Contract Bride Read online

  “And then some. I used to think I liked you in suits. Now I’m wondering what I was thinking.”

  “You were thinking we had a professional relationship?” That was a dumb thing to bring up. The last thing either of them needed were reminders that they still had to work together tomorrow. But on the flip side, they did work together, so maybe it was okay to be real about the situation. “That doesn’t have anything to do with what’s happened here at home. We can keep them separate, right?”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  His heart ground to a painful halt for a half second until she continued.

  “I like it when you use your boardroom voice. It’s sexy.”

  He had to laugh at that. “You mean my boss voice?”

  She wasn’t the first woman to express a similar sentiment. But she was definitely the first one who had needed to be in full control.

  Once again, he was flying blind. The only thing he could do was pay attention to her cues. Easier said than done. But he was doing okay so far tonight. Much better than he’d expected when he’d suggested the idea of her coming to his room in her robe.

  He wouldn’t apologize for the bone-deep desire to erase prim and proper from Tilda’s vocabulary.

  “Maybe talking isn’t the right approach to take here,” he murmured. Distance was the only way he could guarantee no one would get hurt, and all the conversation wasn’t helping.

  He rolled closer and resettled her into his arms. She came willingly and all her gorgeous skin snugged next to his. The heat dialed up a notch, not that it had cooled all that much in the first place.

  Naked Tilda eclipsed all his fantasies and he still couldn’t quite believe she was here, in his arms. The sexy lingerie had been nothing more than a precursor to the main event, and he was not sad that she’d asked him to remove it. Catching her mouth in his, he dropped them both into a kiss that quickly grew intense.

  His first inclination was to touch more of her, but even though she’d said she was okay with creativity, he’d prefer some guidelines.

  He lifted his mouth and murmured, “Did I mention how thoroughly hot it was when you told me the things you wanted me to do to you?”

  She shook her head. “It was a turn-on for me, too. Surprisingly.”

  “You’ve never—” He bit that back. Of course she’d never had a man clue in that she’d needed that or they wouldn’t be here right now. She’d needed him to pull it out of her, just like she’d needed him to come up with the idea of playing out her fantasies.

  What else did she need that he hadn’t discovered yet? His curiosity exploded.

  “We’re not finished letting you explore that,” he advised her and shut up in favor of kissing her.

  Her sweet mouth opened under his and he groaned. So trusting. It was beautiful how responsive she was after almost no time. Tentatively, he set himself into exploration mode, swirling his tongue forward, but she met him halfway, thrusting into his mouth with no fear. She arched against him and he had to check his urge to roll her under him in order to increase the contact.

  So he rolled her on top of him. Her thighs fell between his and her stomach ground against his erection, which was so good, his brain melted. No downside to this position that he could find. From this angle, the kiss got deeper still, and as a bonus, his hands were free to thread through her hair. The silkiness flowed over his fingers and he felt it in his blood. He couldn’t help circling his hips against her, automatically seeking more.

  She moaned and shifted, igniting him with friction, and there was little chance he was going to be able to hold off much longer if she kept that up.

  “Tilda, I need to be inside you. Is that—”

  “It’s okay. I want that, too.”

  There was literally no way to misinterpret that, so he went for broke and sheathed himself with a condom in what had to be the land speed record. She’d barely moved enough for his hands to have room to work, which meant a lot of touching of hot, wet parts. In an instant, she sank down on him, drawing him into the most bliss-filled joining imaginable—and he’d imagined this moment a lot.

  It was far better than anything he’d conjured up in his suddenly feeble fantasies. She felt amazing, tight and, best of all, enthusiastic as she rolled her hips to find a rhythm she liked. This position had just shot to the top of his list. He groaned as she took him deeper, and let the sensations break over him.

  “That’s it, sweetheart,” he murmured. “You work me exactly the way you want.”

  She blinked down at him, registering his words. Slowly, she changed the angle, experimenting with a new speed as her hair fell into her face in the sexiest of manes, and he nearly went blind as heat exploded through his midsection.

  “You’re so gorgeous,” he told her, almost before realizing he’d spoken. What was going on with him tonight? Tilda had turned him into a talker in bed. Insanity. Only people who were intimate with each other talked, because it meant they had stuff to talk about. This was just sex, solely designed to give her some confidence.

  “You think so?” she asked, but it wasn’t the coy question of a woman fishing for compliments. She was almost...shy. Asking for confirmation, even.

  “Oh, yes.” He nudged his hips higher, doing some angle changing of his own to see what spots he could hit to get that expression of bliss on her face that he’d only glimpsed earlier. “When your hair is down around your face, you’re ethereal. Amazing. I love you being on top. The view from here is like staring into the face of heaven.”

  Geez, next he’d be spouting poetry. But he couldn’t take it back, not when a smile bloomed on her face that was every bit the opposite of the angel he’d just likened her to.

  “I like it, too. The view is pretty good from here for me, as well.” She put her hands on his chest and used him for leverage to increase her speed yet again, her eyelids drifting to half-mast as she gasped out his name.

