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“It was all right for you, then?” she asked, not really needing the assurance but wanting to hear it.
He laughed, a deep rumble of pleasure. “Nothing in the world could be more right, my love.”
She smiled. “It was great for me, too.”
For a while they simply luxuriated in lying together. Nina loved rubbing her legs against Jack’s powerfully muscled thighs and calves. He had such a magnificent physique. His broad chest rose and fell under her cheek in a quiet hum of happiness. She played her finger pads teasingly over the erotic places she knew, just under his hipbone, down the side of his rib cage, near his groin, enjoying the spasmic shiver of pleasure she aroused.
Jack ran his fingernails over her back, lightly raking her skin. It made her feel like purring. She adored it. He could do it for hours, and she’d love every minute of it. Being naked with Jack was a hedonistic delight, packed with a multitude of sensory pleasures.
“I like your aftershave lotion,” she said.
“It’s called Obsession.” She heard his grin. “I very much want you obsessed with me.”
She laughed. “I am. My perfume is called Spellbound.”
“Ah! You have me entranced.”
“Mmm…” She snuggled languorously, indulging herself in stretching and curling over him, so delectably different to being coldly alone. “I could stay like this forever,” she murmured.
“Well, it would be a step in the right direction if you married me.” Jack rolled the words out confidently.
She wanted to. But…“It’s not that easy, Jack,” she said regretfully.
“We can make it easy, Nina. We just get Sally to arrange everything. I’ll happily pay her fee, so it’s no trouble to you.”
“I didn’t mean the business of making arrangements.”
“What then?” He turned her onto her back and heaved himself onto his side so he could look into her eyes and watch the play of expression on her face. “Tell me the problem, Nina,” he gently insisted.
There was no avoiding the truth, and she didn’t want to. Honesty was the only way to go in this open intimacy between them. She had to hope Jack would understand, and she trusted he would appreciate where she was coming from.
“It goes back a long way, Jack,” she said ruefully.
&
nbsp; “I’m listening.”
She held nothing back, telling him about her childhood, her parents’ constant bickering, their resentments at being trapped by the responsibility of looking after the child neither of them had wanted, her hatred of asking them for anything, the misery of slinking away from arguments, making herself as unobtrusive as possible, the lonely sense of not really belonging anywhere, her grandmother’s attitude of paying for her keep when she went to live with her after the divorce.
The memory of her mother’s and grandmother’s attitudes did not concern Nina so much. She knew she would do her utmost never to load her daughter with negative feelings. It was the memory of all the hurtful rejections from her father that weighed on her heart.
“My dad always found me a nuisance, Jack. Everything he ever did for me was a chore. He looked at me as though I were a constant irritation. It made me shrink inside.”
“Did he hit you, Nina?” Jack asked softly.
“No more than the occasional smack. It wasn’t physical abuse, Jack. It was his attitude towards me that hurt. He simply didn’t want me in his life.”
“He shouldn’t have married your mother. Bad decision. You would have been better off adopted by a couple who wanted a baby, Nina.”
She took a deep breath. He wasn’t applying what she was saying to himself. She had to bring it home to him. “Jack, you didn’t want a baby, either.”
He frowned, not liking the parallel she was drawing. “You think I’d act like that with our daughter?”
“I don’t want Charlotte to ever feel what I felt, Jack,” she said earnestly. “I know you mean well, and you’ve been very good with her, but I’m afraid you won’t be able to keep it up.”
He pondered that for a while, his eyes sad and sympathetic as they scanned hers, taking in the doubts they harboured. “I really dug my grave with my mouth, didn’t I?” he remarked wryly.
Nina was relieved to see he wasn’t offended. She reached up and stroked his cheek. “I love you, Jack. You’re a wonderful person. I don’t want to drag you into parenthood if it doesn’t suit you. It would end up hurting all of us.”
