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‘Oh…’ Her teeth chattered together in reaction as he found the most sensitive spot on her entire body with his mouth. She shut her eyes tight, wild pleasure and erotic shock at that sudden intimacy travelling through her shivering length in waves. Hot liquid sensation pulsed through her for long, timeless moments. She was out of control and loving it.
He tumbled her back on the bed. Scorching golden eyes raked her with sensual ferocity. ‘I can’t wait…’
‘Take your shirt off…’
He hauled it off with such violence that buttons went flying.
Prudence feasted her eyes on him, wondered if she could wait until he got the rest of his clothes off and decided that she couldn’t. She opened her arms, arched her spine and shifted her hips in silent invitation.
His burning gaze flared with white-hot desire. ‘You tease…’ he ground out helplessly, coming down to her with flattering impatience, all fire, hunger and aggressive masculine energy.
He plunged into her tender flesh with a sweet force that made her cry out. Nothing had ever been as wild as the passion they generated in that fiery fusion. Her excitement was incredibly intense. He drove her to a shattering peak of passion and the intolerable pleasure took her by storm. The power of the experience left her dazed and full of warmth and emotion.
Nik lifted his damp, dark head, smouldering eyes raking her flushed face. His charismatic smile curved his mobile mouth and he claimed her reddened lips in a tender kiss. ‘You amazing woman…’
She wanted to tell him that she loved him but bit back the revealing words just in time. Even so she felt so happy she wanted to cry and she buried her head in his shoulder, breathing in the scent of his damp, tawny skin with blissful satisfaction. She felt as if he was hers now, wholly, entirely, absolutely hers.
‘I wonder if we made a baby this time,’ Nik murmured huskily.
Consternation tensed Prudence’s small frame. A spasm of pure, naked guilt travelled through her, because she had made no attempt to tell him that she was taking precautions against pregnancy. Of course, she had noticed that he had made no attempt to guard against that risk. She had, she was ashamed to admit, felt a tad superior in her knowledge that she was in full, if secret, control of her own fertility. But that had been right back at the beginning when she didn’t trust him and believed she wanted a divorce. Everything had changed since then. She knew that this was the moment when she should speak up, but it seemed to her that such a confession would make things very complicated and might even damage the new bonds they had formed.
‘You’re very quiet.’ Nik rested back on his elbow, watching her from below sinfully long black eyelashes, his lean, bronzed features achingly handsome. ‘I know how much you want a child.’
Prudence squirmed like a butterfly on a pin, torn by the knowledge of her deception. ‘Yes-er-well, but-’
‘I got used to the idea of having a family very fast. I like it,’ Nik confided, pure devilment gleaming in his clear gaze as he let a seemingly idle hand stray from her waist down to her thigh and linger there. ‘I like working on the project of making you a mother. I intend to devote an enormous amount of time and effort to that challenge…any objections?’
‘None…’ Even in the grip of shame over her craven lack of candour, Prudence could not resist that look and even less could she resist his touch. She would just stop taking the pills and he would never know, she thought weakly, quivering with anticipation and excitement as he shifted fluidly closer.
Prudence assumed lack of sleep was to blame for her low appetite at breakfast the next day. She also felt ever so slightly nauseous. Mid-morning they flew back to London. Prudence was so eager to see how her rescue animals had fared during her absence that she changed into practical clothes on the flight and asked to be delivered straight to the stable yard.
Five minutes later, the limo pulled up outside the abbey. As Nik climbed out he kicked over the handbag that Prudence had left lying on the floor. The soft caramel leather holdall he had bought her in Florence tipped out its contents onto the gravel of the driveway. His gaze arrowed in on the foil-packed strip that lay half-in, half-out of the bag. Bending down, he lifted it and fell very still.
CHAPTER EIGHT
WITH DOTTIE’S HELP, Prudence placed baskets for her elderly dogs, Sooty and Minnie, into a cosy back hall and settled them there, since the cook had made it clear that he was no fan of four-legged animals in the kitchen quarters.
The older woman was defensive on Prudence’s behalf. ‘Oakmere is your home. You should just tell that fancy chef that he has to put up with the dogs!’
‘The kitchen’s his territory now and thank goodness that it is. I hate cooking,’ Prudence reminded her equably. ‘Not everyone approves of animals indoors.’
Prudence had never lived without at least a couple of dogs at her heels. She was keenly aware, however, that Nik had grown up without pets and was not accustomed to sharing accommodation with them. Dottie took her leave. Prudence was eager to explore the house and see how the renovations were coming on but it was getting late. Still muddy and more than a little bedraggled from the evening routine of watering and feeding, she hurried upstairs to shower and change before dinner. She also felt incredibly tired and thought that perhaps it was time she had a medical check-up. After all, she reminded herself, her menstrual cycle still seemed to be out of kilter and that was unusual.
Twenty minutes later Prudence emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel and with her wet hair combed back from her brow. Nik was stationed by the tall bedroom windows. Her eyes lit up and eager words about how well the sanctuary had fared during her absence were bubbling on her lips. But when Nik swung round, she saw the grim darkness of his gaze and the forbidding cast of his strong, dark features and her tummy flipped in alarm.
‘What’s up? What’s happened?’ she questioned.
In answer, Nik tossed the packet of pills at her feet.
Prudence gulped and folded her lips, her guilt and dismay unconcealed. ‘Oh, dear…’
‘Is that all you’ve got to say to me?’ Nik countered grittily.
Prudence floundered and sidestepped that direct question. ‘The packet was in my handbag…how did you get hold of it?’
‘I tripped over your bag in the limo and it fell out.’
Her colour high, Prudence stopped trying to evade the confrontation. She drew in a steadying breath. ‘I had already decided to stop taking them-’
‘And when did you take that momentous decision?’
Prudence reddened because she knew that her answer would not impress him. ‘Last night…’
His thunderous aspect remained undiminished. ‘When did you organise contraception?’
She told him.
‘So, you’ve been lying to me from the minute that we began living together as husband and wife.’
Prudence squirmed but sought to defend herself. ‘That’s a very emotive way of putting it-’
His dark gaze flashed gold and his dark, deep voice was dangerously quiet. ‘And how would you suggest I put it?’
‘As it was…rather than how it is now-’
‘That’s not relevant-’
‘It is. I made that decision in the past-’
‘What’s at stake here is trust,’ Nik delineated.
‘Yes, but the circumstances-’
‘Don’t count.’ His lean, bronzed face was unyielding. ‘You should have told me you were using birth control. That was a matter for us both to discuss. But then that isn’t what this is about, is it? You preferred to go behind my back and deceive me.’
Prudence could feel the outrage he was containing. It was there in the rigidity with which he was holding his lithe, powerful body, in the burnished gold in his eyes and the prominence of his hard, classic cheekbones. She wanted to scream with frustration and regret. Everything had been so wonderful, so perfect, and the future so promising. He need never have known that she was taking those wretched pills. Why on earth hadn’t sh
e immediately disposed of the evidence?
In the midst of that train of thought, she was shocked by other, sneaky ideas travelling through her head. Hadn’t she always believed in complete honesty? What had happened to that? Nik had come back into her life and Nik was more important to her than anything else. That was why she had fallen off the straight and narrow path so fast her head was still spinning. She had wanted to preserve their relationship, not tear it apart.
