The Marriage Demand Read online

  Instead she had to content herself with a heartfelt, ‘You’ll never know how much I regret what happened to Philip, Nash. How much I wish…’ She stopped as her throat clogged with emotion. ‘Please,’ she begged him. ‘Please, Nash, we’re both adults and we both loved Philip. Surely we can put aside our differences for his sake…for the sake of what he wanted for Hatton?’

  ‘Our differences?’ Nash threw harshly at her. ‘My God, you make it sound as though we’ve had an idiotic quarrel about some minor incident, not—’

  ‘I do know how you feel about me, Nash,’ Faith told him quietly. ‘I know you feel that I deserve to be punished, even though—’ She stopped and made herself focus on the matter in hand, not her own feelings. ‘What I wanted to say to you is that if that punishment is going to affect Robert and the Foundation, and Philip’s plans for the house, then…’

  ‘Then what?’ Nash challenged. ‘What will you do then, Faith?’

  ‘Whatever it takes not to have that happen,’ Faith told him simply and truthfully. ‘I’ll do whatever you want, Nash, just so long as you don’t stop the Foundation from having Hatton.’

  Whatever he wanted! Nash could hardly believe what he had just heard. Faith was offering herself to him in return for his silence.

  A furious, savage, destructive anger swept down over him, a culmination of all the years of pain and loss, a dangerous implosion set in motion by the kiss he had witnessed and his own reaction to it.

  Years ago she had offered herself to him with what he had then believed to be the innocence of youth—an offer he had truly thought came from love. But he had been so very, very wrong…and only he knew of the nights, the lifetime he had lain awake aching for her, wanting her, swearing that he would burn his need for her out of his heart and flesh himself rather than give in to it.

  Did she really imagine for a single second that he would take her up on her offer—an offer that proved irrefutably just what kind of person she was? Of course he wasn’t going to, not even for the satisfaction of teaching her a much-needed lesson. But he surely had the right to exact some payment from her.

  ‘And what does Robert think about your…offer…to me?’ he asked her silkily.

  Faith frowned. Hadn’t he been listening to her?

  ‘Robert doesn’t know anything about this,’ she told him quickly. ‘And he mustn’t know either.’

  Faith was worried that if Robert did know he might insist on doing something chivalrous, which might damage his own position, and that was the last thing she wanted.

  ‘So this is to be a personal…arrangement…a private agreement?’ Nash suggested.

  ‘Yes,’ Faith agreed immediately, holding her breath as she waited for Nash to ask her what she intended to do if he didn’t agree. Once she had answered that question, informed him that she would hand in her notice rather than prejudice the Foundation’s work, she knew there would be no going back. But to her surprise Nash did not ask the question she had been expecting.

  As the silence between them grew Faith fiddled nervously with one of her earrings, expelling a sharp sound of distress as it came loose and fell to the floor, dropping down on her hands and knees to look for it.

  The images, the temptation, the torment of seeing her in such a pose caused Nash to grind his teeth in furious self-denial. How on earth had he ever imagined her to be innocent?

  As she searched the floor her head was on a level with his groin, the distance between them less than a metre—much less than a metre, he recognised as she crawled closer to him. Totally against his will he could feel his body reacting to her. Angrily he tried to control the fierce upsurge of desire hardening his body, turning away from her as he did so to conceal the evidence of the effect she was having on him.

  Suddenly he could see her lying naked in his bed, all silken skin and open arms…

  Ten years ago he had dreamed of gently and tenderly initiating her into the pleasure of lovemaking, but now he suspected she could well be the one teaching him. Then, at twenty-two, he had considered himself to be reasonably sexually knowledgeable and accomplished, but after he had met Faith—

  He had been living in New York the year Faith was twenty-one, dating an ‘uptown’ woman several years his senior who had made no pretence about her reasons for wanting him in her bed, and only in her bed, since she’d had her own very successful career.

