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His smile, when it came, was extremely sardonic. ‘I’m saying it to make all that we’re going to do this afternoon seem right.’
Suddenly, she was afraid. Of this cold, cruel Nicolas, but mostly of herself. Because she was still turned on by him. Even now. ‘What… what are we going to do?’
Sexy blue eyes glittered down into her.
‘Whatever I want you to do,’ he said. ‘That was the deal, wasn’t it… ?’
CHAPTER TWELVE (#ulink_9741adfb-6bfb-5c4d-8dec-6a770d5257f6)
‘ANOTHER chocolate, my sweet,’ he said, and leant forward to pop one of the deliciously creamy delicacies into her mouth.
No point in objecting, Serina thought. No point in objecting to anything he suggested. The bitter truth was she simply didn’t have the willpower to resist him, or the desire.
Besides, she was ravenously hungry, having not eaten a thing since a very light breakfast—just coffee and one slice of toast.
So she ate the chocolate and washed it down with a mouthful of champagne, all the while wondering why he hadn’t suggested something more decadent than their current positions in the spa bath. They were sitting at opposite ends, only their feet touching occasionally.
It was not what Serina had envisioned. What she had, perhaps, secretly hoped for.
This wasn’t the first time they’d shared a bath. In the old days he would have placed her across his lap, his swollen sex deep inside of her whilst they lay back in the water like two spoons. His hands would have covered her breasts and he would be whispering hot words of love and passion into her ears.
‘What time is it, do you think?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Haven’t got my watch on,’ he replied. ‘But my guess is it’s just after one. Plenty of time left. We could even waste a little of it talking.’
‘Talking?’ she echoed in startled tones.
‘You don’t want to talk? Too bad, Serina. It’s not your choice. So tell me, was your marriage happy?’
The last thing she wanted to talk about was her marriage. Serina sipped some more champagne in an effort to find composure.
‘Like most marriages,’ she said at last, not quite meeting his probing gaze, ‘it had its ups and downs. But on the whole we were happy.’
His head tipped slightly to one side in that way people did when they were trying to detect if someone was lying to them.
‘Why only one child?’he went on, blue eyes boring into her.
Serina’s stomach tightened, but she managed a nonchalant shrug. ‘We tried for more. It just didn’t happen.’
‘Your fault or his?’
‘Neither. We were perfectly healthy, the doctors said.’ Now this was not totally true. Greg had discovered quite a few years back that he had a low sperm count, possibly because he’d had mumps as an adolescent. Technically, he had been still capable of fathering a child, but conceiving had not been easy.
‘I see,’ Nicolas said. ‘Well at least you have Felicity. She’s a delightful child.’
‘Delightful,’ Serina agreed. ‘But difficult.’
Nicolas smiled an indulgent smile. ‘Yes. I can see that she might be that.’
Serina knew she had to get off that topic and quick.
‘And what of you, Nicolas?’ she countered. ‘Have you anyone waiting for you back in New York? That pretty little Japanese violinist perhaps.’
His eyebrows lifted. ‘You know about Junko?’
So he was sleeping with her!
‘I know of her. Felicity did an Internet search and showed me what you’d been up to over the years.’
‘I see.’
‘You’ve had a lot of beautiful women, by all accounts.’
‘True,’ came his cool reply.
Dear heaven, but he was annoying.
‘You never wanted to marry any of them?’
‘Yes. Once. But it didn’t work out.’
‘When was that?’
‘Years ago,’ he responded nonchalantly, as though it was of no importance. ‘Look, I can see that making idle chitchat is not our forte. Not this afternoon, anyway. Let’s get out of this bath and back to what we do best together.’
He rose up through the water, soapy bubbles clinging to various parts of his body—his shoulders his chest…
She stared up at it, then up at him.
‘As you can see,’ he said drily as he stepped out of the bath and reached for a towel, ‘I have recovered sufficiently to continue. Now put down that champagne, beautiful. I need someone out here to dry me, someone who knows just how I like it done.’
