Bridal Bargains: The Tycoon's Bride / The Purchased Wife / The Price Of A Bride. Michelle Reid

no offence regarding your mother and father.’

      ‘None was taken.’ Claire frowned, wondering, as they walked along, why he felt it necessary to explain all of this to her. ‘Actually,’ she added, ‘I liked her.’

      ‘Good,’ he murmured as they reached the arch that would take them back into the other part of the house.

      Claire stepped sideways slightly so they could both move through it. Andreas did the same—and the front of their bodies brushed. Claire stopped breathing. She had a horrible feeling that he had done the same. Tension was rife. She attempted to break it by sliding away from him—but, on a thickened sigh that was all the warning she got, Andreas placed the flat of his palm on the centre of her back, drew her harder against him—and took hungry possession of her mouth.

      It was no use trying to delude herself that this kiss was anything other than it was because it didn’t pretend to be. It was need, pure and simple. Even Claire, with her inexperience of these things, recognised that telling little fact as she was pressed back into a darkened corner of the arch and held there by the kind of need that was not going to take no for an answer.

      Not that she was saying no—or considering saying it. Because from the moment his mouth moulded to the shape of her mouth her lips parted to welcome him. With his expertise to show her the way, she delved into the kind of heated passion that was utterly new to her. She felt hot and breathless, the dim quietness of the hallway helping to fill her head with a steamy mist that made him and what he was doing to her the only thing that mattered.

      His hand drifted downwards to splay at the base of her spine so he could gently urge her into deeper contact with that part of him that so clearly needed it. He was aroused and pulsing; her gasp of awareness was breathed into his mouth. His other hand was making long stroking movements down her body, stimulating senses she hadn’t even known were there but made her subside against him in drowning pleasure.

      It went on and on, growing deeper and more intimate with each heated second as his hand made its way down to one of her silk-covered thighs then began a pleasurable stroking upwards again. Long fingers made contact with bare flesh above her lace edged stocking. Claire responded by arching her spine closer to him.

      In all her life she had never experienced anything like it. It was hungry, it was intense, and it was deeply, deeply sensual, the whole thing coiling around them in burning tendrils of pleasure that poured fire into her veins.

      A door opened somewhere down the quiet corridor. They broke apart like guilty teenagers.

      Both dazed and momentarily dysfunctional, he muttered something—a curse, Claire suspected. Then another—and another while he blocked her from sight with his big body as someone walked down the hallway and in through another door.

      By then she had wilted weakly into the corner, eyes closed, heart fighting to regain control of itself.

      He seems to like pinning me up against walls, she found herself thinking, and choked on a laugh that wasn’t really a laugh. She couldn’t believe she could be thinking such ridiculously flippant things at a time like this!

      ‘Don’t,’ he rasped softly, and his fingers threaded themselves into her hair so his thumb pad could stroke gently across the new pulsing fullness he had brought to her mouth.

      Don’t—what? Claire asked herself half hysterically. Don’t laugh? Don’t cry? Don’t fall apart at the seams in confusion because what just happened was not supposed to happen?

      ‘Don’t look to yourself to find the culprit …’

      He thought she was blaming herself? Claire glared at the floor between their two pairs of feet and mulishly refused to answer.

      After a few taut seconds of this stubborn refusal to offer him a single word, he sighed heavily and his hand fell away, leaving her traitorous mouth pulsing all the hotter. ‘It is my fault, not yours. I am—attracted to you,’ he confessed, seemingly forced into saying that by her silence. ‘But you can trust me not to let this—situation get out of control …’

      Could she? At last she found the strength to straighten away from the wall. There had been no control in either of them only a few moments ago. And it was getting worse every time they kissed like that!

      ‘I do not seduce innocent virgins,’ was his final stiff offering of what she presumed was supposed to be reassurance.

      Where it came from she did not know, because she had never done anything like it before. But, like a cobra rearing up for a sudden attack, she came away from that wall and pushed him violently out of her way, then stalked angrily off, shaking and trembling and wishing the pompous devil in hell!

      It was the word ‘innocent’ that had triggered her reaction; she knew that because the condescending sound of his voice saying it was still buzzing inside her head!

      Because the last thing she felt right now was innocent! She thought crossly as she paced the pale grey carpet in her room. What she did feel was hot and restless and excited!

      If it hadn’t been for Lissa, the little maid, coming to offer to show her where the nursery was, she probably would have started throwing things just to ease her wretched frustration!

      I hate him, she thought as she went off to spend the next couple of hours helping where she could with Melanie.

      I hate him! she repeated after spending ages arming herself ready to face him across the dinner table, only to find that the lucky devil had escaped to calmer places. ‘A business dinner,’ the staff called it.

      Claire begged to differ. She already recognised the tactics. Playing the advance and retreat game was just another fetish of his. So, having advanced, he was now in retreat, hiding, because he was afraid she might decide to call the whole thing off if he stayed around to let her!

      The next morning she came awake to find Althea standing over her with a breakfast tray carrying her usual tea and toast. Surprised, she pulled herself up the pillows then blinked the sleep from her eyes. ‘Hello. When did you arrive?’ she asked curiously.

      ‘Late last night.’ Althea smiled. ‘Andreas wanted to leave you to sleep this morning,’ she then explained apologetically. ‘But his grandmother is already asking for you. So …’

      Enough said, Claire acknowledged ruefully as she watched Althea place the tray across her lap and begin pouring her tea for her, just the way she liked it.

      After that, the two of them fell back into a harmonious routine they had perfected during her stay at the London house. Half an hour later, showered, dressed in a pair of tailored pale blue trousers and a simple white top, she was walking along the gallery to attend the royal summons.

      Althea was with her, by order of the grandmother, so Claire had been told. Knocking lightly on the old lady’s door, they then waited for the terse, ‘Enter!’ before stepping inside.

      The room looked quite different this morning. The tall screen had been moved from the window to allow the morning sun to stream in, and was now shielding a corner of the room.

      And what had looked like heavy and dark old-fashioned bits and bobs yesterday suddenly looked interestingly aged, making Claire want to walk around the room and study them.

      But the old lady was sitting there in her chair by the window looking cross and impatient. ‘What time do you call this?’ she snapped. ‘We get up at dawn in this country, not the end of the day.’

      Knowing it was only nine o’clock in the morning, Claire smiled at this gross piece of exaggeration. ‘But at least I came here first and without even going to see my baby,’ she remarked, taking her lead from the way Andreas had spoken to his grandmother yesterday, and deciding to take her on when she snapped.

      ‘What baby?’ the old woman shot back.

      ‘The …’ Ah, Claire thought, biting back the sarcastic reply she had been about to make. Taboo subject, she recalled as those beady eyes dared her—just dared her to say anything more about Melanie.