Postcards From New York: A Child Claimed by Gold / A Debt Paid in the Marriage Bed / A Dangerously Sexy Secret

Silently she left her room and padded across the polished wooden floor to the kitchen as the sounds of a city which never seemed to sleep played out in the background. Was this what her life would be like from now on? Would she be hiding an ever-deepening affection for the father of her child for ever? Could she live like that?

She poured some water and went to sit by the windows, needing the peaceful view of the park to soothe her tortured emotions. She just couldn’t be falling for Nikolai, not when all she’d wanted was that happy-ever-after with a man who loved her. But she’d never get that happiness now, even by marrying Nikolai. He didn’t love her and had made it clear their marriage was to be nothing more than a deal.

‘Are you unwell?’ Nikolai’s voice startled her, but when she looked up she was even more startled. Just as he’d done that night in Vladimir, he’d pulled on a pair of jeans, and looked so incredibly sexy she had to stop herself from taking in a deep and shuddering breath.

‘I couldn’t sleep.’ She tried hard to avert her gaze from his bare chest, but couldn’t. All she could think about was lying with her arms across it last night. She could still feel the muscles beneath her palm and distinctly remembered the scent of his aftershave invading her sleep. What else was she going to remember?

‘But you are feeling quite well?’ The concern in his voice was touching and she smiled at him.

‘I’m fine, just not sleepy.’ She didn’t have much chance of feeling sleepy now after seeing him like that. All her senses were on high alert, her body all but tuned into his.

His gaze travelled down her bare legs and she realised how she must look, sat on the sofa wearing only a vest top and skimpy shorts, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it now, not without alerting him to the fact that she was far from comfortable having a discussion with him when they were both half-undressed. It was much too intimate.

‘Is it because you are alone tonight? Nobody to curl up with?’ The seductive huskiness of his voice held a hint of laughter. Was he making fun of her?

She looked up at him and knew that wasn’t true. He moved closer and stood over her, his dark eyes seeming to penetrate deep inside her, searching for something. ‘About—about last night...’ she managed to say, but hated the way she stumbled over the words. ‘What I mean is, did we...? Did anything happen between us?’

The air heated around them, laden with explosive sexual tension, but she couldn’t look away, couldn’t break the connection which was becoming more intense by the second.

‘Trust me, Emma, you’d remember if it had.’ A smile lifted his lips and a hint of mischief sparked in his eyes.

He was making fun of her.

‘Oh,’ she said softly, heat infusing her cheeks.

‘You sound as if you’re disappointed to discover that we slept in the same bed without having sex.’ Like a brooding presence, he towered over her, suffocating the very air she breathed, making her pulse leap wildly. ‘It can of course be rectified.’

This time she wasn’t able to stop the ragged intake of breath or the shudder of desire. He wanted her. Just as she wanted him. It was like the night in Vladimir all over again. Then she had believed she was giving in to the allure of a powerful sexual attraction for just one night; even though they were to be married, she knew this was exactly that again. He didn’t love her. This was nothing more than sex.

Her heart thumped hard, and warnings echoed in her mind, but she didn’t want to heed them. She wanted Nikolai, wanted him to desire her, and the allure of that was more powerful than the prophecy of a broken heart.

The seconds ticked by and the power of the sexual chemistry between them increased as surely as if he’d touched her. Her body yearned for his touch, her lips craved his kiss, but most of all she wanted his possession. She wanted to be his.

* * *

Nikolai stood over Emma as she sat and looked up at him. Did she have any idea just how damn sexy she looked in that white vest top, her nipples straining against the fabric? As for the white shorts, well, he couldn’t go there or he’d drag her off to his room like a Neanderthal.

‘We could rectify it now—tonight.’ The lust coursing through him had got the better of him, and he spoke the words before he had time to think, but, judging by the sexy, impish smile, it wasn’t something she was horrified by.

‘Could we?’ Her voice was husky, teasing him and testing him. Damn it. What was the point in denying the attraction which fizzed around them? He wanted her and, unless he was very much mistaken, she wanted him too.

