by Kendrick, Sharon; Lawrence, Kim; Crews, Caitlin; Milburne, Melanie
‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘Or as real as we can make it.’
But as he pulled the ribbon from her ponytail, so that her hair fell in a pale waterfall of waves, Ariston knew he must be honest with her. She needed to realise that the confidences he’d shared today were not going to become a regular occurrence. He’d told her what she needed to know so she could understand where he was coming from. But she needed to accept his limitations, and one in particular.
‘Don’t expect me to be the man of your dreams, Keeley,’ he husked. ‘I will be the best father and husband that I can and I will drive you wild in bed—that much I promise you, but I can never love you. Do you understand? Because if you can accept that and are prepared to live with it, then we can make this work.’
She nodded, her lips opening as if to speak, but he crushed her words away with his kiss. Because he was done with talking. He wanted this. Now. But not here. He saw her startled look of pleasure as he picked her up and began to carry her towards the bedroom.
‘I’m too heavy,’ she protested, without much conviction.
‘You think so?’ He saw her eyes widen as he kicked open the bedroom door and too late he realised this was the kind of thing that women built their fantasies around. Well, that was too bad. He could only be the man he really was. Hadn’t he warned her what he was and wasn’t capable of? He laid her down fully clothed on the bed, but when her fingernails began to claw at his shoulders he gently removed them. ‘Let me undress first,’ he said unevenly.
His fingers were trembling like a drunk’s as he unbuttoned his shirt and he noted that aberration with something like bemusement. What power did she have over him, this tiny blonde with her moon-pale hair and those green eyes which were forest-dark with desire? Was it because beneath that ridiculous fluffy sweater she carried their child—was it that which made him feel powerful and weak all at the same time?
He saw her eyes dilate as he dropped the shirt to the floor and stepped out of his trousers, yet the kind of flippant question he might usually have asked about whether she was enjoying the floorshow didn’t seem appropriate. Because this felt…different. He felt the hard beat of rebellion. Surely those meaningless vows he’d made earlier hadn’t got underneath his skin?
‘Ariston,’ Keeley whispered and suddenly she was feeling confused—wondering what had caused his face to darken like that. Was he having second thoughts? No. She swallowed. She could see for herself that was definitely not the case, and though she should have been daunted by all that hard, sexual hunger—the truth was that she was shivering with anticipation.
She raised her lips but his kiss was nothing but a perfunctory graze as he slid off the velour sweat-pants and pulled the voluminous sweater over her head, so she was left in nothing but her underwear. And she was glad she’d allowed the stylist to steer her towards the fancier end of maternity lingerie to buy a matching set of underwear which had cost the earth. The front-clipped lilac silk bra clung to her breasts and the matching bikini briefs made her legs look much longer than usual. As his dark gaze raked over her, the look of appraisal on his face made her feel intoxicatingly feminine, despite her shape.
His hand starfished darkly over one breast and as she felt the nipple tighten so presumably did he, because a brief smile curved his lips.
‘I want you,’ he said unsteadily.
‘I want you, too,’ she whispered.
He leaned over to skim down her little bikini briefs. ‘I’ve never had sex with a pregnant woman before.’
Lifting her bottom to assist him, Keeley gave him a reproachful look. ‘I should hope not.’
‘So this is all very…’ he undid the front fastening of her bra so that her breasts came spilling out and bent his head to capture one taut tipple between the controlled graze of his teeth ‘…new to me,’ he rasped.
‘New to me, too,’ she moaned, her head falling back against the pillow.
He took his time. More time than she would have believed possible given his obvious state of arousal. His body was taut and tense as he stroked his fingertips over her skin—as if he was determined to reacquaint himself with this new, pregnant version of her body. And, oh, didn’t she just love what he was doing to her? He palmed her breasts and traced tiny circles over her navel with the tip of his tongue. He tangled his fingertips in her pubic hair and then stroked her until she squirmed. Until every nerve ending was so aroused she didn’t think she could bear it any more. Until she whispered his name on a breathless plea and at last he entered her. Keeley moaned as he filled her with that first thrust and he stilled immediately, his eyes shuttered as they searched her face.
‘I’m hurting you?’
‘No. Not at all. You’re…’ Some instinct made her thrust her hips forward so that he went deeper still—because surely that was safer than telling him he was the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen and she couldn’t quite believe he was her husband. ‘Oh, Ariston,’ she gasped as he began to move inside her.
And Ariston smiled because this was a sound with which he was familiar. The sound of a woman gasping out his name like that. He forced himself to concentrate on her pleasure, to make this wedding-night sex something she would never forget. Because a satisfied woman was a compliant woman and that was what suited him best. His self-control was almost at breaking point by the time she shattered around him, her fleshy body spasming with release, and it was only then that he allowed himself the luxury of his own orgasm. But he was unprepared for the way it ripped through his body like a raging storm or for the raw, almost savage sound which was torn from his throat as he came.
