The Tycoon's Marriage Deal Read online

He lifted his head and met her gaze. ‘It will get better the more we do it.’

  Tillie traced the line of his lower lip. ‘I can’t imagine how it could get better for me. I didn’t know my body was capable of that.’

  ‘You have a beautiful body that is capable of dismantling every bit of self-control I muster.’

  She searched his face for a beat or two. ‘Was it good for you?’

  He pressed a kiss to her mouth. ‘Better than good. Amazing. I’ve never slept with anyone like you before.’

  ‘You mean a virgin?’

  He played with a stray strand of her hair, winding it around his finger and letting it go, only to wind it back up again. ‘Not just that.’

  ‘Because I’m fat?’

  A frown formed between his eyes. ‘You aren’t fat. You’ve got a gorgeous figure.’

  ‘Have all your other lovers been slim?’

  He did a slow blink and let out a long breath as if summoning his patience. Then he rolled away and dealt with the condom before he sat on the edge of the bed, one of his hands coming to rest on the side of her thigh. ‘Listen to me, Tillie.’ His voice had that stern schoolmaster tone going on. ‘I understand that years of being engaged to a guy who never even tried to consummate the relationship would do a fair bit of damage to a girl’s self-esteem. But I hate hearing you being so negative about your body. You have nothing to be ashamed of.’

  Tillie let out a sigh. ‘I’m sorry for spoiling the moment.’

  He gave her a half-smile and leaned down to press another kiss to her mouth. ‘Repeat after me. I am beautiful just the way I am.’

  She turned her head away. ‘No! That sounds so ridiculously vain.’

  Blake turned her face back so she had to meet his gaze. ‘Say it.’

  Tillie looked into his eyes and for the first time in her life felt beautiful. Beautiful and desirable. ‘I am beautiful just the way I am. There, I said it. Now will you let me go?’

  He trailed a lazy fingertip down between her breasts. ‘Is that what you want me to do? Let you go or play with you some more?’

  A shiver raced over Tillie’s flesh at the sexy glint in his eyes. ‘You want me again?’

  He took one of her hands and brought it to the swell of his erection. ‘You turn me on, Tillie Toppington. Big time.’

  She stroked the proud heft of him, delighting in the way his expression contorted with each movement of her hand. ‘Will you promise to stop treating me like I’m made of glass?’

  ‘Are you sore?’

  Tillie squeezed her legs together but while there was a slight twinge it was more pleasure than pain. ‘Not a bit.’

  He came back down beside her, lying on his side with one elbow propping him up. His other hand slowly caressed her thigh, a small frown interrupting his features. ‘I was so determined I wasn’t going to do this. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about us going forward—’

  Tillie pressed a fingertip to his lips to silence him. ‘Will you repeat after me? I am having a no-strings fling with you and I am completely okay about it.’

  His expression flickered as if he was struggling with his conscience. ‘I’m having a no-strings fling with you and I am completely okay about it.’

  ‘You don’t sound very convincing,’ Tillie said, stroking the crease of his frown away without much success. ‘Your eyes were saying, what the hell have I done?’

  His mouth tilted in a rueful manner but his eyes still contained smoky grey shadows. ‘As long as we’re both clear on the boundaries.’

  ‘I’m perfectly clear on the boundaries,’ Tillie said, holding her fingers up as if to check off a list. ‘We are going to have heaps of hot sex. We are not going to fall in love. And as soon as you get McClelland Park back we will end our fling.’

  He tapped her on the end of her nose. ‘You will end it.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I get to do the honours this time,’ Tillie said. ‘Will I do it in person or would you prefer a text?’

  His frown came back. ‘If ever I run into your ex I’m going to tell him what a pathetic yellow-bellied coward he is.’

  Tillie couldn’t help feeling a thrill at his comment. While everyone in the village had supported her in her disappointment when Simon jilted her, her father and stepmother had taken the ‘forgive and forget’ approach. Their lack of anger at Simon had made her feel as if they weren’t listening to her, as if they were completely unaware of how deeply hurt she felt about being left in the lurch like that.