  They had been planning to have a weekend together out of the city at the Hamptons. She’d had friends who had a house there they could borrow. The day before they had been due to go he had received his yearly report on Faith’s progress via the third party through whom he was financing her education, in obedience to his godfather’s wishes.

  Only he and Philip’s bank knew how little money Philip had left, how impossible it would have been to pay for Faith’s education out of that money.

  The report had been glowingly full of praise for her—not just for her scholastic work but also for the extramural activities she’d been involved in: raising money for children’s charities, giving her limited spare time to help teach young children to read. There had even been a mention of her upcoming twenty-first birthday.

  To this day Nash had no idea just why he had gone out and bought her those earrings. He had told himself that it was because Philip would have wanted him to do it. Small the diamonds might have been, but they had been the best quality that Tiffany’s could supply, set in twenty-four-carat gold. He had mailed them to England before leaving for his weekend at the Hamptons.

  His companion had been scornful and vocal about his body’s embarrassing failure to respond to her, and although eventually they had had sex, sex was all it had been—a joyless, grimly fought for physical coupling which hadn’t afforded either of them very much pleasure.

  ‘Oh…thank goodness…’ he heard Faith exclaiming now, as her face broke out into a relieved smile and she picked up her earring.

  ‘For God’s sake, get up,’ Nash commanded. ‘I don’t need demonstrations of your sexual skills, Faith.’

  Her sexual skills! Faith’s face burned as she realised just what he meant.

  ‘And as for your offer—well, let’s just say that the jury is still out, shall we?’ Nash told her.

  Faith closed her eyes as she stood up. Why on earth had she bothered to try to appeal to him? It was plain that he fully intended to go on tormenting her.

  Nash frowned as he heard his own words. What was he saying? There was no way he intended to even consider the sordid bargain Faith was trying to strike with him.

  But something was driving him, savaging him. Something he didn’t want to name and couldn’t bear to acknowledge.

  As Nash turned to walk towards the bedroom door Faith hurried after him. There was something she still had to ask—how long had he been the sole trustee of Philip’s estate?

  But before she could say anything Nash had turned round, asking her bitingly, ‘What is it you want, Faith? This?’

  And then he was kissing her, covering her mouth with his, savaging it, destroying the fragile fabric of the illusion she had created for herself that somehow there could be peace between them.

  ‘No!’ she tried to deny, reaching out to push him away. But Nash simply swung her round, pressing her up against the door as he cupped her face to prevent her turning away from him.

  ‘Yes,’ he reinforced rawly, driving the word into her as he parted her lips with his tongue, thrusting it so powerfully into the vulnerable sensitivity of her mouth that her whole body quivered in shocked recognition of the sensuality of his action.

  Imprisoned against the closed door, with the full weight of his lower body resting against her, Faith struggled to combat her own feelings. If Nash’s actions had shocked her, then her own reaction to them was even more shocking, and made her even more angry.

  Instinctively she knew that never in a thousand lifetimes could Robert make her feel like this, make her experience such a fierce, female clawing and urgent need to match the raw se
xuality of Nash’s behaviour.

  Was this the price Nash intended to demand for his silence, his acquiescence to the Foundation’s acquisition of Hatton? Her? The use of her body in whatever way he chose to use it?

  Faith burned with shame and bitter fury—and with another emotion, far stronger than the combined strength of the other two. An emotion that stripped her pride bare and lashed the flesh from her emotions, leaving them raw and bleeding. She wanted Nash.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE black dress lay in a pool of darkness at Faith’s feet and the diamonds she had replaced in her ears shone through the butterscotch and cream of her hair. Her skin gleamed with its own living, breathing warmth, covered only by the nude-coloured camisole she was still wearing. But Faith herself was oblivious to the sensuality and torment she presented to Nash. Every hedonistic and wanton urge she had ever possessed was combining with the emotion she had fought so hard to conquer and deny, causing her to cling urgently to him as she returned the fierce passion of his kiss.

