The Millionaire's Marriage Demand Read online

  “Black lace,” he said huskily. Then with sudden impatience, he stripped off his slacks and briefs.

  She wriggled out of the black lace. “Watch out for my knee, it’s still sore,” she said, and pulled his head down, her tongue darting to meet his in a kiss that seemed to last forever. A kiss in which the old Julie vanished.

  The new Julie, not knowing quite what to expect yet utterly willing to find out, tugged at Travis’s shoulders. “Lie on top of me,” she begged, “I want to feel every inch of you.”

  He slid his mouth down her throat, finding her breast, his hips pressing her into the quilt. She wrapped her arms around him, glorying in his weight, crying out with pleasure as he laved her nipple with his tongue. Sensation lanced through her, fiery and imperative. With a sensuality she had never thought she possessed, she ran her fingers through his chest hair, tugging at it gently, following it all the way to his navel and then beyond.

  Briefly he lifted his hips. And then she found his center, hot and silky, infinitely desirable. He groaned deep in his throat as she touched him, burying his face in her shoulder, his heart pounding against her ribs. As though he couldn’t help himself, he eased her legs apart and plunged into her.

  She gasped with delight, welcoming him and gathering him in. Inexpertly she moved her hips until he filled her, so that she scarcely knew where she ended and he began. Her own rhythms seized her, urgently and inexorably, mounting toward an unbearable peak. “Travis,” she muttered, “oh Travis…”

  “Sweetheart…” he said roughly, his fierce thrusts pushing her over the edge, the hard plane of his chest inflaming her nipples until she arched to meet him, crying out his name in an avalanche of release. He convulsed within her, his own cry echoing in her ears. Then he collapsed on top of her.

  Julie lay very still, and for several minutes couldn’t have said a word to save her soul. Gradually she came back to herself, to two hearts racing as one and a feeling of peace and fulfillment such as she’d never known. I’ve come home, she thought. It’s taken me all these years and many thousands of miles, and now I’ve come home…

  Abruptly Travis raised his head. “Julie, I’m sorry—that was over before it began.”

  A slow smile spread across Julie's face. “You’re sorry?” she said. “I hope not. But maybe I’m the one who should be apologizing. I was so impatient, so demanding—in such a big hurry. I wanted you so much, I couldn’t bear to wait.”

  Travis gave a sudden exultant laugh. “How about we both forget the word sorry? And how about we do it again? Say in five minutes. And this time maybe both of us can restrain ourselves so that it lasts longer than five minutes.”

  “You were timing us?” she said, batting her lashes at him.

  “Not exactly. Too much else was going on. As you may have noticed.”

  “Who, me?” Julie chuckled. She’d never known laughter could be part of lovemaking. She was beginning to suspect that there was a lot she’d never known. Letting all her newfound wonderment show in her face, she said ingenuously, “So I’m supposed to kiss you with restraint? Is that the way it works?”

  “No,” he said, “you’re supposed to kiss me like this.” He bent his head, finding her mouth, moving his lips over hers with tantalizing lightness. His tongue sought out hers, dancing with it, advancing and retreating. And at the same time, with exquisite pressure, he was stroking the warm slope of her breast, again and again.

  Low in her belly, a deep, sweet ache was born. She had time. That was what Travis was saying. Time to savor every sensation. Time to learn his body, to discover what he liked and what pleased him.

  Was that what was meant by intimacy?

  CHAPTER TEN

  Julie brought her hands to Travis’s face, searching out the hard planes of his jaw and cheekbones, tracing his deepset eyes, her own smiling into his with a mixture of shyness and invitation. His hair, so thick and silky; the corded tendons in his neck; the dip of his collarbone and the swell of taut muscle that was his shoulder, she explored them all and found them all utterly entrancing. And the whole time she watched his face, losing herself in the brilliant blue depths of his eyes. He said unsteadily, “Have I told you yet today how beautiful you are?”

  “If you did, I missed it.”