  ‘You know something?’ she said, toying with a whorl of Blake’s chest hair as if it was the most fascinating thing she had ever seen, which, quite frankly, it was. Simon hadn’t had a single hair on his chest and not from waxing them off, either. ‘I was really disappointed when my father and stepmother refused to be angry with Simon. They kept carrying on about how I should forgive and forget as if he’d simply cancelled a date. I found it upsetting they thought it was far more important to forgive him than to let me express how hurt I was. I stopped talking to them about it because I know it disappointed them to see me so bitter and angry.’

  Why are you telling him all your stuff?

  Tillie knew exactly why. Because he listened with a concerned look on his face as if he were putting himself in her shoes and feeling hurt and betrayed on her behalf.

  ‘Are you close to them?’

  Tillie had always thought she was up until Simon had jilted her. ‘I was hurt by the way they hadn’t seemed to fully understand how devastated I was the day of the wedding. I expected them to be furious on my behalf. They had flown thousands of miles to be there, and at great cost, and yet when it was called off they simply shrugged as if a tea party had been cancelled.’

  His expression was not only concerned but she was almost certain she could see a flicker of anger lurking in the back of his gaze. Anger on her behalf. ‘That’s terrible. They should’ve supported you better than that. Don’t they know you at all?’

  What was he saying? That he knew her better than her own family? Weird. Nice weird. ‘I guess if I was truly close to them I would have told them the truth about you and me. But I didn’t. I didn’t feel comfortable lying to them but it was easier than admitting I was pretending to be engaged. They hold marriage as sacred so it would appal them that I was acting the part of your fiancée with no intention of it ever being real.’

  Blake’s frown dug a little deeper on his brow. ‘What will they think of us living together?’

  ‘I’m not sure they’ll find out unless someone else in the village mentions it if they were to write or email them. I only told them we were engaged. They’re on a remote mission posting in Uganda. The Internet and phone coverage is patchy and unreliable so I haven’t heard back yet. Sometimes it can take days or even weeks to hear back from them.’

  He threaded his fingers through hers, bringing up her hand to his mouth, holding her gaze with his thoughtful and serious one. ‘It’s never been my intention to come between you and your family.’

  ‘You’re doing no such thing,’ Tillie said. ‘I’m not a child. I’m twenty-four years old and if I want to live with a man for a few weeks then that’s my business.’

  ‘You’re not worried they might be disappointed you didn’t—?’

  ‘What? Wait for another Simon to come along and keep me in an ivory tower for years and years only to run off with someone else?’ she said. ‘No, thanks. I’m done with weddings.’

  ‘So what’s with the wedding cake in your back room at the shop?’

  ‘I’m using it as therapy. I figure it’s cheaper than seeing a therapist. Every day I stick a dressmaking pin into Simon’s marzipan figure.’

  ‘Is it helping?’

  Tillie thought about it for a moment. Funny, but she hadn’t stuck a pin in Simon since Blake had ‘proposed’ to her. ‘Yes and no. I still have to do something about the wedding dress. It’s taking up too much room in the wardrobe. It’s like a cumulonimbus cloud crammed in there. I’ve thought of selling i
t, but I think it would be much more satisfying to cut it into ribbons.’

  A flicker of amusement flirted with his mouth, but then his expression became serious again. ‘Jim Pendleton told me you didn’t get much say in choosing it.’

  ‘No...but that was my fault for not standing up to Simon’s mother,’ Tillie said. ‘That’s the problem with wanting to belong to someone. You don’t just belong to them but to their family, too. But I can see now Marilyn never accepted me as a future daughter-in-law. Nor did Simon’s father. They tolerated me. I can’t help wondering how they’re getting on with his new partner.’

  ‘Would you ever go back to him if he—?’

  ‘No. Absolutely not.’

  Blake’s frown hadn’t quite left his forehead. He traced a pathway around her mouth with one of his fingertips. ‘You were too good for him. Way too good.’

