by Penny Jordan
Unaware of Sander’s reaction to her statement, Ruby sighed. She was being silly, she knew. The twins would be perfectly safe with Anna. Was it really for their sakes she wanted them with her? Or was it because she felt their presence was a form of protection and was nervous at the thought of meeting Sander’s sister? Had they had a normal marriage she would have been able to admit her apprehension to Sander—but then if they were in a normal marriage she would already have told him about the new baby, and that news would have been a matter of joy and happiness for both of them.
‘You will like Elena—although, as I told her often when she was a little girl, she talks all the time and sometimes forgets to let others speak.’ Anna shook her head as she relayed this information to Ruby. She was helping her to pack for the trip to Athens—her offer, Ruby suspected, more because she had sensed her trepidation and wanted to reassure her than because she really felt Ruby needed help.
‘She is very proud of her brothers, especially Sander, and she will be glad that he has married you when she sees how much you love him.’
Ruby dropped the pair of shoes she had been holding, glad that the act of bending down to pick them up gave her an opportunity to hide her shock. How much she loved Sander? What on earth had made Anna think and say that? She didn’t love him at all.
Did she?
Of course not. After all, he hadn’t exactly given her any reason to love him, had he?
Since when had love needed a reason? What reason had she needed in that Manchester club, when she had looked across the bar and felt her heart leap inside her chest, as though he himself had tugged it and her towards him?
That had been the silly, naive reaction of a girl desperate to create a fairytale hero—a saviour to rescue her from her grief, Ruby told herself, beginning to panic.
Anna was mistaken. She had to be. But when she had recovered her composure enough to look at the other woman she saw from the warm compassion in her eyes that Anna herself certainly didn’t think that she was wrong.
Was it possible? Could she have started to love Sander without realising it? Could the aching, overwhelming physical desire for him she could not subdue be caused by love and not merely physical need? He was, after all, the father of her children, and she couldn’t deny that initially when she had realised that she was pregnant a part of her had believed she had conceived because of the intensity of her emotional response to him. Because she had been naive, and frightened and alone, she had wanted to believe that the twins had been created out of love.
And this new baby—didn’t it too deserve to have its mother’s body accept the seed that began its life with love?
‘You will like Elena,’ Anna repeated, ‘and she will like you.’
Ruby was clinging to those words several hours later, after their plane had touched down in Athens and they were in the arrivals hall, as an extremely stylish dark-haired young woman came hurrying towards them, her eyes covered by a pair of designer sunglasses.
‘Sander. I thought I was going to be late. The traffic is horrendous—and the smog! No wonder all our precious ancient buildings are in so much danger. Andreas said to tell you that he is pretty sure he has secured the Taiwan contract—oh, and I want you both to come to dinner tonight. Nothing too formal…’
‘Elena, you are like a runaway train. Stop and let me introduce you to Ruby.’ Sander’s tone was firm but wry, causing his sister to laugh and then turn to Ruby, catching her off-guard when she immediately enveloped her in a warm hug.
‘Anna has told me what a fortunate man Sander is to have married you. I can’t wait to meet the twins. Wasn’t I clever, spotting them at Manchester Airport? But for me you and Sander might never have made up your quarrel and been reconciled.’
They were out of the airport now, and Sander was saying, ‘You’d better let me drive, Elena. I have some expensive memories of what happens when you drive and talk at the same time.’
‘Oh, you.’ Elena mock pouted as she handed over her car keys, and then told Ruby, ‘It wasn’t really my fault. The other driver should never have been parked where he was in the first place.’
Anna was right—she was going to like Elena, Ruby acknowledged as her sister-in-law kept up a stream of inconsequential chatter and banter whilst Sander drove them through the heavy Athens traffic.
Elena had obviously questioned Sander about their relationship, and from what she had said Ruby suspected that he had made it seem as though the twins had been conceived during an established relationship between them rather than a one-night stand. That had been kind of him. Kind and thoughtful. Protecting the twins and protecting her. The warm glow she could feel inside herself couldn’t possibly be happiness, could it?
The Athens night was warm, the soft air stroking Ruby’s skin as she and Sander walked from the taxi that had just dropped them off to the entrance to the exclusive modern building that housed Sander’s Athens apartment. They had spent the evening with Elena and Andreas at their house on the outskirts of the city, and tomorrow morning they would be returning to the island. Of course she was looking forward to seeing the twins, but… Was she simply deceiving herself, because it was what she wanted, or had there really been a softening in Sander’s attitude towards her today? A kindness and a warmth that had made her feel as though she was poised on the brink of something special and wonderful?
