Bridal Bargains

by Michelle Reid

  Sensation trickled right down the front of her. ‘We are not going to do this,’ she insisted shakily.

  For an answer he began to unbutton his shirt. Nell stared as warm, bronzed skin roughened by dark hair began to make its appearance. Everything about him said man on a course he would not be moved from. Real alarm struck her with a frightening clarity.

  She drew in a taut breath. ‘Y-your m-mother,’ she reminded him. ‘W-we—’

  ‘I don’t need her permission to do this, agape mou,’ he drawled.

  ‘But she—’

  He moved, long fingers leaving the shirt to come and frame her heart-shaped face from pale cheek to trembling chin. Pinpricks leapt across the surface of her skin as he bent to brush his mouth across hers. ‘No more reprieves,’ he murmured very softy. ‘This is it, my beautiful Helen. It is time to face your fate because it is here …’

  Her fate. Nell stared at him. He was deadly serious. To her horror he began to stroke the hand down her throat and across her shoulder, fingertips pushing stretchy jade fabric out of his way.

  ‘Stop it!’ she choked out and at last found the sense to put up a fight.

  Dark eyes lit with a kind of cold amusement that chilled her as he captured her flailing fists and flattened them to the bed above her head. ‘The little game you’ve been playing with me is over,’ he said grimly. ‘Accept it, for you are about to get your just desserts.’

  ‘You’re angry,’ she gasped in shocked realisation.

  His tight grimace confirmed it.

  ‘But—why?’

  The innocent question locked his lean, handsome face. ‘I’ve done nothing but treat you with respect since we married and you paid me back by leaving me for another man.’

  With his free hand he went back to undoing shirt buttons in a grim display of intent.

  ‘Just thank your lucky stars that you did not make it, my beautiful Helen,’ he glinted down at her. ‘Or you would not be about to enjoy Alexander Pascalis the lover, but the other Alexander Pascalis—the one that makes big men quake in fear!’

  ‘How do you know I didn’t make it?’ she prodded recklessly, staring as more and more of that muscled, bronzed, hair-roughened chest appeared. ‘How do you know I didn’t make it a dozen times during the week Hugo Vance wasn’t around to stop it from happening?’ she choked up at him. ‘Before I decided to leave you for good!’

  The fingers stopped working the buttons. Nell heaved in a wary breath of air as a frisson of alarm shot across her heaving breasts.

  ‘But you didn’t, did you?’

  It was a very seriously driven warning to be careful what she said next, making her wish her mouth would just shut up—but it wouldn’t. He might already be wearing the face that made big men quake, but she had a whole year’s-worth of unfairness pounding away inside her, and it needed to be heard.

  ‘Y-you left me alone on our wedding night,’ she reminded him, beginning to struggle again to get free. He subdued her by clamping a leg across her thighs. ‘You refused to make excuses or defend yourself—you couldn’t even be bothered to lie! I’ve had to live with that, Xander, not you. Y-you just went back to your life and didn’t care what you left behind!’ Tears were threatening, making her soft mouth quiver and turning her eyes into deep green pools of hurt. ‘W-well, you left me behind w-with a twenty-four-hour guard to do the caring for you! If I went to the local village shop Hugo Vance came along with me. He had to do—he was in charge of the remote control for the wretched gates!’

  ‘He was there for your safety,’ he bit back impatiently.

  ‘He was there to control your limp rag of a wife!’ she cried. ‘You said that you and I are alike; w-well, tell me, Xander, would you have lived my life for the last year without doing something about it?’

  ‘But I repeat—you didn’t, did you, Nell?’

  Nell lay there beneath him heaving and panting, his leg heavy across her legs and her shining hair caught beneath the hands he still pinned above her head. She glared hotly into a face that was coldly mask-like, reminding her of that rock his mother had talked about. And the stinging pinpricks attacking her flesh were the sparks of her mutiny bouncing right off him.

