Welcome to Mills & Boon. Jennifer Rae

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      But instead, what came out of her mouth was, ‘Why don’t you want to sleep with me?’

      ‘What on earth could have given you that idea?’ Flynn asked, his hand still holding out the open ring box. Helena merely raised her eyebrows at him and watched as his gaze slid from her face down to that perfect sapphire. ‘Trust me—I want to make love to you very much.’

      Helen frowned. He was telling the truth. Hadn’t she seen it in his eyes, felt it in his touch, known it even when he’d kissed her after the speeches on their wedding day? So maybe she was asking the wrong question.

      ‘Okay then, why won’t you?’

      ‘Is this really the time you want to have this conversation?’

      ‘I think it’s something that shouldn’t wait any longer,’ Helena said. ‘But you can, you know, stand up if that’s easier.’

      ‘Right. Because that’s the biggest problem with this conversation.’ Nevertheless, Flynn pushed himself up to standing then dragged his chair across to sit beside her.

      ‘So?’ she asked when he sat looking at her, not saying anything.

      Flynn sighed. ‘So. Of course I want to sleep with you. You’re my wife. You’re beautiful. I care about you and I hope to have a future with you. But...’

      Oh, no. Where was this going? Even in her panic, Helena didn’t believe for a second that he hadn’t done it before, and she knew he wasn’t in love with Thea, so what was it? Even if he had some purity, ‘waiting until marriage’ thing going on, they were already married!

      ‘Before we take that step, before we start something that will hopefully lead to a deeper affection between us, I think it’s important that we agree certain things about our future together.’

      Helena blinked. ‘Isn’t that what we did at lunch? What we’re doing now, with the ring and all?’

      ‘Partly,’ Flynn said. Why wasn’t he meeting her eyes? ‘But, for it to be truly official, we do need the post-nuptial agreement to be signed and filed. Should anything happen, it’s important that these things have been formalised.’

      Helena stared at him. ‘Flynn. Please, please tell me that you’re not refusing to sleep with me because of paperwork.’

      Dropping his head to stare at his hands, Flynn gave a sort of half laugh. ‘It does sound that way, doesn’t it?’

      ‘Wanna try and make it sound a different way?’ Helena suggested.

      ‘Okay.’ Flynn sucked in a deep breath and sat back in his chair, letting the air out slowly. A delaying tactic, Helena recognised. He was figuring out the best way to say whatever he had to say, which meant she probably wasn’t going to like it.

      ‘The other night, before you came in wearing that incredible satin thing—that’s still upstairs, right? I really want to see you in that again some time when I can appreciate it properly.’

      ‘It is.’ A faint warmth hit Helena’s cheeks. So far he wasn’t doing so badly.

      ‘Good. Anyway. Before that, I had a meeting with our fathers that left me in a...not great mood. But it also got me thinking.’ He looked up, his serious eyes focused on hers. ‘The moment we sleep together, we’ve changed the game. There’s no hope of an annulment when we get back. You have to be sure that it’s what you want.’

      ‘An annulment?’ Helena shook her head a little to try and make sense of it. ‘You were refusing to sleep with me to make sure I had an out?’

      ‘That was one reason.’

      ‘What was the other?’

      ‘My father suggested that, should I have any problems getting you to agree to the same terms as Thea for the marriage, I should just get you pregnant to tie you to me, then make sure you signed before the child was born.’

      Helena’s heart froze in her chest. ‘What did my father say?’ she asked. Because Ezekiel probably never knew what she’d been through, and she expected that kind of callousness from him anyway. But her own father...

      ‘He... Helena, he laughed. He said something about you making up for the past by marrying me, and he laughed when Dad told me to get you pregnant.’ He ran a shaking hand through his hair, and Helena wanted to hold him, to soothe him. To have him soothe her. But all she could hear in her mind was her father’s laughter, dismissing the most important thing—the worst thing—that had ever happened to her as a joke.

      She’d known that she and Thea were often more useful than loved. She’d understood that this marriage was a business deal, convenient and lucrative rather than something to be celebrated.

      But until this moment she’d never realised quite how little her father thought of her. And suddenly her heart felt as if it had been torn apart.

      ‘I couldn’t bear it.’ Flynn was still talking, and Helena tried to pay him proper attention again. ‘They were just so casual about the idea—about a child’s life. And I knew I couldn’t risk that. That we had to be sure, that everything had to be agreed before anything like that could happen.’

      Helena swallowed and it felt as if there was a rock stuck in her throat. He hadn’t wanted her to be trapped, hadn’t wanted any child to be unwanted, or used, like he had been. Her soul ached for the boy Flynn must have been, and for the man he’d become. Her own battered heart reached out for his. Maybe they really could give each other what they’d lacked so far, all their lives—love.

      He wanted so badly to do this right, to make a perfect future for them. And so what if he planned it out moment by moment? His reasons were good. His heart was good.

      And Helena wanted that heart for her own. More than she’d ever done as a fourteen-year-old child. More even than when she’d envied her sister her golden, good fiancé. More than when she’d stepped into that borrowed wedding dress, and more certainly than when she’d propositioned him in her negligee on their wedding night. More still than when he’d chosen her the perfect engagement ring.

      She was in love with her own husband, and it scared her and filled her more than she’d ever known anything could.

      ‘I think you should ask me that question again now,’ she said, nerves making her whole body feel as if it was vibrating from the inside out. She needed to tell him the truth, needed to confess. But if she did...it could destroy the cautious happiness they were building together. Once they were home, once the paperwork was signed, maybe then she could talk about what had happened to her, what she’d done. Maybe then she could make him understand.

      But first she had to make him love her.

      Flynn smiled up at her, already on his knees again. ‘Helena. Will you be my wife? In every way there is?’

      ‘Yes,’ she breathed and felt that amazed joy flooding through her.

      * * *

      Flynn swept her up in his arms the moment she spoke. He owed her a proper kiss, after their first public one, and that was what he intended to give her. Lowering his mouth to hers, he tried to convey everything he felt—every hope, every dream—through a kiss.

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