Page 27 of A Nine-Month Deal With Her Husband

His answer made sense, but it sounded... Millie bit the inside of her cheek. What was the word she was looking for? Rehearsed, maybe? Not a lie, but not the full truth either.

‘And the other part?’ Millie pressed him.

He scratched his neck, and his eyes slid off hers. ‘You are like a human lie detector test. Look, I promised never to lie to you and I don’t want to. Can I say that I am trying to work something out and leave it at that?’

She wanted to push, but sensed it wouldn’t help. ‘And you want me to stay in Reykjavik?’ she clarified.

‘Iceland is pretty special this time of the year and I thought it might be a good time for you to rediscover the country, as you’ve been away a long time.’

She had and she’d missed being here—she’d lost touch with her Icelandic roots. After their hasty marriage, she’d been desperate for a new life and a new place. It had taken her twelve years to return and she’d yet to lay all her ghosts to rest. Maybe if she spent some time here, she could work through the last of the resentment she held towards Magnús, she could remember her mum better and she could close the circle.

But there was another elephant in the room and this one was wearing very sexy lingerie. What about sex? Would Ben expect her to share his bed? Could they go back to where they were last night? She wanted to spend long, lovely hours in his arms, but was having a fling with him the clever thing to do?

But how was she supposed tonotwant to sleep with him? He was smart, interesting, gorgeous and had superior bedroom skills. And shelikedhim. She’d never liked any man as much as she did Ben.

Maybe she should forget everything—using him as a baby maker, exploring this land she once called her home, their explosive attraction—and go back to London and resume her life there, eventually forcing herself to make an uncomplicated choice from a sperm bank website. But she’d asked Ben to give her a baby. It wasn’t a request she could take back.

Millie rubbed her hands over her face and, when she lowered them, she saw that Ben was looking at her, his eyes steady and warm. ‘Stay here, spend some time with me and when it’s time for you to go home I’ll, hopefully, be able to give you an answer about giving you a baby.’ His eyebrows pulled together in a frown. ‘But I feel I should warn you that the chances of me saying yes are not high.’

‘I told you, you don’t have to do anything, be anything—’

Ben jammed his hands into the pockets of his pants and frustration flickered in his eyes. ‘Millie, we went over it. I know what you said and I’ll think it through, okay?’ He looked at his watch and then picked his coffee off the counter. ‘So, are you staying or are you going back to the UK?’

It was a choice between spending time with him or spending time in London, mostly alone. It was a choice between having his body wrapped around her when she slept, waking up to the smell of good coffee and a rumpled man in the morning and a series of great orgasms to...well, boredom. Loneliness.

Nobody, she decided, should be lonely at this time of the year. But before she agreed to stay here, she needed to know whether they were going to pick up where they left off. ‘And are we going to keep sleeping together?’

Ben didn’t drop his eyes from hers. ‘Last night was amazing, but—’

Oh, dear, here came hisbut...

‘Obviously I’d love to keep making love to you. But I don’t want you to feel pressurised, that it’s a condition of you staying. If we both want to, we can. If not, we remain friends.’ He sent her one of those warm smiles that could melt her insides at fifty paces.

There was no point in trying to play it cool. ‘I want to, Ben.’

A rare, full smile bloomed. ‘Yeah, I do, too.’

‘And are we friends, Ben?’ Millie asked, tipping her head to the side.

‘We’re on our way,’ Ben told her. It was a fair statement, but Ben knew her better than she knew him. ‘Two weeks, Mils, let’s go play. Let’s forget about babies, work, divorce, the trust and what happens in the future and live in the moment. A two-week step out of time.’

Oh, that sounded like heaven. But the thought that life didn’t work like that niggled at the back of her brain. They still had to be smart. ‘Same terms as before?’ she asked. ‘No strings sex, complete honesty?’

He placed an open-mouthed kiss on her lips. ‘That works. Can I get Einar to cancel your flights?’

Millie nodded quickly. ‘Yes, please. Could you also ask him to see if he can get me an appointment at the bank so that I can deal with those safety deposit boxes?’

He nodded, scooped up his phone and in an instant he was talking to Einar, issuing a set of instructions in his machine-gun-fast Icelandic. Man, she had a long way to go before she became even mildly proficient in the language again. Thank goodness most Icelandic people spoke excellent English.

Millie slipped off the stool, but her progress to the coffee machine was halted by Ben’s strong arm around her waist. While still talking to Einar, he deposited her back on the stool, but only on the edge and lifted her thigh to hold it over his hip. He smiled down at her as her core connected with his erection and she was pretty certain her eyes rolled back in her head. Because she wanted him to moan her name, she placed her hands on his hips and stretched out her fingers and allowed her thumbnail to scrape his long, hard length.

Ben was in the middle of a sentence about delaying some meeting—or she thought he was—but then his eyes darkened and he shuddered. He disconnected the phone mid-sentence and it clattered on to the surface of the island, coming to rest quite close to the far side. It buzzed with an incoming call, most likely Einar, but Ben ignored it and lowered his mouth to hers and slid his tongue past her teeth, to tangle with hers.

He jerked his head off her and stared down at her, his eyes blazing with need and passion. ‘I’m taking you back to bed,’ he told her in a deep growl. He lifted her and Millie wrapped her legs around his hips, loving his strength. Ben walked her up the stairs to the landing where he stopped to kiss her.

‘I want you so damn much, Millie,’ he told her, yanking her jersey up and over her head.

His need for her was obvious. It was in his touch, in the way he attacked her clothes, in his need to get her naked as soon as possible. She wanted him as much, as mindlessly, as completely.

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