  It was as though when Nash had released her from her dress he had also released her from her inhibitions; the fury and bitterness she had originally felt as he kissed her had burned away to nothing but the sheer power of her response to him.

  As a girl she might have dreamed of him kissing her, of them being lovers, but as a girl she had been far too immature to ever dream of anything like this—this raw, hungry, aching, overpowering need for him which was filling her, driving her, compelling her.

  Beneath her fingers she could feel the fabric of his shirt, a barrier to what she really wanted to touch and feel, and she gave a small female growl of thwarted longing, her body tensing with the frustration of not being able to touch him as she so much needed to do, skin to skin, flesh to flesh.

  As her fingertips found the opening at the front of his shirt her growl turned to a soft purr of pleasure, but he was the one who was trembling from the effect of what she was doing, Nash recognised helplessly as his body reacted immediately to her touch.

  He tried to remind himself of why he was here, of why he was doing this, but Faith’s fingers were tugging frantically at his shirt buttons and instinctively he started to help her.

  ‘You feel so good…’

  Helplessly, totally lost in what she was feeling, Faith moaned the words into his mouth, the movement of her lips against his a series of soft, erotic little flutters that made him shudder from head to toe.

  God, but he wanted her…craved her…needed her…He had always known it would be good between them, but had never dreamed it could be like this…

  How could just kissing someone make her feel as though her whole body was about to explode? Faith wondered dizzily.

  With Nash’s help she had finally unfastened his shirt. Greedily she stroked her hands over his naked chest. She wanted to touch him, stroke him, kiss him, lick him, breathe in the pheromone-laden scent of him that was already affecting her so headily.

  The only reason he was doing this, Nash told himself, was to remind himself of just what she was, to see just how far she was prepared to go.

  Pain streaked the fiery intensity of his longing for her. He couldn’t possibly still love her—not knowing what she was, what she’d done. But the way she was touching him was driving him crazy…drowning out any kind of logic or reason.

  Nash hadn’t stopped kissing her from the moment he had pushed her up against the door, Faith recognised giddily. She felt almost drunk, drugged by the way he was making her feel, by the way he was making her need him. Her lips clung to his as the hot, hard weight of his lower body moved against hers, keeping her pinned where she was and reinforcing with every movement how powerfully male he was.

  Once, a long time ago, she had broken all the rules, turned her back on convention and, driven by her teenage hormones and her love, had gone to Nash’s room, creeping into its darkness to find her way to his bed.

  All she had wanted to do was be with him, to have him hold her, love her, but as he had sat bolt upright in the bed she had seen in the silvery light of the moon that he was naked, and a wild, wanton female urge had overtaken her, driving her to beg him to kiss her.

  Then, for a moment, she had almost thought that he might as he had leaned closer to her. She had held her breath and closed her eyes, trembling from head to foot when his hands had closed over her wrists. But the words he had eventually spoken had not been soft, sensual words of love, but a harsh command to her to open her eyes.

  When she had complied he had told her firmly, ‘This has got to stop, Faith, for both our sakes. You’re young and you don’t really know what you’re asking…or doing,’ he had added more gently. ‘I promise you that one day you will thank me for sending you away tonight.’

  Thank him…Shamed and in despair, Faith had fled from his room to cry herself to sleep in her own bed. But now, as she remembered that incident, she acknowledged that Nash had been right. At fifteen she had been too young for the intensity of the raw passion they were now sharing.

  Now, she sensed with a surge of erotic female power, there was no way that either of them was going to be able to stop.

  Emboldened by her own thoughts, she pulled Nash’s shirt free of his jeans.

  A long, slow shudder of pleasure rolled through her as she touched his naked torso. But just touching him wasn’t enough. She wanted to look at him, taste him, fill her famished senses with the sensual reality of him, with the knowledge that he wanted her, needed her, as powerfully as she did him.

  Dragging her mouth away from his was almost a form of torture, but worth the momentary sense of loss it caused her when her awed gaze slid with hedonistic enjoyment over his body.