  Hewn, hard, handsome and so threatening she shivered. Yet backing down now just wasn’t an option she was prepared to take. ‘Do you think you are the only one that can be discreet about their lovers?’ she heard herself dare to challenge. ‘Do you think that because you didn’t want me I should think myself unfit for anyone else?’

  Maybe she did have a death wish, she thought tensely as a new level of stillness locked his hard eyes on her face with an expression that was too frighteningly inexplicable to dare to read. He was eleven years older than Nell and at that precise moment she felt every one of those years boring holes into her head.

  ‘Are you telling me—without the guts to make the full statement,’ he pushed out finally, ‘that you have taken lovers since you married me?’

  Nell’s quivering upper lip had to fight to break free from her bottom lip. ‘Would it make me a lesser person in your eyes if I said yes?’ she quavered huskily. ‘Perhaps totally unfit for you to touch?’

  It was living on the edge, Nell knew that as she said it, feeling more afraid of what she was prodding here than she dared let herself think. But she needed to know. She’d lived the last year loving a man who’d locked her up in a glass bubble marked, ‘Virgin. Sole possession of Alexander Pascalis’, as if it was the only thing about her that made her worthy of the place she held in his life, while he blithely continued to bed his mistress as if that was perfectly OK.

  But the real point she was making was, would he still want to be here with her without the provenance?

  A stifled gasp escaped when his hand came to rest beneath her breast, where her heart was racing madly. It began a gentle stroking as he lay stretched out, half beside her, half on top of her, a look of grim contemplation taking charge of his face. She’d stop fighting to get free and had never felt more vulnerable because she just didn’t know what he was going to say or do next. His eyes weren’t telling her, his expression wasn’t telling her, even the light stroke of this hand wasn’t telling her anything because she wasn’t sure that he was aware it was doing it.

  It was a test, Xander knew that. He was not so blinded by those beautiful flashing eyes and this sensational body he had pinned to the bed that he could not recognise a challenge when it was being tossed at him.

  What he could not decipher was if the reckless little witch was talking like this because she wanted to hit him hard with the truth or because she was taunting him with the possibility of it being the truth.

  Was it the truth?

  He still did not know. She had still not made that yes a full-blown, bloody statement of fact.

  Did it make a difference to how he felt?

  To wanting to make love to her? Not the slightest difference to the desire pounding away in his blood.

  To this creature he had respected more than anyone else in his entire life? Hell, yes, it made a difference there. Nell belonged to him. She wore his ring on her slender white finger. She had loved him so much once that he refused to believe that she was capable of making love with any other man but him.

  But he discovered he was scared that in a fit of rebellion she might have done.

  He pulled in a deep breath. The atmosphere was so thick with his long silence that he could taste it on his tongue as he slid his hand up to cover her breast. Its receptive tip stung to life to push into his palm and another strangled gasp escaped her soft, quivering mouth.

  He looked at her hair spread out across the cover like a burnished copper halo. Then at her face, heart-shaped, exquisite but wary as hell. His eyelashes glossed over his gaze, dipped lower, across the smooth-as-silk shoulder he had exposed that looked so sexy and inviting, then further to where his long fingers cupped her breast over sensually moulding jade-coloured fabric. The tips of his fingers were in tantalising contact with smooth
flesh just above the dress, where a little pulse was beating wildly. He stroked, she quivered, his body tightened in response.

  Then came the rest of her, slender, flat-planed yet deliciously curvy inside the hugging dress. She was stretched out beneath him like an offering. But what exactly was on offer? Experienced lover or the beguiling innocent he’d walked away from on their wedding night and since suffered so many hot dreams about?

  He slid his eyes back to her eyes, capturing a deep look of anxiety that pricked the hairs around his groin. The sultry heat of the afternoon shifted around them as he released a hissing sigh.

  Time to find out. ‘The answer is—no,’ he stated very huskily then before the next stifled gasp could escape her he trapped it with his hungry mouth.