CHAPTER TEN
A SOFT GLOW crept beneath Keeley’s eyelids and in those few blurred seconds between sleeping and waking, she stirred lazily. Replete from pleasures of the night and with the musky scent of sex still lingering in the air, she reached out for Ariston—but the space beside her on the bed was empty, the sheet cold. Blinking, she reached for her wristwatch and glanced across the bedroom. Just after six on a Saturday morning and there, silhouetted by the light flooding in from the corridor, was the powerful figure of her husband, fastening his cufflinks. She levered herself up the bed a little. ‘You’re not going into work?’
He walked into the bedroom, one of the cufflinks catching the light and glinting gold. ‘I have to, I’m afraid.’
‘But it’s Saturday.’
‘And?’
Keeley pushed the duvet away, telling herself not to make waves. Hadn’t they just had the most amazing night, with the most amazing sex—and hadn’t those hours of darkness felt like perfect bliss? So what if he went to work when most of London was still fast asleep and getting ready for the weekend? She told herself that Ariston’s dedication to work was the price you paid for being married to such a wealthy man. But it was hard not to feel disgruntled because it would have been nice to have spent the morning in bed for once. To have done stuff like normal newly-weds—moaning and giggling about crumbs in the bed or debating whose turn it was to make the coffee.
But she wasn’t a normal newly-wed, was she? She was the wife of a powerful man who had married her solely for the sake of their baby.
She forced a smile to her lips. ‘So what time will you be home?’
Reaching for his jacket, Ariston glanced across to where Keeley lay, looking delectably rumpled and oh-so-accessible. Her heavy breasts were spilling over the top of a silky nightgown, which somehow managed to make her look even more decadent than if she’d been naked. She must have slipped it on again during the night, he thought, swallowing down the sudden dryness which rose to his throat. A night when she had been even more sensual than usual, her uninhibited response to his first careless advances leaving him deliciously dazed afterwards.
He’d arrived home with an armful of flowers impulsively purchased from a street seller outside his office, a vibrant bouquet which bore no
resemblance to the long-stemmed stately roses usually ordered by one of his secretaries to placate her when he had been held up by a meeting. And Keeley had fallen on them with delight, burying her nose in the colourful blooms and going to the kitchen to put them in water before his housekeeper had shooed her away and taken over the task.
His heart clenched as he remembered the soft flush of colour to her cheeks and the bright glitter of her eyes as she’d risen up on tiptoe to kiss him. He had pulled her onto his lap after dinner, playing idly with her hair until she’d turned to him in silent question and he’d carried her off to their bedroom with a primitive growl of possession. Had he once told her that he didn’t play the caveman? Because it seemed that he’d been wrong. And he didn’t like being wrong.
He watched as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ears, the movement making her breasts strain even more against the shiny satin of her nightgown, and he forced himself to look away. To align the pristine cuffs of his shirt beneath his suit jacket as if that were the single most important task of the day.
Was she aware of her growing power over him? A shimmer of unease iced over his skin. She must be. Even someone as relatively innocent as her couldn’t be oblivious to the fact that sometimes he didn’t know what day of the week it was when she turned those big green eyes on him. Perhaps she was trying to extend that subtle power. Perhaps that was the reason for the sudden look of determination which had crossed over her sleep-soft face.
‘Ariston?’ she prompted. ‘Must you go?’
‘I’m afraid I must. Anatoly Bezrodny is flying over from Moscow on Monday and there are a few things I need to look at before he arrives.’
There was a pause as she snapped on the bedside light and pleated her lips into a pout which was just begging to be kissed. ‘You spend more time at the office than you ever do at home.’
‘Perhaps you’d like to dictate the terms of my diary for me?’ he questioned silkily. ‘Speak to my assistant and have her run my appointments past you first?’
‘But you’re the boss,’ she protested, undeterred by his quiet reproof. ‘And you don’t have to put in those kind of hours. So why do it?’
‘It’s because I’m the boss that I do. I have to set an example, Keeley. That’s why you have a beautiful home to live in and lots of pretty things to wear. So stop pouting and give your husband a kiss goodbye.’ He walked over to the bed and leaned over her, breathing in the sexy, morning smell of her. ‘You haven’t forgotten we’re having dinner out tonight?’
‘Of course I haven’t.’ She lifted her lips to his. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’
But he thought the kiss she gave him seemed dutiful rather than passionate, which naturally challenged him—because nothing other than complete capitulation ever satisfied him. Framing her face with his hands, he deepened the kiss until she began to moan and he was sorely tempted to give her what she wanted, until a swift glance at his watch reminded him that his car would be waiting downstairs.
‘Later,’ he promised, reluctantly drawing away from her.
After he’d gone, Keeley lay back against the pillows, blinking back the stupid tears which had sprung to her eyes. What was her problem—and why was she feeling so dissatisfied of late? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known what she’d been getting herself into when she’d married Ariston. She’d known he was a workaholic and he’d never promised her his heart. He’d been honest from the start—some might say brutally so—by telling her he could never love her. And she had accepted that. He was giving as much of himself as he was capable of giving—that was what she told herself over and over. She closed her eyes and sighed. It wasn’t his fault if her feelings for him were changing…if suddenly she found herself wanting more than he was prepared to give. And allowing those feelings to accelerate was fruitless; she told herself that too. She would be setting herself up for disappointment if she kept on yearning for what she could never have, instead of just making the most of what she did have.
