Not a Marrying Man (16 page)

Amber could not believe how incredibly exciting it was, watching Warwick undress like this. He’d never done a slow strip for her before. It was a relief to be able to look at him openly and not feel guilty about it.

He was a hunk all right. That nurse had been so right about that. A gorgeous hunk, and all hers. At least for tonight. What tomorrow morning would bring Amber did not know. All she could be sure of was the here and now. And that promised the kind of pleasure that only Warwick could give her—the kind of pleasure that no girl could resist.

For a brief moment, whether she fell pregnant or not no longer seemed crucial: she wanted to be here with him no matter what.

When Warwick finally slipped off his underpants he saw her eyes widen a little but not with fear. Flattered by her reaction, he stretched out beside her on the bed and began caressing her nipples in the way he knew she loved him to, first with his fingers and then with his mouth. When her back started arching from the bed, he moved on, trailing his mouth down past her navel till he encountered the top edge of her satin panties.

She trembled uncontrollably when he ran a hand up her thigh and slipped it under the leg elastic.

She was wet down there,
very
wet.

Removing his hand, he then removed her panties, sliding them slowly down her legs, holding her dilated eyes with his at the same time. Once the panties were dispensed with, he eased her legs apart then bent them up at the knees. Carefully, so that he didn’t bump into her damaged ankle, he settled himself between her thighs and slowly, very slowly, pushed himself into her.

It was then that it happened again, that overwhelming rush of emotion that flooded his body and tightened his chest till he thought he might be having a heart attack.

‘Dear God,’ he actually cried out.

‘What is it?’ she said immediately. ‘What’s wrong?’

Nothing was
wrong,
he finally realised as enlightenment hit.

For a long moment he just stared down at her, at her lovely face, her lovely body and her even more lovely soul.

So
this
was what falling in love felt like.

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ he replied, his voice husky. ‘You just take my breath away.’

The compliment brought tears to Amber’s eyes, and hope to her heart.

‘Don’t you dare cry,’ he said thickly.

She blinked madly. ‘I won’t. I promise.’

‘Let’s just enjoy each other tonight, the way we used to.’

‘All right,’ she agreed.

But down deep, in that place where guilt festered, Amber knew that tonight was different from what they used to do. Tonight she was deceiving Warwick, big time. Tonight she had a secret agenda.

And whilst she had no intention of telling Warwick the truth, it struck Amber that maybe her troubled conscience would stop her from enjoying the sex the way she used to. Perhaps she would have to fake an orgasm or two, something she’d never had to do with Warwick before.

It was a worrying and slightly depressing thought.

‘Good girl,’ he said, and began to move, using that tantalising but powerful rhythm where he would almost withdraw before plunging back into her like a sword filling its scabbard to the hilt.

Soon, all worry had ceased, all her thoughts focusing on the exquisite sensations he was evoking. She knew, well before it happened, that she would not have to fake her orgasm. How silly of her to imagine that could ever be the case!

Her hands gripped handfuls of the quilt, trying to hold on to the pleasure, trying to make it last.

A futile exercise!

She cried out as she came, her bottom lifting from the bed at the same moment that he reached release. He cried out too, as his seed shot, hot and strong, into her womb. Only then, as he shuddered into her, did she think of the child whom this mating might produce. Just the thought of it brought an elation—and an
emotion—which was difficult to control. She wanted to laugh and to cry at the same time. It was the strangest feeling, both joyful and sad.

She turned her head away and closed her eyes tightly shut, afraid to look up at him, afraid of what he might see.

‘I’m sorry, Amber,’ he said, and stroked a gentle hand down her cheek. ‘I know this was not what you wanted.’

She could not bear to let him think that. Could not
bear
it!

‘Don’t be silly!’ she exclaimed, her eyelids flying upwards as her head turned to face him. ‘It’s exactly what I wanted. I haven’t liked being celibate any more than you have.’

His eyebrows lifted at her words. ‘Does that mean I’m not going to have my wrists slapped for seducing you?’

‘For pity’s sake, Warwick, you didn’t seduce me. I’m as responsible for what happened just now as you were. I could have said no at some point but I didn’t. I
chose
to let you make love to me.’

‘And will you choose to let me make love to you some more?’ he asked, a sudden movement of his hips reminding her that he was still deep inside her and not totally spent, by the feel of him.

A memory popped into her mind, of a television programme she’d once seen about fertility problems, where it had been explained that too much sex was not conducive to conception. It was more a matter of quality rather than quantity, and of timing.

The trouble was Amber wasn’t quite sure when she might ovulate.

Was more than once a night too much? she wondered.

‘I’ll take your silence for a yes,’ Warwick said, and started to move, rocking backwards and forwards in a slow, sensual rhythm.

Amber caught her bottom lip with her teeth in an effort not to moan. But it felt so delicious.
He
felt delicious.

She couldn’t tell him to stop now. She just couldn’t.

Tomorrow she’d be more in control.

Tomorrow she’d come up with a plan.

Excerpt from Amber’s diary two weeks later.

W
ARWICK CALLED
out to Amber as he carried the first of the shopping bags inside. She didn’t answer.

Frowning, he dumped the bags onto the kitchen table and walked across the hallway to the bedroom where he’d left her. She wasn’t there. The bathroom door, however, was shut.

‘Amber! Are you in there?’ he called out from the doorway.

‘Yes,’ came a rather feeble reply through the bathroom door.

‘Is everything all right?’

