The CEO's Contract Bride

by Yvonne Lindsay

  “Why were you devastated, Declan? Tell me.” Gwen stepped towards him, and placed her hand against his chest. His heart beat like a crazy thing beneath her hand.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “It was a mistake, what I said. If I could find any way to take it back I would. I’m sorry, Declan.”

  “Yeah, so am I. I’m sorry I ever thought this would work. Now, you’re free, I’m free. We can go back to our lives.”

  She couldn’t let it rest there. She had to draw every last stubborn word out of him, even if it was like pulling out rusted upholstery staples with a pair of chopsticks.

  “Why did you want it to work between us? Tell me.” Her voice was low, insistent. With a need born of desperation she had to hear his answer.

  “Because I love you, Gwen. For all the good that does me.” He pushed her hand away from his chest and went to walk away but Gwen grabbed hold of his arm.

  “Don’t you dare walk away from me now, Declan Knight.”

  Gwen butted up to him, chest to chest and poked a pointed finger at his arm. “Why didn’t you ask me why I called Steve’s name?”

  “Oh, yeah, like that would’ve made good breakfast conversation. Sure.” Sarcasm dripped like poisoned icicles from his mouth.

  “I dreamed about him. A nightmare. If I called his name, it was in fear, not passion. All my passion is for you.” Gwen emphasised each point with another stab of her finger.

  “Is?”

  “Yes. Is. I don’t want to be married to you for six months—or a year! I want to be with you forever. And I’ve never been more frightened in my entire life.” Gwen took his face in both hands. “Don’t you dare tell me I have my freedom. I don’t want it. I haven’t been free since I agreed to marry you, because even though we married for all the wrong reasons, despite how we may have fooled ourselves how right they were, I never believed I could be worthy of the love of a man like you.”

  “But, Gwen…”

  She placed a finger on his lips. “Hear me out, please. My father left my mother when I was six years old. I saw first-hand how loving someone so much scarred him so deeply he couldn’t bear the sight of her, or me as a constant reminder of how she’d betrayed him. And you know, despite everything, she was never the same after that. She was a beautiful woman—still is. Any man would be proud to have her on his arm. But all that meant nothing when my father stopped loving her. She’s spent every day since looking for a man who’ll love her like that again.”

  Tears filled her eyes. She tried to blink them away, but still they came. “You know, when I was tiny, he would pull me on his lap and tell me I was his beautiful princess. His treasure. I felt like I owned the world when I was with him. When he found out I wasn’t his child he just cast us away.

  “Knowing how my mother’s behaviour drove them apart, seeing her constant need for reassurance that she was beautiful, I swore I could make a marriage work without physical attraction but, God help me, I couldn’t control that with you. Eight years ago, what we shared was the most overwhelming and most beautiful thing I’d ever experienced. But it was totally wrong. We reached for one another for all the wrong reasons and they destroyed any chance we had to build something special together.

  “I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter—that you didn’t matter to me. But I got a second chance when Steve did what he did. It brought you back into my life, into my house. Into my heart. I love you, Declan, with all that I am. Don’t tell me this is over.”

  “Over?” Declan wrapped his arms around his wife. “No, this isn’t over. We’ve only just begun.” He bent his head and tenderly caught her lips and it was as though he kissed her for the first time. Completely, honestly, with love.

  He swept her into his arms and carried her down the hallway. “Your place or mine?” he asked with a devilish gleam in his eye.

  Gwen laughed gently. “Oh, yours, please. I’ve coveted that bed from the day you moved in.”

  “We haven’t finished decorating in here.”

  “I won’t be looking at the walls, I promise you.”

  He lay her gently on the bed before stretching the full length of his body alongside hers and lifted one hand to stroke the outline of her face. Gwen watched as his eyes shimmered with emotion. When he finally bent his face to hers she could barely hold back the sense of exultation that flooded her mind and her body. He was hers.

  She threaded her hands into his hair and pulled him harder to her, relishing the right she had to do so. His lips fused with hers and his tongue swept gently into her mouth, setting off tiny shocks of delight as he probed the sensitive membrane of her inner lips.

  She put her hands to work, divesting him of his shirt and reaching for the buckle at his waist and loosening his trousers so she could hold him in her hands. He shuddered with pleasure at her touch, growling against her mouth as she stroked the velvet length of him.

  “You’re wearing too many clothes,” he groaned, finally relinquishing her lips and pulling out of her reach.

  “Why don’t you do something about that then,” she answered softly with a smile that left him in no doubt of her invitation.

  Slowly, with infinite care, Declan removed each item of clothing. She wanted to scream at him to hurry. To just push her skirt up and take her like that. She wanted him with a hunger that eclipsed anything she’d known before. But still he took his time.

  He trailed his fingers across her shoulders, then down across her collarbone before pressing his heated lips to her skin. She squirmed against the bedcovers, the textured duvet cover igniting her bare skin where it touched, making her press even harder against the fabric. When Declan’s tongue followed the trail of his fingers down between her breasts and over her ribs, ignoring the peaked swollen flesh of her breasts, she couldn’t hold back the moan of dissatisfaction.

  “Touch me,” she begged. “Please.”

  “Since you asked so nicely,” he replied before letting his fingers glide, feather soft across the creamy swell of her breast, first one then the other.

  “More,” she demanded, her voice thick with passion, thick with need for him.

  She gasped and arched her back off the bed as he caught her nipple between his thumb and index finger, the pressure at first gentle then harder and tighter as he rolled the sensitive flesh between the pads. Then the other side as he manipulated both nipples. Wave after wave of pleasure rose within her and she pressed her eyes shut, focussed only on the sensation that radiated through her body. When the moist heat of his mouth replaced the fingers of one hand she toppled over the edge of reason and gave in to the pulse of pleasure that flooded her body, shuddering against his mouth, her fingers tangled in his hair.

