Ally Blake - Untamed Billionaires - Marriage - For Business or Pleasure? / Getting Red-Hot with the Rogue / One Night with the Rebel Billionaire

‘Can I ask you something?’

She sighed and rolled over to face him, her eyes adjusting to the darkness slowly and just able to make out his reclining form at a safe distance across the bed.

Though were a few feet really safe? This was Nick Mancini she was sharing a bed with, the Nick Mancini she’d loved as a teenager and missed for years.

‘You will anyway, so go ahead.’

‘Why did you run away?’

‘I didn’t.’

The defensive words popped out before she thought about it, an instant response to a subject she’d rather avoid.

‘Yeah, you did.’

His whisper floated on the darkness, a mixture of accusation and regret, and she wondered how he’d felt at the time.

When she’d first arrived in London, she’d been too busy coping with her own hurt to think about anything else. The people she loved in her life kept hurting her: her dad, then Nick, and she’d struggled to hold together while trying to build a new life.

Part of her coping strategy had been to paint Nick in a bad light: he wasn’t worthy of her; he didn’t care; he wasn’t capable of emotions.

But what if she’d been wrong?

What if he had cared and there was another reason behind his refusal to accompany her? After all, she’d hidden her real reason for fleeing.

‘I just needed a new start.’

Which was partially true. She just couldn’t tell him the reason behind her desperate yearning for a new start.

‘But why London? You hung around Brisbane for a month before you left—you could’ve stayed there. Even Sydney or Melbourne at a pinch, places where we could’ve kept in contact, tried to maintain a re…’ He trailed off and she resisted the urge to sit bolt upright and flick the light on.

Had she heard right? Was he saying they could’ve had a relationship if she hadn’t wanted to get as far away from her father as possible?

‘Maintain a what?’ she prompted, eager to hear the words but almost wishing he wouldn’t say them.

What was the point of bringing all this up now? She couldn’t change the past, couldn’t change what she’d done, and knowing she could’ve had a future with Nick even outside Jacaranda would hurt her all over again.

‘A really strong friendship,’ he finished, and disappointment pierced her.

So what? Wasn’t that better than hearing he might’ve loved her back then as much as she’d loved him?

‘I know I acted like a jerk before you left, I know we had our share of troubles, but we were really good friends. I missed that after you left.’

Wow, he’d missed her. And actually admitted it!

Time to lighten the mood before she lost her head completely, blurted out the truth and sought comfort in his strong arms.

‘Aw, shucks. I didn’t think you cared.’

‘I cared.’

His two little words hung in the growing silence between them, laden with untold truths and forgotten dreams. ‘But, hey, life happens.’

This time, he broke the tension with a forced chuckle. ‘We’ve both come a long way. And however many times I tied your hair to a chair or put frogs in your bag, I still care. Goodnight.’

Nick’s admission filled her with a slow, delicious warmth that seeped through her body, leaving her cocooned in a delightful haze.

How could she maintain her immunity when he said stuff like that? Better yet, did she want to?

‘Don’t let the bed bugs bite,’ she murmured, snuggling under the sheets and closing her eyes, hoping for sleep and knowing it was useless.

She had too much to think about, starting with her reawakening feelings for a man best left in her past.

NICK stirred some time around midnight, his dreamless sleep disturbed by a puff of air somewhere in the vicinity of his ear lobe.

His eyelids cranked open a fraction, half-heartedly investigating the source of air, only to snap open as he registered a luscious woman draped over his upper torso, her arm flung proprietorially across his chest and a leg nudging the vicinity of his boxers.

Not just any woman.

Britt.

His wife.

Whom he wanted to make love to something fierce.

Considering the chaste way they’d fallen asleep he should gently slip out from under her and try not to wake her.

But his good intentions evaporated when she snuggled closer, her knee edging towards a fast-growing hard-on, and he froze, gritting his teeth to stop from groaning out loud.

He could play the gentleman, but where would be the fun in that? Britt had always called him her bad boy and, while a small part of him had thought she only hung around him because she was tempted to slum it for a while, he’d liked the reputation.

And it had grown, fuelled by idle gossip of small-town inhabitants and the fact he smoked, rode a motorbike and lived in denim.

He’d heard the rumours, from his fictitious tattoo of skull-and-crossbones on his butt to riding bare-chested all the way to Sydney.

He’d laughed, silently appalled at how reputations could be made or broken by hearsay. Considering he’d been working his ass off trying to make the plantation stay afloat at the time, he hadn’t much cared.

Another puff of air, another small moan in her sleep had him easing away before he did something she’d regret. Make no mistake, she’d been about to give him the ‘don’t think you can seduce me’ talk last night before he’d cut her off. As if he wouldn’t have got the message from seeing her in that libido-killing bulky robe.

She’d made her point earlier and he’d be damned if he sat through it again, rehashing stuff he didn’t agree with. Especially when she was half naked, with all the distraction that would have entailed. The way he saw it, they could keep this marriage business focused while having fun too but there was no way, no how, he’d be pushing the issue now.

Britt had made her feelings more than clear.

‘Nick?’

Her sleepy whisper slammed into his consciousness, beckoning him to stay right where he was. But he couldn’t, he wouldn’t take advantage of the situation no matter how turned on he was or how badly he wanted his wife.

‘Shh, go back to sleep.’

He stroked her hair, a small part of him melting as she snuggled deeper and, rather than pull away, he cuddled her closer with his arm.

Her hair tickled his shoulder, her cheek, so soft and warm, pressed against his chest and the faintest scent of lavender and vanilla lulled him into believing that, for now, this was enough.

If Nick was a bad boy, Brittany was a bad girl.

A very bad girl.

When she’d woken in Nick’s arms that first morning, she’d felt him pulling away, sensed him trying to disengage. And while winding up with her head resting on his chest and the rest of her draped over him hadn’t been planned, she’d taken full advantage of the situation.

Maybe not full advantage, as that would’ve entailed doing a lot more than cuddling, but she’d pretended to sleep while savouring the hard chest cushioning her cheek, the warm, toned body beneath her hands and his intensely male scent, which set off her pheromones in a big way and always had.

She could’ve stopped there but, no, she’d been a really, really bad girl.

And proceeded to do the same thing every morning.

For the next two weeks.

The tension was killing her. If only it were doing the same to her husband.

‘How’s business coming along?’

Her head snapped up from where she’d been resting her chin in her hands, staring out of the window and daydreaming of exactly how bad she’d like to be, to find the object of her wicked fantasies staring at her with cool detachment.

It had to be a ruse. After all, wasn’t he the one who’d been hot to trot on their wedding night? Surely he couldn’t have turned off just like that?