  Tillie screwed up her face and then tiptoed her fingers down his sternum. ‘I wish you’d stop calling me good. I want to be bad.’

  His smile ignited a spark in his eyes and he brought his mouth down to hers. ‘That’s what I’m here for, sweetheart.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BLAKE KISSED HIS way down her body, his hormones going nuts over the swell and shape of her curves. Why had he always dated stick insects when he could have had this? Her body was his every secret fantasy. The way she responded to him, the way she moved against him, the way she held him as if she never wanted to let him go. He couldn’t remember a time when sex had been more satisfying.

  Or more terrifying.

  He had been so determined to keep control all the way through but in the end he’d blown like a bomb. That she could do that to him was a little unnerving. He was supposed to be the one at the control panels but every time his mouth met hers, he felt that control slip further out of his reach.

  He came down to her breasts and swirled his tongue over her right nipple, taking the tight bud gently between his teeth, his blood pounding in his groin when she gave a breathless little gasp and clutched at his shoulders as if torn between wanting more and pushing him away.

  He knew the feeling. The tug of war between common sense and a desire so raw and primal it took control of his flesh, made him a pawn to its needs—needs that he normally had firm discipline over, but not now. Not with her.

  This was different.

  Tillie was different.

  She awakened something in him that up until now had been lying dormant.

  He liked the closeness of making love to her. Coaching her into the magic of physical pleasure had intensified his own. He felt sensations he had never felt before. He had let go in a way he never had before. He hadn’t had any choice. It was as if her body had triggered something in his—something dark and unknowable, a force he had fooled himself he didn’t possess.

  But it was there.

  Lurking deep and secretively inside him.

  The need to be close to someone, not just physically but enough to tell them about the things that weighed him down or buoyed him up.

  When Tillie had told him how disappointed she’d been when her father and stepmother hadn’t seemed to understand her devastation at being jilted, he’d felt a striking sense of commonality. A bond he hadn’t felt with anyone else. The sense that someone else understood isolation and loneliness. Understood the hurt that couldn’t be erased with a few casually flung platitudes.

  Tillie was nursing her own hurt, but was a fling with him the way to go about eradicating it? She said she no longer wanted the fairy tale. Could he believe she had changed so much in a matter of months? She still had her wedding cake and dress, for God’s sake. She might say she was keeping them as part of her getting-over-her-ex therapy, but how sure could he be she was telling the truth? Even to herself?

  He knew all about the lies people told themselves when they didn’t want to face stuff. Hadn’t he been lying to himself all these years about his father? Thinking, hoping that this year things would be different. Better. That his dad would finally emerge out of the well of grief he’d been drowning in for the last twenty-four years.

  But had it happened?

  Not yet, but Blake was determined he would make it happen.

  Tillie’s hand glided over his chest, her mouth fused to his in a passionate kiss that made the base of his spine tingle. She made soft little whimpering noises and opened her mouth for the entry of his tongue. Her tongue played with his in a dart and retreat dance that made the blood in his veins pound. What was it about her mouth that made kissing so damn exciting? Every nerve in his lips was on high alert, the shape and mould of her mouth against his delighting him as if this was his first ever kiss. He could feel every movement of it as if it had been magnified through his senses. The way she licked his lower lip and then took it between her teeth in a kittenish bite, before releasing it to sweep her tongue back over it, made every other kiss he’d experienced feel like a platonic peck in comparison.

  Her touch was soft and yet electric, her hands moving over his body in an almost worshipful manner. His skin lifted in goose bumps when she sent her hand down in search of his erection. Her shyness was as endearing as it was exciting. But there was nothing lacking in her caressing of him. She responded to his sounds of pleasure as if they had their own secret language that no one else knew. Reading his body, stroking it with increasing confidence and boldness, making his senses go haywire.

  Blake pulled away so he could concentrate on giving her pleasure. He moved down her body, kissing her stomach and then lower to her feminine mound. She was so responsive to him, so relaxed now under his touch it made him feel a level of trust had developed between them unlike anything he had experienced in his other relationships.

