As she stood in the tiny cubicle and examined her face in the mirror she fastened her bra. Her skin was pink from his prolonged attention, her lips swollen, and her eyes glittered with danger. The face that looked back at her was not a woman she knew.

And she was so not the woman Niklas had first met.

Not once in her life had she rebelled; never had she even jumped out of her bedroom window and headed out to parties. At university she had studied and worked part-time, getting the grades her parents had expected before following them into the family business. She had always done the right thing, even when it came to her personal relationships.

Niklas had been right. She hadn’t wanted her boyfriend in the way she wanted Niklas, and had strung things out for as long as she could before realising she could not get engaged to someone she cared about but didn’t actually fancy. She had told her boyfriend that she wouldn’t have sex till she was sure they were serious, but the moment he’d started to talk about rings and a future Meg had known it was time to get out.

And that was the part that caused her disquiet.

She wasn’t the passionate woman Niklas had just met and kissed—she was a virgin, absolutely clueless with men. A few hours off the leash from her parents and she was lying on her back, with a stranger above her and the throb of illicit pulses below. She closed her eyes in shame, and then opened them again and saw the glitter and the shame burned a little less. There was no going back now to the woman she had been, and even if there were she would not change a minute of the time she had spent with Niklas.

She heard a tap against the door and froze for a second. Then she told herself she was being ridiculous. She brushed her teeth and sorted her hair and washed in the tiny sink, trying to brace herself to head back out there.

As she walked down the aisle she noticed her bed had been put away and the seats were up. She attempted polite conversation with Niklas as breakfast was served. He didn’t really return her conversation. It was as if what had passed between them simply hadn’t happened. He continued to read his paper, dunking his croissant in strong black coffee as if he hadn’t just rocked her world.

The dishes were cleared and still he kept reading. And as the plane started its descent Meg decided that she now hated landing too—because she didn’t want to arrive back at her old life.

Except you couldn’t fly for ever. Meg knew that. And a man like Niklas wasn’t going to stick around on landing. She knew what happened with men like him, wasn’t naïve enough to think it had been anything more than a nice diversion.

She accepted it was just about sex.

And yet it wasn’t just the sex that had her hooked on him.

He stretched out his legs, his suit trousers still somehow unrumpled, and she turned away and stared out of the window, trying not to think about what was beneath the cloth, trying not to think about what she had felt beneath her fingers, about the taste of his kisses and the passion she had encountered. Maybe life would have been easier had she not sat next to him—because now everything would be a mere comparison, for even with the little she knew still she was aware that there were not many men like Niklas.

Niklas just continued reading his newspaper, or appeared to be. His busy mind was already at work, cancelling his day. He knew that she would have plans once they landed. That she probably had a car waiting to take her to her hotel and her parents. But he’d think of something to get around that obstacle.

He had no intention of waiting.

Or maybe he would wait. Maybe he’d arrange to meet up with her tonight.

He thought of her controlling parents and turned a page in the paper. He relished the thought of screwing her right under their nose.

She, Niklas decided, was amazing.

There was no possibly about it now.

He thought of her face as she came beneath him and shifted just a little in his seat.

‘Ladies and gentlemen …’ They both looked up as the captain’s voice came over the intercom. ‘Due to an incident at LAX all planes are now being re-routed. We will be landing in Las Vegas in just over an hour.’

The captain apologised for the inconvenience and they heard the moans and grumbles from other passengers. They felt the shift as the plane started to climb, and had she been sitting next to anyone else Meg might have been complaining too, or panicking about the prolonged flight, or stressing about the car that was waiting for her, or worried about what was going on …

Instead she was smiling when he turned to her.

‘Viva Las Vegas,’ Niklas said, and picked up her remote, laid her chair flat again and got back to where he had left off.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘IT WAS A false alarm.’

They were still sitting on the plane on the tarmac. The second they had landed in Vegas Niklas had pulled out his phone, turned it on and called someone. He was speaking in Portuguese. He had briefly halted his conversation to inform Meg that whatever had happened in Los Angeles had been a false alarm and then carried on talking into his phone.

‘Aguarde, por favour!’ he said, and then turned again to Meg. ‘I am speaking with my PA, Carla. I can ask her to reschedule your flight also. She will get it done quickly, I think.’

And make sure he’d sit next to her too, Niklas decided.

‘So?’ he asked. ‘When do you want to get there?’

Of course the normal response would be as soon as possible, but there was nothing normal about her response to him. Niklas was looking right at her, and there was undoubtedly an invitation in his eyes, but there was something he needed to know—somehow she had to tell him that what had happened between them wasn’t usual for her.

To put it mildly.

