‘He destroyed nothing else,’ Nik pointed out. ‘And Max was very clever. I may have
despised him but even I have to acknowledge that. Who knows what he might have arranged? If we split up, if we part, somebody somewhere may be primed to use that certificate to hurt my family—’
‘That’s being paranoid!’ Leah muttered unevenly, her head beginning to ache.
‘It’s not a risk I am prepared to take. As far as Max was concerned you were content to be my wife right up until the day he died,’ Nik said smoothly. ‘He knew no different. And I believe that he would have taken a special pleasure from ensuring that if I ever attempted to divorce you I would pay.’
The most obvious explanation had evaded her, she conceded dazedly, her hands clenching tightly together. She had let her imagination run riot. She had believed that Nik might well be punishing her for her father’s sins. She had believed that Paul’s very existence so outraged Nik’s pride that he was set on hanging on to her out of sheer dog-in-the-manger bloody-mindedness. She had even begun to believe that on the basis of practical, unemotional reasoning he might indeed consider her to be a suitable wife.
And the terrible reality was that every one of those motivations had been considerably kinder to her ego than the awful truth she had finally been forced to acknowledge: Nik thought he was stuck with her for eternity. Like an albatross. And if he hadn’t been so accustomed to being in that position he might well have been wondering whether a suitably choreographed accident might not best meet his requirements.
‘You’ve turned a little...pale,’ he mused.
‘I’ve got a headache,’ Leah mumbled.
She was remembering the fury which had brought him to her hotel, a fury which she now saw had been entirely divorced from any personal feelings on his side. After all, Nik couldn’t allow her to leave him. Even if he really wanted to throw the door wide and encourage her to leave, he couldn’t risk doing it. Marrying her had indeed been the life sentence he had called it.
For the first time she understood how furiously helpless he must have felt in the grip of that awareness early on in their marriage...and how desperately he must have hoped that she would meet and fall for someone else while her father was still alive, thereby releasing him from the union. After all, had that been her choice, Max could scarcely have blamed Nik. No wonder he had left her alone for five years...and no wonder he had accused her in Paris of being obscenely faithful and loyal. Why had she chosen not to examine that condemnation more closely? Why had she buried it?
The tray was removed. Nik bent down and began to lift her. ‘I can manage!’ she gasped strickenly, but he ignored her.
Settled back on the bed, Leah snatched at the sheet and turned over on her stomach, unable even to look at him. She felt stripped of every ounce of pride, every inch of dignity. She was drowning in humiliation. In the space of minutes Nik had changed everything. What right did she have to demand her freedom now? Whether she liked it or not, it had been her infatuation with Nik which had trapped him into this situation. Even Max wouldn’t have tried to push her into marriage with a man she neither wanted nor loved.
‘You’d feel more comfortable without that robe.’
Leah tensed, having been unaware that he was still in the room.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘You need a good night’s sleep.’
She felt the sheet move, hands at her waist, gently tugging loose the sash and then sliding the robe down off her shoulders to remove it. The sheet was smoothed back into place.
Nik sighed softly. ‘You know this is my bedroom. Would you mind very much if I moved back in?’
Leah went rigid and then quivered. ‘I’ll move now,’ she managed, beginning to lift her head.
‘I want you to stay,’ he breathed in a curiously stifled tone.
‘Oh...’ Leah froze, violently disturbed by the announcement.
‘We are married,’ he murmured.
The silence stretched, gnawing at her every nerve-ending.
‘Yes.’ It was a whisper so faint that the sound of a pin dropping would have been louder. But it was an acknowledgement which Leah had avoided, protested and denied for years. Now it had been forced on her.
She lay there in shock. There was no other word to describe her condition. The sturdy foundations of her resentment and bitterness and her determination to leave him had been blown to smithereens and right now she was still lying in the bomb crater, fumbling feebly to find some reasonable excuse for denying him the right to sleep in his own bed and the expectation that she share that same bed. And the truth was that there wasn’t any reasonable excuse available to her.
Nik had come to terms with their future that day in Paris. She saw that now. He had got to the bottom of that safety-deposit box and emerged without the ticket to freedom he had vainly sought. For a little while he had hoped that she had it—that wretched certificate that she had never even heard of before that day! And when he had realised that unpleasant reality he had known simultaneously that their marriage was indeed a life sentence. Hence his sudden change of attitude towards her. If escape was out of the question, he had to make the best of imprisonment. If he could not free himself to marry another woman, he had to make the best of the one he had got...