  “How your eyes are the green of a hummingbird’s wings? How your skin is smooth as a river?” As he ran his hands down her body, she shivered in response, his voice casting a spell over her. “How you tremble when I touch you. Like this. Or like this.”

  His palms, curving to her hips, cupping her buttocks, then sliding to her inner thighs, did indeed fill her with a wild, sweet trembling. Tears suddenly blurred her vision. “No one’s ever said such beautiful things to me.”

  He found the sleek petals of flesh between her legs, seeking out their heart, watching her face change as he stroked her very gently. “Does that give you pleasure?”

  She thrust with her hips, briefly closing her eyes. “Yes, oh yes…”

  She was drowning in desire, flooded by its tides. And she’d been ignorant enough to think it didn’t exist. She knew better now. Desire existed. Desire for Travis, for his big, muscular body and all the wonderful things he was doing to her.

  Going on instinct, Julie moved her hands further down his body, roaming the corded muscles of his belly, the jut of hipbone and his taut flanks. “If I’m beautiful,” she murmured, “so are you.”

  He suddenly rolled over, carrying her with him so that she was lying on top of him, pulling her face down to kiss her again. And all the time he was exploring her breasts and narrow waist, the flare of her hips, in slow, sensuous strokes. She kissed him back, moving his thighs apart so she could rub herself against him with a matching sensuality. “Do you like that?” she asked.

  “Like it?” he gasped. “Julie, I love everything you do.”

  With sudden shyness she said, “You mean I don’t disappoint you?”

  His hands stilled. “You couldn’t be further from the truth.” He paused for a moment, as if searching for the right words. “You told me you’d made love a long time ago, that you weren’t a virgin… but it’s almost as though I am the first. There’s an innocence about you that makes me feel very special.”

  She wasn’t sure she liked the direction he was heading. “I’m doing my best to lose that innocence,” she said lightly, “which will require your full cooperation.”

  “You’ve got it,” Travis said, and lifted her to ride him. She was more than ready for him; as he buried himself deep within her, she gasped with delight. Again Travis found the place where she was most achingly sensitive, teasing her flesh until she was shuddering with pent-up need, her head thrown back, her belly taut within the hollow of her rib cage. An inward throbbing seized her, wild as an ocean storm; she rode him as though he were the waves of the sea until the last barriers between them dissolved, and his own climax reared to meet hers.

  The last fierce ripple ran through her; the sounds she was hearing were her own harsh indrawn breaths mingled with his. As though she were boneless, she sank down on top of him, holding him close, his body hair rough under her cheek. “It happened again,” she said raggedly.

  “I feel like I’m making up for a lifetime of hunger,” Travis said hoarsely, wrapping his arms around her.

  “I feel like I’ve been ambushed,” she croaked. “I had no idea making love could be like that.”

  “Look at me, Julie.”

  She glanced up, the expression on his face catching at her heartstrings. Distantly she felt the stirrings of what was unquestionably panic. “Travis, I—”

  “I want you to know something—I’ve never made love like that in my life,” he said in the same hoarse voice. “I’d pictured seducing you slowly, taking my time, giving you the most pleasure I was capable of. But instead, both times, I was totally out of control. That’s not like me… to lose myself like that.”

  Her one desire to defuse a level of emotion that terrified her, Julie said pertly, �
��It’s not like me, either—you can take that to the bank.”

  To her relief he smiled. “We could try again. Although we may have to wait more than five minutes this time… I’m only human.” His smile widened. “Tell you what. Why don’t I take you out for dinner? Then we could come back here and make love all night. Or we could go to my place if you like.”

  “Dinner… did you say dinner?” In a flurry of bare limbs, Julie sat bolt upright, her face horror-stricken. “Moroccan chicken. Ohmigosh!”

  “What’s the matter?” Travis demanded. As she tried to scramble off him, he grabbed her by the wrist. “Surely the thought of a dinner date with me isn’t that horrendous?”

