited after my tutorial and asked...’ She lifted a hand to her head and groaned. ‘I asked what I could do to help. It was then he admitted that he’d fallen for me. He’d been fighting it because he was my tutor and so much older. I was totally sucked in, and all the creeping around and secrecy seemed romantic.
‘It turned out that everyone else but me knew that at the start of an academic year he had an affair with a new student. It was a big standing joke—I was the joke.’ The look she flashed him was rueful.
‘You mean he groomed them.’ At his sides Seb’s hands clenched into fists. If the guy had been there at that moment he would have... He took a deep breath. He wasn’t here but Mari was.
He’d taken a virgin bride. What have you done, Seb?
‘We were all consenting adults, there was nothing illegal and I was pretty stupid.’
‘He used his position of authority and trust,’ Seb condemned. ‘It is appalling that the college authorities allowed it to happen.’
‘Well, I don’t expect they knew,’ she observed fairly. ‘And they don’t allow it, not now. There was a massive scandal the next year as the girl he singled out for special attention after me attempted suicide. Luckily she didn’t succeed, but he resigned shortly after that and I think his wife divorced him. Don’t stop...’ she pleaded, lifting herself up on her elbows as he swore his contempt bilingually.
His eyes followed the flow of her hair as it settled over her shoulders, but he couldn’t push back the hard knot of ice-cold anger that her matter-of-fact retelling of the story had created.
‘I’m sorry about the things I said that night. I had just come from a run-in with my mother, who was...well, being herself, and she never brings out the best in me.’
‘It was a long time ago,’ she said, looking at him curiously. ‘And I had my revenge, so maybe we’re even?’
‘It left scars, and I was partly responsible for that.’
She held out her arms. ‘You healed them, too, but there is this little one that I don’t think you quite reached.’
A slow carnal smile curved his lips as he pulled her foot, tucking it over his shoulder. ‘Now, where would that be?’
‘Not sure,’ she admitted thickly.
Seb found it, and he took his time about it; he had taken her to the edge twice before taking her over with him.
She flipped over on her stomach to look at him. ‘I should go back to my room and get dressed.’ She yawned without much enthusiasm. ‘I don’t know what your grandmother will think.’
‘We are married, remember.’
A flicker of a frown disturbed her smooth brow as Mari looked at the ring on her finger, a plain gold band. ‘But that’s not real, is it? Though I suppose she won’t know that.’
‘My grandmother is no longer here. That is why she—’ his lips quirked at the corners ‘—stopped by, to say goodbye. She is staying with her sister for a few days. Apparently my great-aunt has had a fall.’
‘Is she all right, your aunt?’
‘Apparently she was more concerned about the horse.’
‘Your aunt was riding?’
‘In this instance, falling.’ He threw back the quilt that had moments before warmed both their bodies and casually vaulted from the bed, completely at ease with his naked state. Mari was less so, but her glance welded hungrily on his long, lean, muscle-toned frame, and she felt her insides heat.
Their glances connected and she lowered her gaze, clearing her throat. The microsecond of contact sent her nervous system into chaos... My God, I’ve become insatiable.
‘You don’t sound very worried,’ she observed, visualising a scene in her head that involved him crossing the room and slipping back into bed...into her. ‘Should she even be on a horse at her age?’
The reproach in her tone drew a laugh, and a look over his shoulder as he moved in the opposite direction to her imagination to the window, which he pushed wider, letting in the smell of jasmine with a soft breeze.
‘Marguerite fully intends to die on one, as she will tell anyone who dares suggest she should slow down, but not yet, I think, though reading between the lines it sounds as though she was shaken.’
She glimpsed the concern behind the languid humour and touched the smooth skin of his back as he sat down on the bed to slide his jeans on before standing to zip them up.
‘Why don’t you hate me, Mari?’
She blinked, astonished by the question. ‘Who says I don’t?’
She glimpsed a strange look on his face before he turned and stalked across the room, making her think of a panther. ‘Because you don’t have it in you.’ Although what he had to say might severely test that theory.
‘I did crash your wedding and nearly cost you a billion dollars.’
‘I tricked you into marrying me.’
‘There have been some upsides to that,’ she admitted, looking from his face to the tumbled bedclothes. At least in bed naked she had no trouble understanding him. ‘And I’m not eighteen anymore. I knew what I was doing. I admit I never expected to enjoy anything about these eighteen months.’
Even from the several yards that separated them she could see the lines of strain around his mouth as he began to walk back across the room towards her, looking very like her mental image of a dark, dangerous pirate with his bare feet, rippling muscle, his chest gleaming gold and the stubble on his face giving him a dangerously attractive look of dissipation. In a fair world it would be illegal for a man to be this sexy.
So the world is not fair, Mari—deal and stop drooling! She was dragging her eyes clear of the open fastener on his waistband when he spoke, his deep voice just audible above the blood rushing in her ears.
‘Has it occurred to you that the eighteen-month rule might be out of the window?’