‘I want you, Emma,’ he said and held out his hand to her, more emotionally exposed than he’d ever been in his life. He had no idea how, but this woman was dismantling every barrier he’d erected to shut himself away, to prevent himself from ever having to feel anything for anyone.

The silky softness of her throat moved as she swallowed, her gaze fixed on his. Then she parted her lips, the small movement so sexy he almost groaned out loud. Finally she took his hand, placing hers in his, and he pulled her gently to her feet and towards him.

Shock rocked through him as her body collided with his and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against him. Her body seemed to beg his for more, but he wanted to hear it from her lips, needed to know this was what she wanted. ‘Is this what you want?’

She slipped from his embrace and he drew in a sharp breath as she crossed her arms in front of her and, taking hold of her vest top and pulling it over her head, threw it carelessly to the floor. His gaze devoured her slender figure, her full breasts, and he clenched his hands into tight fists as he fought to hold on to control. But when she slithered the white shorts down her legs, kicking them aside, he knew that control was fading fast.

It was like Vladimir all over again. Except this time he didn’t have to worry about consequences. This time he could make her his totally.

‘Yes.’ That one word was a husky whisper that sent fire all over him at the knowledge this woman was his, and the fact that she’d given him her virginity only increased the power of that idea.

He closed his eyes briefly against the need to take her quickly, to thrust into her and possess her more completely than he had ever taken a woman before. She’d only ever known his touch and because of that he had to take it slowly, make this a night of pure pleasure for both of them.

Slowly he undid his jeans, maintaining eye contact with her as he removed them to stand before her as naked as she was. A dart of satisfied pleasure zipped through him as she lowered her gaze to look at him, arousing him still further.

She moved back to him, looking into his eyes and taking on the role of seductress, just as she had in Vladimir; she wrapped her fingers around him, pushing him to a new level of control. He actually trembled with the pleasure of her touch and groaned as her lips pressed against his, her hand still working the magic.

When she let go of him and kissed down his neck, over his chest, he groaned in pleasure, but when she lowered herself down to continue the torture her touch had started it was nearly his undoing. He pushed his fingers deep into her hair but, as his control began to slip, he pulled her back and she looked up at him, her green eyes dark and full of question.

‘My turn.’ The gravelly growl of his voice was almost unrecognisable as he pulled her to her feet then pushed her back onto the sofa. With predatory instinct he knelt up before her and, leaning on her, pressed his lips to hers, taking in her gasp of pleasure.

‘Nikolai,’ she breathed as he kissed down her neck rapidly. She arched herself towards him as he took one nipple between his teeth, nipping, teasing, before caressing it with his tongue.

Again enforced restraint made him shake and he braced his arms tighter to hold himself over her. She writhed in pleasure beneath him as he turned his attention to the other nipple, her hands roaming hungrily over his body.

As he moved lower still, kissing over her stomach, she clutched at his shoulders, her nails digging in, the spike of pain so erotic he could hardly hang on to his control any longer. But he wasn’t finished with her yet.

He moved his head between her legs, tasting her as she lifted her hips upwards, all but begging him for more. He teased her with his tongue, pushing her to the edge, but stopping as he felt her begin to tremble, not ready to let her go over just yet.

‘Let’s go to the bedroom,’ he said between kisses as he moved back up over her stomach, over the hardened peak of her nipple and up her throat.

‘No,’ she gasped as she clung to him, wrapping her legs around him, the heat of her touching him; he knew that he was lost, that all control was gone.

In one swift move he filled her, thrusting deep into her and making her his once more. She gasped as she gripped harder onto his back, her hips lifting to take him deeper inside her. It was wild. Passionate.

Her body was hot and damp against his, but still it wasn’t enough. He wanted more, much more. With a growl he thrust harder, striking up a fierce rhythm she matched. Her cries of pleasure pushed him further until he forgot everything except her. With one final thrust, he took her over the edge with him.

* * *

Darkness still filled the room as Emma lay contentedly against Nikolai after the hours of making love. They had moved from the sofa to the shower and then finally to his bed. She should be exhausted, but she’d never been so alive, so vibrant. It was almost too good to be true.

