‘I appreciate you coming to this with me. I know you don’t like parties unless you’re tucked away somewhere quiet talking solely about business,’ Betsy remarked ruefully. ‘But you’ll have your brothers there for company—’
‘And all the little half-brothers and sisters,’ Nik reminded her wryly. ‘I’ll make an effort to get to know them but, as I lack small talk and Belle’s probably already given them a poor impression of me, I can’t make any promises.’
‘A little bit of an effort is all that is required from you,’ Betsy assured him, trying not to smile at his willingness to extend an olive branch to Gaetano Ravelli’s youngest children. He had listened to her and he was prepared to change the status quo and to her way of thinking that was more than enough to earn him four gold stars.
‘Obviously I’m willing to make any effort required,’ Nik countered.
Betsy looked up at him with her very blue eyes. ‘Why?’
Nik linked his arms round her still-slim waist, slowly easing her slender body into connection with his while he stared down at her with green eyes that had flared to jewelled brilliance with desire. ‘I want you to be happy with me, Betsy.’
‘I am happy,’ she assured him, colour rising in her cheeks, hugely erotically aware of his big, powerful body and the erection he was making no attempt to hide. She stared up at him, treacherously enthralled by his sleek, dark, masculine beauty. The knowledge that in every way that mattered he was still hers in spite of the separation they had endured thrilled her and played merry havoc with her defences. Her body hummed at her feminine core, desire stirring in her, even while common sense fought to suppress it and remind her that she was all dressed up and keen to arrive on time for the party.
Nik lowered his handsome dark head and in an abrupt motion Betsy twisted her head aside, fighting her natural inclinations before he could succeed and wreck her lipstick. ‘I’m all done up now,’ she reasoned in breathless excuse and then glanced up at him, disconcerted when she recognised a fleeting flash of wounded uncertainty in his gaze. Her heart leapt in dismay at the memory that look provoked. He had looked at her precisely like that the day he had walked out, as if he didn’t understand quite what he had done by making a secret of his vasectomy, couldn’t credit her reaction to the revelation and was incredibly hurt by it. She hadn’t understood it then but it still wasn’t an expression she could be comfortable seeing him wear again.
In an equally sudden movement she pulled free of his arms and spun to present him with her back. ‘Unzip me,’ she instructed.
‘But I thought—’ he began in apparent mystification at her change of heart.
‘Since when was I so fussy?’ Betsy teased shakily, eyes over-bright with sudden tears, her pregnancy hormones all on override because she wanted him, she always wanted him and she marvelled that he should not immediately grasp that little fact.
The dress shimmered down to the floor and she stood revealed in lacy underwear. He feasted his eyes on her tiny, increasingly curvy body while she scooped up the gown and laid it carefully over a chair. ‘Sometimes I want you so much it almost hurts,’ he told her in a hoarse undertone.
Colour mounted in her cheeks as he shed his jacket and shirt with none of the care she had employed. She strolled back to him and unfastened his trousers, slender hands delving beneath to find the long, hard evidence of his arousal and stroke his velvet-smooth, rigid shaft with wondering fingers until he swore in guttural Greek under his breath and wrenched off the remainder of his clothing with less patience than he had shown a moment earlier. She knelt at his feet pleasuring him with her lush mouth and knowing fingers, excitement lancing almost painful waves of arousal through her heated body with every groan she wrenched from him.