  When the final wave subsided she opened her eyes only to feel passion rise again with a new hunger as he traced the outline of her ribs with his tongue, then followed the fine line of indentation of her abdomen and lower to her belly button. His tongue dipped and swirled in the recess and a sharp dart of pleasure shot straight to her groin.

  She had no voice left to protest as he gently pushed her legs apart and positioned himself between her thighs, his fingers sliding through the thatch of hair that protected her core. Her inner muscles clenched in anticipation as his warm breath whispered against her tender, swollen flesh. When his mouth closed over her and his tongue flicked over her sensitive bud she gave herself over to the beauty of the pleasure he gave her. Again her body climbed and soared, almost but not quite reaching the pinnacle of the pleasure his lips and tongue promised.

  Her cry of protest split the air as he suddenly halted his ministrations and pulled away from her body. Through glazed eyes she watched as he slipped to the edge of the bed and removed the last of his clothing, kicking his pants across the room to land with a dull thud against the wall. Then he was back, his eyes blacker than darkest night as they held hers, his lips shining with her own moisture.

  Gwen reached for his erection. His skin was taut, and hot—so hot. She
guided him to her entrance, letting go only as he gently probed her before sliding full length within her body in one smooth motion. She lifted her hands to his shoulders, relishing the bunched power in his muscles as he held still, refusing to move.

  Unable to stay still Gwen clenched her inner muscles again and pulled up to let her lips capture his. Then, thank God, he moved again, withdrawing from her body before plunging in again and again until finally she splintered into a million tiny particles of pleasure. Tears squeezed from her eyes at the beauty of this man—her husband—and the love he gave her. How could she ever have settled for anything less than this perfection, this rightness, this sense of belonging?

  His climax, when it came, shook him in powerful waves and he collapsed against her, his body moulding to her shape as though they’d been carved from the same piece of clay. A smile of satisfaction and deep contentment played at her lips as she coasted her fingers up and down the length of his back, relishing the tiny tremors that shuddered through his body in aftershock.

  He was hers. Finally, totally, hers.

  Declan levered himself slightly up and rolled to one side, hooking an arm around her so she faced him, their bodies still joined, their hips and thighs still pressed together.

  “Thank you,” he murmured.

  “You’re very welcome. Thank you.” She undulated her hips against his.

  Declan laughed softly. “No, you silly goose. Not for that, although I’m certainly not complaining.” He captured her lips again, drawing her lower lip between his teeth, letting them abrade the swollen flesh. “I mean thank you for loving me. This marriage of ours, the old one, I felt safe with that. It was something I thought I could control. I’ve needed to be in control for longer than I can remember, but you swept that all aside. You had me doing things, saying things that went totally against the grain.

  “I understand how you felt about love. To much the same degree I saw how losing my mother altered my father from a happy family man to a driving workaholic who no longer had time for his sons. It was always the business before us. He couldn’t bear to live without her, but neither could he abandon us totally.

  “Sure I was there to pick up the slack with the others. But, man, we lost count of the number of nights we’d wake up and roll Dad into bed after he’d tied on a few at the local after work.”

  Declan looped one finger in a tendril of Gwen’s hair and twirled it round and round, enjoying the silky soft feel of it against the coarseness of his skin.

  “It used to make me so bloody angry to have all that responsibility. But I did it and I kept on doing it because I had to. One way or another, I learned to bury that piece of me that loved, exactly like he did. Despite how much I hated the way he behaved, the harder I tried to not be like him, the more like him I became and when Renata died the transformation was complete.”

  He drew in a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “I loved Renata, Gwen. Passionately. You know what she was like—so carefree, so outgoing. Completely outrageous. The complete opposite of me. It was like trying to carry a flame in your hand while a gale blew up from the south. When she died I blamed you for being there with her but more than that, I blamed myself because I wasn’t and because I didn’t try harder to talk her out of that climb. I could’ve prevented that fall—could’ve saved you both. I’ve lived with that every day of my life since.”

  “Declan, no,” Gwen interrupted. “Don’t crucify yourself like that. No one could’ve stopped Renata that day. She was determined. I only went with her because I was sure that my inexperience would hold her back a little. She knew I couldn’t make that climb, that she’d have to button back. I begged her to let us go back down, and eventually she agreed. But by then it was too late.”

  Gwen pressed her lips to Declan’s throat, taking comfort in the strength of his pulse against her lips. “We both loved her, Declan, but it’s up to us now. We can’t turn back the clock and undo time. We need to stop blaming ourselves for what happened, and move forward from today.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. I can understand that now. You know, I think Renata and I would have gone through the rest of our lives chasing thrills but never quite making that final commitment.” Declan tipped her chin up and pressed a kiss against her lips. “I never expected to fall in love again. Not like this. I can’t believe how lucky I am to have you. I want to make a lifetime commitment to you. What we have is forever. Will you marry me, Gwen? Properly this time.”

  “Oh yes,” she sighed against his lips. “That would make me the happiest woman in the world.”

  Declan ran his hand down the glorious, sinfully soft length of her back and pulled her body against his, feeling himself stir to life. He knew he would never have enough of her. His life couldn’t be more complete. Tonight he’d been given the greatest gift of love. “Gwen, this has been the best birthday of my entire life. You’re never going to top this one.”

  “Maybe not.” Gwen smiled back. “But I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying.”

  ISBN: 978-1-5525-4819-6

  THE CEO’S CONTRACT BRIDE

  Copyright © 2007 by Dolce Vita Trust

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  Yvonne Lindsay, The CEO's Contract Bride