Tempted by Her Convenient Husband

by Charlotte Hawkes

  ‘I can think of a better time,’ he drawled. ‘But that boat sailed when you walked into my bedroom looking like a damned siren.’

  She shouldn’t let his words heat her so easily. And still she felt the grin tug at her mouth.

  ‘A siren?’

  ‘A damned irresistible one,’ he groaned. ‘And now I find out you were saving yourself.’

  ‘I wasn’t saving myself...’ She paused, acutely aware that he was still so deep inside her. It seemed like such an odd time to be holding such a conversation. ‘I just...didn’t find anyone I liked enough.’

  Lukas groaned again. Emphatically.

  ‘That’s hardly the best thing to tell a guy who’s just become your first. It tends to inflate the ego.’

  ‘Really?’ she murmured. ‘Well, if it helps, I can tell you that you’ve been a disappointment.’

  ‘A disappointment?’ he growled, clearly taken aback.

  ‘A terrible, terrible disappointment,’ she teased. Because somehow, in spite of all her lack of experience, he’d made her feel powerful. And utterly desirable. ‘It’s supposed to be about shattering my earth and rocking my world, is it not? And yet I feel quite...unmoved.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Lukas remarked drily.

  ‘It is.’ She fought to keep a straight face. ‘Because if...’

  Lukas began to shift. Slowly drawing out of her, then back in, not so deep this time. Oti caught her breath and waited for the pain, but this time, though it felt odd, the searing sensation had gone, replaced instead by a dull ache. Then, gradually, as he began to move in a lazy rhythm inside her, that ache too began to dissipate.

  Little by little, she began to move her hips to meet his, following an instinct that she didn’t recognise. Testing him and learning him, even as he moved himself so carefully above her.

  Her hands had long since released from their fists, and now she pressed her palms against the solid wall of Lukas’s chest, allowing herself to feel the definitive beat of his heart and letting his heat seep into her. Revelling in the way that same heat spread through her, warming her. As if he could heal her...if only she might let him.

  And, fanciful or not, Oti finally surrendered, giving in to everything as she’d told herself she must never do.

  She forgot about the circumstances of their marriage and she simply relaxed into the moment. Into the incredibly glorious slide of their bodies, so intertwined that she couldn’t have said where she ended and he began.

  As though she were handcrafted to fit him.

  There was nothing but her and Lukas, and that incredible fire he was building within her. Stoking it slowly but surely with every roll of his hips and every pull out and thrust in. Making everything in her world hotter and brighter with each passing moment. Its intensity terrified her and thrilled her in equal measure.

  It felt like a lifetime before she came back to herself, floating on sensations she had never experienced before, she’d never even dreamed about, just as nerve endings she hadn’t known existed still fired for an age afterwards.

  But when she did come back to herself, it was to see Lukas walking back into the bedroom, still gloriously naked, which at least gave her confidence that he wasn’t making a bolt for it.

  ‘So—’ she licked her lips as she tentatively sat up ‘—where do we go from here?’

  ‘From here?’ he said slowly. Scooping her into his arms, he carried her through to where a hot bath was running, before lowering her in and then sliding in behind her. ‘You start to talk to me.’

  * * *

  ‘What is it I should tell you?’ Oti asked a few minutes later. After he’d taken a sponge and squeezed it over her exquisite body.

  He was still trying to get his head around the discovery that she’d been a virgin. Still trying to work out how a woman so intelligent and beautiful could possibly have still been untouched.

  ‘Shall we start with the obvious?’ he muttered gently, unable to help himself from lifting a wet curl from her neck and dropping a kiss where it had lain.

  His body was already—impossibly—beginning to tighten again with need. As though he hadn’t just had her—his wife—less than ten minutes earlier.

  ‘You want to know why I was still a virgin,’ she said flatly.

  ‘For a start.’ He dropped another kiss, and her body relaxed just a fraction.

  They didn’t speak for a moment, the sound of gently splashing water filling the room instead. But then Oti drew in a breath, as though steadying herself, and she began.

  ‘I told you that I picked myself up when I was nineteen, right after my mum died.’

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. He just kept slowly sponging her down.

  ‘But I didn’t tell you why I went off the rails in the first place.’

  ‘Take your time,’ he murmured when she paused again, this time clearly waiting for some kind of response.

  She gave an almost imperceptible dip of her head.

  ‘When I was fifteen I was attacked.’

  ‘Attacked how? Sexually?’ Lukas bit out, stilling for a moment, unprepared for the anger that stabbed through him at her unexpected admission. She stiffened again, and he instinctively resumed his ministrations.

  ‘Sort of.’ She sucked in a deep breath. ‘It was on some holiday, on a beach one night. My family...and the Rockman family.’

  Lukas didn’t know how he controlled himself. How he didn’t spit out the next question.

  ‘One of the Earl’s sons?’

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted almost soundlessly.

  Whatever he’d felt before about the way the Earl—his biological father, for want of any other term—had treated his mother, it was nothing compared to the sheer violence he felt at the knowledge that one of his sons had attacked Oti.

  ‘He raped you?’ Lukas rasped out.