Sander looked at Ruby. She was wearing a pale peach silk dress patterned with a design of pale grey fans. It had shoestring straps, a fitted bodice and a gently shaped slim skirt. Its gentle draping hinted at the feminine shape of her figure without revealing too much of it, and the strappy bodice revealed the tan her skin had acquired in the weeks she had spent on the island. Tonight, watching her over dinner as she had talked and smiled and laughed with his sister and her husband, he had felt pride in her as his wife, as well as desire for her as a man. Something—Sander wasn’t prepared to give it a name—had begun to change. Somehow he had begun to change. Because Ruby was a good mother? Because she had trusted him about the twins’ care? Because tonight she had shown an intelligence, a gentleness and a sense of humour that—a little to his own surprise—he had recognised were uniquely hers, setting her apart from his mother and every other woman he had known?
Sander wasn’t ready to answer those questions, but he was ready and eager to make love to his wife.
To make love to her as his wife. A simple enough statement, but for Sander it resonated with admissions that he would have derided as impossible the day he had married her.
As they entered the apartment building Sander reached for Ruby’s hand. Neither of them said anything, but Ruby’s heart leapt and then thudded into the side of her chest. The hope she had been trying desperately not to let go to her head was now soaring like a helium balloon.
On the way up to the apartment in the lift she pleaded mentally, ‘Please let everything be all right. Please let things work out for…for all of us.’ And by all she included the new life she was carrying as well.
She was going to tell Sander, but today whilst she had had the chance she had slipped into a chemist’s shop and bought a pregnancy testing kit—just to be doubly sure. She would wait until they were back on the island to use it, and then she would tell Sander. Then, but not now. Because she wanted tonight to be very special. Tonight she wanted for herself. Tonight she wanted to make love with Sander, knowing that she loved him.
In the small sitting room of the apartment, Sander removed the jacket of his linen suit, dropping it onto one of the chairs. The small action tightened the fabric of his shirt against the muscles of his back, and Ruby’s gaze absorbed their movement, the now familiar ache of longing softening her belly and then spreading swiftly through her. Her sudden need to breathe more deeply, to take in oxygen, lifted her breasts against the lining of her dress, causing her already aroused and sensitive nipples to react even more to the unintentional drag of the fabric. When Sander straightened up and turned round he could see their swollen o
utline pressing eagerly against the barrier of her dress. His own body reacted to their provocation immediately, confirming the need for her he had already known he felt.
She couldn’t stand here like this, Ruby warned herself. If she did Sander was bound to think she was doing so because she wanted him and was all too likely to say so. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to be accused of being a woman who could not live without sexual satisfaction. What she wanted was to be told that he couldn’t resist her, that he adored her and loved her.
Quickly Ruby turned towards the door, not wanting Sander to see her expression, but to her astonishment before she could reach it he said quietly, ‘You looked beautiful tonight in that dress.’
Sander was telling her she looked beautiful?
Ruby couldn’t move. She couldn’t do anything other than stare at him, torn between longing and disbelief.
Sander was coming towards her, standing in front of her, lifting his hands to slide the straps of her dress off her shoulders as he told her softly, ‘But you will look even more beautiful without it.’
The words were nothing, and yet at the same time they were everything. Ruby trembled from head to foot, hardly daring to breathe as Sander unzipped her dress so that it could fall to the floor and then cupped the side of her face and kissed her.
She was in Sander’s arms, and he was kissing her, and she was kissing him back. Kissing him back, holding him, feeling all her doubts and fears slipping away from her like sand sucked away by the sea as her love for him claimed her.
The sensation of Sander’s hands on her body, shaping it and caressing it, carried her on a surging tide of her own desire, like a tribute offered to an all powerful conqueror. His lightest touch made her body shudder softly in swiftly building paroxysms of pleasure. She had hungered to have him desire her like this, without the harsh bitterness of his anger. In the deepest hidden places of her heart Ruby recognised that, even if she had hidden that need from herself. She had hungered, ached, and denied that aching—yearned for him and forbidden that yearning. But now, here tonight in his arms, the lies she had told to protect herself were melting away, burned away by the heat of his hands on her body, leaping from nerve-ending to nerve-ending. Beneath Sander’s mouth Ruby moaned in heightened pleasure when his thumb-pad rubbed over her nipple, hot, sweet and aching need pulsing beneath his touch. Her body was clamouring for him to free it, to lay it bare to his eyes, his hands, his mouth, so that he could plunder its desire, feed it and feast on it, until she could endure the ache of her own need no longer and she clung to him whilst he took her to the heights and the final explosion that would give him all that she was and all that she had to give, make her helpless under the power of his possession and her own need for it, for him.