Except Niklas made her stomach fold into herself, and his eyes were waiting, and his mouth was so beautiful, and she did not want this to end with a kiss at an airport gate. She did not want to spend the rest of her life regretting what would surely be a far more exciting choice than the one she should be making.

He made it for her.

‘It sounds as if there is a lot of backlog. The airport will be hell with so many people having to re-route. I could tell her to book our flights for tomorrow.’ Niklas had already made the decision. He had not had twenty-four hours to himself in months, had not stopped working in weeks, and right now he could think of no one nicer to escape the world with.

‘I’m supposed to be …’ She thought of her parents, waiting for her at the conference, waiting for her to arrive, to perform, to work twelve-hour days and accept weekends constantly on call. Hers was a family that had every minute, every week, every year of her life accounted for, and for just for a little while Meg wanted to be able to breathe.

Or rather to struggle to breathe under him as he kissed her and took her breath.

He looked at her mouth as he awaited her answer, watched the finger that twirled in her hair finally pause as she reached her decision, saw her tongue moisten her lips just before she delivered her answer.

‘Tomorrow,’ Meg said. ‘Tell her tomorrow.’

He spoke with Carla for a couple more moments, checked he had the right spelling of her surname and date of birth and passport number, and then clicked off his phone.

‘Done.’

She didn’t know what his life was like—didn’t really understand what the word done meant in Niklas Dos Santos’s world …

Yet.

They waited for their baggage and she got to kiss him for the first time standing up, got to feel his tall length pressed against her. He loaded their bags onto one trolley and then he did a nice thing, a very unexpected thing: he stopped at one of the shops and bought her flowers.

She smiled as he handed them to her.

‘Dinner, breakfast, champagne, kisses, foreplay …’ God, he didn’t even lower his voice as he handed her the flowers. ‘Have I covered everything?’

‘You haven’t taken me to the movies,’ Meg said.

‘No …’ He shook his head. ‘There was a movie on. You chose not to watch it. I cannot be held responsible for that …’

Oh, but he had been. She felt the thorns of the roses press in as he moved closer again and crushed the flowers.

‘Consider yourself dated.’

There was no waiting in long queues for Niklas. Customs was a very different thing in his world, and as his hand was holding hers, she too was processed quickly. Suddenly they had cleared Customs and were walking out—and it was then she got her first glimpse of what done meant in a world like Niklas’s.

Carla must have been busy, for there was already a driver waiting, holding a sign with ‘Niklas Dos Santos’ written on it. He relieved them of their bags and they followed him to a blacked-out limousine. She never got a glimpse of Vegas as they drove to the hotel, just felt the brief hit of hot desert sun.

No, she never saw Vegas at all.

She was sitting on his lap.

‘I’m going to be the most terrible let-down …’ She peeled her face from his.

‘You’re not,’ he groaned.

‘I am …’ God, her head was splitting just at the attempt to be rational. ‘Because I have to ring my mum …’

Her hands were shaking as she dialled the number, her mind reeling, because she had to tell him she was a virgin. Oh, God, she really was going to be a let-down! His fingers were working the buttons on her trousers now, his hand slipping in and cupping her bum. His mouth was sucking her breast through her blouse as she was connected to her mother, and she heard only smatters of her conversation.

‘Yes, I know it was a false alarm …’ She tried to sound normal as she spoke with a less than impressed Ruth. ‘But all the flights are in chaos and tomorrow was the earliest I could get.’ No, she insisted for a third time, there was simply nothing she could do that would get her there sooner. ‘I’ll call you when I’ve sorted out a hotel and things. I have to go, Mum, my battery’s about to go flat.’

She clicked off the phone and he turned her so that she was sitting astride him. Holding her hips, he pushed her down, so she could feel what would soon be inside her, and for the first time she was just a little bit scared.

‘Niklas …’

‘Come on …’ He did her blouse up. ‘We are nearly there.’

She made herself decent, slipped her cardigan over her blouse to hide the wet patch his mouth had made, and found out once again what it was like in his world.

They breezed through check-in, and even their luggage beat them to their huge suite—not that she paid any attention to it, for finally they were alone. As soon as the door shut he kissed her, pushing her onto the bed. He removed his jacket and pulled condoms from his pocket, placing them within reach on the bedside table, and then he removed her trousers, taking her panties with them at the same time.

God, he was animal, and he moaned as he buried his face in her most private of places. Meg felt the purr of his moan, and this new experience coupled with her own arousal terrified her.

‘Niklas …’ she pleaded as his tongue started to probe. ‘When I said my relationship wasn’t passionate …’

‘We’ve already proved it had nothing to do with you.’ His words were muffled, but he felt her tense and as he looked up he met anxious eyes.

‘I haven’t done this before.’ She saw him frown. ‘I haven’t done anything.’

There was a rather long pause. ‘Good. I will look after you …’

‘I know that.’

