“You’ve got some infectious problem?” His voice was harsh with frustration. Apart from which, he didn’t believe that a woman as fastidious as Nicole would have taken any health risk with sex.
“How do I know you haven’t got one?” she retaliated. “Don’t tell me you’ve been celibate for the past five years.”
“No, but I’m not stupid, Nicole.”
“I want you to use a condom,” she pressed aggressively.
“That’s not as pleasurable for you or me.”
“Tough!” Her eyes savagely mocked his argument. “Me getting pregnant is not part of our deal.”
“Pregnant? You’re worried about getting pregnant?”
“It happens,” she said fiercely.
He frowned over the sharpness of her concern. It seemed unreasonable, given the effectiveness of modern means of contraception.
Perhaps realising it needed some credible explanation, she blurted out, “I’m not on the pill, Quin. By insisting on having me with you tonight, you didn’t give me time to get myself safely protected.”
His mind swiftly processed what she was saying. “So you haven’t been sexually active for some time…months…years?”
Five years? he wondered, recalling her crack about the possible length of his celibacy.
“That’s none of your business.” Again her eyes were savagely mocking as she added, “The point is, you don’t want a child out of this any more than I do. Such a responsibility would interfere far too much with your life. Though, of course, you could just turn your back on it, leaving me to deal with the consequences of our…pleasure.”
Was that a bitter tone in her voice?
Quin forgot about the enforced pause to their current pleasure, his mind totally engaged with Nicole’s response to him on other levels. “I’ve never shirked responsibility,” he stated, ironically conscious of the family debt he’d carried and eventually paid out. “Nor did I turn my back on you, Nicole. It was you who walked away.”
“After you shut about a million doors in my face,” she said derisively. “Only the bedroom door was always open. But let’s not go down that road, Quin. We’re dealing with now and I don’t want any mementoes—butterflies or babies—of this time together. I brought a packet of condoms in case you didn’t have a ready supply. It’s in my bag.”
The raging desire was gone. The act of getting up and doing the whole condom thing was a passion killer anyway, Quin told himself, moving to lie beside Nicole. The whole night stretched ahead of them. There was no need for any haste in satisfying the hunger for a deeply sexual connection with her. Other intimacies also had appeal.
“Shall I get the packet?” she asked, turning towards him and propping herself up on her elbow.
“Sure! Might as well be prepared for when I get another erection,” he drawled sardonically.
She glanced down and winced at the limp evidence of doused arousal. “Sorry, Quin. I should have spoken before. I didn’t deliberately hold back on it.”
He cocked a challenging eyebrow. “Caught up in other things?”
Her lips compressed. No admission that she’d wanted him. But she had. No doubt about that in Quin’s mind. The triumphant knowledge of it simmered in his eyes as he said, “I put your bag in the ensuite bathroom.” He waved to a door beyond the bedside table closest to where he lay. “It’s through there.”
It meant she had to clamber over him or get up on her side and round the bed, passing directly by the blue butterfly which he’d cunningly displayed with the only light switched on in the room. He watched her as she took the latter action. Her naked body was briefly silhouetted against the spotlight as she headed for the bathroom, her gaze rigidly fixed on the door, not so much as a glance at the butterfly.
Her lovely full breasts seemed heavier, not quite as perky as he remembered. A more mature figure five years down the track, he thought, but certainly no less sexy. To his mind, her body was still the most beautifully feminine he’d ever seen; curves where there should be curves, flowing in perfect harmony, her bones softly fleshed, long shapely legs.
He was glad she wasn’t inhibited about it, feeling no need to cover up in front of him. Which would have been absurd anyway, given they’d been lovers. Nevertheless, it conceded a familiarity she might have wanted to reject in these current circumstances with hostility a strong thread in her attitude towards him.
Quin brooded over the hostility while she was out of sight in the bathroom. He didn’t really understand it. When they’d first met at the bank where they’d been employed, the sexual chemistry between them had been instant and compelling. They’d both been swept away by it. There’d been no courtship. One dinner date followed by blazing passion. It had taken enormous discipline for him not to become obsessed with her, not to lose sight of the goal he’d set himself.
Despite the cost to the financial momentum he’d been building, he’d moved out of his mother’s home and rented an apartment so he and Nicole could be together as much as possible. Nicole had been happy with the arrangement. The sexual excitement had been intense and they were also highly compatible out of bed, with her understanding the pressures of trading and his being able to converse knowingly about her work in sales.
She was the only woman he’d ever lived with, the only one he’d ever wanted to live with. Being with her had always been an enormous buzz. It still was. But in the end she hadn’t been satisfied with what they had.
He couldn’t remember when she’d started agitating about meeting each other’s families. He hadn’t wanted to go there. It meant getting more tied up with Nicole than he already was and he didn’t want to think about future relationships when he hadn’t yet discharged the burden of the past. One thing at a time. He’d been adamant about simply continuing to share what they did—just the two of them—which didn’t have anything to do with their families.
He had sensed an emotional withdrawal from her—a coldness stemming, he’d thought, from not getting her own way. He hadn’t fallen in with her design for their lives, whatever that was—marriage, babies, setting up a family home. Nevertheless, she had seemed to accept that he wasn’t about to change his mind—remaining with him for two years before deciding to break off their relationship and go overseas.