So she ate the delicious breakfast prepared by Ariston’s cook and told his driver that she didn’t need him that day. She thought the chauffeur seemed almost disappointed to be dismissed and, not for the first time, she wondered if Ariston had asked him to keep an eye on her. No. She picked up her handbag and checked she had her mobile phone. She mustn’t start thinking that way. That really was being paranoid.
She thought about going to look at the autumn leaves in Hyde Park, but something made her take the train to New Malden instead. Was it nostalgia which made her want to go back to where she used to live? To stare at the world she’d left behind and try to remember the person she had been before Ariston had blazed into her life and changed it beyond recognition? She found herself walking down familiar streets until at last she reached her old bedsit, and as she stood and looked up at the window she wondered if she was imagining the surreptitious glances of the passers-by. Did she look out of place with her quietly expensive clothes and extortionately priced handbag as she chased the ghosts of her past?
She ate lunch in a sandwich bar and spent the afternoon at the hairdresser’s before going home to get ready for dinner, but she was unable to shake off her air of heaviness as the housekeeper let her in. She didn’t know what she’d expected from marriage to Ariston, but it certainly hadn’t been this increasing sense of isolation. She’d known he was tricky and distant and demanding, but she’d…well, she’d hoped.
Had she thought that living together and having amazing sex might bring them closer together? That what had started out as a marriage of convenience might become, if not the real thing, then something which bore echoes of it? Of course she had, because that was the way women were programmed to think. They wanted closeness and companionship—especially if they were going to have a baby. She knew she’d broken down some invisible barrier after he’d told her about the heartbreak of his childhood and she’d prayed that might signal a new openness. After the passion of their wedding night, she’d waited for that openness to happen. And then she’d waited some more.
And now?
Careful not to muss her hair, she pulled a silky black evening dress over her head. Now she was being forced to accept the harsh reality of being married to someone who barely seemed to notice her, unless she was naked. A man who left early each morning and returned in time for dinner. Who slotted in time with her as if she was just another appointment in his diary. Yes, he accompanied her to all her doctor’s appointments and murmured all the right things when they saw their baby son high-kicking his way across the screen. And very occasionally they drove out to the countryside or watched a film together—small steps which made her hope that non-sexual intimacy might be on the cards. But every time her hopes were dashed as those steel shutters came crashing down and he pushed her away—Mr Enigmatic who was never going to make the mistake of confiding in her again.
Ariston arrived home in a rush and went straight to the shower, emerging from his dressing room looking a vision of alpha virility, in a dark dinner suit which matched the raven thickness of his hair. He walked over to the dressing table where she sat and began to massage her shoulders—bare except for the spaghetti straps of her black dress. Instantly she felt the predictable shimmerings of desire and her nipples hardened.
‘Ariston,’ she said huskily as his fingers dipped from her shoulder to caress her satin-covered ribcage.
‘Ariston, what? I’m only making up for what I didn’t have time for this morning. And how can I prevent myself from touching you when you look so damned beautiful?’
She clipped on an opal earring. ‘I don’t feel particularly beautiful.’
‘Well, take it from me, you are. In fact, I’m tempted to carry you over to that bed right now to demonstrate how much you turn me on. Would you like that, Keeley?’
Did the leaves fall from the trees in autumn? Of course she would like it. But using sex as their only form of co
mmunication was starting to feel dangerous. The contrast between his physical passion and mental distance was disconcerting and…unsettling. Each time he made love to her it felt as if he were chipping away a little piece of her, and wasn’t she worried that soon there would be nothing of the real Keeley left? That she would become nothing but an empty shell of a woman? She fixed the second earring in place. ‘We don’t have time.’
‘Then let’s make time.’
‘No,’ she said firmly, rising to her feet in shoes which probably weren’t the most sensible choice for a pregnant woman, but this was the first time she’d met Ariston’s colleagues and, naturally, she wanted to impress. ‘I don’t want to arrive with my cheeks all flushed and my hair all mussed, not when I’ve spent all afternoon at the hairdresser’s.’
‘Then perhaps you should skip the hairdresser’s next time,’ he commented drily as he glanced at the elaborate confection of curls piled high on her head. ‘If it puts you in such a bad mood.’
It was one of those stupid little rows which spiralled up out of nowhere and Keeley knew she ought to dispel the atmosphere which was still with them when they got into their car. She wasn’t going to improve matters by sulking, was she? Laying her carefully manicured hand on his knee, she felt the hard muscle flex beneath her fingers.
‘I’m sorry I was grumpy.’
He turned towards her, the passing street lights flickering like gold over his rugged features. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said smoothly. ‘It’s probably just your hormones.’
She wanted to scream that not everything involved her wretched hormones—but she was aware that such a reaction would make a mockery of her words. She stared down at her baby bump instead, before lifting her gaze to his. Why not tell him about what else had been bugging her lately—a practical issue they could address and which might improve the quality of their lives? ‘Ariston.’
‘Keeley?’