‘I will.’

And then his mouth resumed, and she felt his breath in places she had never felt someone breathe before, but still the tension and fear remained. Niklas must have sensed it too, as he raised himself up on his elbows and looked down at her beneath him, her face flushed.

Niklas was a very uninhibited lover; it was the only piece of himself that he readily gave. Sex was both his rest and recreation, and with his usual lovers there was no need for long conversation and coaxing, no need for reticence or taking his time. But as he looked down at her flushed cheeks he recalled their long conversations on the plane, and the enjoyment of spending proper time with another person. He thought of all the things he had told her that he never usually shared with anyone, and he realised he liked not just the woman who lay beneath him but the words that had come from her mouth.

He kissed it now, as if doing so for the first time.

Not their first kiss. Just a gentle kiss—albeit with his erection pressing into her as he thought about what to do.

His first intention had been to push her on the bed and take her quickly, just so that they could start over again, but he really liked her, and he wanted to do this well.

Thoroughly.

Properly.

‘I know …’

He sounded as if he’d had an idea, and he stopped kissing her, smiling down at her before rolling off and picking up the phone. He told Meg that a bath would relax her, and as they waited for a maid to come and run it he wrapped her in a vast white dressing gown. She lay on the bed, watching him as he went through his case, and then he joined her on the bed and showed her some documents, his fingers pointing to the pertinent lines, which she read, frowning.

‘I don’t get this.’

‘I had to get a check-up when I was in Sydney, for my insurance …’ he explained.

‘So?’

‘I wasn’t worried about the results. I always use protection …’ He was so completely matter-of-fact.

‘I’m not on the pill,’ Meg replied as she understood his meaning, and she saw his eyes widen just a little as she dampened his plans.

‘But still …’ He stopped himself, shook his head as if to clear it. What the hell had he been thinking? For a second a baby had seemed a minor inconvenience compared to what they might miss out on. He was, Niklas decided, starting to adore her, and that always came with strong warnings attached—that was always his signal to leave.

‘Niklas … am I making a big mistake?’

He was as honest with Meg as he was with all women, because his was a heart that would remain closed. ‘If you are looking for love, then yes,’ Niklas said. ‘Because I don’t do that.’

‘Never?’

‘Ever,’ Niklas said. He could not bear even the thought of someone depending on him, could not trust himself to provide for another person, just could not envisage sharing, yet alone caring—except already a part of him cared for her.

‘Then I want as long as we’ve got,’ Meg said.

When the maid left he took her by the hand and led her to the bathroom. The bath was sunken, and as she slid into the water he undressed, and she was looking up at his huge erection, her cheeks paling in colour. Niklas found himself assuring her that nothing would happen between them just yet—not until she was sure she was ready. The need to comfort her and reassure her was a new sensation for him, and as he looked down at her he decided that for the next twenty-four hours he would let himself care.

He climbed into the water with her and washed her slowly, sensually, smoothing the soap over her silky skin. He dunked her head in the water too, just so he could see the red darken.

‘Your last boyfriend—did he try …?’ Niklas asked as he soaped her arms, curious because he wondered how any man could resist the beautiful woman he held in his arms.

‘A bit …’ Meg said.

Even her arms blushed, he noted.

‘I just …’

‘What?’ He loved her blushing, and found himself smiling just watching her skin pinken, feeling the warmth beneath his palms as she squirmed.

‘I told him I didn’t want to do anything like that till we were really serious. You know …’

His eyes widened. ‘Married?’

‘Engaged,’ she corrected.

‘Do people really say that?’ He sounded incredulous, his soapy hands moving lower, past her breasts and down to her waist. ‘How would you know if you wanted to marry someone if you hadn’t—?’

‘That had nothing to do with it. I wasn’t demanding a ring. I realised I was just making up excuses …’

‘Because?’ He was sliding his soapy hands between her legs now, and she didn’t know how to answer. ‘Because?’ he insisted.

‘Because I didn’t have any compulsion to sit in a bath with him and let him wash me there …’ She couldn’t believe he expected her to speak as he was doing what he did. ‘And then he started talking rings.’

‘I bet he did,’ Niklas said, because, naked with her like this, what man wouldn’t want his ring on her finger?

Suddenly his brain went to a place it should not, and Niklas tried hard to shut it down. This had to stay as just sex between them. He pulled her straight over to him, hooked her legs over his and kissed her shoulder.

‘I loved flying with you …’ He said it like a caress as he lifted her hair, and his mouth moved to the back of her neck and sucked hard.