Utterly confused, Mari searched his face, looking for a trace of the warm, sensitively passionate lover who had taught her so much about her own body in just one night, and morning...but he wasn’t there. Just a sombre-faced stranger, not the man she had fallen... The blood drained from her face as she swallowed and thought, No, I can’t have... It’s just sex. Very good sex, but just sex. Love is—
‘Unless you are on the pill?’
Too busy arguing with herself, she still didn’t see where he was going with this. ‘Why would I be?’
‘I didn’t use anything. You could be pregnant.’ Her comment about not wanting children had not seemed relevant at the time; now it did.
His words hit her with the force of a lightning bolt. She gasped and hit back, fear making her voice cold. ‘Do you make a habit of having unprotected sex with one-night stands?’
His dark eyes glittering, the sharply defined contours of his high cheekbones were accentuated by a dull flush as he ground out what she was assuming—no major leap—was a swear word and dragged a hand across his set jaw.
‘It was a first. I’m sorry.’
She gave a sniff, feeling guilty now that she had lashed out at him. At the end of the day, she’d become just as caught up in the moment and had behaved just as recklessly as Seb had. ‘So am I. It’s as much my fault as yours,’ she acknowledged.
Seb gave a hard laugh. ‘I seriously doubt that many people would agree with you, and you are not a one-night stand. You are my wife.’
‘For eighteen months...’
‘Maybe.’
‘What do you mean?’ she demanded, gathering the quilt around her.
‘I mean if last night results in a baby, that time limit vanishes. There is no way that my child would be brought up by another man.’
When she finally spoke, her voice sounded weirdly controlled, perhaps to compensate for the total chaos rampaging in her head. ‘I’m not having a baby.’ And I’m not in love.
‘You’re right. It probably won’t happen. Why don’t we deal with it when or if the time arises?’
She shook her head. ‘You really are unbelievable. How am I meant to think about anything else now? It would be a disaster!’ she wailed, thinking disaster was not a big enough word to describe being trapped in marriage with a man who didn’t love you. She had always felt sorry for those people who ‘stayed together because of the baby’ and she didn’t want to be one of them!
His jaw tightened. ‘What are the odds?’
Confused by the abrupt question, she shook her head.
‘Of you conceiving.’
‘Oh.’ She flushed self-consciously and did a quick mental calculation and swallowed. ‘Pretty high,’ she admitted. ‘Why is this happening?’ She pressed her face with her hands and released a muffled wail. ‘I can’t have a baby!’
‘Calm down.’ He sat down on the bed and brought her hands together, covering them with his. ‘I know you don’t want children but—’
‘Who said I didn’t want children?’ she flared.
‘You did.’
‘Not my own—there are so many children out there who need homes. I’m going to adopt.’
He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, wondering if he could feel any more of a total bastard.
‘What? What have I said now?’
He shook his head.
‘So what now? You’re the one who said he was good at thinking on his feet.’
The slow dangerous smile that split his lean face did not lessen the tension that drew the skin taut across his high cheekbones. ‘I am thinking, but you are distracting me.’
She followed the direction of his gaze and pulled the quilt up over her breasts, before angling a hot-cheeked look of accusation at his face. ‘You’re thinking about sex at a time like this?’
‘I can multitask,’ he promised her. ‘How does this work for you? We cut the honeymoon a bit short and go straight back to Mandeville, at least until we know for sure one way or the other. We’ll need to consult with an obstetrician. There are probably a few things you should and shouldn’t be doing.’
‘Stop it. I am not some sort of...incubator!’ A short while ago she had been a desirable woman he had wanted to make love to; now she was what...a mother?
A mother... A shiver of reaction worked its way through Mari’s body as the words echoed in her head.
At least now she knew the answer to one of the questions she had been asking herself on and off virtually all her life. While she still didn’t know what made any mother abandon her child, she did know that she never could.
Facing the slim possibility there might be a baby, Mari knew that nothing in the world would make her give it up. She knew, but what about Seb? Would he ask her to? Would he assume she’d have a termination?
‘Don’t be ridiculous! Look, I didn’t plan on having a family now either, but—ʼ
She wanted to cry, but instead she tuned him out. It was ironic really; she had guarded her heart so well all those years, and the first time she let down her guard... God, she had terrible taste in men. At least she hadn’t fallen for him.
You keep on telling yourself that, Mari.
‘What happens if I am pregnant? What, as a matter of interest, is your grand plan? I’m sure you’ve got one.’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’
She tensed. ‘Not to me.’
‘We stay married.’ He angled a searching look at her face. ‘You look surprised. What did you think I was going to say?’
She shook her head. ‘What about love?’
‘We are not talking song titles here, Mari. We are talking about giving our child, should there be one, a secure upbringing.’
‘There might not be a child,’ she reminded him. The addition was for her own benefit. ‘Probably won’t be.’
He nodded and looked at her. ‘But until we know for sure... Mandeville?’
Reluctantly she nodded.
