Dominic couldn’t ever remember struggling to hold back like this before—not even on his own very first encounter.
Emotionally, he felt as out of his depth as a sixteen-year-old, yet physically he was determined to make this the most fabulous experience of her life.
He watched as her body relaxed and accommodated his. He observed with fascination and absorption the physical signs of her flowering, seeing the delicious flush of rose-pink as it transformed the creamy lushness of her skin.
He moved slowly, revelling in each deep, agonisingly blissful thrust for immeasurable moments, until at last he sensed that she was on the very brink.
And then, only then, did he allow himself to become engulfed in the pleasure too, so that loss of control had never been quite so sweet or quite so poignant.
His last thought was that he had not given even a second of consideration to the question of contraception. But somehow he didn’t care, and even if he did it was now too late, and they both fell over the top, their cries the only sound echoing around the vast room.
Romy found herself completely engulfed in the aftermath. She was filled with the most delicious glow. Swamped by it.
She tightened her arms around Dominic’s bare back as it rose and fell with the effort of dragging air back into his lungs. She felt the gradual slowing of his heart and the infinitely pleasurable sensation of his spasms as they stilled deep inside her.
But then he levered himself up onto his elbows, his face dark with some unnamed emotion as he withdrew from her.
A stranger.
Romy shivered as the afterglow began to wear away. She became aware that she was lying almost naked on the sofa—still wearing her shoes and stockings, with her legs sprawled out all over the place.
He reached out an arm and retrieved his dress shirt, tossed it to her and said harshly, ‘Put this on.’
Shakily, she complied, her heart sinking as he got to his feet and pulled on his trousers, then moved to the fireplace where he stood, his face taking on the unmoving expression of a statue. Only his eyes glittered with life.
‘How?’ he said simply.
Romy shook her head. ‘Does it matter?’
He clenched his fists involuntarily by his sides. ‘Of course it matters!’ he ground out ‘Or did you imagine that I would simply overlook the fact that I was the first man for you?’ He forced himself to extinguish the possessive thrill that just saying those words gave him. ‘Even though you were married for over three years!’
Romy bit her lip in confusion. Her dilemma lay in whether to honour the living—or the dead.
Dominic stared at her. ‘How?’ he asked again.
Telling him was no guarantee of happiness, and Romy had been hurt too badly to risk it. ‘I’m sure you have ideas of your own, Dominic,’ she answered flippantly.
Black, warring thoughts crowded his mind.
Nameless fears which begged to be recognised. ‘Oh, sure,’ he answered coldly. ‘No shortage of those.’
‘Oh?’
Oh, the way she lay there, he thought, suppressing a groan. So beautiful and so damned erotic, the half-buttoned dress shirt giving him the occasional provocative glimpse of her silken stockings with those tantalising strips of bare flesh above. ‘Was that why Mark excluded you from his inheritance?’ he demanded.
Romy sighed. ‘He excluded me from his inheritance because I asked him to.’
Black brows were raised in a look which was frankly disbelieving. ‘Oh, really?’
‘Yes, really.’ Dominic’s contempt stirred her in a way that his indifference would never have done. Because the dark inner struggle which was taking place on those cold, beautiful features was surely some sort of indication that he cared? Did she dare to let herself hope?
‘There was very little inheritance in any case,’ she told him calmly. ‘The estate is all tied up for future generations. Mark’s brother’s son will inherit. And the remainder—the fairly modest amount of cash and jewels—well, that was needed to pay for Mark’s mother’s nursing. She’s infirm now, and needs round-the-clock care—’
‘Yes, I know,’ he said bleakly, and turned a piercing silver gaze on her. ‘And all that is admirable of you, Romy—but I’m still no closer to understanding why—’
‘We didn’t consummate our marriage?’ Romy looked down at her ringless hands.
‘Precisely.’
Romy thought of Mark and the comfort she had offered him. Of the long, dark nights when she had held his hand to try to ward off his fears. Able to give him in that small way what he had been unable to take from her in any other...
She looked up at Dominic, her eyes suddenly wet, her face a mass of confusion. ‘It’s Mark’s story,’ she said.
‘And Mark is dead!’ he lashed back, almost viciously.
‘Yes.’ Mark was dead. And Mark had loved her, in so much as he had been capable of loving anyone. The very last thing he had said to her before he died had been, ‘Be happy, Romy. Promise me.’
And she had replied in a voice choked with tears, ‘I promise.’
‘I never slept with Mark before we were married,’ she began slowly.
‘That became very apparent just a short while ago,’ Dominic clipped back, his eyes hooded and suspicious.
Romy swallowed. ‘He told me that it was because he loved me and respected me—which was why he wanted to wait until we were married.’
‘Go on.’
‘I knew that wasn’t the way that most people these days behaved, but in a way I was glad to wait.’ Romy swallowed. ‘It seemed an indication of how much he cared for me. And also...’
Dominic frowned as he heard her voice quaver. ‘Yes?’
‘It reassured me that I wanted to wait, too. That I was not desperate to leap into bed with him. That I was not as promiscuous as my...as my...’
‘As your mother?’ he guessed suddenly, and it was as though a curtain before his eyes had been lifted.
‘Yes.’ Romy did up another button of the shirt almost absently, not noticing that Dominic’s eyes followed the movement obsessively. ‘Then I met you. In the lift. And, well...you know what happened next.’
She scrubbed at her eyes furiously with the back of her fist, and Dominic had to quash the urge to go across and take her in his arms once more.
‘Yes,’ he said, in a grim voice. ‘I know what happened next—it has haunted me ever since, Romy.’
‘And me too!’ she retorted fiercely. ‘Or do you really think that I did that kind of thing with every good-looking man I bumped into? Well? Do you?’
He didn’t give it a moment’s thought. ‘No,’ he answered. ‘I don’t think that.’
She quickly brushed a tear away. ‘I went back to my room that day. I don’t know what I planned to do—maybe talk to my mother, except that she had passed out cold on the bed. And then Mark came by and I...’ She looked up, the truth written in her dark eyes, and Dominic recoiled as though she had hit him.
‘You told him?’ he queried incredulously. ‘You told Mark?’
‘Yes, of course I told him.’
‘Just what, exactly,’ he demanded, his eyes glittering dangerously, ‘did you tell him?’
Romy