  No film star could ever come anywhere near matching Nash for sheer heart-stopping, hormone-inducing, raw masculine sensuality, Faith decided. He was everything a man could be, everything a man should be, and yet, for all the hot, passionate intensity and impatience of her desire, there was still a part of her that was suddenly and sweetly overwhelmed by loving tenderness.

  Responding to those emotions, she kissed the top of her finger and gently placed it against the masculine outline of his throat, and then replaced it with her lips, her mouth, slowly starting to kiss her way downwards.

  Nash felt as though he had opened a door and walked into his deepest and most private fantasy—only in that Faith had interspersed her kisses with words of love.

  Ten years old that fantasy might be, but, as he was discovering, it still had the same power over him now as it had done then.

  ‘Faith,’ he groaned, taking hold of her and demanding, ‘How would you like me to do that to you? To tease you, torment you, lie you down on that bed and slowly kiss my way all over your body?’

  As she tilted her head back so that she could look into his eyes Faith knew that her own were betraying her, but she was beyond caring.

  ‘You want that?’ Nash was asking her thickly. ‘You want me to kiss your breasts, your nipples, your belly…’ His voice dropped to a low, raw growl of male arousal. ‘That special secret place? Do you want that, Faith?’ he demanded. ‘Do you want me to kiss you there, to taste you, lick you, make you want to give yourself completely to me?’

  Faith couldn’t speak. She could barely move; her whole body was held in thrall to the heavy, hot pulse of sensation inside it, that Nash’s words had aroused.

  Nash couldn’t believe what he was saying—thinking…wanting…He was like a man possessed, taken over by some alien power—the power of love…

  As the words slid into his mind he pushed them away. This had nothing to do with love. This was justice. This was—

  Faith had started to kiss him, tiny hungry darting kisses that covered his face, his throat, his mouth.

  ‘Take off your clothes, Nash,’ she begged him. ‘Take me to bed. Show me…teach me…’

  Teach her! Nash wanted to tell her that he doubted there was anything he could possibly teach a woman like her, but she was reaching for the belt on his jean
s, fumbling with the clasp, and the feel of those slim feminine fingers fluttering helplessly against his body was doing the kind of things to him that would have brought a stone statue to life.

  Even so, he still tried to cling to sanity. He started to say gruffly to her, ‘We need—’

  But Faith shook her head, interrupting him, telling him in a desire-laden whisper, ‘I need you, Nash. I need you so much…so badly…’

  Her hand had been resting on his waist as she unfastened his jeans, and now, without him even being aware of her having moved, he felt it sliding inside them. He could feel as well as hear the sound of the aching groan inside his head as her touch grew bolder.

  Faith shuddered as the movement of her hand caused Nash’s jeans to drop lower and his body to tense. Beneath her fingertips she could feel the crisp thickness of his body hair.

  In retaliation Nash slid down the delicate straps of her camisole, exposing the full, taut roundness of her breasts. Her nipples were already hard, responding to the hungry touch of his hands.

  As he bent his head, unable to resist responding to the temptation they were offering him, Nash drew a long, shuddering breath. They were behaving like two hormone-crazy teenagers, so hot for one another that they couldn’t wait for the comfort of a bed—but they weren’t teenagers. They were…

  The shudder that tormented Faith’s body as Nash’s lips closed over her nipple drove the ability to think about anything other than what they were sharing completely out of his head. He swept Faith into his arms and carried her over to the bed.

  Feeling that she had escaped into the most beautiful dream, Faith watched as Nash removed the rest of his clothes, her eyes soft with love.

  As a teenager she had hardly dared to allow herself to imagine being with Nash like this, and as an adult she had closed down that part of herself that was her sexuality. Now those barriers had melted like wax in the heat of the sun, and the sensation that raced and rolled and thrust through her unprepared body as she stared at Nash caused a flutter of such sexually explicit sensation to begin to unfurl, deep inside her, that she gave a small half-shocked, half-bemused little gasp.