  ‘He tried to.’ She hunched her shoulders and Lukas had to clench the sides of the bath not to drag her around. Just to give her space.

  ‘I was lucky... Edward came looking for me and he found us in time...before anything serious happened.’

  ‘You were...okay?’ Lukas demanded, immediately regretting his choice of words.

  Of course she hadn’t been okay.

  ‘Edward went mad. I think he would have killed him if I hadn’t pulled him away. But when he told our parents, and they told us not to upset the Rockmans by making a big deal of it, he really went crazy.’

  ‘Your parents said what?’

  Lukas didn’t know how he stayed calm. It was only because he knew that him blowing up would be the last thing that Oti needed.

  ‘That’s when our family really started to come apart. I went crazy, turning into that girl we all know so well from the press. I drank, tried drugs and generally wasted my life. But the one thing I couldn’t stand to do was be around boys, or men. And I haven’t had a serious relationship since.

  ‘Meanwhile, Edward couldn’t stand to be around any of us. I think he blamed himself for not being there sooner to stop it getting even as far as it did.’

  ‘I can understand that.’ Lukas barely recognised his own voice. ‘I can’t believe that you could stand to be near your parents after that.’

  ‘I couldn’t.’ She shook her head, but he noticed her shoulders were relaxing slightly and she was beginning to sit up straight again. ‘I think it’s why I turned so wild.’

  ‘But you picked yourself up. You got to medical school. That’s to be commended.’

  ‘Only once my mother had died and I felt like living that lifestyle was only punishing myself. I was lucky that I’d got good grades through school, despite all my coasting. But once I got my head down I worked hard, and I became a doctor.’

  And then her brother’s accident had happened, and she’d ended up running away to Africa.

  Lukas shoo
k his head, his mind still grappling with everything that he’d discovered in the past twenty-four hours. ‘I can only imagine what you’ve been going through these past years.’

  He needed to stay focused and strong, for Oti. The wife he hadn’t wanted, but now found he couldn’t remember life without. The woman who hadn’t even felt able to tell him that she had been a virgin.

  He felt like a complete cad.

  If he was any kind of decent man he would walk away now. They’d agreed from the start that there would be no physical side to their marriage, and he should have stuck to that. He should never have given in to his overwhelming desire for her; he should have been strong enough for both of them.

  He owed her that much.

  And then she spun around abruptly in the bath, and he definitely wasn’t expecting the bright, almost dazzling expression on her face.

  ‘I haven’t been going through anything, Lukas,’ she told him earnestly. ‘Not any more. I’ve been focused on the positives and I’ve been living my best life being the doctor I always wanted to be in South Sudan.’

  Lukas was still fighting to make sense of everything she was telling him. Revelation after revelation had fallen from her lips, building up a picture of a woman who was a million miles away from the creature he’d told himself, a matter of months ago, that she was.

  She made him feel all at sea. And humbled.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ He shook his head. ‘If it hadn’t been for this marriage you would still be out in Africa, doing the job you love so much. And this...us should never have happened. Go back—I won’t stop you.’

  He began to lift himself out of the bath, to give Oti her space, vowing to himself that he would never touch her again, when she grabbed his wrists and held him in place.

  ‘Lukas—’ she cut him off, not even trying to conceal the excitement in her tone ‘—you could come out with me. Even just for a month or two. See what I do... Did.’

  ‘Oti...’

  ‘You asked me if there was anything you could do,’ she challenged. ‘This is it. Come back to South Sudan with me.’

  ‘Oti...’

  But it appeared that now she had the proverbial bit between her teeth she wasn’t about to let go.

  ‘Please, Lukas. We’ll call it our honeymoon.’

  And it should concern him more that his head told him to let her go whilst his...chest pulled tight with the effort of stopping himself from agreeing.

  CHAPTER NINE

  LESS THAN A week later, after an eleven-hour flight from London to Juba, the capital, and then a fifty-minute flight to a small airstrip in the middle of nowhere—the closest serviceable one given the season—Lukas found himself with Oti in South Sudan.

  The paperwork for him to join her had taken a bit more work, as he’d not been on the charity’s books nor been through their lengthy application process. But it never failed to strike Lukas just how far limitless pockets of cash could get a person. Coupled with the fact that they’d clearly been prepared to move heaven and earth to get Oti back there.

  It was crazy how the more he was around her the more he wanted her. Like an addiction, when the only addiction he’d ever had before had been to succeed and drag himself out of the council estate where he’d spent the formative years of his life.

  They were four hours into their five-hour drive to the medical camp when they passed a woman on the road carrying a screaming, rigid baby, its arms locked in an uncomfortable outstretched position.

  Lukas wasn’t surprised when the driver stopped the car and Oti leapt out. He followed out of instinct, but it was odd, after a professional lifetime of being the person people automatically looked to in order to resolve any number of problems, to now be the person relegated to standing on the sidelines watching.

  The only plus side was that it afforded him the opportunity to watch Oti in what was clearly her environment. She had a quiet authority about her that was eminently watchable. A grace and an efficiency, just like she’d demonstrated that day back home when she’d helped the woman deliver her baby at the roadside.

