Page 43 of Her Diamond Deal with the CEO

She frowned. She was making it sound like a one-night stand. But that didn’t make any sense because they were married. Surely you had a one-night stand with someone you didn’t know. Then again, what did she know? She’d only had three sexual partners, and she had ended up marrying all of them.

It made her feel off balance bracketing them together in that way because they were all very different. For starters, she had believed she was in love with Garrett and Vince, but the thought of love had never entered her mind with Jack.

And yet it was Jack whose touch made her shiver all the way through. Jack who made her melt on the inside. Jack who had claimed her body. And not just her body, she thought, remembering last night’s tearful confession. She had never told either of her ex-husbands anything that deeply personal. Maybe that was why him being here in this bed, their bed, felt so right.

Staring blindly across the room, she saw the sun disappear behind a cloud. Or maybe she was just tired and hormonal because she had been here before.

Twice.

With Garrett, she had fallen for his certainty, trusting, expecting him to be steadfast and true. And because Vince made her laugh, she had assumed he would make her happy. Now she was doing the same thing with Jack, wanting this encounter to mean something more than bodies and skin and sweat.

She glanced down at the tangle of bedsheets.

But this was sex. Wild, sublime, incomparable sex; she doubted that any man would ever make her feel as alive and aware and as beautiful in his bed as Jack. And yet, she knew it wasn’t enough. The truth was that the relationships that worked, like her parents’, were more than just a chemical attraction.

Her hand moved protectively to her stomach where once there had been an indent and now there was a bump. And anyway, this relationship was about more than just her and Jack.

She thought back to what he’d said about taking care of her and Oli and the baby. He meant financially, and of course she wasn’t going to pretend that Jack’s money wouldn’t make a difference. How could she? It was making a difference right now. And she knew he was trying to help, trying to reassure her. But it was not an acknowledgement that this baby was his any more than his concern during sex. Remembering how he’d wanted to edit all evidence of her ongoing pregnancy from the photos on his phone, she felt her throat tighten. He was still a long way from acknowledging that.

Which was why, up until now, she had pushed Jack’s postpartum involvement in their baby’s life to a corner of her mind she didn’t visit very often.

Her fingers flexed against her abdomen.

Sometimes she wondered if she had tried hard enough to make him believe her. There were moments when she had thought about telling him about Garrett and the agonising months of disappointment and despair, as if that might prove she wasn’t the manipulative little hustler he’d accused her of being. Once or twice she even felt the words form into sentences, but the pain and shame of those months were so embedded in the fascia of her body that she couldn’t say them out loud.

And it had been easier before not to rock the boat.

But what about now?

‘Penny for them?’

Ondine blinked. Jack was standing in the doorway. His handsome face was calm and blank, but his eyes were watching her with a lazy, predatory gleam that made her breath tangle in her throat. He was wearing loose black shorts and a black vest and his skin was flushed from working out, although how he had the energy was beyond her.

Not that she was complaining about the end results, she thought as her gaze roamed over the smooth muscles of his arms and chest.

‘I was just wondering what time it is.’ She shifted up the bed but as she did so the sheet fell away from her body and she felt his dark gold gaze move over her breasts with the same freedom his hands had in the hours before dawn.

So now they were both staring at each other like moonstruck idiots.

Jack recovered first.

‘I’m not actually sure.’ He walked across the room and stopped at the end of the bed, his fingers flexing round the top rail as if it were a barbell. ‘Somewhere between brunch and lunch.’

She laughed. ‘I’m guessing that means you’re hungry.’

His gaze was steady and unwavering. ‘It’s hard not to be when I’m around you,’ he said, after a moment. ‘You make me hungry.’ She felt her body react, skin tightening, breasts tingling, nipples suddenly incredibly sensitive. It was an echo of what he’d said to her in the pool house last night—was it really only last night?—and it was all too easy to remember what had happened afterwards. All too tempting to turn memory into a live action replay.

‘And you make me greedy,’ she said quietly.

He was still watching her and she felt his gaze, felt the intensity of his concentration. ‘I’m glad you’ve got your appetite back. The doctor will be too.’

She tilted her head back to meet his eyes. ‘I think she was talking about food. Not sex.’

His dense, dark lashes snapped upwards at the directness of her words. ‘But you are. Talking about sex, I mean.’

‘Yes.’ Heart thudding, she pulled the sheet up to cover herself. ‘We both are. Except we’re not talking about it. We’re tiptoeing round it—’

His gaze sharpened. ‘I see. And you want us to be less coy?’

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