Bound By His Vow: His Final Bargain / The Rings That Bind / Marriage Made of Secrets

His hands gripped her hips once more as his body reared over hers. Somehow he’d had the foresight to apply a condom. She vaguely recalled him retrieving one from his wallet in his back pocket before he had shucked his trousers off.

He kissed her again, his mouth hard and yet soft in turn. It was a devastatingly seductive technique, yet another one he had mastered to perfection. She felt his erection poised for entry against her. She opened her legs for him, welcoming him with one of her hands pressed to the taut and carved curve of his buttocks, the other behind his head, pulling his mouth back down to hers as her ankles hooked around his legs.

He surged into her with a groan that came from deep at the back of his throat. It bordered on a rougher than normal entry but she welcomed it with a groan of pleasure. He seemed to check himself and then started to move a little more slowly, but she pushed him to increase his pace with little encouraging gasps and whimpers and further pressure from her hands pressing down on his buttocks.

She felt the rocking motion of his body within hers. She heard the intervals of his breathing gradually increase. She felt the tension in his muscles as they bunched up under the caress of her hands. The friction of his body within hers sent off her senses into another tailspin of anticipatory delight.

But still he wasn’t intent on his own pleasure.

He was still focused on bringing about another delicious wave of hers and brought his fingers down to touch her. The way he seemed to know how much pressure and friction she needed to maximise her pleasure was the final undoing of her. The continued thrusting of his body and the delicate but magical ministration of his fingers were an earth-shattering combination. She was catapulted into another crazily spinning vortex of feeling that robbed her of all sense of time and place.

It was all feeling—feeling that was centred solely in her body.

But as she was coming down from the heights of human pleasure her mind resumed enough focus to register his powerful release. It sent another shockwave of pleasure through her body. She had felt every moment of that powerful pumping surge as he lost himself. There was something about that total loss of control that moved her deeply. It had always been this way between them. A mind-blowing combustion of lust and longing, and yet something else that was less easily definable…

As she moved her hands to the front of his body she noticed the pale circle on her bare left ring finger. It was a stark reminder of her commitment elsewhere.

Her stomach sank in despair.

She wasn’t free.

She wasn’t free.

She pushed against his chest without meeting his gaze. ‘I want to get up.’

He held her down with a gentle but firm press of his hand on her left shoulder. ‘Not so fast, cara. What’s wrong?’

Eliza couldn’t look at him. Wouldn’t look at him. She stared at the peppery stubble on the bulge of his Adam’s apple instead. ‘This should never have happened.’

He took her chin between his finger and thumb and forced her to meet his gaze. ‘Why is that?’

Her eyes smarted with the tears she resolved she would not shed in front of him. ‘How can you ask that?’

His gaze quietly assessed hers. ‘You still feel guilty about the natural impulses you have always felt around me?’

She lowered her lashes, chewing at her lip until she tasted the metallic sourness of blood. ‘They might be natural but they’re not appropriate.’

‘Because you’re still intent on tying yourself to a man who can’t give you what you want or need?’

She continued to valiantly squeeze back the tears, still not looking at him. ‘Please, let’s not go over this again. I’m here with you now. I’m doing what you asked and paid me to do. Please don’t ask me to do any more than that.’

He released a gusty sigh and got up, dressing again with an economy of movement Eliza privately envied. She felt exposed, not just physically—even though she had somehow managed to drag her discarded dress over her nakedness—but emotionally, and that was far more terrifying.

‘Contrary to what you might think, I didn’t pay you to sleep with me.’ His voice was deep and rough, the words sounding as if they had been dragged along a gravel pathway. ‘That is entirely separate from your position here as nanny to my daughter.’

She gave him a pointed look. ‘Both are temporary appointments, are they not?’

His eyes were deep and dark and unfathomable. ‘That depends.’

‘Is Kathleen coming back?’

‘She hasn’t yet decided.’

‘I thought you said my month-long contract was not up for negotiation,’ Eliza said with a little frown. ‘If she decides not to return, does that mean you’ll offer me the post?’

‘That also depends.’

She arched her brow. ‘On what?’

‘On whether you want to stay longer.’

Eliza chewed at her lip. If things had been different, of course she would stay. She would live with him as his lover, as his mistress, his daughter’s nanny—whatever he wanted, she would do it because she wanted him so much.

But things weren’t different.

They were exactly the same as they had been four years ago. It didn’t matter what she wanted. It was the shackles of her guilt that would always make her forfeit what she wanted. How could she stay here with Leo and leave her other life behind? It was a fanciful dream she had to erase from her mind, just as she’d had to do in the past.

Eliza thought of little Alessandra, of how attached the child had become to her in such a short time. It wasn’t just that the little girl was looking for a mother substitute. Eliza had latched onto her with equal measure. She looked forward to their time together. She felt excited about the ways in which Alessandra was growing and developing in confidence and independence. It wasn’t just the teacher in her that was being validated, either. It was the deep-seated maternal instinct in her that longed to be expressed. Alessandra was responding to that strong instinct in her to love and protect and nurture.

If things were different, she would have been Alessandra’s mother.

There was still a fiendish pain inside her chest at the thought of another woman sharing that deeply bonding experience with Leo. She so desperately wanted to be a mother. Each birthday that passed was a painful, gut-twisting reminder of her dream slipping even further out of her grasp.

Eliza brought her gaze back to his once she was sure she had her emotions hidden behind a mask of composure. ‘Staying longer isn’t an option…’

‘Driving up the price, are we, Eliza?’ A ripple of tension appeared along his jaw, his dark eyes flashing at her with disgust. ‘That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? You want me to pay you a little extra to stay on as my mistress. How much do you want? Have you got a figure in mind?’

She took a steadying breath against the blast of his anger and turned away. ‘There’s no point talking to you in this mood.’

A hard hand came down on her forearm and turned her back to face him. His eyes blazed with heated purpose. She felt it ignite a fire in her blood where his fingers were wrapped around her wrist like a convict iron.

The tension in the air crackled like sheet lightning over a wide open plain.

‘Don’t turn away from me when I’m speaking to you,’ he rasped.

Her chin went up and her eyes shot him their own fiery glare. ‘Don’t order me about like a child.’

His dark eyes glinted menacingly as they warred with hers. ‘I’m paying you to obey my orders, damn it.’

Eliza felt a trail of molten heat roll down her spine but still her chin went even higher. ‘You’re not paying me enough to bow and scrape to you like a simpering servant.’

Those fingers burned her flesh like a brand. That hard-muscled body tempted her like an irresistible lure. Those dark eyes wrestled with hers until every nerve in her body was jangling and tingling with sensual hunger.

Heat exploded between her legs.

She could almost feel him there, that pounding surge of his body that triggered something raw and earthy and deeply primitive inside her.

‘How much?’ His eyes smouldered darkly. ‘How much to have you in my bed for the rest of the month? How much to have you bowing and scraping and simpering to my every need?’