The Pretend Fiancé (20 page)

The high society ladies prattled on around Judith, talking about one unimportant social engagement or another. Gossip infected every class, it seemed. She was sure that the little scene that had just unfolded would be told and retold for the next six months at least. These people tended to have very little excitement or drama in their boring lives.

In truth, Judith hated this sort of thing. The women were insufferable, the food bad, the atmosphere wanting. But they had all been necessary evils. All endured to get what she wanted.

Although she'd gotten more than that. She hadn't expected that sort of vehemence from the girl, that sort of backbone.
And the way she'd drunk that tea and wished us well at the end? Absolutely marvelous!

Perhaps I shouldn't dismiss the girl so quickly after all
, she thought. Still, there was that matter with that journalist, that walking British stereotype of suaveness and charm. Another necessary, if tasteless evil. She looked forward to seeing how Aiden, and their relationship, handled that little revelation.

She interrupted Cordelia, "Tell the footman to bring more tea. This pot is getting cold! If there's one thing a person shouldn't have to suffer in this world, it's cold tea..."
That, and conversations with the likes of Claudia von Hildebrand and Cordelia Astor
. She kept that part to herself, though.

A
nxiety wracked Gwen so badly that she couldn't insert the keycard into the lock. Anxiety and nervous energy still working its way through her muscles due to her melodramatic escape from that tea room.

The lip of the card kept sliding over the brushed metal receptacle, never going in.

You have to tell him right away,
she thought,
you have to
. Aiden was going to learn about Ben no matter what, and it would be better coming from her than Judith.

She tried for the lock again. The card started entering, then started bending, then flew from the slot when she let go of it.

Bending, Gwen reached for it. As she did, the door opened. She saw polished black shoes in the gap, dual tiny reflections staring back at her from Aiden's toes.

"Aiden..." Gwen started before her heart could shoot up into her throat and cut her off.

"Thank God!" Aiden said, grabbing her arm and hauling her inside. "Gwen, there's something I have to say."

"Me first."

"No, I need to, so please just listen. I know what's going on..."

"You do?" Had Judith already gotten here? Had she made that butler bring Aiden a message while Gwen was out?

"Yes. Please, listen. I want to be honest with you. Catherine was here again. I thought she wanted to take care of some more business catch-up. At least, I did until she came out of the bathroom in her underwear and sat on my lap..."

"She
what
?"

"I know how this sounds! Let me finish before you react. Nothing happened between us, nothing at all. You were right about her and I was wrong. She liked me, but that's over now. We spoke, that was it. However, she told me about your contracts. I know that's what you've been hiding from me. Judith made you agree to something else, and you couldn't tell me. I know now, and it's okay."

Gwen didn't know what to say, what to think. She trusted him on what he said about Catherine. But that just exacerbated her guilt regarding Ben. He thought he knew why she'd been behaving like this; however, he only knew part of it. And not even the worst part.

She had to tell him. "Aiden..."

"It's okay, I know now. It's okay. That whole thing with Catherine made me remember how much I love you, and how much I want to be with you. So let's just be together, you and me, okay?"

"Aiden, I..."

"No. No more talking. There's been too much talking over the past few days. So shut up and kiss me."

He kissed her, then, putting a hand on the back of her head and pulling it towards him. Her body responded instantly to the raw power of his desire. The rational part of her, dwindling rapidly, knew that she needed to tell him. However, the rest of her knew that they both needed this even more.

So her resistance faltered and she gave herself to him.

Her body burned for him. Burned as he ran his hands down her shoulder, down her back, down to her bottom. His fingers dug into her flesh, pulling her hips against his so that she could feel him.

His fingers didn't relent, and she didn't want them to. He touched her as though he'd been denied her company a lifetime.

"Aiden..." she said breathlessly. This time she didn't say his name to tell him about Ben. She'd already forgotten about Ben. No, this time her voice was a plea, begging him to take her, to be with her.

He answered her by kissing her neck, letting her feel his teeth run along her skin. He bit down, gently at first. His own passion urged him on, urged him past rational thought so that only the hunger for her body remained. He bit down harder and she gasped.

He bit until it hurt, and still she begged him for more. The pain was good. The desire was better. They mingled as their bodies mingled.

"You drive me crazy," Aiden said, leaving her neck red and tender where he'd pressed his teeth into it. "I can never stop thinking about you..."

He spun her around so that her back pressed against his body. His words etched themselves into her thoughts, into her being. His trembling fingers pulled her shirt up, exposing her midriff. His palm pressed over her navel, his skin unbelievably hot against hers.

He kissed her neck again, running his lips up so that his breath washed over her ear. When he spoke, a shiver a desire ran down her spine and gooseflesh speckled every inch of her skin.

"Just the thought of touching you is enough to send me over the edge," he said. His fingers started tracing slow circles on her stomach. The tingles from it went all the way through her, and she pressed herself back against him.

His other hand went down her thigh, his fingertips pressing into the thin layer of denim. And then it started back up again, not stopping until it reached her breasts. He squeezed and kneaded her, his desire lending his grip strength that had her moaning and quivering against him.

"And then I think of how warm you always are for me..." he said, his deep voice resonating in her chest.

He stopped running his fingers in circles on her bare stomach, instead reached down and popping the zipper on her jeans.

"Aiden... Touch me..." Gwen said, letting her head fall back against his shoulder. His fingers started their circling again, lower this time. They kept brushing against the elastic of her panties.

His lips found her neck again, his mouth hot, so hot against her.

"Please, baby," she said. She couldn't stop thinking about the heat, about the way she flushed with the desire to feel his touch.

An ache opened up inside her, deepening with every teasing revolution of his fingers that were oh so very close.

Their hotel suite became too hot to bear. It was like someone had lit a bonfire right in front of her, and Aiden held her trapped next to the scorching flames that threatened to come out and caress her skin.

