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Her spine arched, wild torrents of joyous sensation cascading through her quivering body as he pushed back her thighs and rose over her, pounding into her tight depths with driving hunger. She thrashed under him, every nerve-ending electrified by the pagan rhythm of his hard thrusts and the inexorable climb towards another climax. When it came, she hit a peak and shattered like glass, shocked by the white-hot intensity of excitement exploding inside her.
She fell back against the pillows, utterly drained of energy, while Bastien groaned long and low and shuddered with pleasure.
Bastien drank in the scent of Delilah’s shampoo as he struggled to get his breath back. Her silky hair had the sweet fresh perfume of a summer meadow. Her arms were still wrapped around him and he lifted his tousled dark head to drop a brief but appreciative kiss on her brow.
‘You’re an unbeatable cure for a nightmare, glikia mou,’ he husked with wicked amusement, rolling free of her to head for the bathroom.
The minute he arrived there he realised too late what was missing. He had not used a condom—not that last time or the time before it in the shower.
It was a very dangerous oversight that chilled Bastien and made him want to punch something hard in angry self-loathing. The shower beat down on him while some of the worst memories of his life engulfed him and he shuddered, knowing what he must do, knowing that this time around he would not dare to walk away and simply hope for the best.
Delilah needed to know that, whatever happened, her future and that of any child she had would be totally secure.
A towel knotted round his lean brown hips, he strode back into the bedroom and proceeded to disconcert Lilah with what she deemed to be inappropriate questions.
‘Why on earth are you asking me such things?’ she demanded tautly, her colour high from embarrassment.
‘We’ve had sex twice without a condom,’ Bastien told her grimly. ‘I’m regularly tested and I’m clean, so there is no risk of an infection. I’m merely trying to calculate the odds of conception.’
Lilah’s whole body turned cold at the threat of an unplanned pregnancy. She hadn’t noticed the lack of contraception—had been as lost in passion as he must have been. That acknowledgement stung, because she knew how important it was to take precautions and protect herself from such consequences.
Ashamed that she could have been so reckless and immature as to overlook such necessities, she answered his questions about her menstrual cycle and watched his frown steadily darken.
‘Obviously you could conceive. You’re young, fertile...naturally there’s a good chance.’ His beautiful mouth compressed hard. ‘We’ll get married as soon as I can get it organised.’
‘Married?’ Lilah parrotted in a strangled shriek, sitting up in bed with a sudden jerk, her eyes awash with disbelief as she stared back at him.
His unfathomable dark eyes glittered. ‘You need to know that whatever happens I’m there for you, and a wedding ring is the only security a man can offer a woman in that situation.’
‘People don’t rush off and get married simply because of a contraceptive oversight,’ Lilah whispered shakily. ‘That would be crazy.’
‘I know exactly what I’m doing. My first child was aborted when I was only twenty-one,’ Bastien explained, shattering her with that flat statement of fact. ‘I refuse to risk a repeat of that experience.’
Lilah was poleaxed. ‘But...but I—’
‘So we’ll get married. And if it transpires that we have no reason to stay married we’ll get an equally quick divorce,’ Bastien assured her smoothly, as though such a fast turnaround from marriage to divorce would be the most natural development in the world.
‘But we can’t just get married on the off-chance that I might be pregnant,’ she muttered incredulously.
‘If you have conceived we’ll be married and you’ll be less tempted to consider a termination,’ Bastien pointed out with assurance. ‘We don’t need to publicise our marriage in the short term, or drag anyone else into our predicament. We’ll have a private wedding.’
Stunned, Lilah flopped down flat again, exhaustion rolling over her like a hefty blanket. It was all too much to take in. The shocking revelations of his past and the sheer impossibility of their future.
