The Purchased Wife(19)

'You taste of fresh water and soap.'

'I showered,' Nell mumbled distractedly.

'And removed my scent from your skin. Now I will have to put it back again.'

'But you need-'

'You,' he said. 'Again,' he added on a lusty growl as he leaned over to claim her mouth.

'Mmm,' Nell mumbled out a dizzy protest. 'Don't do that. Your mother. We have to-What are you doing?' she choked as his hand made a shockingly intimate dive between her legs.

'Making sure that you don't disappoint,' he returned smoothly, then laughed when her eyes widened in shock that he'd dared to actually admit it. 'A deal is a deal,' he said smoothly and flattened her to the bed.

Nell was caught in her own trap and she knew it. When Xander had come back to the island to stake his claim on his bride, he did it by unleashing the full power of his sensual repertoire upon her that by far outstripped any ideas her naive imagination she could have come up with.

He was amazing. Any attempt to get him to talk about anything serious was thoroughly quashed by-sex. The kind of sex that could mercilessly slay her senses even when she was only thinking about it. He just had to look at her and she wanted him. He just had to say, 'Come here', in that rough-toned, desiring voice and she went like an eager lamb to the slaughter of her own common sense.

They played together, in the pool or in the ocean. He showed her how to reach the top of the rock flanking the little cove so they could dive into crystal-clear water beneath. He taught her how to fish from the selfsame rock then laughed himself breathless as she screamed in horror when she actually caught a fish. And of course they made love-all the time, anywhere. Xander could not get enough of her and in truth Nell learned to use the newfound power over him with a feline ruthlessness that kept him forever and delightfully on his guard.

'I knew you would be dangerous once you discovered how to do this to me,' he complained late one afternoon after she'd spent the whole day taunting him with teases and half-promises and now rode him with slow and sinuous moves with her body that kept him pitched right on the edge, fighting not to give in because giving in before she did would fill her green eyes with so much triumph.

His skin was bathed in sweat and his hands were clamped to her supple hipbones. When she leant down to capture his mouth a whole new set of sensual muscles joined the torment. She caressed his taut cheekbones, the rasping clench of his jaw. She brushed the hard tips of her breasts against him and rolled her tongue around the kiss-softened contours of his lips before whispering, 'My lover,' then drew in every sensitised, beautifully tutored muscle to send him toppling over the edge.

As role reversals went, Nell knew she had cornered the market. She had him hanging on every flirtatious word and look and gesture like a besotted slave. On the occasions he grabbed back power just to remind her that he could do if he so desired to, she became the tormented one, the hopeless, helpless, besotted slave.

One week floated in perfect harmony into two then a third.

Thea watched them and smiled a lot, and began crocheting an intricately patterned gossamer-fine christening shawl with a serene complacency that made Nell blush.

This was what she'd wanted, wasn't it? Frowning as she bent to pick up a stray piece of driftwood off the shoreline, she sent experienced fingers gliding over its undulating ocean-smoothed contours the way her mother had taught her to do, while her mind drifted elsewhere.

She suspected she was pregnant. It was very early days yet to allow the suspicion to grow too large in her head, but her regular-as-clockwork period had let her down three days ago, and if Xander's virility was as potent as the rest of him then she knew, deep down, what it meant.

It changed everything. From believing she wanted to conceive his baby she now discovered that she didn't. Not yet, not like this. Not while they still hid from the real world on this tiny island where she felt more like a very indulged mistress than she did a wife.

A sigh broke from her, sending her chin tilting up so she could stare bleakly at the blue horizon. Xander could not remain hidden here for very much longer. As it was he needed to spend more and more time in his state-of-the-art study here dealing with business. And Nell had pressing things of her own she needed to do if she could only get to a telephone that did not have every call made on it carefully monitored.

Marcel. She was worried about him. She needed to know how he was and what he was doing. If he was cutting himself up with guilt and remorse or too angry with her to care that she was worrying about him.

When Xander did find it necessary to leave here, did he intend to take her with him this time or was she, in effect, still his prisoner whether it be behind the gates of Rosemere or here in this beautiful place?

He evaded the question each time she asked it. He evaded any discussion about life beyond here. Their honeymoon, he called it. A time to enjoy now, not what tomorrow had to bring. But even a honeymoon as idyllic as this one had to come to an end some time.