  Oti clearly cared deeply about her patients, just as there was no doubt in Lukas’s mind that she loved her job. And marriage to him had nearly robbed her of all of that, yet she’d been prepared to do so out of love for her brother.

  She made him feel humbled. Which was why there was no way that he was going to spoil things for Oti by letting her see his discomfort at quite how redundant he already felt out here. All he could do was be here in case she needed him for now, and once he got to camp she’d assured him there would be plenty of non-medical jobs to occupy any volunteer.

  He fervently hoped that was true. He hadn’t had a full week away from work since he’d written his first app at fifteen; there was no way he could sit and twiddle his thumbs for the next couple of months.

  Keeping his distance by the four-by-four, Lukas watched as Oti chatted to the mother, mostly using her own grasp of the language, with their driver and translator standing by for backup, though she didn’t appear to need it.

  It wasn’t long before Oti headed back over to him, and he wasn’t surprised that the relieved mother was in tow.

  ‘This is Larhan and her baby. I suspect he’s contracted neonatal tetanus, so the earlier we start treatment, the more chance he has of survival.’

  ‘She was walking to the camp?’ He didn’t know why he felt so shocked. ‘It’s an hour’s drive away. And even at our slow driving speed on these so-called roads, there is no way someone walking would get there before nightfall.’

  ‘That’s why we’re taking her with us,’ Oti confirmed. ‘I’ll sit in the back with them, but her baby is going to need space. Could you get the rucksacks out and keep them in the front with you? It’ll be tight, but rather that than them falling against him. He’s in enough pain as it is.’

  ‘Are the limbs meant to be locked out like that?’ He frowned. ‘I mean, obviously they’re not meant to be but...’

  ‘I know what you mean.’ She even offered him a smile. ‘The muscle rigidity is caused by the toxin acting on the baby’s central nervous system.’

  ‘But he’s...what...a few weeks old?’ He had no idea about babies, but he looked small. ‘How did he get tetanus?’

  ‘Given that he’s only five days old, I’d say it’s likely he contracted it due to poor umbilical-cord-cutting practices when he was born. A dirty blade or, more often out here, the practice of drying out the cord by sealing it with cow dung. Sort of like a poultice. We see it a lot out here.’

  ‘Isn’t the cow sacred to some of the tribes out here?’ he reflected carefully.

  ‘Exactly, but right now this baby is suffering with spasms, and if we don’t get him back quickly then he’ll most likely die. In our camp, around three in every four babies that we see die of it, usually because they don’t get to us in time, but also because we have limited resources out here.’

  Shock ran through Lukas as he hauled the rucksacks onto his back and ran them around to the front of the vehicle. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected when he’d agreed to travel out here with her, but it hadn’t been this. It was quite a rude awakening.

  ‘It gets worse, though,’ Oti added quietly as she came around with the last bag. ‘We call it the silent killer because we only get to see about five per cent of the babies who suffer from it. As far as we can estimate, many thousands more die at home, in terrible pain.’

  ‘But even if we get him back to your camp in time, the probability is that he won’t survive?’

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. Instead, he followed her around the back of the four-by-four to help her and the mother and baby into the back. Then he slammed the old creaking door as gently as he could and prepared to push the vehicle out of the boggy mud where it had sunk after being stationary for even that short period.

  At least that wa
y he felt useful.

  And an hour later they were finally at the compound, a high brush fence surrounding baked clay brick huts and various tents, from nine-by-nines to larger marquee-style offerings.

  He watched Oti leap down into a handful of other medical volunteers who looked to be coming out to greet them.

  Their expressions of delight and welcome switched instantly to professional mode as Oti approached, their gaze dropping from her to the wailing baby in her arms.

  ‘This is Shangok. He’s five days old. We saw his mother, Larhan, about an hour down the road to the camp, so we brought them in. As far as I can gather, he was born a healthy two point eight kilograms, and for the first few days he fed, slept and cried as normal. Yesterday, however, he stopped feeding and began to turn stiff. He hasn’t slept or stopped crying since.’

  ‘MNT?’ one of her colleagues posited.

  Oti gave a curt bob of her head. ‘I suspect so.’

  ‘We’ll take him inside and get treatment started if you want to get settled in?’

  ‘No.’ Oti shook her head. ‘I’ll do it. Give me one moment.’

  ‘You’re jumping straight back into work,’ Lukas said as she hurried over to him.

  She looked momentarily abashed. ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘Would it matter if I did?’ He smiled despite himself. ‘This is why we’re here, is it not? You want to show me the role you love.’

  The brilliance of her smile punched through him. In all the time he’d known her—and, admittedly, it wasn’t that much—he’d never seen her smile like that. As if she was truly happy being back, despite the circumstances of their arrival. Her joy was truly intoxicating.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She was already heading away from him. ‘They’ll want to get him into a quiet environment with little stimuli, so if I don’t go now then I won’t be able to go in afterwards.’

  ‘Go.’ He waved her away with his hand, even though he didn’t have a clue what he was supposed to do next.

  ‘Look for the big boss. She’ll tell you where your tukul is, and then we’ll compare house guests when we meet next. Mine has a hedgehog who likes to snuffle about in the middle of the night.’