“Thank you.”

But he didn’t take it.

The towel dangled from her fingers for a long, endless moment. Slowly, she raised her eyes in silent question.

“Are you certain you won’t bathe?” he coaxed, his head resting against the back of the tub lazily.

“The water’s still warm.” His dark gaze beguiled her. The heat from his eyes enveloped her right along with the steam rising from the tub.

“Will you leave the room?” she countered, lifting her nose in the air haughtily, indicating that would be the only way she would avail herself of the tub. At the single, blunt shake of his head, she snapped, “Then you know my answer.”

He sighed. “Then you leave me no choice.” Before she realized his intent, his fingers circled her wrist. With one hard yank she tumbled into the tub. Screeching, she landed on his lap, facing him. Water splashed and sloshed over the sides.

“Are you mad?” Meredith pushed at his slick chest and attempted to rise out of the tub, but her hands slipped off the slippery copper sides and she fell back in. Her derriere nestled snugly against that intimate part of him. She struggled. She wiggled. And his manhood stirred to life.

Mortified, she stilled her movements and crossed her arms over the soaked front of her gown to glare at him. “Will you please let me up?”

He held both hands open in the air in a gesture of mock innocence. “I’m not even touching you.”

“Right,” she snorted indelicately. “But you aren’t helping me out, are you?”

He angled his head to the side with an air of contemplation. Only the glint to his eyes belied such seriousness. “No, I’m not. I don’t want a bed-mate that stinks.”

“I do not stink.” She splashed the water in indignation. “I bathed this very morning. And no one said you had to share a bed with me, anyway.”

“Since you’re already wet, you might as well bathe.” He handed her the bar of soap.

She shook her head. “I’m wearing a nightgown.” She regretted the words the instant they were out. A crafty gleam entered his eyes.

“A matter easily corrected.”

Squeaking, she tried to evade his grasping hands as they dove below the water for the hem of her gown. She clutched his wrists, sending herself pitching forward, her mouth and nose colliding with his chest. She didn’t care. The most immediate threat were the hands skimming her bare legs, grazing her calves, tickling her thighs, igniting a trail of fire right to the center of her. She panted against his neck, clawing at his hands as they locked on the hem of the nightgown. He pulled the fabric up, up, up…

Meredith sunk her teeth into his shoulder.

“Ouch!” He touched where she bit him. A fiery gleam entered his eyes as he looked up at her with his wolf’s smile. “I didn’t know you liked it rough, Meredith.”

Her face burned at his husky murmur. Her gown floated along the surface of the water like a pale lily pad. She tried to push the sodden fabric down, acutely aware of her n**ed limbs curled around him. Yet the fabric remained afloat.

His eyes were as dark and deep as the night sky outside their window as he grabbed her by the waist and forced her to straddle him. She sucked in a breath and her hands fluttered to his broad shoulders. His eyes glinted triumphantly as his manhood prodded her entrance. His hands slid to her hips, digging into the soft flesh, anchoring her to him, holding her prisoner in the shockingly intimate position. That easily… she was lost. Her hands ceased pushing. Her fingers curled into his flesh in a gesture of welcome and acceptance.

He entered her in one slick thrust. Meredith cried out, thrilled at the fullness of him. Her nails dug tiny half-moons into his shoulders. His hands clung to her waist, lifting her up and down as though she weighed nothing at all. The rhythmic sounds of the water lapping the sides of the tub and splashing onto the floor seemed to come from a distance far away. She felt his lips at her throat, her collarbone, through the wet, second skin of her gown. She closed her eyes. The prim, uninteresting Meredith ceased to exist. It was as if she floated outside herself, hovered in the air above them like a ghost, watching this wanton creature making love in a bath with a dangerous, beautiful man, hands clutching his wet, dark head to her breast.

She shuddered and saw spots behind her closed lids. A strange, mewling cry rose from deep inside her. Ripples of white-hot sensation washed over her body. He surged inside her one final time, his fingers digging into her buttocks, drawing her down deeply on him. His groan filled the air. Sliding her arms around his neck, she sifted her hands through his wet hair and hugged him closer to her breast.

He scooped her up in his arms and stepped out of the tub. Water pelted the floor like tapping rain, and Meredith felt herself smile a small, dreamy grin. “I thought you didn’t want to get the floor wet.”

“I lied. Hell with the floor.” He set her before him and pulled the wet nightgown up over her head. “I just wanted you within reaching distance.” The sopping mass hit the floor with a smack.

She trembled as he toweled her dry. But not from cold. She felt shaken by her loss of control.

She had surrendered with such ease, so swiftly, without shame, reveling in the mating of their bodies.

He rubbed the towel over her nakedness as if she were a helpless child. All the while she avoided his eyes, embarrassed at her total surrender and afraid he could read more than lust in her eyes.

As he dried her legs, she stared at his dark bent head, loving the simple sight of the dark hair curling at his nape. If he looked up then, he would doubtless see the love emblazoned across her face. Just as it was on her soul. The prospect terrified her.