The doubts she’d had about accepting his so-called proposal had been blown away by the hot sex they’d shared. If things were that good between them, wasn’t there hope he might one day feel something deeper for her? She certainly wanted that to be true because her feelings were definitely growing for him. They had become deep and meaningful. Did that mean she was falling in love with him?

As the question reared up before her, Nikolai stirred and she braced herself, remembering how she’d woken to find him staring out of the window in Vladimir. Had he regretted that night? A night which had changed both of their lives beyond recognition. More questions stirred in her mind as Nikolai propped himself up on his elbow and looked at her, his eyes filling with desire once more.

‘I’m going to see some sights today,’ she said, trying to fight the rise of a fresh wave of desire. She didn’t want their time together to be all about sex. She wanted to get to know him better, but while he kept the barrier raised around himself that was going to be difficult. Did he ever let anyone get close?

‘We’ll go together.’ He pulled her against him and kissed her and she almost gave in.

‘That would be nice,’ she said with a teasing smile and moved away from him. ‘It will be a nice way to get to know each other better.’

‘How much better do we need to know each other?’ He was smiling but there was a hint of caution in his voice.

‘There’s so much we don’t know about each other.’

‘Such as?’ The hard tone of his voice had become guarded and it was like being back in Vladimir that first night with him. The impenetrable wall was right round him, shutting her out.

‘What we really want from this marriage.’ She let the words fall softly between them.

‘I know what you want. You want financial security. Why else would you come all this way? You also want for your child what you never had—a father figure.’

Did he have any idea he’d got it so right? Was he really that cruel he’d manipulate her insecurities so coldly?

‘My offer of marriage is exactly what you wanted.’ He spoke again and all she could do was take it, knowing it was all true. ‘Even though you held out for a bit more, marriage is what you came here for, wasn’t it, Emma?’

‘What?’ She couldn’t believe what he was saying, but neither could she move. All she could do was stay there and look at him.

‘Is tonight part of a bigger plan?’

How could a night so perfect turn into a one so terrible? Emma shivered in the shadow of the gulf which had opened up between them at the mention of the deal they’d struck. ‘Is that what you really think?’

‘You have given me no reason to think otherwise.’ He threw back the sheets and strode across the room to pull on his jeans, totally uncaring about his nakedness. He was running again.

‘Nikolai.’ She said his name more sharply than she intended. ‘Don’t go. Not again.’

He stood at the end of the bed in the semi-darkness of the room and glared at her. ‘What exactly is it you want to know, Emma? And, more to the point, who is asking—the woman I am to marry, the one who is carrying my child or the woman who wants to get to the truth just for an article in a magazine?’

Emma recoiled at his fierce tone, but it proved he was hiding the truth, that whatever it was he’d gone to great lengths to conceal from her in Vladimir was still there, creating a barrier around him as physical as a wall of bricks and mortar.

‘I’m asking, Nikolai—as your fiancée—because I care, because if we don’t deal with this, whatever it is that’s keeping you emotionally shut away, making you so cold, it will fester between us, always dominating, always threatening. Do you want your child to grow up under that cloud?’ Her passionate plea didn’t dent his armour.

‘What do you want? My life story? I gave you that in Vladimir.’

‘You gave me the version you wanted me to know, but things have changed. We are having a baby and, if we’re to marry, then I want that marriage to be a success. I don’t want our child to grow up knowing any kind of insecurities.’

‘What do you know of insecurities, Emma?’ His voice had softened, taken on a more resigned tone.

‘Much more than you might think.’ Her own childhood, the unhappiness of continuously moving to new foster homes, crept back to the fore, as did her father’s rejection. She pushed it away. Nikolai must never know what sort of mother she’d been raised by. If he did, he might think she wasn’t fit to be a mother herself, and she couldn’t risk her baby being taken away, like she and Jess had been.

‘Do you really think that’s possible?’ He glared at her and she knew he was angry that she was not only challenging him but being evasive herself.