  She tugged futilely at his grasp. “My parents, they’re coming here for dinner. I’m making this fancy chicken casserole.” Her gaze fell on the bedside clock, her voice rising. “They’re going to arrive in three-quarters of an hour.”

  Travis said promptly, “I’ll do the dishes, and you cook.”

  She looked at him as though he had two heads. “Are you suggesting you stay for dinner with my parents?”

  “Yeah… I guess I am.”

  “No way! I’m not letting them within a mile of you. Let go, Travis, please.”

  If anything, his grip tightened. “What’s the big deal with your parents, Julie?”

  She struck at his hand. “I am not going to tell you my life history when my mother and father will be ringing the doorbell in exactly forty-three minutes.” She gave a moan of despair. “They’re always punctual. Precisely on time. They’ll take one look at me and they’ll know what I’ve been doing all afternoon. How could I have forgotten they were coming?”

  “You forgot because we were doing something more important.”

  How could she argue with him? She was the one who’d thrown herself at him. “That’s your interpretation,” she said fractiously.

  Travis released her wrist so suddenly that she almost fell sideways. “You want me out of here? Right now?”

  “Of course!”

  His voice hardened. “There’s no of course about it. Not from my point of view. We just made love. Twice, in case you’ve forgotten. And now you want to hustle me out the door so your parents won’t catch sight of me and think you’ve actually been with a man. How old are you, for heaven’s sake?”

  “Thirty,” she muttered, scrabbling for her clothes, which seemed to be scattered all over the floor. “What’s that got to do with it? Do hurry, Travis.”

  “Just you wait a minute,” he said grimly. He stood up, towering over her, stark naked and angrier than she’d ever seen him. Taking her by the shoulders, he grated, “We made love. That means something to me, and I’m not going to walk out the door as though it never happened. We’ll get together tomorrow evening after work. We can meet in the middle of the park, or in a coffee shop, or all the way out at the Spring Point lighthouse—I don’t give a damn where we meet. But we’re going to meet. And you’re going to talk, Julie. You’re going to tell me why you’ve never had a serious boyfriend in your life, and how that relates to your parents. Have you got that?”

  It wasn’t easy to be cool, calm and collected when wearing nothing but black lace briefs and confronted by a large, angry and entirely naked male; but Julie did her best. “That’s your agenda,” she said coldly, “You haven’t asked me mine.”

  “I don’t care if you’ve already got plans—cancel them,” he grated, and with complete composure bent to pick up his scattered clothes. Julie averted her eyes from the long curve of his spine. She still wanted him, she thought, appalled. How could she? What was wrong with her?

  Was she some kind of sex maniac?

  An inner resolve, scarcely articulated, hardened into shape. “I—I don’t think we should see each other again,” she said.

  Travis’s hands stilled on his belt buckle. “Would you mind repeating that?”

  “You heard.”

  “We’ve just been as intimate as a man and woman can be, and now you want me to vanish from your life?”

  Chilled to the bone, Julie wrapped her arms around her waist. “Yes,” she said, “I do.”

  His eyes never leaving her face, Travis reached for his shirt. “You don’t think two people should be involved in that decision?”

  Flinching from his sarcasm, she said, “It’s precisely because I don’t want to be part of a couple that I’m making the decision.”

  “Do you have to sound so cold-blooded?”

  He sounded anything but. Unbidden, an image of his face at the moment of climax flashed into her mind. Julie shoved it away, pain lancing her heart. “I’m trying to avoid disappointment in the future,” she cried. “For both of us.”

  “You let me look after myself,” Travis said grimly. “You’re looking for guarantees, Julie, that’s what you’re doing. There aren’t any, haven’t you learned that yet?”

  “I won’t commit to any kind of long-term relationship with you… so what’s the point of seeing you again? We’ll both end up getting hurt.”

  “I don’t understand—you’ve lived in India and Tanzania, yet you won’t take the smallest of gambles in your personal life. What kind of parents have you got?”

