The last thing she wanted to talk about was her marriage. Serina sipped some more champagne in an effort to find composure.
‘Like most marriages,’ she said at last, not quite meeting his probing gaze, ‘it had its ups and downs. But on the whole we were happy.’
His head tipped slightly to one side in that way people did when they were trying to detect if someone was lying to them.
‘Why only one child?’he went on, blue eyes boring into her.
Serina’s stomach tightened, but she managed a nonchalant shrug. ‘We tried for more. It just didn’t happen.’
‘Your fault or his?’
‘Neither. We were perfectly healthy, the doctors said.’ Now this was not totally true. Greg had discovered quite a few years back that he had a low sperm count, possibly because he’d had mumps as an adolescent. Technically, he had been still capable of fathering a child, but conceiving had not been easy.
‘I see,’ Nicolas said. ‘Well at least you have Felicity. She’s a delightful child.’
‘Delightful,’ Serina agreed. ‘But difficult.’
Nicolas smiled an indulgent smile. ‘Yes. I can see that she might be that.’
Serina knew she had to get off that topic and quick.
‘And what of you, Nicolas?’ she countered. ‘Have you anyone waiting for you back in New York? That pretty little Japanese violinist perhaps.’
His eyebrows lifted. ‘You know about Junko?’
So he was sleeping with her!
‘I know of her. Felicity did an Internet search and showed me what you’d been up to over the years.’
‘I see.’
‘You’ve had a lot of beautiful women, by all accounts.’
‘True,’ came his cool reply.
Dear heaven, but he was annoying.
‘You never wanted to marry any of them?’
‘Yes. Once. But it didn’t work out.’
‘When was that?’
‘Years ago,’ he responded nonchalantly, as though it was of no importance. ‘Look, I can see that making idle chitchat is not our forte. Not this afternoon, anyway. Let’s get out of this bath and back to what we do best together.’
He rose up through the water, soapy bubbles clinging to various parts of his body—his shoulders his chest…
She stared up at it, then up at him.
‘As you can see,’ he said drily as he stepped out of the bath and reached for a towel, ‘I have recovered sufficiently to continue. Now put down that champagne, beautiful. I need someone out here to dry me, someone who knows just how I like it done.’
Serina’s heartbeat quickened at his command, her head whirling with hot jabs of desire. At last it was going to begin again. At last, she could touch him as she’d been dying to touch him.
Foolish man, Nicolas was to think thirty seconds later. She didn’t dry herself at all, her beautiful body glistening with moisture as she proceeded to dry him, slowly, sensuously, dabbing at his arms, shoulders and back, then moving around to press the towel against his buttocks before slowly running it down the back of his legs. His gut tightened when she began to move the towel up between his legs.
‘Delay,’ he’d read in the last chapter of an old sex manual he’d once bought, ‘is the best way to increase the intensity of one’s climax.’
Serina had obviously learned that lesson well. She pulled the towel away and walked round to face him. There, she stood before him and rubbed the towel slowly over her own body, her dilated eyes showing him that she was just as turned on as he was.
‘Throw the towel away,’ he groaned.
She did.
‘Kneel down.’
She obeyed once more. Without question, without hesitating.
‘Now tell me that you love me.’
Her head tipped backwards as her eyes flew up to his.
‘You don’t have to mean it,’ he ground out, his hands reaching to tug her hair down from where she’d wound it up on top of her head, out of the reach of the bath water. ‘Just say it. So that it makes what you’re going to do seem right.’
‘Nicolas, don’t,’ she croaked out.
‘Don’t what, my darling?’ His fingers splayed through her hair, spreading it out onto her shoulders. ‘Don’t humiliate you this way? How can it possibly be humiliation when you want this as much as I do?’
Her sob filled him with self-loathing. But nothing was going to stop him. Not her distress, or his conscience.
‘No one has ever done it better than you, Serina,’he crooned.
When her head drooped and her hands lifted from her sides, he thought she was about to burst into tears. Instead, she reached up and touched him, enfolding delicate fingers around his aching penis and pressing the tip against her lips.
His whole body shuddered as though lightning had struck it. She didn’t stop there, however. She opened those soft sweet lips and took him into the wet heat of her mouth. He stared down at her as her head lifted and fell in a slow but merciless rhythm. He wanted to cry out, to scream. He wanted, more than anything, to hate her.
And he did hate her in that moment when he knew he could no longer contain his desire. For as his body raced towards a climax, the victory suddenly felt like hers. She was the one in control here. She was the one doing the using and the rejecting once again.
Serina wanted him gone from her life. And she was prepared to do anything—even this—to achieve her goal.
Such thoughts brought bitterness and a dark desire, not to witness his own ragged release, but hers. She was the one he wanted to see out of control. Had he forgotten his threat to make her beg? He was hardly achieving that this way.
At the last moment he found the strength to pull free of her, glorying in the glazed and confused eyes she raised up to his face.
‘I’ll take a raincheck on that, my love,’ he said as he lifted her onto unsteady feet. ‘I have other things in mind for this afternoon. And for you… ’
NICOLAS shook his head ruefully as he gazed down at Serina’s sleeping form. So much for his intention to indulge in a whole afternoon of vengeful sex, where she’d have lost control and begged for mercy.
If only he hadn’t brought her back to bed.
The bed had been a mistake, as had his unsuccessful attempt to arouse her so much with his own mouth that she’d plead for release. She’d been aroused all right, he was pretty sure of that. But not as much as he had been. Before he knew it he was reaching for another condom. Even worse, he’d taken her in the spoon position, which meant he hadn’t even been able to see her face when she came. If she had, that is. Men could never be too sure about such things, he’d discovered over the years. All in all, things hadn’t gone according to plan. Afterwards, she’d fallen asleep.
A glance at his watch showed it was just on three. Of course he could wake her up and start all over again, this time reliving a few of the more erotic foreplays and positions that they’d explored at length all those years ago.
The possibilities were endless. But he just didn’t want to. He didn’t want to feel what he felt every time he touched her.
It wasn’t hate