  With Tillie, sex wasn’t just sex. It was a discovery of the senses, a sensual journey with unexpected and thrilling results.

  She came under the ministrations of his tongue, her hands gripping his head to anchor herself until the storm abated. ‘Wow...just wow...’ she said, her cheeks and décolletage still flushed with pleasure.

  Blake smiled and moved up her body, turning her so she was straddling him. He reached for a condom but before he could put it on, she took it from him.

  ‘Let me,’ she said.

  He glided his hands up and down her arms while she put the condom on him with smooth strokes down his shaft that nearly took the top of his head off. She wriggled her body, taking him deep inside with a part-groan, part-gasp that thrilled him as much as the feel of her body gripping him so tightly. ‘This way you can set the pace,’ he said. ‘Slow or fast, whatever you need.’

  ‘I need you.’ She lowered her face to his to kiss him.

  Blake feasted on her mouth, tangling his tongue with hers, his lower body in raptures over what was going on down there. Tillie was riding him slowly, moving her body up and down and round and round until he was fighting to stay in control. Being able to see her joined to him so intimately ramped up his excitement. The pleasure rippling through him was played out on her features as if their bodies were tuned to report what each was feeling.

  ‘You can do it,’ he said when he could see she was close to orgasm. ‘Don’t hold back.’

  She gave a sharp cry and then shuddered and shook over him, triggering his own release until his groans joined hers. Finally, she slumped over his still-tingling body, her hair tickling his face and neck, her chest rising and falling against his.

  He stroked the silky-smooth skin of her back, enjoying the feel of her curves pressing into the harder planes of his body. ‘You’re not going to go all shy on me now, are you?’ he said.

  Tillie turned her head so she could access his neck, sending her tongue out to lick just below his ear. ‘I did feel a little bit...exposed doing it like that.’

  Blake turned his head to look at her. ‘You look beautiful when you come.’

  Her cheeks went a faint shade of pink and her fingertip came up and passed over his stubbled jaw all the way to his mouth, her gaze lowered to follow
its pathway. ‘I knew sex would be good, but I didn’t realise it would be this good.’

  He lifted his hand to sweep her disordered hair back off her face. ‘It’s not always this good.’

  Her eyes flickered with surprise. ‘Even for you, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, realising with a strange little jolt it was true. ‘Even for me.’

  She propped herself up on her elbows, her eyes meeting his and her naked breasts with their tightly budded nipples tantalising him all over again. ‘I have nothing to compare it with other than...you know...’ Her cheeks fired up again and her gaze slipped out of reach of his.

  Blake brought her chin up with the end of his finger. ‘There’s nothing to be ashamed about. Self-pleasure is the key to finding out what works for you and what doesn’t and it’s particularly important for women.’

  She pressed her lips together for a moment. ‘I know...but it’s hard to shake off the repressed attitudes you’ve grown up with. I often wondered if it was somehow breaking the abstinence rule.’

  ‘Is that what your ex thought?’

  ‘Simon hardly ever talked about things like that,’ she said with a little laugh. ‘I asked him once if he ever relieved himself but he got all touchy about it, saying it was wrong of me to talk about sex when he was trying not to think about it.’

  Blake frowned. ‘And you were seriously going to marry this guy?’

  Tillie’s mouth flattened and two little circles of pink formed on her cheeks. She moved away from him and went in search of her clothes. ‘I know it’s probably hard for someone like you to understand my reasons for wanting to be with Simon, but—’

  ‘Why someone like me?’ Blake asked, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

  She snatched up her clothes and held them against the front of her body. ‘You’re good-looking and successful and can have anyone you want. It’s different for people like me.’

  ‘I’m not following you,’ Blake said. ‘You have just as much right to a good relationship as anyone else. Why would you settle for anything less?’

  She sent him a pointed glance. ‘Why do you settle for casual relationships and not something a little more lasting?’