  When Tilda was in control of her pleasure, it was breathtaking. He wanted more and ground his thumb into her center. That was the magic button, apparently, because she threw her head back and rode him faster, hollowing him out with her sexy moans. After he’d spent what felt like an eternity clawing back his own release through sheer will, she finally closed around him with a strong pulsing ripple.

  He let go with a cry, emptying himself in a release that eclipsed anything he’d ever known.

  Tilda collapsed to his chest and his arms locked around her automatically. To keep her in place. That was his story, but in reality, he was holding on—because if he didn’t, he feared he’d float away in a haze of bliss.

  And he didn’t miss the fact that she let him. She was amazing, putting herself out there despite her fears and blazing through to a brilliant finish.

  She murmured nonsense phrases against his skin, or rather, his brain was too mushy to interpret something so complex as language, not when she’d just rearranged every one of his molecules into something different. Something he didn’t fully understand yet.

  But he did know one thing. He’d lied to her earlier.

  What was happening between them had everything to do with their marriage because they’d just consummated it. Brilliantly, no less. And he wasn’t done.

  He cultivated distance to keep people from being hurt by his tendencies to be blunt and abrupt, but even that was a shield against his genuine desire to help when someone was hurting.

  He’d dropped all his careful barriers to get Tilda to this point, which he didn’t regret, but it was going to be hell to put them back together.

  But necessary.

  That feeling in his chest? It was happiness. And he didn’t deserve that.

  * * *

  When Tilda woke up, there were arms around her and she had a moment of panic. She half pulled away and turned, but it was dark. She couldn’t see, and the panic escalated, pounding
through her veins. The arms were holding her down. Forcing her to do something she didn’t want to.

  Then it came to her in a flood. Warren. He’d taken her to bed last night and she’d fallen asleep with him. His face floated through her consciousness, so precious, and it centered her.

  She was okay. She was in Warren’s bed. He was holding her because he was extending their intimacy, not trying to keep her someplace she didn’t want to be. That didn’t seem to matter to her pulse. Snuggling back against his chest was a lot harder than she’d have guessed. What was wrong with her? If nothing else, Warren had always been about safety.

  Lying in the dark, she stared at the ceiling she couldn’t see and tried to get her automatic reactions back under control.

  “Hey.” Warren’s soft voice whispered across her shoulder. “You okay?”

  She nodded. A lie. He was so wonderful, and this was all about her being damaged beyond repair. But she couldn’t breathe. The air wasn’t getting into her lungs somehow and dizziness overwhelmed her.

  “Do you need to go back to your own room?” he asked.

  Yes. That was exactly what she needed. Nearly sobbing with gratitude, she took the out and rolled to kiss his forehead. Then she snatched her robe and fled.

  Back in her own room, she snapped on the light and threw on a pair of flannel pajamas, crawling into the bed she’d been sleeping in for the last week, ever since she and Warren had gotten married. It hadn’t taken too long to end up in his bed, though. She’d moved way too fast, caught up in the fantasy he’d pushed her to enact. Okay, he hadn’t had to push her very hard.

  She couldn’t deny that she’d wanted to be with him. He hadn’t forced her in any way. Quite the opposite. If any tactic would have worked to get her out of the dungeon Bryan had put her in, letting her have at least the illusion of control was it. She wasn’t at all fooled, though. Warren could just as easily flip and start controlling all aspects of her life if he so chose. They were married, after all.

  The light stayed on. It burned into her retinas as sleep evaded her. She’d screwed up by taking things with Warren so far. She was his employee and she needed to start acting like one. This job was all she had, and she’d started out intending to dazzle him with her skills. Instead, she’d let herself be seduced by things that weren’t available to her, like happiness and fulfillment.

  Bryan had stolen that dream from her. Sex was one thing, and she didn’t even handle that very well. But anything else was completely off the table.

  In the morning, she took a long shower and washed away all thoughts of the man who had so expertly made love to her the night before. Then she dressed in the dullest suit she owned and set up shop in the library, which was adjacent to Warren’s study. Last Saturday had been wasted on moving and getting settled. Today she had a long agenda of things to accomplish that wouldn’t get done if she sat around and daydreamed about the reasons her muscles ached so badly.

  The reason popped his head into the library a little before eight o’clock. “Good morning.”

  Warren’s long, delicious gaze wouldn’t let hers go, or maybe that was her fault because he was so gorgeous and so dressed and she shouldn’t be thinking about beckoning him into the library so she could strip him out of the jeans and T-shirt he’d donned in deference to the weekend.

  “Good morning,” she squeaked and cleared her throat. “We have a lot to do before Monday. I’ve got meetings scheduled with the major entertainment venues—”

  “Have you had breakfast?” he cut in. “Work will be there later. Come have some pancakes with me.”

  “I, um...no, I haven’t.” Pancakes were her favorite. She had to spend all day in his company, anyway. Might as well get pancakes out of the deal while she tried to figure out how their dynamic had changed.