Serina’s heartbeat quickened at his command, her head whirling with hot jabs of desire. At last it was going to begin again. At last, she could touch him as she’d been dying to touch him.
Foolish man, Nicolas was to think thirty seconds later. She didn’t dry herself at all, her beautiful body glistening with moisture as she proceeded to dry him, slowly, sensuously, dabbing at his arms, shoulders and back, then moving around to press the towel against his buttocks before slowly running it down the back of his legs. His gut tightened when she began to move the towel up between his legs.
‘Delay,’ he’d read in the last chapter of an old sex manual he’d once bought, ‘is the best way to increase the intensity of one’s climax.’
Serina had obviously learned that lesson well. She pulled the towel away and walked round to face him. There, she stood before him and rubbed the towel slowly over her own body, her dilated eyes showing him that she was just as turned on as he was.
‘Throw the towel away,’ he groaned.
She did.
‘Kneel down.’
She obeyed once more. Without question, without hesitating.
‘Now tell me that you love me.’
Her head tipped backwards as her eyes flew up to his.
‘You don’t have to mean it,’ he ground out, his hands reaching to tug her hair down from where she’d wound it up on top of her head, out of the reach of the bath water. ‘Just say it. So that it makes what you’re going to do seem right.’
‘Nicolas, don’t,’ she croaked out.
‘Don’t what, my darling?’ His fingers splayed through her hair, spreading it out onto her shoulders. ‘Don’t humiliate you this way? How can it possibly be humiliation when you want this as much as I do?’
Her sob filled him with self-loathing. But nothing was going to stop him. Not her distress, or his conscience.
‘No one has ever done it better than you, Serina,’he crooned.
When her head drooped and her hands lifted from her sides, he thought she was about to burst into tears. Instead, she reached up and touched him, enfolding delicate fingers around his aching penis and pressing the tip against her lips.
His whole body shuddered as though lightning had struck it. She didn’t stop there, however. She opened those soft sweet lips and took him into the wet heat of her mouth. He stared down at her as her head lifted and fell in a slow but merciless rhythm. He wanted to cry out, to scream. He wanted, more than anything, to hate her.
And he did hate her in that moment when he knew he could no longer contain his desire. For as his body raced towards a climax, the victory suddenly felt like hers. She was the one in control here. She was the one doing the using and the rejecting once again.
Serina wanted him gone from her life. And she was prepared to do anything—even this—to achieve her goal.
Such thoughts brought bitterness and a dark desire, not to witness his own ragged release, but hers. She was the one he wanted to see out of control. Had he forgotten his threat to make her beg? He was hardly achieving that this way.
At the last moment he found the strength to pull free of her, glorying in the glazed and confused eyes she raised up to his face.
‘I’ll take a raincheck on that, my love,’ he said as he lifted her onto unsteady feet. ‘I have other things in mind for this afternoon. And for you… ’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#ulink_fdee44e0-a4ef-5958-91a5-76b3fe0570c7)
NICOLAS shook his head ruefully as he gazed down at Serina’s sleeping form. So much for his intention to indulge in a whole afternoon of vengeful sex, where she’d have lost control and begged for mercy.
If only he hadn’t brought her back to bed.
The bed had been a mistake, as had his unsuccessful attempt to arouse her so much with his own mouth that she’d plead for release. She’d been aroused all right, he was pretty sure of that. But not as much as he had been. Before he knew it he was reaching for another condom. Even worse, he’d taken her in the spoon position, which meant he hadn’t even been able to see her face when she came. If she had, that is. Men could never be too sure about such things, he’d discovered over the years. All in all, things hadn’t gone according to plan. Afterwards, she’d fallen asleep.
A glance at his watch showed it was just on three. Of course he could wake her up and start all over again, this time reliving a few of the more erotic foreplays and positions that they’d explored at length all those years ago.
The possibilities were endless. But he just didn’t want to. He didn’t want to feel what he felt every time he touched her.
It wasn’t hate at all.