She closed her eyes at the bruise he was making, and then felt his hand move up her thigh. It was his neck she was now kissing, licking away the fragrant water just to get to his skin. As they continued to nip and kiss each other Niklas moved his hand, his finger slipping inside, and when she felt a moment’s pain she sucked harder on his neck. He pushed in another finger, stretching her, and again she bit down on his shoulder as pain flashed through her body. She knew he had to stretch her—she had seen that he was huge and this was her first time after all—but he did it with a gentleness that moved her.

He continued to slide his fingers in and out, and then kissed her breast, sucking on her wet nipple. She began to moan and lift herself to his fingers as pleasure washed over her. Niklas realised that things were moving rather faster than he had intended. He wanted her on the bed—or rather they needed to get back to the condoms.

‘Come on …’ He moved to stand, except her hand found him first and, yes, she deserved a little play too.

He liked being touched by a woman. He had just never expected to enjoy it as much as he did now. Had never expected the naked pleasure in her eyes and the tentative exploration of her hands, just her enjoyment of him, would make him feel as it did.

For enjoy him, Meg did. It was bliss to hold him, huge and slippery and magnificent in her hands, and she was still scared, but rather more excited at the prospect of him being inside her.

‘Like this?’ she checked, and he closed his eyes and leant his head back on the marble wall behind him.

‘Like that,’ he said, but then changed his mind. ‘Harder.’ And he put his hand over hers and showed her—showed her a little too well.

‘Come here.’ He pulled her up over him. He was seconds away, had to slow down, but he had to have her. He was rubbing himself around her and she was desperate for him to be inside her too.

‘We need …’ It was him saying it, and he knew he should take her to bed and slip on a condom, but he wanted her this moment, and for once in his life he was conflicted. He knew he could have her now, that he was the only one thinking, and he wanted the pleasure. But as he looked at her, hovering over him, Niklas knew he wouldn’t have a hope of pulling out in time.

Her hands were on his shoulders and he was holding her buttocks, almost fighting not to press her down. He wanted to give in, to drive her down and at the same time lift his hips, and he would have—absolutely he would have, in fact—had her phone not rung.

He swore in Portuguese, and then French, and then Spanish at the intrusion.

‘Leave it,’ he said.

But it rang again, and for a brief moment common sense returned. He stood, taking her wet hand and helping her out as they headed for the bed. He turned off her phone, and checked that his was off too, for he was tired of a world that kept invading his time. Then he looked at the shiny foil packets and realised that the last thing he wanted was to be sheathed when he entered this woman.

‘I want to feel you,’ he said. ‘I want you to feel me.’

And his mind went to a place he never allowed it to go.

He’d been told by plenty of people that he was damaged goods, that a man with his past was not capable of a stable relationship.

Yet he wanted to be stable for a while.

He was tired of the noise and the endless women. Not once had he considered commitment, and he didn’t fully now, but surely for a while longer he could carry on caring? He had amassed enough that he could trust himself to take care of another person for a while at least, and if there were consequences to his reckless decision then he could take care of that too.

He could.

In that moment he fully believed that he could.

He would.

No, he did not want others around him today—did not want his thoughts clouded. Usually, to Niklas, rapid thoughts were right, and they were the ones that proved to be the best. He looked at her, pink and warm and a virgin on his bed, and decided he would do this right.

Thoroughly.

Properly.

‘Marry me.’

She laughed.

‘I’m serious,’ he said. ‘That’s what people do when they come to Vegas.’

‘I think they usually know each other first.’

‘I know you.’

‘You don’t.’

‘I know enough,’ Niklas said. ‘You just don’t know me. I want to do this.’

And what Niklas Dos Santos wanted he usually got.

‘I’m not talking about for ever—I could never settle with one person for very long, or stay in one place—but I can help you sort out the stuff with your family. I can step in so you can step back …’

‘Why?’ She didn’t get it. ‘Why would you do that?’

He looked at her for a long time before answering, because she was right. Why would he do that? Niklas had had many relationships, many less than emotional encounters, and there had been a couple of long high-maintenance ones. Yet not once in his life had he considered marriage before. Not once had he wanted another person close. He had actually feared that another person might depend on a man who had come from nothing, but as he looked at her for the first time he wasn’t daunted by the prospect at all.

Around her—again for the first time—he trusted in himself.

‘I like you.’

‘But what would you get out of it?’

‘You,’ he replied, and suddenly it seemed imperative that he marry her—that he make her his even if just for a little while. ‘I like sorting things out … and I like you. And …’ He gestured to the condoms on the bedside table. ‘And I don’t like them. So,’ he said, reaching for the hotel phone, ‘will you marry me?’

There was nothing about him she understood, but more than that there was nothing about herself she understood any more, for in that moment his proposal seemed rather logical.

A solution, in fact.

‘Yes.’

He spoke on the phone for just a few moments and then turned and smiled at his bride-to-be.

‘Done.’

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