‘I’m not talking about for ever—I could never settle with one person for very long, or stay in one place—but I can help you sort out the stuff with your family. I can step in so you can step back …’
‘Why?’ She didn’t get it. ‘Why would you do that?’
He looked at her for a long time before answering, because she was right. Why would he do that? Niklas had had many relationships, many less than emotional encounters, and there had been a couple of long high-maintenance ones. Yet not once in his life had he considered marriage before. Not once had he wanted another person close. He had actually feared that another person might depend on a man who had come from nothing, but as he looked at her for the first time he wasn’t daunted by the prospect at all.
Around her—again for the first time—he trusted in himself.
‘I like you.’
‘But what would you get out of it?’
‘You,’ he replied, and suddenly it seemed imperative that he marry her—that he make her his even if just for a little while. ‘I like sorting things out … and I like you. And …’ He gestured to the condoms on the bedside table. ‘And I don’t like them. So,’ he said, reaching for the hotel phone, ‘will you marry me?’
There was nothing about him she understood, but more than that there was nothing about herself she understood any more, for in that moment his proposal seemed rather logical.
A solution, in fact.
‘Yes.’
He spoke on the phone for just a few moments and then turned and smiled at his bride-to-be.
‘Done.’
IT WAS THE quickest of quick weddings.
Or maybe not.
They were in Vegas, after all.
Niklas rang down to the concierge and informed them of their plans, telling him how they wanted them executed.
‘Do you want them to bring up a selection of dresses?’ he asked Meg. ‘It’s your day; you can have whatever you want.’
‘No dress.’ Meg smiled.
But there were some traditional elements.
He ordered lots of flowers, and they arrived in the room along with champagne, and there was even a wedding cake. Meg sat at a table trying on rings as the celebrant went through the paperwork.
He’d arranged music too, but Niklas chose from a selection already on his phone, and Meg found herself walking at his side to music she didn’t know and a man she badly wanted to.
The bride and groom wore white bathrobes, and she stood watching as the titanium ring dotted with diamonds she had chosen was slipped onto her finger. Perhaps bizarrely, there was not a flicker of doubt in her mind as she said yes.
And neither was there a flicker of doubt in Niklas’s mind as he kissed his virgin bride and told her that he was happy to be married to a woman he had only met yesterday.
‘Today,’ Meg corrected and, yes, because of the time difference between Vegas and Australia it was still the day they’d first met.
‘Sorry to rush you.’ He grinned.
There was a mixture of nerves and heady relief when everyone had left.
He undid her robe and took off his, and then he pulled her onto the bed.
‘Soon,’ Niklas promised as his hands roamed over her, ‘you will be wondering how you got through your life without this.’
‘I’m wondering now,’ Meg admitted, and she wasn’t just talking about the sex. She was talking about him too. She had never opened up more fully with another person, had never felt more like herself.
Niklas’s kiss was incredibly tender—a kiss she would never have expected from him. He kissed her till she almost relaxed, and then his mouth became more consuming. He needed to shave, but she liked the roughness, liked his naked body wrapped around hers.
She was on her back, and he was on top as he had so badly wanted to be on the plane. He could not wait—not for a moment longer. His knees nudged hers apart and he slipped his fingers briefly in, checking she was ready for him, finding that she was.
And now there was nothing between them.
And he was no longer patient.
He warned her it would hurt.
He watched her face as she blanched in pain, then kissed her hard on the mouth.
As he drove into her she screamed into his mouth, because that first thrust seemed to go on for ever, and every part of her felt as if it was tearing just to accommodate his long, thick length. He tried to be gentle, but he was too large for that. But once he had ripped off that Band-Aid he kept moving within her, kept on kissing her mouth, her face, giving her no choice but to grow accustomed to the new sensations she was feeling. He moved within her as his tongue had earlier described that he would, moving deep till he had driven her wild. He wasn’t kissing her now, and she looked up to see his face etched with concentration, his eyes closed, his body moving rapidly as hers rose to meet him.
Now it was Meg’s hands urging him on, digging her fingers into his tight buttocks, whimpering as she sought relief, and then he opened his eyes and let her have it, spilled every last drop deep into her. Her orgasm followed quickly after, and she was frenzied as she came, almost scared at the power of her body’s response, at the things he had taught her to do.
And then he collapsed on top of her, his breathing heavy, and although it felt like a dream somehow it was real. Meg realised that he had been right—she had no idea how she’d got through her life without this.
Without him.
‘Shouldn’t we be regretting this by now?’ Meg asked.
They were lying in a very rumpled bed and it was morning. Her body ached with the most delicious hurt, but Niklas had assured her for this morning’s lesson she would need only her mouth.
‘What’s to regret?’ He turned on the bed and looked over to her.
He didn’t do happiness, but he felt the first rays of it today. He liked waking up to her, and the rest was mere detail that he would soon sort out.
‘You live in Brazil and I live in Australia …’
‘As we both know, there are planes …’ He looked across the pillow. ‘Do you worry about everything?’
‘No.’
‘I think you do.’
‘I don’t.’
‘So how shall we tell your parents?’
He saw her slight grimace.
‘They might be pleased for you.’
As the real world invaded so too did confusion. ‘I doubt it. It will be a terrible shock.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I think once they get used to the idea they’ll be pleased.’ And then she swallowed nervously. ‘I think.’
He smiled at her worried face. ‘First of all you need to get used to the idea.’
‘I don’t know much about you.’
‘There isn’t much to know,’ Niklas said.
She rather doubted that.
‘I don’t have family, as I said, so you have avoided having a mother-in-law. I hear from friends they can sometimes be a problem, so that’s an unexpected bonus for you!’
He