“I’ll have you warmed up in a bit,” he murmured, his voice a husky growl as the towel arrived at her br**sts, reminding her that—thankfully—she was not a child and he was not performing his task with the stoicism of a monk. The towel felt abrasive and rough, the friction chafing her ni**les into hard points. He slowed his attention there, massaging the sensitive mounds of flesh until a low, keening sound swelled from her throat. He dropped the towel and shoved her back on the bed. She reached for him as he came over her. Cupping his face in her hands, she kissed him like a woman long denied, devouring his lips as he drove himself inside her. He pulled back to stare at her as he thrust a second time. She tried to control her ragged breathing and slow her wildly surging hips, hoping she did not appear the bungling novice in her eagerness.

He stilled over her. “You’re mine.” His voice was strained, an unnatural tremor running through it.

Body afire, she could only nod.

His fingers brushed the fine hair at her temple. “Say it,” he commanded.

For all the quietness of his voice, a hint of desperation underlined the request. Must he hear her say it? She had pledged herself to him this very day. But if she agreed to this, to belong to him…

in this moment, with their bodies merged, there was no going back. Once the words were out she could never protest intimacy again. Her bedroom door would stand forever open. Just as her heart.

“I’m yours.”

His mouth swooped down, hard and demanding, picking up where the towel left off, continuing his amorous assault on her br**sts. She tossed wildly beneath the hot, wet suction of his mouth.

His h*ps began moving again and she clutched his buttocks with both hands, forcing him closer, faster, harder. The sting of tears threatened, and she squeezed her eyes tight, only the barest amount of wetness escaping the corners.

Still, as his mouth and body loved her so thoroughly, sadness lingered, hovering like a storm cloud. His words from earlier that day echoed in her heart. Love was not part of the arrangement.

* * *

Nick woke several times during the night. At first he told himself the novelty of Meredith curled beside him and his desire to have her again woke him.  But the fourth time he awoke with a gasping start, as if he did not know entirely where he was.

Staring down at her sleeping form, he remembered. Dark smudges shadowed her eyes, attesting to her exhaustion. The shadows only heightened her porcelain complexion, making her appear fragile, not at all like her feisty self. She had been through a great deal in the last twenty-four hours. Unable to resist, he ran the back of his hand down her cheek. Dead to the world. Dawn washed the room in a pre-morning gray and still she slept on, oblivious to his touch or the approaching day.

He wrapped an arm around her waist. She relaxed into his chest with a small sigh, and his heart clenched at the total trust she extended him even in sleep. He closed his eyes. Then opened them again to study her. Had he ever thought himself immune to her? Wide mouth slightly parted in sleep, lips bruised from a thorough loving, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever beheld.

Despite lack of sleep, he wasn’t tired. He could watch her for hours. And the thought sent a bolt of panic straight from his heart to his head.

Until tonight he had been convinced making love was an expression a woman invented to make sex more significant, more than the joining of two bodies in a purely physical act, more than meaningless. But with Meredith, his past ceased to exist. Last night the rest of the world had disappeared. Last night he had learned the difference between sex and making love. With her, it was more than an expression.

He couldn’t deny it any longer. His anger had long disappeared—if it had ever truly existed. Her deception was not so incomprehensible. Perhaps he had understood her motives all along but used his anger to erect a barrier, to keep himself from connecting with her. Looking at Meredith, he knew he loved her. The emotion that destroyed, that reduced one to utter vulnerability, that led to suffering and grief, had claimed his heart.

He could do only one thing.

Chapter 24

Meredith descended the carriage and faced the achingly familiar sight of Oak Run. The late afternoon sun broke through the clouds and cast down its beams as if in welcome. She looked at Nick, pleased to be home, pleased that he wanted them to come here instead of Town.

The front door flew open to reveal Maree’s broad, smiling face. Until that moment, Meredith didn’t realize how much she had missed her. She felt she had been gone a lifetime. Oak Run looked smaller to her eyes. Lifting her skirts, she flung herself in the ample arms of her housekeeper, disengaging herself when she heard Nick instruct the driver, “Just the lady’s luggage. Leave mine. And see about switching out the horses.”

Her pleasure faded and she turned back to him. “You’re not staying?”

“I’ll be going on as soon as the horses are changed.”

She eyed the softly settling dusk. “But it’s late. Won’t you at least stay the night?”

At this, he said nothing. He didn’t need to. That ready-to-bolt look on his face explained everything.

“When will you be back?” She hated asking, but found it impossible to feign total indifference at his departure.

He shrugged, averting his eyes. “Can’t say.”

Although the words weren’t said, she heard them just the same. I’m not coming back.

Numbness crept over her as she stood on the front steps, watching the grooms switch out the horses. Nick stood silently by. Coach finally ready, he turned to face her again. She felt the challenge in her eyes, daring him to admit the truth, to admit he was leaving her and that he had no intention of coming back. He stepped forward as if to kiss her farewell.

She jerked back, too hurt, too furious, to let him touch her.

His mouth thinned into a grim line.

“You should go,” she declared, tones ringing with angry defiance. “No doubt you have business to attend to in London. Nothing’s keeping you here.”

With one last probing look, he bounded up into the coach, hovering in the doorway for a moment. At last he settled on, “Take care of yourself.”

She watched the coach disappear down the driveway, swiping at her cheeks and despising the hot spill of tears. Why should she weep? She had all she ever wanted: a secure and settled future for her family. She never set out to find love.