One Night: Sensual Bargains: Nine Months to Redeem Him / A Deal with Benefits / After Hours with Her Ex

“Diana?” He was staring at me. I realized I’d taken too long to respond.

“Of course that’s what I love best,” I said, tossing my head. “What else is there about you to love?”

“Such a heartless woman,” he sighed, then drew closer. Nuzzling me, he cupped my breast through my thin cotton sweater. My nipples turned instantly hard, pressing up through the red lace of my bra, thrusting visibly against the sweater. He whispered, “Allow me to serve you, then, milady....”

Falling to his knees in front of me, Edward suckled me, pressing his mouth over my nipple. I gasped as I felt his hot mouth through the thin cotton and fillip of red lace beneath. His free hand wrapped around my other breast, then a moment later, he moved to that side.

My sweater disappeared, then the red lace bra. With a growl of satisfaction, he lowered his mouth to my bare skin. My head fell back, my eyes closed. His lips were hot and soft, satin and steel. When he drew back, I was shivering with need, just like the first time he’d touched me. As though we hadn’t been making love four times a day, every day, for the past ten days.

“So we’re agreed,” he murmured. Rising to his feet, he pulled me into his arms. “You’ll come with me to London.”

“I can’t just go there as...as your sex toy,” I said in a small voice, my stupid, traitorous heart yearning for him to argue with me, to tell me I meant more to him than that.

“I know.” He suddenly smiled. “London has a thriving theater scene. You can live at my house as you audition for acting roles.”

“Audition?” I said, trying to keep the fear from my voice.

“It’s perfect.” Running his hands down my back, he kissed my cheek, my neck. “By day, you pursue your dreams. At night...you’ll belong to me.”

Cupping my face, he kissed me, hot and demanding. I wrapped my arms around him, kissing him back recklessly, ignoring my troubled heart.

I couldn’t give him up. Not yet. Not when I could still live in his world of passion and color and desire for a little while longer. I wanted to be the bold woman who wore red lace panties for her lover, and paraded around nearly naked. I wasn’t ready to go back and be that invisible girl again. Not yet. I needed to be in his arms. I needed to be with him, one moment teasing each other, playing like children, and the next bursting into flame in the most adult way possible. It reminded me of the old definition of love—friendship on fire...

No. My eyes flew open. I cared about Edward, sure. I liked him a lot. But that wasn’t the same as being in love.

I couldn’t let it be.

I like him, that’s all, I told myself firmly. We have fun together. It’s not a crime.

I pulled away. “All right,” I said, keeping my voice casual. “I’ll come to London.”

“Good,” he said, with a low, sensual smile that said he’d never doubted he could convince me. Leaning me back against the poker table, he got me swiftly naked beneath the bright heat of the fire and made love to me.

And so the next morning, under the weak pink light of the dawn, I was packed up in his expensive car, along with the rest of his possessions, and driven east across the moor. Toward civilization.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ue4cdb610-b336-578e-b2fa-fd81cb79b7b7)

“WOW. YOU’RE NOT looking so great.”

The girl sitting beside me on one of the plastic chairs lining the hallway had a concerned look on her beautifully made-up face.

“I’m fine,” I replied, trying to breathe slowly, fervently trying to believe it. It had been two months since we’d arrived in London, and I’d felt strangely queasy, almost from the day we’d arrived here. I’d thought it was from fear, and also the guilt of lying to Edward about how I actually spent my days. But today, I’d finally faced my fear. For the first time, I was actually forcing myself to stay through an audition, rather than chickening out and fleeing for Trafalgar Square like a safely anonymous tourist.

For an hour, I’d sat here in the hallway, practicing my lines in my head and waiting for them to call my name. Shouldn’t the queasy feeling have gone away?

Instead, it had only increased as I waited backstage at a small, prestigious West End theater, surrounded by beautiful, professional-looking actors, who were loudly practicing their lines and doing elocution exercises, and taking no notice of me whatsoever. Except for the American girl sitting next to me.

“Are you feeling sick?” she asked now.

“Just nerves,” I said weakly.

“You look like you ate a bad curry. Or else it’s the flu.” Wrinkling her nose, she leaned away from me ever so slightly. “My sister looked like that the first three months she was pregnant....”