Nicolas knew that he could not face another three hours of this emotional torment. It was time to call a halt before his thoughts and feelings got the better of him.
‘You’re a sad case, Nick, my man,’ he muttered to himself as he rose from the rumpled bed and headed for the bathroom.
Five minutes later, a dressed Nicolas was shaking Serina’s right shoulder.
She moaned softly, rolling over onto her back and stretching voluptuously before blinking open her eyes.
Nicolas was glad he was fully dressed. His body was still, unfortunately, on a different wavelength to his mind.
‘Time for me to take you home, sweetheart,’ he said, his voice as hard as his poor tormented flesh.
She blinked and sat up, her full breasts moving in a most provocative way. ‘What?’
‘You heard me. It’s time for me to take you home.’
Alarm filled her face. ‘It’s six o’clock already? Why didn’t you wake me? Oh no, I didn’t ring Felicity.’ She glanced at the digital bedside clock before throwing him a confused look. ‘But… but… it’s only just after three o’clock!’
‘I’ve changed my mind about the length of this afternoon’s activities,’ he interrupted in a cold, crisp voice. ‘I’ve had enough.’
‘Enough?’ she echoed rather blankly.
‘Did I not make myself clear? Then let me put it another way. You’re still one heck of a good lay, but I can see that you were right. Our relationship, such as it was, is dead in the water. All that was left was some lingering flames. This afternoon snuffed out the last of those flames, good and proper. For which I am grateful. Now I can go back to my life the day after tomorrow and not give you a second thought. And you, my love, will surely do the same.’
Serina was grateful that he turned away from her at that point. For her face had to have betrayed her shock at this last statement.
Not give him a second thought?
Was he insane, or just seriously deluded?
‘Better shake a leg,’ he said over his shoulder as he strode from the bedroom in the direction of the living room.
She stumbled out of the bed, only then realising that her clothes were out in the living room. Where he was.
To walk out there naked after what he’d just said sent a shiver running down her spine. Not once, in the past, had Nicolas referred to her as a ‘lay’, either good or otherwise. The word was repulsive in her eyes. Didn’t he know how much she still loved him? Hadn’t he felt the love in her lips? In her willingness to do whatever he wanted?
Of course not. Why would he? She’d acted like a tough cookie on the way here, saying that sex was all he was good for. She only had herself to blame for the way he was treating her.
But, oh… it had been wonderful for a short while. She’d been able to pretend that nothing had changed, that they were young lovers again, where nothing existed for her but the heat of the moment. She’d wallowed in the thrill of obeying his commands; in playing the role of his love slave.
But the time for pretence was over now, she realised as a bleak dismay filled her heart. It was time to go back to the real world and her real life. Time, too, to get a grip.
Gathering herself, she hurried into the bathroom, where she grabbed a towel and was wrapping it tightly around her nakedness when she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the vanity mirror.
Goodness, she could not go back to the office looking like that! Her hair was a mess, her lips looked puffy and her eyes…
If eyes were the windows to one’s soul, then her soul was in big trouble!
Steeling herself once more, she hurried out to the living room where she found Nicolas making himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen. Ignoring his sharp, top-to-toe glance, she set about scooping up her clothes from the floor. Finally, and without a single word, she snatched up her handbag as well and bolted back to the bathroom.
Serina had just made herself look respectable when her mobile phone rang. She stiffened before rifling the handset out of the bottom of her bag and whisking it to her ear. Since the terrible call about Greg’s death, she experienced a rush of anxiety whenever her mobile rang at odd times. Felicity knew not to ring her on it unless there was an emergency. But who else could it be?
‘Yes?’
‘It’s only me, Serina,’ her mother replied somewhat wearily. ‘Not Felicity. You have to stop worrying about that child, dear. She’s extremely capable of looking after herself.’
‘Yes, Mum. I do know that. So what’s up? It’s not like you to ring me on this phone.’
‘I tried the office number but it was engaged. That’s why I rang you on your mobile. I thought you might like to know how things went with Mrs Johnson today.’