  Nell felt herself go up in a plume of sharp static. The wait, the breathtaking silence, the scouring inspection of her body followed by his answer had shattered her tension and sent her spiralling out of control. Sensation latched on to every nerve-end, making each muscle she possessed stretch in long, sensual response then collapse into the driving power of his kiss.

  He responded without hesitation, taking that kiss even deeper. It was as it had been in the water only far more demanding, a wild, escalation of pleasure that would not let her be still and had her fighting to free her trapped hands so she could touch him as he was touching her.

  He let the hands go, sliding his own hand over her hair to the side of her neck then the smooth skin of the shoulder he had exposed for himself. His mouth followed, pressing small kisses to her skin that had her fingers clutching at his head. Smooth, dark silk hair filtered through her fingers. The kisses reached the soft, pulsing mound of her breast. She released a tight groan then pulled at his hair, caught his mouth and began kissing him back so desperately it was almost frightening.

  ‘Want me?’ It was so harshly spoken that Nell thought he was still angry; opening her eyes, she expected to see the cruelty of rejection about to hit her once again, only to find herself drowning in the smouldering, dark depths of desire.

  ‘Yes,’ she breathed.

  His masculine growl scored her cheek as he plundered that soft, breathy answer. His hand returned to her shoulder, took a grip on the dress and pulled it down to her waist.

  No bra—had he known that? The next masculine growl said yes, of course he had known it and long before he’d cupped her breast. He’d known from the moment she’d walked into the salon that she’d dared to come there wearing less than she should. Even her nervousness towards his mother had not been able to quieten the little devil at work inside her that wanted to torment him as she had been doing since he arrived in the cove.

  His mouth took possession of one pouting nipple while his fingers took possession of the other. The wet and dry rasping of tongue and fingers sent her into a paroxysm of gasping jerks and quivers. He knew what he was doing. He knew this was torture.

  ‘Xander.’ She groaned out his name in an anxious plea for mercy and received it when his warm, damp mouth came back to hers.

  After that she lost touch with everything but her senses and him. He was an expert at this and so incredibly ruthless about it she barely had time to absorb one new exciting experience before he was overriding it with something else. Her flesh sang where he caressed it, her restless fingers digging into satin-tight flesh that rippled in response to the sharp edges of her nails.

  His shirt had gone. Nell had no idea that she had removed it. Her dress lay in a discarded heap on the floor. He was kissing her breasts again, her stomach, her navel, tongue-tip sliding sensual moisture across her acutely alive and sensitised flesh. When he suddenly rose to his feet, she let out a cry of pained protest because she saw rejection coming yet again. When she realised what he was doing, she moved on her side to watch him unashamedly as his fingers worked to free himself of the rest of his clothes.

  Eyes black with promise, he watched her watch him. Every movement he made was hard and tense—packed with sexual motivation that curled her up with excitement. The trousers were stripped from his body and deep green eyes made a slow, shy sweep of him that couldn’t help but linger on the bold thrust of his erection. Arrogant, she thought, and, on the tight little sensation of alarm mixed with excitement, she gave it the right to be.

  ‘The way you look at a man is going to get you into trouble one day,’ he ground roughly into the tension.

  ‘I only do it with you.’

  It was an admission that brought him back to her side, his superior framework rolling her onto her back so he could cover her. Then the real seduction of his bride began. It was hot and it was deadly serious, an intoxicating journey into a dark new world that explored all her senses and tuned them to a thick, throbbing, aching pitch. No tormenting of her breasts now but long, deep suckling, hands stroking her everywhere, the knowing movements of his body keeping her floating on a desperate high. When he finally eased the briefs down her legs then stroked his fingers along her thighs she began whimpering uncontrollably because she knew what was coming, her body clenching and unclenching in a mad mix of uncertainty and need.

  He took her mouth in a deep, drugging kiss as if he knew what she was feeling and was trying to soothe her fears as he reached that warm, damp, untouched place. Her head suddenly filled with dark noises, a swirling, whipping, throbbing pulsation that had her fingers clutching at him. He was hot, damp, tense and trembling, his breathing all over the place.

