Marriage Without Love & More Than a Convenient Marriage(82)

Color crept under her skin as the silence stretched and she realized if anyone made an alteration to these arrangements, it would have to be her. He watched subtle, uncomfortable tension invade her posture and almost willed her to do it. He wanted to share her bed, but he suddenly saw exactly how hard it was for her to stand up for herself.

She gave a jerky little smile at the woman and said, “It’s fine, thank you,” and Gideon felt a pang of disappointment directed at himself. He should have made this easy for her. But he didn’t want to.

The woman left. As the distant sound of the front door closing echoed through the quiet house, Adara looked to him as if he’d let her down.

“Do we just take another room?” A white line outlined her pursed mouth.

“Why would we need to?” he challenged lightly.

“We’re not sharing a bed, Gideon.” Hard and implacable, not like her at all.

“Why not?” he asked with a matching belligerence, exactly like himself because this issue was riling him right down to the cells at the very center of his being.

Her gaze became wild-eyed and full of angry anxiety. “Have you listened to me at all in the last twenty-four hours? I don’t want to get pregnant!”

“People have felt that way for centuries. That’s why they invented condoms,” he retorted with equal ire. “I bought some before we left the hotel. Do you have an allergy to latex that I don’t know about?”

She took a step back, her anger falling away so completely it took him aback. “I didn’t think of that.” Her brows came together in consternation. “You really wouldn’t mind wearing one?”

He stood there flummoxed, utterly amazed. “You really didn’t think of asking me to use them?”

“Well, you never have the whole time we’ve been married. I wasn’t with anyone else before you. They’re not exactly on my radar.” She gave a defensive shrug of her shoulders, averting her gaze while a flush of embarrassment stained her cheekbones.

Innocent, he thought, and was reminded of another time when they’d stood in a bedroom, her nervous tension palpable while he was drowning in sexual hunger.

Anticipation was like a bed of nails in his back, pushing him toward her. On that first occasion, she had worn a blush-pink negligee and a cloak of reserve he’d enjoyed peeling away very, very slowly.

Don’t screw this up, he’d told himself then, and reiterated it to himself today. The first night of their marriage, he’d had one chance to get their intimate relationship off on the right foot. He had one chance to press the reset button now.

The primal mate in him wanted to move across the room, kiss her into receptiveness and fall on the bed in a familiar act of simple, much-needed release.

But it wouldn’t be enough. He saw it in the way her lashes flicked to his expression and she read the direction of his thoughts. Rather than coloring in the pretty way he so enjoyed watching when he suggested a visit to her room, she paled a little and her lips trembled before she bit them together.

“You don’t...” Licking her lips, she looked to him with huge eyes that nearly brimmed with defensiveness. “You don’t expect me to fall into bed with you just because you’ve got a condom, do you?”

Expect it? The animal in him howled, Yes.

“It’s always been good, hasn’t it?” He bit out the words, perhaps a little too confrontational, but his confidence was unexpectedly deserting him.

She crossed her arms, shoulders so tight he thought she’d snap herself in half. “It’s always been fine.”

“Fine?” he charged, gutted by the faint praise.

She sent him a helpless look that made him feel like a bully.

“I can hardly deny that I’ve enjoyed it, can I?” she said, but the undertone of something like embarrassment or shame stole all the excitement he might have felt if she’d said it another way. “I just...”

“Don’t trust me.” He ground out the words with realization. It was an unexpectedly harsh blow. “Come on,” he said, holding out his hand before he lost what was left of his fraying self-control.

She stilled with guardedness. “What? Where?”

“Anywhere but this room or I’ll be all over you and you’re obviously not ready for that.”

A funny little frisson went through Adara as she took in the rugged, intimidating presence that was her husband. He held out a commanding hand, as imperious and inscrutable as ever, but his words had an undercurrent of...was it compassion?

Whatever it was, it did things to her, softening her, but it scared her at the same time. She was already too susceptible to him.