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

Claire protested as she fell back another step—then another, until the backs of her trembling knees hit the edge of the bed. ‘I can do whatever I want to do. You promised me that,’ she reminded him. ‘When I agreed to all of this.’

      ‘And you want to take a lover,’ he breathed in taut understanding.

      ‘Why—will you be jealous?’ she taunted him, with a sense of horror at her own crazy recklessness.

      Something came alive on his lean, dark face that had her hand shooting up to press against his chest in a purely defensive action meant to keep him back.

      ‘No,’ she murmured unsteadily. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

      He said nothing, but his eyes were certainly talking to her. They were gazing down at the hectic heave of her breasts beneath the stretch-silk tulle as if he could actually see this so-called lover’s hands on her body. And at last the alarm bells began ringing inside her head, warning her that she had finally managed to awaken the sleeping devil she’d always known must live somewhere inside him.

      She should leave, she knew that. She should get the hell out of this bedroom and hide away somewhere until he had got his temper back.

      But she didn’t move another muscle. Instead she just stood there and trembled and shook.

      A little whimper escaped her.

      It was enough to bring his eyes flicking up to clash with her eyes—and their darkness was so blisteringly intense that her lungs suddenly stopped working altogether.

      He was faring no better, she realised. His heart was pounding; she could feel it hammering against his ribs beneath the place where her hand lay flat against his chest in its puny effort to ward him off. He felt warm and tough, the masculine formation of well developed muscle so intensely exciting to her that she froze on a wave of horrified shock.

      ‘No,’ she breathed in shaken rejection—and went to jerk her hand away from him—only he stopped her by covering it with his own hand.

      It was then that the heat went racing through her. The heat of fear, the heat of desire, the heat of a terrible temptation.

      But what was worse was she could feel the self-same temptation thundering through him! He was still, he was tense, and he was vibrating with a desire so strong that there really was no denying it.

      Anxious eyes flicked back to clash with his. ‘No,’ she repeated in breathless denial of what she saw written there. ‘You don’t want me,’ she whispered shakily.

      To her surprise he laughed, the sound so harsh and tight and bitterly deriding that it managed to make her wince. Yet she received the disturbing impression that it was himself he was deriding.

      ‘You fool,’ he muttered then, and before she could even feed the words into her brain he had spread one set of long brown fingers across the satin-smooth skin between her shoulder blades, cupped the other to the back of her head. And, with a hard, rough, angrily masculine jerk, he tugged her up against him then took her startled mouth hotly and savagely.

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      SHE didn’t stand a single chance.

      Her senses went haywire, every one of them making a mad scrambling surge towards that life-giving mouth like butterflies set free from the bonds of their chrysalis. Her lips fell apart, her tongue going in urgent search of its partner. He shuddered violently at the intimate contact, his hands banding her more closely to him. Like two magnets of opposing poles, they became locked together in a sizzling exchange that left no room for anything but the burning eruption that was taking place between them.

      It was wild and it was hot, fuelled by his anger and her refusal to back down no matter what the consequences. It was a lethal combination that flung the whole thing spinning out of control so quickly that neither was able to snatch sanity back.

      He took her mouth savagely—and savagely she replied, inciting the whole crazed, potent experience into a frenzy of desire that closed down time and space to this one small zone filled with a vibrant, soaring, passionate energy.

      It was devouring—intoxicating. The more he took, the more she gave, arching to the stroke of his hands on her body, literally sighing with pleasure when he touched her breasts. Her injured hand was locked around his neck so her fingers could cling to his hair, her other hand lost inside his jacket, greedily learning every muscle-rippling contour along his back-bone as he jerked and shuddered to her touch.

      It was like touching heaven, and if the door to the bedroom had suddenly swung open neither of them would have heard it, they were so lost, so caught up in a conflagration that had been sharply building between them for days.

      ‘Claire …’ He groaned her name against her hungry mouth.

      Whether in pleasure or in protest she didn’t know, but the sudden flare of heat coming from him set her own flesh burning. She gasped when she felt the power of his arousal surge against her. It caused an echoing eruption within herself, locking her thighs in an urgent need to maintain that vital contact as a flare of bright, blinding, blistering desire went shooting through her.

      Like seasoned lovers, she thought dazedly. You would be forgiven for thinking that we did this with each other all the time! When in actual fact Claire had never felt like this before—ever!

      The halter-style bodice to her dress dropped to her waistline, his hands feathered over newly exposed flesh, and she gasped on a tremor of nerve-tingling pleasure as her knees gave out and she toppled dizzily back onto the bed.

      He followed her downwards so that they landed in a tangle of limbs that only seemed to intensify their excitement. His breathing was fast, his expression intense, his mouth still moist from their long, hot kiss. But it was the look in his eyes that sent Claire completely still beneath him.

      In all her life, she had never seen anything like it before. It was hot and it was ravenous but it was also painfully—painfully vulnerable.

      ‘I want you,’ he said hoarsely.

      ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I can tell that you do.’ But it was said very gently. For some reason that she didn’t understand this big, strong, very arrogant man was hurting enough without her adding to it by taunting him.

      Without really having to think about the wiseness of it, she reached up and kissed him—as a lover would kiss a true lover.

      Then it was back. The hot, hard, driving passion that had no time or room for gentleness or leisure. He kissed like a man who hadn’t done this for centuries, and she responded with a passion that she’d never known she possessed.

      Her dress slid away without her even noticing, then his jacket, his shirt and tie. He kissed and licked and caressed and suckled her until she was so lost in the frenzied storm that she had no idea what she was doing any more.

      So when she dared to fold her hand around the length of his burgeoning sex it came as a shock to feel him go utterly motionless beside her. Opening heavy, love-glazed eyes, she lay there watching as he seemed to take an actual pause in life itself. His eyes were closed, his dark face taut, his mouth flattened into a single white-ringed line of unbearable tension.

      Yet not sexual tension, but a different tension.

      ‘Andreas?’ she breathed, unsure what was happening.

      When he didn’t respond she went to take her hand away, a hot flush of mortification staining her cheeks. But his hand snaked down to stay her, long fingers trembling slightly as they kept hers tightly wrapped around him.

      Then he let the air out of his lungs in a long, slow, measured way, and his eyes fluttered open, revealing those dark, dark irises where that awful, wretched, pained vulnerability was back again.

      He didn’t say anything, though, and when he came to lean over her the tempo changed—the man changed, turning from ravaging hunter into devastatingly rich and sensual lover.

      Still greedy, he was greedy—but