  ‘Nell.’ He said her name, hoarse and husky, then made that first gentle intrusion inside.

  She went wild in a second, it was that devastating. Had her gasping and crying out as shocking, hot pulses of pleasure rushed into her blood. He was touching her in ways that sent her mindless, smooth, slick, knowing fingers dragging feelings from her she would not have believed could be as powerful as this. And she could feel the heat of his own desire feeding from hers with the plundering depth of his kisses and the shuddering pleasure he was getting from this.

  ‘Theos,’ she heard him utter in a deep, rasping growl, then he stretched, the length of his sleek, muscled frame sliding damply against her. ‘Nell …’ He breathed her name like a caress, trying to reach wherever it was she had gone off to. ‘I need to know if this is the first time for you.’

  The first time, Nell repeated hazily, and lifted heavy eyelids to see the intensity burning in passion-glazed eyes and the savage control locked into his beautiful face.

  ‘Of course it is,’ she answered softly as if he should know that—and smiled.

  His response was dynamic, the heated power of his kiss and the return of his caresses that drew her like liquid into thick, melting heat. She was lost and she knew it, blown away by sensation and the power he possessed to make her feel like this.

  ‘Xander,’ she whispered, feeling oddly as if he was slowly shattering her into tiny pieces.

  He moved again, overwhelming in his maleness as he slotted himself between her thighs then made that first careful thrust with his hips. She felt his heat, his probing fullness. The shuddering strength with which he controlled the slow force of his entry was an experience in itself. Nell opened her eyes, found herself trapped once again by the spellbinding intensity carved onto his lean, dark features. He was big and bronzed and glossed with perspiration. The scent of his desire permeated the air. Sweat beaded his tautly held upper lip, his black eyelashes heavy over the bottomless black glaze of his eyes.

  ‘You tell me if I hurt.’ His voice was hoarse and husky.

  She nodded, soft mouth parted, breathing reduced to small, thick gasps of quivering anticipation.

  She felt the increased burn of his slow intrusion, the hunger, the reined-in control. Silken muscles flexed and he was trembling. She lifted her head to crush a kiss against his parted lips.

  ‘Take it,’ she whispered and the potent flare of masculine conquest lit his eyes when he made that final long, smooth stab that sent her arching against the bed in a moment of hot, stinging agony.

  He caug
ht the sound in his mouth as if it belonged to him, lips fusing like their bodies as she tensed and clawed at his hot, damp flesh that rippled with each helpless dig of her nails. His breathing was ragged, the tension holding him showing in the tremor of his fingers as they did their best to soothe the moment of discomfort away with gentle strokes of her face.

  Yet, ‘Mine,’ he still breathed in rasping triumph, then the pain was dispersing and she was shifting restlessly beneath him. With a groan that lost him the final grip on control, he began to move again, plunging ever deeper while she made the wild leap into a mindless pleasure, clinging not clawing, riding the ever-increasing pace of his passion as it grew and grew until it exploded in a sense-shattering whirl of electrifying release. He followed her into that amazing place with convulsive rasps, which tore from his chest.

  Too stunned by it all to do more than listen to the pounding of his heart as he lay heavily on her, Nell lay quietly beneath him while he laid languid kisses across her face.

  ‘You surprised me,’ he murmured.

  ‘In what way?’ She couldn’t even find the energy to open her eyes as she asked the question.

  His tongue teased her kiss-swollen bottom lip. ‘You put me out of my misery when you could have damned me forever by letting me take you without knowing the truth.’

  ‘Whether you are my first lover or not should make no difference.’ She could not resist sliding her tongue across the tip of his.

  ‘I am not built for innocence, agape mou.’ He made a move with his hips so she could understand what he meant. He was still inside her, a thick, pulsing entity that filled her. ‘I hurt you anyway, but not as much as I would have done without your generosity to keep me in check.’

  ‘And your arrogance is showing again.’

  ‘Ne,’ he acknowledged lazily. ‘But admit it—I did not disappoint.’