“I’m fine,” I repeated sharply, then swallowed, my head falling back as another wave of nausea went through me.

So much for my acting skills. Clearly not fooled, the girl looked nervously from side to side. “Oh. Good. Well. Um... Please excuse me. I have to practice my lines...over there.”

Getting up, she left in a hurry, as if she’d found herself sitting next to Typhoid Mary. I couldn’t blame her, because I felt perilously close to throwing up. Leaning my head against the wall, I closed my eyes and tried to breathe. I was so close to auditioning now. In a moment, they would call my name. I would speak my lines on the stage.

Then the casting agents would tell me that I sucked. It would be hideous and soul-crushing but at least I could slink home afterward and no longer be lying when I told Edward that while he was working eighteen-hour days at his office in Canary Wharf, I’d spent the day pursuing my dreams.

Just a few minutes more, and it would be over. I tried to breathe. They would probably cut me off halfway through my lines, in fact, and tell me I was too fat/thin/old/young/wrong, or just dismiss me with a curt Thank you. All I needed to do was speak a few lines and...

My lines. My eyes flew open as I slapped my hand on my forehead. What were my lines? I’d practiced them for two days, practiced them in the shower and as I walked through the barren garden behind Edward’s lavish Kensington townhouse. I knew those lines by heart. But they’d fled completely out of my brain and...

Then I really did feel sick and I raced for the adjacent bathroom, reaching it just in time. Afterward, I splashed cold water on my face and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked pale and sweaty. My eyes looked big and afraid.

My sister looked like that the first three months she was pregnant.

Leaving the bathroom, I walked out to the hallway. Then I kept walking, straight out of the theater, until I was outside breathing fresh, cold air.

My nausea subsided a bit. The sky was dark and overcast, not cold enough to snow but threatening chilling rain.

It was the first of March, but spring still felt far away. I walked slowly for the underground station, my legs trembling.

My sister looked like that the first three months she was pregnant.

The possibility of pregnancy hadn’t even occurred to me. I carefully hadn’t let it occur to me. I couldn’t be pregnant. It was impossible.

I stopped abruptly on the sidewalk, causing the tourists behind me to exclaim as they nearly walked into me.

Edward had gone out of his way to take precautions. But I hadn’t even worried about it, because I assumed Edward knew what he was doing. He was the one who never wanted to commit to anyone, and what could be a greater commitment than a child?

But there had been a few near misses. A few times he didn’t put on the condom until almost too late. And that one time in the shower...

Feeling dazed, I walked heavily to Charing Cross station nearby and barely managed to get on the right train. I stared at the map above the seats as the subway car swayed. My cycle was late. In fact, I realized with a sense of chill, I hadn’t had a period since we’d arrived in London two months ago. There could be all kinds of reasons for that. I was stressed by my halfhearted attempts at breaking into the London theater scene. I was stressed by the fact that I was lying to Edward about it. And then there was the nausea. I’d told myself my body was still growing accustomed to Greenwich Mean Time, or as the girl had suggested, I’d eaten a bad fish vindaloo.

All right, so my breasts felt fuller, and they’d been heavy and a little sore. But—I blushed—I’d assumed that was just from all the sex. The rough play at night was almost the only time I ever saw Edward anymore.

Every morning, his driver collected him before dawn to take him to his building in Canary Wharf, gleaming and modern, with a private shower and futon in his private office suite, and four PAs to service his every whim. Battling to save the deal that his cousin was trying to sabotage, he’d worked eighteen hours a day, Sundays included, and usually didn’t return until long after I was in bed. Some nights he never bothered to come home at all.

But on the rest, Edward woke me up in the dark to make love to me. A bright, hot fire in the night, when his powerful body took mine with hungry, insatiable demand. Sometime before dawn, I’d feel him kiss my temple, hear him whisper, Good luck today. I’m proud of you. Half-asleep, I’d sigh back, Good luck, and then he was gone. I’d awake in the morning with sunlight slanting through the windows, and his side of the bed empty. And I would be alone.

My days in London were lonely. I missed the life we’d had in Cornwall. I missed Penryth Hall.

Everything had changed.

Was it about to change more?