Rings of Gold: Gold Ring of Betrayal / The Marriage Surrender / The Unforgettable Husband

‘Your accent is thickening,’ she remarked, quite out of context.

He looked nonplussed momentarily, then grimaced. ‘That is because I am as tired as you are,’ he sighed. And in an act of failing patience he bent and lifted her into his arms. ‘Your time is up,’ he muttered, moving out of the baby’s room and down the hallway to her own room. ‘The decision is taken from you.’

He walked to the bed and allowed her bare feet to slide to the floor. Then he was grimly dealing with her robe, drawing it from her shoulders and tossing it aside to reveal a matching gown of the smoothest coffee satin, before leaning past her to flick back the covers on the bed.

‘In,’ he commanded.

Meekly, she did as she was told, while he turned his attention to extracting his mobile phone from his trouser pocket.

‘Toni?’ His voice was curt, demanding attention, not responses. ‘I am with Sara. Disturb me only when it is time.’ Click. The mobile was flicked shut.

‘What did that mean?’ she asked sharply, her wide eyes watching every move he made as he placed the mobile on the bedside table.

‘Nothing,’ he dismissed. ‘I am expecting a call from New York.’

He began striding around the room, turning off table lamps until only the small silk-shaded one by the bed remained illuminated. Then he returned to the side of the bed, and, never once glancing at Sara, though she was sure he was aware that she never took her eyes off him, he discarded his shoes then stretched out beside her.

‘Nic—’ she began pensively.

‘Shush,’ he cut in. ‘Go to sleep.’

‘I was only going to say—thank you,’ she whispered.

He didn’t reply, didn’t move, didn’t do anything but lie there staring at the ceiling above their heads. Sara watched him do it, watched until her eyes began to sting and her lids grew heavy, watched until she could no longer watch, and at last drifted into sleep.

He was still lying there over an hour later, but had moved onto his side and was half dozing when she suddenly groaned and moved restlessly, throwing off the covers and twisting out of them so that she could curl herself against him instead.

‘Nic,’ she whispered, then placed her warm lips against his.

It was his downfall. He knew it and despised himself for it even as he gave in to it.

But she tasted so sweet. So exquisitely sweet. Like nothing he had ever tasted anywhere else in his life but from her …

It was wonderful. Like floating on a soft, fluffy cloud of rich, warm euphoria. Her body felt as light as a feather but her limbs were heavy, somnolent with the most honeyed delight. And her flesh was smiling. Could flesh smile? she asked herself wonderingly. Because hers certainly was. And since this was her dream she could let herself do and feel anything she liked. So, yes, her flesh was smiling, its outermost layer caressed by something warm and moist and infinitely pleasing.

She tried breathing not fast but slowly, savouring the sensual pull of oxygen into her lungs which seemed to set off a chain reaction throughout her body, setting her senses pulsing, slow and easy like the cloud she was floating on, the smile on her flesh, the sigh she released as she exhaled again.

‘Nic,’ she whispered.

That was what this was. It reminded her of Nicolas in one of his lazy, loving moods when he would lick her skin from toes to fingertips, raising a million and one sensations of pleasure all over her, rendering her lost and helpless. His to do with as he pleased.

‘Sweet,’ a hushed voice suggested.

Oh, God, yes, this was sweet, she agreed silently. The sweetest, sweetest sensation on earth—or in heaven. For she wasn’t of this world right now. She was floating somewhere above it, stretched out, naked and basking, basking in the wonder of herself.

Her breasts felt full and heavy, her nipples stinging with impatience because he hadn’t reached them yet. And they wanted him to. They wanted him to close his mouth around them, lick and suck and make them his own.

‘Nic,’ she whispered again, in breathless need this time.

‘Shush,’ the hushed voice answered.

She sighed in lazy agreement—then came fully awake with a muscle-locking, bone-clenching jerk when he slid the tip of his tongue into the delicate crevice between her thighs.

‘Oh, God,’ she gasped. ‘Nicolas—No!’

‘Yes.’ He was suddenly looming over her, his face dark with passion, mouth full and moist from the havoc he had just been creating with his tongue.

And they were both naked! Her nightdress was gone—his clothes!—the crisp hair on his chest rasping against her breasts, one wonderfully muscular thigh heavy across her own.

‘You want me, Sara,’ he insisted. ‘Your body wants me. Your subconscious mind wants me! Don’t tell me no when I can feel you literally throbbing with need of me!’

‘You said comfort,’ she reminded him whimperingly.

‘This is comfort,’ he declared. ‘The most exquisite comfort there is.’

‘But—’

‘No,’ he gritted. ‘I need this too! We both do.’ Then he cut off any more protests with the hungry crush of his mouth.

She let out a single helpless sigh. He answered it by groaning something in his throat, then his tongue was playing with hers in the most sensuously evocative way, which brought her hands up to grasp tightly at his neck. His thigh moved against hers, rubbing a caress over the soft golden mound which protected her sex. His fingers trailed over her shoulders, her upper arms, then finally, exquisitely, her breasts.

‘Do you know how sweet to taste you are?’ he muttered, head coming up, hunter’s eyes glowing at her in the darkness. ‘How your skin secretes something onto my tongue that causes a chemical reaction inside me that drives me half-insane?’ He sighed, as if he despised himself for saying all of that. ‘I am addicted to you,’ he admitted thickly. ‘You are a fix I can get from no other source!’

‘You’ve tried?’ she asked painfully.

‘Of course I have tried!’ he admitted. ‘Do you think I like feeling this way about you?’

‘No,’ she sighed on a wave of dark sadness for this man with his monumental pride which must be taking a battering because he had discovered he could not lie with her without wanting her. Wanting the woman he believed had betrayed him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. Sorry that fate had forced him to feel that way.

‘Don’t talk,’ he commanded bleakly. ‘I have to remember what you are when you talk. And I need this—need it!’ he repeated hoarsely.

Then he groaned again, caught her mouth in a mind-blowing desperate kiss that brought tears to her eyes and her hands down to stroke his chest in a lame gesture of comfort to relieve his agony.

It was at that moment that she realised how much she still loved him, loved this man who could believe such vile things about her yet could still desire her as desperately as this.

The rest took place in a charged kind of silence, he arousing her with a grim sense of determination that told her he wanted the full collapse of all her senses before he would feel satisfied in taking her.

When he did eventually come into her, he did it with a ruthless precision that brought a grunt from his throat and a gasp from hers. Then he stopped, elbows braced at each side of her, eyes closing on a tense sideways jerk of his head that was in itself a dead give-away of how close he had driven himself to the edge before allowing himself to do this.

He filled her. In that moment of complete stillness Sara lay there and felt him fill her, felt the wonder of it, the beauty, felt her own muscles close around him, draw him deeper, hold him, knead him.

‘Breathe,’ he gritted. ‘Damn you, Sara. Breathe!’

It was only as she sucked air into her lungs on a greedy gasp that she realised she had stopped breathing, her whole body locked in a spasm of sheer sensual ecstasy.

Her hands flew out, wildly uncoordinated as they searched for something solid to hold onto. They found his shoulders. He growled something in his throat, then his body was moving, thrusting—short, tense, blunt thrusts that held his face locked in a mask of total sexual compulsion and drove her over the edge to complete oblivion.

When she eventually dragged herself back from wherever she had gone off to, Nicolas was no longer in the bed. He was standing by it, pulling on his trousers with terse, angry movements, every cell in him sending out a message of bitter regret.