"There's never a moment when I don't want to be touching you," Aiden said, his voice insistent, "There's no one I'd rather be close with than you..."

She couldn't respond anymore. He'd brought her too close to the edge. She was beyond words.

His fingertips dipped below the waistband of her panties, then slipped out. Then went in again, lower this time. And then again. Until finally even Aiden couldn't keep the pretense anymore.

Her breath caught in her chest as he found the source of all that heat.

Neither of them could hold back at all past that point. There was no way they could make it upstairs to the bed, or even over to the couch.

They needed each other right then, that very moment. They didn't even manage to get all of their clothes off. Just enough for their own lusty purposes.

Aiden pushed her down against the table, the polished surface shockingly cold against her bare chest and stomach. The sensation invigorated her, brought her even deeper into the moment.

He savaged her body, still unable to hold anything back. When her climax came, it knotted every muscle in her so that she arched up off the table. His hungry mouth kissed her back, ran across her shoulder blades, and tasted her glistening sweat.

Aiden transfixed her in a moment of pure pleasure and ecstasy, and she screamed out not caring if anyone might hear.

He had her body under his command, and he used it like she wanted him to use it. He gave her what she wanted and needed from him until even he couldn't hold back any longer, that moment of his own ultimate pleasure placing his body under her control, if only for those few moments.

And she made sure they counted.

The ache he left her with would last days, she knew. However, she cherished that ache, because she also knew that it was indisputable physical proof of the strength of his feelings for him.

She could only hope that she left him with an ache of equal magnitude.

When she pushed herself off from the table, Gwen discovered that her knees had been replaced with jelly sometime in the last few minutes.

"That was..." Gwen said, starting to stoop over to collect her pants but deciding against it when she realized that if she moved any farther she'd be on the floor, unable to stand back up under her own power.

"I don't even know what that was..." Aiden said. He stood behind the couch, holding onto it for support.

Fresh, clean sweat glistened on his cheeks and brow, and his recent exertions had given his face a swarthy flush.

"I meant it, though."

"What?" Gwen replied.

"Everything that I said to you. Both before and during."

Gwen wished that those moments of eternal bliss that he led her into could actually be eternal rather than simply feeling that way. That way she wouldn't be where she was now, one secret still stashed deep at the back of a cobweb-filled closet.

"I still need to say something to you," Gwen said.

"Whatever it is, it can wait," Aiden said, coming and taking her hand. He only looked slightly more steady on his feet than she felt.

"It can wait until when?" Gwen said, following him on shaky legs.

"Until after a shower," he replied.

He led her into the bathroom. They didn't exactly have a lot of clothes left on to strip out of, either. And soon Aiden held her bare body against his while steaming water sprayed down onto them from the showerhead, washing away the sweat they'd built up earlier as well as the stuff they worked up there. It wasn't a particularly productive shower. Not for the purposes of getting clean, at least.

***

T
hey sat at a small, circular table for two down at the hotel restaurant, waiting for dinner to arrive.

Every time Aiden closed his eyes, he received flashes of what they'd just done together. Two bodies moving together. Heat. Desire. It was all very primal and basic.

Maybe that was why he couldn't stop himself from holding Gwen's hand, or from smiling every time she looked his direction. She looked great, incredible, radiant. And Aiden still couldn't quite believe that she belonged to him now, and the opposite, of course. Or would, soon.

He kept running his thumb over the engagement ring, hoping that she liked it, wondering if maybe there might be an even better one out there to grace that lovely finger of hers.

Although he also thought that maybe he kept paying so much attention to her because she'd been so quiet ever since they got out of the shower. She'd told the waiter what she wanted and then said nothing since.

He liked to think that maybe that was a result of his prowess as a lover. That he'd satisfied her so deeply and so well that she simply saw no need to ruin that perfection by putting words to it.

However, Aiden also knew that you never got ahead in life, whether business or personal, by making yourself see only what you wanted to see. To be the person he was, he needed to see things the way they were, not as he fantasized them.

And right then, his pragmatism told him that while she clearly found his bedroom skills on par or better, that wasn't the cause of her silence.

"It can't be that bad," Aiden said.

She blinked at him. "What?"

"Whatever you're holding back from me still. It can't be as bad as you think it is."

Gwen glanced around the restaurant. Aiden followed her line of sight as it skipped from the waiters and their silver trays to the mirror-backed bar to the raised dais at the one end with the reserved seating.

"You can't know that. You don't know what I'm thinking," Gwen said.

"Then maybe I'm just a little bit psychic, because I think I do."

She snorted at that. It was nice to see a bit of the old Gwen back. "Now that I really doubt."

"So why don't you try me? Tell me what it is, and I'll be the judge."

"Can I make this a trial by jury instead?"

He shook his head. "No, now come on. Out with it."

She picked up her water glass and drained it. Slowly. When she finished, she looked at it forlornly, mourning the lack of liquid procrastination.

"Time's up. No more distractions. Tell me."

Aiden had to admit to himself that all this made him more than a little nervous. Just what could bother her so much that she actually seemed afraid to tell him, especially after that incredible impromptu encounter they just shared?

"Okay," she said, swallowing heavily. She tried pulling her hand out from under his, but he held on tightly.

"Do you remember that night I stormed out on you? After the dinner disaster with my parents?"

"Well, it was only a couple days ago, so yes. How could I forget?"

"Thank you, Captain Sarcasm. Moving on," Gwen said, "Anyway, I stormed out and I forgot my purse. So I didn't have my wallet or my key or anything. So I wandered around and ended up at this little bar like ten minutes or so from here. I was angry at you, at me, at mom and dad..."

She took a deep, shuddering breath. Aiden gave her hand a supportive squeeze.