‘Tell me, Nikolai. I know some of your story but, as your fiancée, I want to hear it from you.’ She spoke softly and held her breath as he paced the room and ran his fingers quickly through his hair.

* * *

Nikolai didn’t know where to start. He was angry, at himself and Emma. She knew the basic facts so why did she want more? He looked down into her eyes and realised it didn’t matter any more what he tried to keep from her; she knew half the story and he was sure that it would only be a matter of time before she’d know every sordid detail. Better it came from him—now.

‘Why exactly do you feel it is necessary to know?’ Why the hell was he doing this? It was far too deep, too emotionally exposing, and he just didn’t do emotion. He’d learnt long ago how to keep fear, anger and even love out of whatever he was doing. Each time he’d come to his mother’s rescue as his father had used his fists, he’d acted calmly and without emotion. It hadn’t mattered whether he was wiping her bleeding nose or merely standing between them, he’d been devoid of any emotion. It had been the only way—and still was.

‘You said before, in Vladimir, that your parents were forced to marry.’ She nudged his memory with the start of the story he’d told her that night they’d first slept together. Then, just as now, being with her had threatened to unleash his emotions.

‘Yes, they were, but only because she was pregnant with his child.’ He watched her face pale and had the urge to kiss her, to forget the past and lose himself in her wonderful body once more. It surged through him like a madness. Thankfully, sense prevailed. Despite the fact that she looked so sexy sitting there naked in his bed, her hair no longer sleek but ruffled from sex, he was sufficiently in control to acknowledge things were already complicated enough without giving her hope of having a normal, loving marriage.

‘That’s hardly the crime of the century,’ she said, sympathy in her voice and a smile lingering tentatively on her lips as he sat on the bed and looked at her.

He knew what she meant. She was pregnant with his child and they were going to be married; that fact only compounded his misgivings, making him ever more determined to keep emotions out of this deal they’d struck, because that was how he had to think of it: as a deal for his child. Just as his father had forced his mother into marriage, he was forcing her.

Now the one thing he didn’t want to happen was happening. Emotions were clamouring from his childhood, demanding to be felt, and he hated it. Memories rushed back at him and he fought for control. What would she think of him if she knew the truth?

He should just say it. However he tried to dress it up, those words would be painful; knowing how he’d come into the world, how it had forced his mother into something she hadn’t wanted, made him feel worthless. It was that sense of worthlessness which had driven him hard, making everything he did a success.

He looked at Emma and knew she had to know just who he was.

‘He’d raped her.’

There, he’d said it. Finally said the words aloud. He was the unwanted product of a rape which had devastated his mother’s life, forcing her into a violent marriage.

‘Rape?’ Her voice was hardly more than a whisper, and it helped to be near the warmth of her body as the cold admission finally came out, but strangely just saying those words wasn’t enough. He wanted to tell it all now he’d finally started, as if he’d opened a door he could never close.

‘My father was a family friend and had asked to marry my mother. He’d wanted the connections our family name and wealth would bring him.’

Emma didn’t say anything but moved a little closer to him, heat from her body infusing him. He wanted to hold her, to feel the goodness within her cleanse the badness from him, but he couldn’t, not yet, not until she knew it all. ‘Did she refuse him?’

He gritted his teeth as he recalled the time he’d first found out what had happened, how his gentle and loving mother had become the wife of a vicious brute of a man just because of him. He had no idea why, but now he wanted to talk, to tell Emma everything, even knowing she could use it all and destroy him. He wanted to prevent it all coming out as a headline story in the press. That was why he’d flown from New York to a country he barely remembered to ensure a grandmother he’d come to hate didn’t tell her the damned story. Now here he was, spilling it all out to the very woman who wanted to know his family story for that very reason.

‘She did. And because of that he attacked and raped her.’ He bit down on the anger which raged in him now, just as it had done the day he’d realised he’d been the reason his mother had married a violent man. Surely their life would have been better without a man like that in it? He’d never questioned his mother, never asked her about it. She didn’t even know he’d overheard her and his stepfather talking. That would break her heart as much as the story being leaked to the world would.

