by Miranda Lee
Unfortunately, being loved the way Amber loved him—with such sweet sincerity—was as powerful as the most addictive drug. Giving up the way she made him feel was going to take a massive act of will, one that Warwick didn’t think he was capable of this evening. Knowing she wanted him to make love to her after dinner was weakening his resolve to end their relationship.
Maybe it was time to tell her the truth about himself, to force Amber to face the fact that there was no future with him.
Could he do that? Should he?
Unfortunately, revealing his genetic flaw and all its appalling inevitabilities might not bring about the desired result. If Warwick had learned one thing about Amber’s character during the last ten months, it was that she was as compassionate as she was passionate. She would become visibly upset whenever she saw those ads about poor starving children, and could only be soothed when he promised to make regular donations to whatever charity was canvassing for help. Stories about neglected animals inevitably brought similar distress, as did reports on the news about more bombs killing innocent women and children in war-torn countries. Warwick had taken to putting a box of tissues at the ready by the sofa to mop up her tears.
Finding out what awaited her lover in the future might send her running, not in the other direction, but right into his arms.
It was a risk Warwick decided he could not take. He would have to find some other way to end their relationship.
‘Is that your glass of wine over there?’ He nodded towards the nearly full glass that was sitting on the side table next to the box of tissues.
‘Oh, yes, it is. I was having a drink earlier when I was waiting for you to come home.’
Another stab of guilt. Still, he was here now.
‘Bet I can guess what it is,’ he said. ‘A Sauvignon Blanc from the Marlborough region.’
She smiled as she walked over to pick up the glass. ‘You know me too well.’
Yes, he thought as he dropped a few cubes of ice in his glass then slurped in some whisky. I do. And you deserve better than me. You deserve a man who’ll marry you, give you children and grow old with you.
I can’t do any of those things.
Warwick scowled as he lifted the glass to his lips, irritated suddenly by his maudlin thoughts. What good did they do? He’d always been a realist, and the reality of his life was that he couldn’t offer Amber any more than he’d originally offered her.
But damn it all, surely the time she’d spent living with him hadn’t been totally wasted. She’d travelled a lot and learned a lot. She’d socialised with some of the world’s most successful people, been dressed by the world’s most fashionable designers, stayed in the world’s most luxurious resorts.
Some women would kill for what Amber had experienced during these past ten months.
Unfortunately, Amber wasn’t one of those women. Warwick knew she didn’t give a fig about any of those things. All she wanted was his love and his ring on her finger.
Not that she’d told him so. Not once.
Her aunt Kate had told him, last Easter at a family barbecue at her home that Amber had dragged him along to.
What an old tartar she’d been. But she’d obviously loved her niece and wanted to see her happy.
‘You do realise,’ Kate had snapped at him when Amber had left them to go to the bathroom, ‘that Amber was practically engaged when she met you. To a perfectly nice boy who would have given her the only things she’s wanted since she was knee high to a grasshopper: a loving husband and a family of her own. Two things you’ll never give her, Warwick Kincaid.’
The old dragon probably could have said a lot more but didn’t get the opportunity.
‘Shame on you,’ she’d hissed under her breath as Amber had walked back towards them.
That had been three months ago. Warwick hadn’t told Amber what her aunt had said. Hadn’t asked her about the man she’d been on the verge of marrying. He certainly hadn’t embraced the undeniable shame the woman’s forceful words had momentarily evoked. Instead, he’d gone on wallowing in Amber’s warmth and passion, telling himself that he hadn’t forced her to choose him over that other fellow. He’d never forced her to do a single thing. She had free will, didn’t she? She wanted to be with him.
But gradually, the shame had resurfaced. So had his conscience, something that he’d kept buried for a long time. In hindsight, his plan to stop acting like a besotted bridegroom and start showing his true colours had not been well thought out. He hadn’t anticipated the hurt that his abrupt change in behaviour would bring her. Hadn’t anticipated his own level of self-disgust.
Far better that the break be clean and swift.
When the time came, that was.
Her walking over and bending forward to pick up her glass of wine showed him that that time definitely wasn’t tonight, his flesh stirring as he imagined how she would look doing that without that dress on.
‘Dinner won’t be ready for at least fifteen minutes,’ she said as she straightened. ‘I haven’t cooked the rice yet.’
‘What are we having?’
‘Beef stroganoff.’ Her free hand lifted to push her long hair back from where it had fallen over one of her shoulders. ‘I wanted something plain for a change.’
Warwick’s flesh stiffened as he noted the telling outline of erect nipples under the pink silk. She was as frustrated as he was, by the look of things. Understandable considering there’d been no sex this past week, the longest time he’d abstained from touching her since their first night together. It had been damned difficult. But at the time he’d been on a mission to make her hate him; to make her give him the flick, instead of the other way around.
Now that that idea had been tossed out of the window, Warwick had no weapons against the desires that were, at this very moment, taking dark possession of him. Various erotic scenarios filled his mind, none of which involved waiting till after dinner to satisfy his already clamouring flesh. His hunger had nothing to do with food. It was primal and sexual and urgent.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he said abruptly.
