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Sander couldn’t move. The second he had seen the two boys he had known that there was nothing he would not do for them—including tearing out his own heart and offering it to them on a plate. The sheer force of his love for them was like a tidal wave, a tsunami that swept everything else aside. They were his—of his family, of his blood, of his body. They were his. And yet, watching them, he recognised immediately how they felt about their mother. He had seen the protective stance they had taken up and his heart filled with pride to see that instinctive maleness in them.
An old memory stirred within him: strong sunlight striking down on his bare head, the raised angry voices of his parents above him. He too had turned to his mother, as his sons had turned to theirs, but there had been no loving maternal arms to hold him. Instead his mother had spun round, heading for her car, slamming the door after she’d climbed into it, leaving him behind, tyres spinning on the gravel, sending up a shower of small stones. He had turned then to his father, but he too had turned away from him and walked back to the house. His parents had been too caught up in their own lives and their resentment of one another to have time for him.
Sander looked down at his sons—and at their mother.
They were all their sons had. He thought again of his own parents, and realised on another surge of emotion that there was nothing he would not do to give his sons what he had never had.
‘Marriage it is, then. But I warn you now it will be a marriage that will last for life. That is the measure of my commitment to them,’ he told her, looking at the boys.
If she hadn’t been holding the twins Ruby thought she might well have fallen down in shock—shock and dismay. She searched Sander’s face for some sign that he didn’t really mean what he was saying, but all she could see was a quiet, implacable determination.
The twins were turning in her arms to look at Sander again. Any moment now they would start asking questions.
‘Upstairs, you two,’ she repeated, taking off their navy duffel coats. ‘Change out of your uniforms and then wash your hands.’
They made a dash past Sander, deliberately ignoring him, before climbing the stairs together—a pair of sturdy, healthy male children, with lean little-boy bodies and their father’s features beneath identical mops of dark curls.
‘There will be two conditions,’ Sander continued coldly. ‘The first is that you will sign a prenuptial agreement. Our marriage will be for the benefit of our sons, not the benefit of your bank account.’
Appalled and hurt by this fresh evidence of how little he thought of her, Ruby swallowed her pride—she was doing this for her boys, after all—and demanded through gritted teeth, ‘And the second condition?’
‘Your confirmation and proof that you are taking the birth control pill. I’ve seen the evidence of how little care you have for such matters. I have no wish for another child to be conceived as carelessly as the twins were.’
Now Ruby was too outraged to conceal her feelings.
‘There is no question of that happening. The last thing I want is to have
to share your bed again.’
She dared to claim that, after the way she had already behaved?
Her outburst lashed Sander’s pride into a savage need to punish her.
‘But you will share it, and you will beg me to satisfy that hunger in you I have already witnessed. Your desire for sexual satisfaction has been honed in the arms of far too many men for you to be able to control it now.’
‘No! That’s not true.’
Ruby could feel her face burning. She didn’t need reminding about the wanton way in which she had not only given herself to him but actively encouraged him to take her. Her memories of that night were burned into her conscience for ever. Not one of her senses would ever forget the role they had played in her self-humiliation—the way her voice had sobbed and risen on an increasing note of aching longing that had resulted in a cry of abandoned pleasure that still echoed in her ears, the greedy need of her hands to touch and know his body, the hunger of her lips to caress his flesh and taste his kisses, the increased arousal the scent of his skin had brought her. Each and all of them had added to a wild torrent of sexual longing that had taken her to the edge of her universe and then beyond it, to a place of such spectacular loss of self that she never wanted to go there again.
Shaking herself free of the memories threatening to deluge her, Ruby returned staunchly, ‘That was different…a mistake.’ Her hands curled into her palms in bitter self-defence as she saw the cynical look he was giving her. ‘And it’s one that I never want to repeat. There’s no way I’d ever want to share your bed again.’
Her denial unleashed Sander’s anger. She was lying, he was sure of it, and he would prove it to her. He wasn’t a vain man, but he knew that women found him attractive, and Ruby had certainly done everything she could that night to make it plain to him that she wanted him. Normally he would never have even considered bedding her—he liked to do his own hunting—but her persistence had been like a piece of grit in his shoe, wearing down his resistance and helping to fuel the anger already burning inside him. That was why he had lost control. Because of his grandfather. Not because of Ruby herself, or because the aroused little cries she had made against his skin had proved so irresistible that he had lost sight of everything but his need to possess her. He could still remember the way she had cried out when he had finally thrust into her, as though what she was experiencing was completely new to her. She had clung to him, sobbing her pleasure into his skin as she trembled and shuddered against him.
Why was he thinking of that now?
The savagery of his fury, inflamed by both her demand for marriage and her denial of his accusation, deafened him to the note of raw pain in her voice. Before he could stop himself he had taken hold of her and was possessing her mouth in a kiss of scorching, pride-fuelled fury.
Too shocked to struggle against his possession, by the time she realised what was happening it was too late. Ruby’s own anger surged in defiance, passionate enough to overwhelm her self-control and battle with the full heat of Sander’s desire to punish her. Desire for him was the last thing she had expected to feel, but, shockingly, the hard possession of Sander’s mouth on her own turned a key in a lock she had thought so damaged by what he had already made her endure that it could never be turned again. Turned it with frightening ease.
This shouldn’t be happening. It could not be happening. But, shamefully, it was.
Her panic fought with the desire that burned through her and lost, overcome as swiftly as though molten lava was pouring through her, obliterating everything that stood in its path. Her lips parted beneath the driving pressure of Sander’s probing tongue, an agonised whimper of longing drawn from her throat. She could feel the passion in Sander’s kiss, and the hard arousal of his body, but instead of acting as a warning that knowledge only served to further enflame her own desire, quickening the pulse already beating within her own sex.
Somewhere within the torrent of anger motivating him Sander could hear an inner voice warning him that this was how it had been before—this same furious, aching, agonised need and arousal that was possessing him now. It should have been impossible for him to want her. It should always have been impossible. And yet, like some mythical, dark malformed creature, supposedly entombed and shut away for ever, his desire had found the superhuman strength to break the bonds imprisoning it. His tongue possessed the eager willingness of the softness of her mouth and his body was already hard, anticipating the corresponding willingness of the most intimate part of her if he didn’t stop soon…
Ruby shuddered with mindless sensual delight as Sander’s tongue began to thrust potently and rhythmically against her own. Beneath her clothes her nipples swelled and hardened, their ache spreading swiftly through her. Sander’s hand cupped her breast, causing her to moan deep in her throat.
She was all female sensual heat, all eager willingness, her very responsiveness designed to trap, Sander recognised. If he didn’t stop now he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from taking her where they stood, from dragging the clothes from her body in his need to feel her bare skin against his touch, from sinking himself deep within her and feeling her body close round him, possessing him as he possessed her, both of them driven by the mindless, incessant ache that he was surely cursed to feel for her every time he touched her.