No answer this time.

Instant alarm had him striding over to the bathroom
door and knocking on it. ‘Amber, what’s going on in there?’

‘Nothing,’ she choked out.

He wasn’t having any of that. But when he went to open the door he discovered that it was locked.

‘If you don’t tell me what’s going on,’ he ground out, ‘I’m going to break this door down.’

He was about to do just that when the door opened and there stood a devastated-looking Amber, her lovely blue eyes awash with tears.

‘Dear God, what is it? What’s happened? ‘

‘I can’t tell you,’ she cried.

‘Why not?’

‘I just can’t!’ she blurted out, then broke down entirely, almost falling over when her head dropped into her hands.

Warwick scooped her up into his arms and carried her over to the bed, where he laid her gently down on top of the quilt. There, she gave him one last traumatised look before she rolled over onto her side and curled up into the foetal position, her eyes squeezing shut as deep sobs racked her slender body.

‘Go away!’ she choked out when he bent to stroke her hair. ‘Just go away!’

Warwick had never in his life felt so helpless, or so guilty. Because he didn’t have to be told what was behind Amber’s distress.

He
was, somehow.

He didn’t go away; he couldn’t. He pulled up a chair by the bed and sat watching over her till her weeping subsided. Even so she didn’t speak, just lay there staring blankly into space.

‘It’s me, isn’t it?’ he said bleakly at last. ‘I’ve caused this.’

A deep sigh reverberated through her as she slowly straightened and looked up at him.

‘I wish I could blame you but I can’t,’ she said in a dull, flat voice. ‘It’s all my own fault. I’m the one who did the wrong thing. And now I’m being punished.’

Warwick had no idea what she was talking about. ‘What do you mean, punished? For what? ‘

Her eyes searched his face, her expression half guilty, half regretful.

‘Shortly after I broke my ankle,’ she said brokenly, ‘I stopped taking the pill. No, please don’t say anything. Let me finish first. Let me try to explain.’

Warwick’s stomach had already fallen into a deep dark pit. For she didn’t really have to explain. He knew why she hadn’t told him she’d gone off the pill. And he knew exactly what had just happened.

Poor darling, he thought as a tidal wave of remorse washed through him, poor, poor darling.

‘At first, I did it because I thought we were finished. Then I realised I wanted a baby,’ she blurted out. ‘No, that’s not totally true. I wanted
your
baby. And I knew you’d never give me one willingly.’ Her face twisted with raw emotion, her throat convulsing as she swallowed several times. ‘Believe me when I tell you I wasn’t trying to trap you into marriage or anything. I would never do that. I just wanted a small part of you to love after you left me. I knew all along it wasn’t right. But you do dreadful things when you’re desperate. Still, you don’t have to worry,’ she added, her voice turning bitter. ‘As I’m sure you’ve gathered by now, I got my period just now. So I’m not pregnant. I’m sure you’re relieved to hear that.’

Warwick sighed a deeply unhappy sigh. He’d been hoping to extricate himself from Amber’s life without
leaving behind too much hurt, and without revealing the wretched truth. But he could see now the extent of his delusion. He knew Amber loved him. How could he possibly think that staying all this time and making love to her as much as he had would not give her more pain?

‘I’m not at all relieved, Amber,’ he told her truthfully. ‘I would dearly love you to have my child.’

She sat bolt upright in surprise, eyes blinking wide. ‘You would? ‘

‘Yes. But it’s never going to be, my love.’

His
love?
Had she heard that right?

Amber frowned as she struggled to make sense of the rest of what he’d said. Was he sterile? Could that be the answer to his distancing himself from any form of commitment?

‘What I’m about to tell you will come as a shock.’

Amber was all ears.

‘You could not become pregnant by me because I have had a vasectomy.’

‘A
VASECTOMY!’
Amber exclaimed, her eyes rounding.

‘Yes.’

Warwick saw her shock turn to confusion.

‘But why … why would you do something like that?’ she asked in disbelieving tones. ‘And when? When did you do it?’

Warwick sighed. ‘I had it when I was twenty.’

Amber’s mouth fell open as her face registered, not just shock, but total disbelief.

‘I have this gene,’ he went on whilst she just sat there, staring at him with stunned eyes. ‘All the men in our family have it. Actually, now that I come to think of it, there are only men in our family. Except for their wives, of course. But they don’t carry the same blood.’

She blinked. It was the first movement he’d noted since he told her how long ago he’d rendered himself sterile. Clearly, she was in deep shock.

Good, he thought. It would give him time to explain.

‘My father didn’t commit suicide because of gambling losses,’ he went on. ‘I believe he did it because he’d begun experiencing the first signs that his mind had begun to deteriorate. That’s what this gene causes. Early onset dementia, or Alzheimer’s, if you want the more
technical term. I found out the truth not long after my father died. My aunt Fenella told me. She was married to my dad’s older brother. I knew my uncle had suffered from dementia before he died but I had no idea that it ran through the family tree the way it did. My grandfather also had it, apparently, and my great-grandfather. Aunt Fenella did some research and discovered that they all had begun to lose it around fifty years old. She said she was only telling me to stop me from having children and passing on the gene to another generation. She said it was a shame that my father hadn’t realised the situation before he’d had me. Apparently, Uncle George had had his suspicions and had refused to have kids. Unfortunately, he and my dad were always at loggerheads with each other and hadn’t spoken in years. She said she was sorry to have to tell me such bad news but felt it was her duty.’