  Because it had. The fact that he hadn’t readily jumped into her work discussion told that tale. He’d been hot to have these meetings for weeks because Down Under Thunder had deals with all the music festivals and such. Warren and Tilda had been planning to upend his competition’s foothold with the concert crowd.

  “The dining room is too formal,” Warren announced and led her out to the terrace where more invisible hands had set up a white bistro table inlaid with shiny bits of glass that caught the morning sunlight.

  Charmed against her will, she let him pull out one of the chairs for her and settled into it. Then there was nothing left to do but focus all of her attention on the man across from her.

  “The meetings will be a great first step toward choking off Down Under Thunder,” she said in a rush, mostly to keep her mind centered on the important things instead of letting her gaze wander across his broad shoulders.

  She might have used them as a handhold more than once last night, and for some odd reason, she could not stop wondering if she’d left nail marks in his skin. Heat climbed through her core as she recalled the exact position, his body under hers, joined so very intimately. She’d ridden him with abandon. It had been glorious.

  “Sure that’s what you want to talk about this morning?” he asked lightly as the cook served plates with stacks of fluffy pancakes, a platter of bacon and syrup warmed in a small white urn, then vanished. “There’s not something else on your mind?”

  The heat in her core intensified as she stared at him. What was she supposed to say to that?

  Yes, you rocked my world and I want you again right now?

  Because that would be both true and a horrible idea.

  She ate pancakes, instead. They melted in her mouth too fast to be a good diversion from the conversation because he just kept watching her as he forked up his own bits of fluffy goodness.

  “Nothing is more important to me than getting this project completed,” she said firmly, because she had to say something. And then she shook her head. “I mean, not that I’m in a rush to be finished. I want to do a good job and it’s very important that each detail—”

  “Tilda.” Warren reached out and laced his fingers with hers, no hesitation, which told her that he was already far more comfortable with her than she was with him. “You’ll ace this project, no doubt. We’re having breakfast on the terrace on Saturday after we took our relationship someplace unexpected. If you don’t want to talk about what happened last night, fine. Pick another subject. But not work.”

  Agape, she stared at him. “Work is all there is between us.”

  “No.” His fingers tightened, and his thumb found a sensitive spot on her hand to caress. “Not when you can’t even sleep in the same bed with me all night long, it’s not. We have an impending interview with the green-card people and the subject of sleeping arrangements may come up. Wouldn’t it be better to be prepared for that?”

  Something with a dark edge flared through her stomach and she didn’t like the direction of the conversation. “What are you saying?”

  He let her hand go and ran his fingers through his hair as he sat back in his chair. “I thought...it’s just that last night was amazing. Wasn’t it?”

  Remembering last night, her heart went a little bonkers, flipping over on itself in time with a bird’s chirp in the garden below. “It was. So amazing. So unexpected.” But she’d made a resolution while lying in bed unable to sleep, and she would stick to it. “I don’t want to talk about last night. It was a onetime thing, a fantasy. We’re not a couple. We work together. The marriage part of our relationship is incidental.”

  A heavy block of something landed on her chest and she couldn’t breathe.

  Was that all there was for her for the rest of her life? The inability to sleep with a man and barely the ability to have sex with one? What about later, when she didn’t have someone as patient and kind as Warren? Who would care enough to tease out her fantasies, pay enough attention to her to know that she would like being on top when she didn’t even know that about herself?

  It was too
much. She couldn’t do this intimate breakfast on Warren’s terrace the morning after they’d slept together.

  Of course, fleeing to her room didn’t help. She was still completely out of sorts. Warren seemed to understand that she needed space and left her alone.

  For about fifteen minutes.

  The knock on the door had his authoritative ring to it. The housekeeper had a much lighter touch, and besides, what had Tilda expected, that he’d let his project suffer because she was being difficult about having slept with him?

  “Tilda,” he called through the door. “Talk to me. Please.”

  And say what? Not talking was much easier and avoidance was her current coping mechanism. She’d sneaked away from Bryan when he’d been on an assignment, she’d left Melbourne the first opportunity Craig had given her and she continually shoved Warren into a box called “work” so she could pretend none of the other stuff was happening.

  But that didn’t make it right to run.

  She opened the door and his beautiful, masculine presence immediately swelled into the room, filling up places she’d only begun to realize were empty. “I’m sorry. I tend to run away from anything that scares me.”

  “That’s part of the problem, Tilda.” His voice betrayed none of his emotions. But his eyes told a different, far more interesting story. “I don’t want to be one of the things that scares you.”

  Mute, she stared up at him as a wealth of emotions surfaced in his gaze that she’d have missed if she’d never opened the door. This was difficult for him. She was causing him distress. And maybe some pain? The whole time, she’d had a sort of academic understanding that he was being patient and kind, but had never really acknowledged the cost. She’d seen evidence of it last night. How quickly she’d forgotten the effort he’d made to treat her so well. Selfishly, she’d assumed any cost was physical, but there was a very real possibility that he was paying for it emotionally, as well.

  That brought her up short.

  “Come in.” She held the door open wide and stepped back. Did he understand that such a gesture cost her, as well?