‘About what?’
‘About eating.’
She looked confused. ‘You don’t want any dinner?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Then what do you want?’
‘I want you to take your dress off.’
Amber’s eyes flung wide. ‘What?’
Warwick appreciated that he’d never ordered her to take her clothes off for him. Not even in the bedroom. Why now? he wondered, even as he banished any qualms and surrendered to the temptation to exercise his sexual power over her.
‘You heard me,’ he said in a voice that was as hard as his erection.
‘But … but people might see me,’ she stammered. ‘From out on the water.’
‘Not up close,’ he countered. ‘Come now, Amber, you’ve nothing to be shy about. You have a glorious body. Do you need a little help, is that it?’
CHAPTER THREE
AMBER just stared at him.
What I need, she suddenly felt like screaming, is a little respect.
But no words came from her mouth—her rapidly drying mouth.
She stood there, rooted to the spot, as he started walking towards her, bringing his drink with him, lifting it to his lips and sipping it slowly. Their eyes met over the rim of the glass, his shocking her with their coldness. Or was that desire glittering in their ice-blue depths?
She couldn’t be sure. He’d run hot and cold ever since he’d come home, leaving her hopelessly bewildered.
Amber told herself to move. To do something, say something.
Anything!
But her tongue was as useless as her legs.
She remained frozen as he moved around behind her, a soft gasp breaking from her lips when he pushed aside her long curtain of hair, draping it over her left shoulder before bending his mouth to her exposed right ear.
But it wasn’t his lips that made her shiver. It was the fear of
what she was about to allow … and enjoy.
‘Don’t,’ she heard herself whisper just as his tongue tip dipped into the shell of her ear.
‘Don’t what?’ he whispered a few seconds later.
‘Don’t do this to me … ‘
‘But you want me to,’ he murmured, and nibbled at her ear lobe. ‘This is what tonight was all about. Not food.’
‘No,’ she choked out. ‘Not … entirely.’
His laugh was low and sexy. ‘Yes. Entirely.’
She stiffened when he ran the zipper down past her waist, a shudder following when he stroked the cold glass he was holding down her spine.
‘You want this as much as I do,’ he said thickly as he pushed the sides of her dress off her shoulders.
It pooled around her feet in a silky pink puddle, leaving her wearing nothing but her pink high heels.
This wasn’t the first time she’d left off her underwear. But it was the first time she’d felt ashamed of having done so.
I’m exactly what Aunt Kate said I am, Amber accepted despairingly as she stood there, naked, before her wealthy lover’s gaze. Not a proper girlfriend or a much loved partner, but a mistress, a kept woman. Kept for nothing but her master’s sexual pleasure.
Her stomach contracted when he moved around to look at her from the front, her feelings of shame at war with those other wickedly powerful emotions he could so easily evoke. Not just desire but need—the need to be caressed, and kissed, and filled.
She closed her eyes, blotting out the way his glittering blue eyes were gobbling her up. Perversely, her not being able to see him only increased her awareness of her own appalling excitement. Every muscle in her body tensed up, waiting for his touch. Yearning for it. Dying for it.
His breath on the nape of her neck told her that he’d moved behind her again. He must have put his drink down too, both his hands free to slide up and down her arms, which immediately broke into goose bumps.
‘Do you have any idea what you do to me?’ he murmured as he pressed himself against her naked back, his mouth hovering just above her right ear.
‘No,’ came her shaky reply. She only knew what he did to her, and what he’d done. Reduced to this … this pitiful state where shame and pride were no match for the pleasure of his lovemaking.
Though this wasn’t lovemaking tonight. This was just sex—raw, unadulterated sex.
‘If I were a prince in the Middle Ages,’ he whispered as he took her hands and lifted them high above her head, ‘I would keep you … just like this … locked in a dungeon … with nothing to do but wait for me to come to you.’
She shuddered at the image he’d created.
Why it excited her so much she could not fathom. She should have been repulsed. Instead, she was shaking with excitement.
‘Would you like that?’ he demanded to know, his breathing growing heavier as he pressed himself even harder against her bare buttocks.
‘Yes,’ she choked out.
His naked groan betrayed a level of need possibly even greater than her own.
‘What on earth am I going to do with you?’ he growled.
Amber moaned, having reached that point where pride and shame had become totally irrelevant. She needed Warwick inside her, right then and there, regardless of the fact that she was standing in the middle of a well-lit, glass-walled living room, less than a hundred metres away from where boats full of tourists were enjoying evening dinner cruises on Sydney Harbour.
‘Please,’ she heard herself practically beg as she moved her legs wantonly apart.
Warwick heard the wild desperation in her voice, felt the uncontrollable excitement that had taken possession of her. He should have felt triumphant. Clever old Warwick, knowing exactly what buttons to press and words to say to seduce her into a state of total surrender.
Why, then, did he suddenly feel bitterly ashamed of himself?
The answer was obvious.
Because she loves you, you bastard. She’s not some cheap whore who doesn’t care what you do to her.
But even as he told himself all this Warwick was unzipping his trousers. His conscience kept screaming at him not to, but Amber wasn’t the only one who’d reached the point of no return.