  “The kind that are a perfect advertisement for singlehood,” she flared. “Travis, I have the right to say I don’t want to see you again, and I’m exercising that right.”

  Doing up the buttons on his shirt, he said, “You’re denying yourself the possibility of falling in love, of marriage and bearing children… is that the way you plan to live for the rest of your life?”

  “The first time we met, you told me it was against your principles to belong to anyone!”

  “Maybe I’ve changed.” he said.

  “Then that’s your problem.” She had to end this. “It would have been better if this afternoon had never happened, I was a fool to even let you in the door.”

  “You were the one who instigated our lovemaking.”

  “I made a mistake!”

  “So an experience that damn near knocked me off my feet was nothing but a mistake?”

  “Stop it! I can’t take any more of this. Just go away and leave me alone, Travis—that’s all I ask.”

  “You don’t have a worry in the world,” he said savagely, turned on his heel and left the bedroom.

  Julie opened her closet door, grabbing a skirt and blouse off the hangers. She was trembling again, just as she’d trembled when Travis had undressed her. But now it was nothing to do with desire.

  Dimly, as if the sounds came from another world, she heard Travis’s shoes scrape on the front mat; then the apartment door slammed shut.

  He’d gone.

  She’d done the right thing. She knew she had. Yet all she wanted to do was throw herself across the bed and cry her eyes out. In the space of a few minutes, she’d plummeted from the bliss she’d found in his arms to this dead despair.

  For it had been bliss. She’d felt whole, perhaps for the first time in her life. Travis had made her complete.

  With a tiny moan of dismay, Julie ran for the bathroom and turned on the shower. Ten minutes later, dressed and more or less presentable, she hurried into the kitchen. She’d scrap making the Moroccan chicken. She had time to do the dishes, run a mop over the kitchen floor and thaw some pasta sauce that she had in the freezer. Thank heavens she’d made the cheesecake this morning.

  Before all this had happened. Before her life had changed irreversibly.

  Quickly Julie filled the sink with hot water. She mustn’t think about Travis; she couldn’t afford to. She squirted detergent into the sink and tossed in the dirty cutlery; when the buzzer sounded twenty minutes later, the clean dishes were stacked in the tray, the kitchen floor had dried, she’d added extra scallops and shrimp to the sauce and she’d just thrown the place mats on the table. The other thing she’d done was bury the sweet peas Travis had brought her in the depths of the garbage can.

  Taking a long, deep breath, Julie walked to the door,
opening it wide. “Hello Mum, Dad,” she said, and lifted her cheek to be kissed. Her parents didn’t do hugs.

  “Hello, Julie,” her mother said. “You look very flushed, are you feeling all right?”

  “Of course she is,” her father said heartily. “You’re like me, never ill. Right, Julie?”

  This was a not-so-subtle dig at his wife Pearl, who enjoyed a variety of ailments, many of them genuine. The minor heart attack she’d had in the spring had been lumped with everything else by her husband; Julie, more knowledgeable, had been encouraging her mother to eat a little less and exercise a little more.

  Pearl ignored her husband’s comment, passing Julie her wet raincoat. “What a terrible day… oh, you didn’t get around to laying the table?”

  How well Julie knew that air of faint reproach; all too often it had been directed her way. “A friend dropped in unexpectedly,” she said, opting for a censored version of the truth. “So I’m not quite ready.”

  Her mother headed right for the kitchen. “Seafood pasta, how nice… you’ve heard they’ve been having trouble with the local scallops, have you? Some kind of algal growth.”

  “No, I hadn’t heard,” Julie said evenly. “Can I get you a glass of wine?”

  “I’ll stick to fruit juice, dear. Much better for you.”

  “Do you know why the French live longer?” Thomas Renshaw interposed. “Red wine, proven to cut down on heart attacks.”

  Julie said dryly, “I’ve only got white, Dad.”

  “If you’d had red, he’d have wanted white,” Pearl said with a merry little laugh. “Wouldn’t you, darling?”