She released another sigh. Xander watched it leave her as he stood in the window with the phone pressed to his ear. She was wearing a blue sarong today. Beneath the sarong would be a matching-coloured bikini, and her hair was up, looped into one of those casual knots she had a way of fashioning that always tempted him to tug it free.

His fingers twitched, so did other parts as he saw himself unwrapping the beautiful package that was his sensational, warm and willing wife.

Wife. His wife. As soon as he thought the words a blanket of seemingly unquenchable possessive desire bathed his flesh. He wanted to be out there with her, not standing here talking business on the telephone.

'I know I have to attend,' he snapped out, sudden impatience sharpening his tongue. 'I merely asked if there was any way it could be put back a week.'

No chance. He'd known it even before he suggested it. Wishful thinking was a useless occupation out there in the real world. And that was his biggest problem. Nell and this incredible harmony they had come to share did not belong in the real world. Nell, he'd come to realise, never did. Not in his world anyway. For the last year he'd kept her safely locked up inside a pair of iron gates, waiting, he'd told himself, for her to grow up before he attempted to redress the mess their marriage had become. In his arrogant self-confidence, he had not seen that she'd done the growing seething inside with resentment at the way he treated her. If she had not crashed her car, she would have been long gone with her Frenchman before he'd known anything.

And the way the guy had disappeared so completely turned his blood cold when he thought of Nell disappearing with him like that.

'What of that other business?' he clipped into the telephone. His frown deepened when an unsatisfactory reply came back. 'A man cannot drop from the face of the earth without leaving some trace, Luke,' he rasped out in frustration. 'I need you to find him. I need you to interrogate him. I need to know what his true intentions had been towards my wife!'

'And if it was a subtle form of kidnap?' he lanced back at whatever Luke Morell said. 'I will continue to think of her as in danger until I have answers... No, I will not leave her safety to the hands of bodyguards again. What use was Hugo Vance? Helen is my wife, my responsibility... Then let an empire crumble.'

Grimly he slammed down the phone, knowing he was being unfair, unwise-irrational. But how the hell else could he behave around a woman as unpredictable as Nell?

He'd spent three weeks in her constant company-had sunk himself into her more times than he cared to count! But did he know what made her tick? No more than he did a year ago when he'd wrongly believed he had her tagged and labelled my beautiful, besotted wife.

She'd turned the tables on him that time. Then she'd done it yet again when she'd tried to leave him for her elusive Frenchman. OK, so this time he had managed to breach the damn citadel of her physical defences, but with Nell he could not afford to let the sex count for anything. He did not trust her, or that strange, glinting look he'd glimpsed in her eyes now and then. The little witch still had her own agenda. he was damn sure of it. She might love what he could make her feel, but did she love him...?

When you've had your fingers burned by complacency not once but twice, unless you are a complete fool you do not take chances on it happening again. And what was she doing with that piece of driftwood? he questioned suddenly. The way she was caressing it was almost erotic. Was she imagining it was him-or someone else?

Jealousy. Uncertainty. He did not like feeling like this! With a grim clenching of every bone in him he spun away from the window, wondering what the hell he was going to do. He had to go to London . He did not want to take Nell with him. But was she going to accept that?

Not a chance in hell, he thought as he began gathering together papers that littered the top of his desk. Papers that were important to running an empire-yet all he wanted to do was hide away here with his wife!

A black scowl darkened his face as he strode into the hallway. Seeing Nell stashing the piece of driftwood by the open door, he pulled to a stop as he made one of those clean-cut, uncompromising decisions that usually made him feel better about himself.

'We need to talk,' he announced brusquely.

'We do?' Surprise lit her tone as she walked towards him, a sensational, wand-slender, Titian-haired woman wearing a halo of sunlight all around her. 'Well that makes a change,' she drawled teasingly.

He was wearing white, Nell noted. Xander liked to wear white, white, loose, fine muslin shirts that allowed the gorgeously tight, bronzed shape of his body show through, and white linen trousers that fastened with a tie cord low on his lean waist. One tug at the cord and she would reveal the real man, she thought temptingly, felt the hot secretion of desire sting her senses and wished she had more control over herself.