‘I don’t understand. Why did she marry him after that?’ Incredulity filled her voice as she once again looked up at him.

‘That is something I have never understood.’ Despite the warmth of her body his mind drifted back in time, to the many occasions when he’d cowered in a corner, hiding from his father’s wrath. ‘When my mother and I left Russia I was ten and I never wanted to go there again. I did all I could to fit in with our new life, to please my new father. It was like being given a new chance.’

‘Why did your mother marry your father if he’d done that?’ It was a question he’d asked himself so many times.

‘Maybe she saw marriage to that brute as her only chance. She was from a well-known family and wouldn’t have wanted to bring such a scandal out into the open.’

Emma moved and wrapped her arms around him, pressing her lips to his forehead. It was strangely comforting to be held by her, to feel her compassion wrapping around him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘For making you go there again.’

‘Maybe I should have faced my father’s mother when I had the chance, asked her why she helped to hide such horrible things from the world. From the outside we must have appeared a normal family. I want to know if she realises that by doing that she trapped my mother and I with an angry bully. Only his sudden death freed us.’

‘It doesn’t mean we shall be the same,’ she said, homing in on the worry he’d had since the moment she’d arrived in New York with the news of her pregnancy. He wasn’t fit to be a father with a past like that, but that just made him more determined to be a part of his child’s life, to be a better father.

‘How can you say that when you only agreed to marriage for the child’s sake?’ He began to build his barriers back again, using all the ammunition he had to push her away. As he spoke he looked into her eyes and saw the flash of pain within them, but buried it deep inside him.

‘Our child was not conceived through violence,’ she said firmly as she touched his face with the palm of her hand, a gesture he wanted to enjoy, but he couldn’t allow himself that luxury.

‘But it most definitely wasn’t conceived out of love.’ He threw the harsh truth at her and her hand stilled.

‘No, it wasn’t.’ The softness of her voice, mixed with sadness, slashed at him harshly. What the hell had he been thinking of, talking about this with her?

She moved away from him, looking like a hurt and wounded animal, and that strange sensation squeezed his chest again. This was getting far too deep for him and he had to put a stop to it right now.

‘I never want to talk of this again.’ Anger boiled over inside him, threatening to spill out everywhere, turn him into a copy of the man who’d terrified him as a child, and she’d done that to him.

Emma looked up at him and he watched her bare shoulders go back as she sat a little taller, her chin lifting in that sexily defiant way of hers. ‘I understand, and we won’t.’

She understood? How could she understand? He wanted to ask her about her childhood, just what it was in her past that qualified her even to say that, but he couldn’t deal with any more emotion. He needed space, time on his own. He strode from the bedroom as the light of dawn filled the apartment, thankful that she hadn’t attempted to follow or ask anything else.

CHAPTER NINE

THE GENUINE CONCERN Nikolai had been showing her all week, taking time out from the office and going sightseeing with her, had definitely brought them closer in many ways. After the disastrous way last weekend had ended she felt a glimmer of hope and the uneasy sensation that she was doing the wrong thing marrying him melted into the background.

Today he’d chosen a trip on the Hudson River to see the Statue of Liberty. He’d hired a private boat and it was so romantic it reinstated the flailing hope. It was a perfect spring day but, even so, the motion of the boat was making her queasy. Just as she had done every day this week, she tried to hide it from him but, as if he’d become tuned into her feelings, he guessed she was unwell.

‘This wasn’t such a good idea,’ he said as he stood behind her and pulled her close against him. She closed her eyes, enjoying the sensation of being cared for, being protected. Deep down it was all she’d ever wanted. Love and protection had been so lacking in her childhood it had become the elusive dream. A dream which right at this moment felt tantalisingly close.

‘It’s fine,’ she said as she snuggled closer. The spring wind not yet carrying any warmth didn’t help, but, against the man she was most definitely falling in love with, she really didn’t care about anything. Being here in his arms like this was so right, so natural, she didn’t want anything to spoil it. ‘I just don’t think I can take photos today.’