All of a sudden Leah was shorn of defences. Hadn’t she brought all of this on them both? Hadn’t she, in her complete and utter stupidity, agreed to marry a man who had looked like death warmed up on the day he had proposed? And she had asked him if he was ill. Ill? Three weeks had passed before the wedding and she had only seen him twice in company and he had been so cool and so distant, he had been like a stranger. But had she smelt a rat? No way! She had been head over heels in love and had told herself he was preoccupied with business.
A slight sound dredged her from her frantic lashings of self-loathing. She turned her head. Her lowered lashes swept up, revealing startled blue eyes. Nik was undressing. Tension thrumming through every tautened muscle, Leah closed her eyes again. But she listened, just as she listened minutes later to the sound of the shower running. Ordinary, everyday sounds for most married women...only not for her. And she found herself envisaging the state of the bathroom: a heap of discarded wet towels and nothing used returned to its proper place.
She had a stark memory of having once invaded Nik’s wing of the London house after he had departed one morning. She remembered the wet towels, the disorder and the disturbing, frightening realisation that no two people could have been more separate or less intimate than they were in their marriage that was not a marriage.
After that she had felt like a lodger in his beautiful house. She had never stamped her personality anywhere, never moved a single piece of furniture. That day had been the beginning of her detachment from him...just as this day had forever shattered that same protective device.
Her ears pricked up in disbelief at the sound of Nik humming a brief snatch from a famous operatic aria out of tune. He sounded so...buoyant? Her lashes lifted. She clashed unexpectedly with gleaming jet. Nik was standing by the bed gazing down at her. Instantly his gaze veiled, the curve of his expressive mouth straightening out.
‘Go to sleep,’ he instructed almost soothingly.
She closed her eyes, heard him discard the towel which was all that had interrupted her view of that lean, lithe golden body. The mattress gave ever so slightly, the sheet slid and then the light went out.
Silence fell. Leah lay as still as a corpse but considerably more wide awake, knowing that she could not possibly sleep with Nik lying naked within a foot of her, his every restive movement filling her with instinctive alarm and rocketing tension.
* * *
Wonderfully warm and relaxed, Leah gave a sinuous little wriggle and the hard heat of the body next to hers tautened. Her lashes lifted. She looked up into smouldering black eyes, fringed by ebony lashes. The impact of those eyes was mesmerising. Her blood leapt in her veins and her heat raced. She felt dizzy, breathless and utterly dispossessed of all rational thought.
A fingertip stroked along the lush ripeness of her lower
lip. ‘Open your mouth for me. I want to taste you,’ Nik urged huskily.
Held fast by his searing gaze, she instinctively obeyed and with a stifled groan of satisfaction he crushed her slender form to him, his hands sweeping over her hips and her back as his hard, demanding mouth took hers with savage intensity.
A sweet, twisting ache stirred in her belly. The tip of his tongue snaked between her readily parted lips, erotically probing the tender inner reaches to make her quiver with helpless excitement beneath him.
With insistent hands Nik tugged the thin straps of her nightdress down from her shoulders, baring the pouting swell of her breasts. His sure fingers cupped and explored the straining mounds and caressed her nipples until they were throbbing and stiff. Uncontrollably her hips arched up to his, her thighs trembling in response as her hands rose and tangled in his thick black hair.
Her heart hammered wildly in her chest as he released her reddened lips. He teased her sensitised breasts, his tongue skimming down the valley between them while his hands toyed with the rigid peaks he had created. Heat was surging through her in waves of violent response and when he employed his mouth on her tender flesh instead she moaned low in her throat, subjected to a storm of exquisite sensation that tantalised and tormented.
She was intoxicated, enslaved by passion, lost in a world of intense and drugging pleasure. With a soft growl of anticipation, Nik took her mouth again with compulsive hunger and pulled her against him, his hand sliding through the silvery curls at the apex of her thighs, searching out the silken softness beneath with intimate expertise, each sensual invasion calculated to heighten the fevered and mindless response he was receiving.
It was a sweet agony of delight that made Leah sob and pant for breath. Her hips jerked and lifted of their own volition, the demanding ache of desire rising to an unbearable pitch. A whimper of frustration was torn from her. His hands sank beneath her as he slid between her thighs. He threw back his head and raised her to meet the powerful thrust of his hard body. With an earthy groan of unashamed pleasure, he drove his rigid, swollen length into her yielding depths.