She listened to the water beating down on the tiles in the shower and cringed. She knew she didn't have beautiful eyes or sensational legs and she also knew what he didn't know but would soon find out. What you saw wasn't what you got. Her sole claim to vanity was a padded bra, just so that she wasn't too noticeably flat, certainly not to draw further attention to that particular part of her body.
She felt the mattress give with his weight and curled up into a tighter, even more inaccessible ball.
A finger ran down her exposed backbone and she shuddered. 'When I said that a bomb wouldn't deflate my ego, I'm beginning to think I was deluding myself,' Alex remarked without expression.
'Please...please don't touch me. I can't give up Nicky but I'll do absolutely anything else. I'll stay out of your way...you'll never see me...you can have all the women you want!' she told him wildly. .
'I want you,' Alex breathed with sudden rawness, hauling her bodily back into the hard heat of his long, powerful length with an easy strength that sent her nervous tension into overdrive.
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'You cheat! You agreed to a marriage in name only!' Sarah gasped strickenly, furious that she had abandoned her pride to beg him to leave her alone and that that selfsame plea had failed to wring an ounce of compassion from him.
Alex twisted her round and pressed her flat, forcing her into glancing and unwelcome contact with gleaming golden eyes that challenged. ' When did I agree?'
Trembling, she stared wordlessly up at him, the reality of that omission on his part only now registering with her.
'I would never have agreed to that particular term,' Alex spelt out very quietly. 'Indeed, were it not for your physical appeal, I would not have agreed to the marriage at all. Had I found you unattractive, had I not been able to imagine taking you to my bed, it would have been insanity to agree. Some day I want children of my own... Did you really believe that I would allow you to deprive me of that right as well?'
Sarah hadn't thought of that. Breathing rapidly, she looked up at him, gripped by a sinking sense of inevitability. He had accused her of tunnel vision. Guilty as charged.
'If this marriage lasts it will last on my terms, not on yours,' Alex delivered, his broad brown shoulders blocking out the light as he lowered his dark head.
Galvanised back into motion, Sarah registered his intention and made a desperate attempt to snake free of him. But Alex seemingly was prepared for evasive action and one powerful hand meshed into her hair, holding her fast. Her eyes huge, her face taut and pale, she looked up at him like a trapped animal, her heartbeat hitting the Richter scale.
His thumb massaged the curve of her jawbone almost soothingly. 'Relax.'
Was he joking?
'I won't do anything you don't want me to do,' he murmured thickly.
'Then let go of me!'
'I was about to say that I wouldn't hurt you... but that might not be true.' Dark golden eyes scanned her hungrily. 'I've never made love to a virgin before but I will be as gentle as I possibly can be.'
Hot-cheeked, she thought of denying her innocence, wondered furiously how her lack of experience could be that obvious. 'You-----'
Alex rested a silencing finger against her mouth, so close now she could feel his breath on her cheek, the raw power of his all-male body resting against her. 'You set me on fire that night at Gina's house and you didn't even know it. The whole time we were in that room I was visualising how it would be if I stripped that robe from you, laid you flat and possessed you as no other man ever had...'
Sarah stared up at him in horror. 'You pervert!'
'I was very aroused,' Alex admitted huskily. 'As I was in the car after the wedding... Didn't you feel that? Can't you tell when a man wants to rip your clothes off? Don't you feel the excitement in the air...the vibrations? I looked at you and thought, She's mine now and she's woman enough—no matter what she says—to go out and make herself even more beautiful just to please me.'
Sarah was transfixed by what he was telling her, had never imagined once in her entire adult life that any man would talk to her this way. Followed by that outrageously conceited assurance that she had transformed her appearance purely to make herself more appealing for his benefit when no such madness had ever entered her mind, she was literally forced into-speech. 'Pleasing you had nothing to do with it!'
A vibrantly amused smile slashed his sun-bronzed features. 'If you say so,' he said, with the air of an adult humouring a child over a triviality.
The astonishing charisma of that smile briefly blanked out her every rational thought. And it was while she was struggling to comprehend how a smile could make her feel all warm and dizzy that Alex kissed her, his mouth drifting down into a natural collision with hers, gentle, seeking, shorn of any threat.