He groaned as he slid into her, wallowing in the feel of her flesh enclosing his like a tightening fist. She made some sound, a moan perhaps, though not of pain, but of pleasure. It was impossible to stop now. With his right hand splayed firmly over her stomach, and his left cupping her right breast, he began to move his hips.
Not so fast, Warwick, he warned himself as his body immediately surged towards a decidedly premature release. His hips, however, refused to obey him. They jerked back and forth with an urgency that would not be denied, his outspread fingers pressing upwards on her belly, lifting her buttocks up higher against his abdomen, the angle affording him a deeper penetration.
Warwick grimaced as he felt the hot blood rushing along his veins. He was going to come! Hell on earth, he hadn’t come this fast in decades!
Amber’s suddenly shattering apart in his arms was a huge relief to his pride, allowing him to abandon what little control he had left.
He cried out, holding her tight against him as he ejaculated with the ferocity of an erupting volcano.
She shuddered with him, the contractions of her orgasm more intense, he thought, than ever before. The fantasy he’d painted about keeping her imprisoned in a dungeon had really turned her on. So much so that she’d forgotten who might be watching what they were up to.
You should do this more often, Warwick. Play erotic games with her.
Up till now he’d hardly touched the sides of what he’d learned over many years of hedonistic behaviour. There was so much more he could show her, and do with her.
The only question was … should he?
As much as Warwick was tempted by the thought of becoming Amber’s tutor in the erotic arts, he knew that the more imaginative and adventurous practices—whilst wildly exciting—carried a degree of danger; the danger of corruption.
The last thing he wanted to do was corrupt Amber. Pleasure her … yes. Satisfy her … yes. Corrupt her? No.
He would not destroy her basic innocence, he decided as he gently withdrew, then scooped her up into his arms. Such innocence was too precious. She was too precious.
He was going to miss her terribly, he thought as he carried her into the bedroom. But not tonight. For now she was still his.
He wouldn’t think about the future. Tonight was for nothing but pleasure.
Hers.
His.
But mostly hers.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN Amber woke the next morning, all her fears that her relationship with Warwick was coming to an end in the near future had been firmly pushed aside. She smiled as she glanced over at his naked body spreadeagled across the satin sheets, his arms and legs flung wide, his chest rising and falling in the slow, deep rhythm of the truly spent.
Amber could well understand his exhaustion. He’d been insatiable with her last night, showing her with his tireless lovemaking that he was in no way bored with her. It still amazed Amber how well he knew a woman’s body and how to uncover a woman’s secret desires. There’d been a time—pre Warwick—when she hadn’t been that fussed about sex. But, from the first night she’d spent with Warwick, she’d become a virtual slave to the cravings he evoked and satisfied, oh, so well. Amber could not imagine living without the pleasure of his lovemaking … could not imagine living without him!
But you might have to one day, whispered the voice of reason as she slipped out of the rumpled bed and headed for the bathroom.
It was a disturbing thought. What would she do when and if that happened?
Amber grimaced, clinging to the hope that maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe her dream of Warwick falling in love with her and asking her to marry him was still a possibility. There were times, like last night, when she was confident that he had. There was love in his lovemaking
: a tenderness and consideration that didn’t equate with the cold-blooded womaniser that her mother had more or less described him as last night.
‘Oh, my goodness!’ Amber exclaimed, bolting back to the bedroom and checking the time on the digital bedside clock.
‘Twenty to eleven!’ she gasped aloud.
She immediately raced over to shake Warwick on the shoulder.
‘Warwick! Wake up! Wake up! I need you.’
He lifted one heavy eyelid, giving her a droll if bleary look. ‘You have to be joking, Amber,’ he drawled in that cultured voice of his. ‘I would have thought you’d had enough for at least twenty-four hours.’
‘Not for that, silly!’ she said. ‘I need you to drive me over to Mum’s place before midday, then up to Wamberal. To Aunt Kate’s place.’
His second eyelid opened much more quickly, his sleepy expression replaced by bewilderment. ‘Run that by me again, would you? I mean … I’m absolutely sure that your aunt Kate is no longer in residence. So why are we driving up to her place?’
‘She left it to me,’ Amber announced rather baldly. ‘In her will. A new one which she’d made recently and which has only just come to light. Mum rang me about it last night but I forgot to tell you. No, don’t start asking me endless questions right now,’ she raced on when he sat up abruptly with his mouth already opening. ‘We haven’t the time. We have to be out of here in about fifteen minutes flat if we’re going to get to Carlingford before midday. I promised to pick up the keys to Aunt Kate’s before Mum leaves to go to the hairdresser’s.’
Amber took it as testimony to Warwick’s caring that he didn’t argue, or tell her that he had more important things to do that day. He just got up and got on with what she’d asked. Just after eleven they were zooming through the harbour tunnel, though Amber was still a little tense that they might not make it in time.
‘I’ll give Mum a ring once we’re out of the tunnel,’ she said, and fished her mobile out of her handbag. ‘Let her know my estimated time of arrival.’