This was how it had been that first night in Manchester, with her senses overwhelmed by the intensity of what she was experiencing. So much so, in fact, that she had scarcely noticed the loss of her virginity. She’d been so desperate for his possession and for the pleasure it had brought her.
She was his, and Sander allowed himself to glory in that primeval knowledge. His body was on fire for her, aching beyond bearing with his need for her, but he wanted to draw out their pleasure—to savour it and store the unique bouquet of it in his memory for ever. He bent and picked her up, carrying her through into the bedroom, their gazes meeting and locking in the sensually charged warmth of the dimly lit room.
‘I’ve never forgotten you—do you know that? I’ve never been able to get your memory out of my head. The way you trembled against me when I touched you, the scent of your skin, the quick, unsteady way you breathed when I did this.’
Ruby fought to suppress her breathing now, as Sander caressed the side of her neck and then stroked his fingertips the length of her naked spine.
‘Yes, just like that.’
Helplessly Ruby whimpered against the lash of her own pleasure, protesting that Sander was tormenting her and she couldn’t bear any more, but Sander ignored her, tracing a line of kisses along her shoulderblade. When he had done that the first time she had arched her back in open delight, helpless against the onslaught of her own desire. Sander lifted her arm and began kissing the inside of her wrist and then the inside of her elbow. He had never known that it was possible for him to feel like this, Sander acknowledged. The sensual sweetness of Ruby’s response to him was crashing through all the defences he had raised against the way she was making him feel.
He kissed her mouth, probing its soft, welcoming warmth with his tongue, whilst Ruby trembled against him, her naked body arching up to his, the feel of her skin through his clothes a torment he could hardly bear.
Ruby was lost beneath the hot, intimate possession of Sander’s kiss—a kiss that was sending fiery darts of arousal and need rushing through her body to turn the existing dull ache low down within it into an open pulsing need. Her breasts yearned for his touch, her nipples throbbing and swollen like fruit so ripe their readiness could hardly be contained within their skin. She wanted to feel his hands on her body, stroking, caressing, satisfying her growing need. Wanted his lips kissing and sucking the ache from her breasts and transforming it to the liquid heat of pleasure. But instead he was pulling away from her, lifting his body from hers, abandoning her when she needed him so desperately. Frantically Ruby shook her head, her protest an inarticulate soft moan as she sat up in the bed.
As though he knew how she felt, and what she feared, Sander reached for her hand and carried it to his own body, laying it flat against the hard swell of his flesh under the fabric of his suit trousers, his gaze never leaving her face as it registered her passion stoked delight in his erection, and its sensual underlining of his own desire for her.
Very slowly her fingertips traced the length and thickness of his flesh, everything she was feeling visible to him in the soft parting of her mouth, the brief flick of her tongue-tip against her lips and the excitement darkening her absorbed gaze.
Impatiently Sander started to unfasten his shirt. Distracted by his movements, Ruby looked up at him and then moved closer, kneeling on the bed in front of him as she took over the task from him. She leaned forward to kiss the flesh each unfastened button exposed, and then gave in to the impulse driving her to know more than the warmth of his skin against her lips, stroking her tongue-tip along his breastbone, breathing in the pheromone-laden scent of his body as it shuddered beneath her caress. His chest was hard-muscled, his nipples flat and dark. Lost in the heady pleasure of being so close to him, Ruby reached out and touched the hard flesh with her fingertip, and then on an impulse that came out of nowhere she bent her head and kissed the same spot, exploring it with the tip of her tongue.
Reaction ricocheted through Sander, engulfing and consuming him. He’d been unfastening his trousers whilst Ruby explored him, and now he wrenched off what was left of his clothes before taking Ruby in his arms to kiss her with the full force of his building need.
The sensation of Sander’s body against her, with no barriers between them, swept away what were left of Ruby’s inhibitions. Wrapping her arms around Sander’s neck, she clung to him, returning his kiss with equal passion, sighing her approval when his hands cupped her breasts.
This was what his heart had been yearning for, Sander admitted. This giving and receiving, this intimacy with no barriers, this woman above all women. Ruby was everything he wanted and more, Sander acknowledged, making his own slow voyage of rediscovery over Ruby’s silk-soft body.
Sander prided himself on being a skilled lover, but he had never been in this position before. He had never felt like this before. He wasn’t prepared for his own reaction to the way he felt. He wasn’t prepared for the way it powered his own desire to a level he had never known before, threatening his self-control, creating within him a desire to possess and pleasure every part of her, to bring her to orgasm over and over again, until he possessed her pleasure and her with it. He wanted to imprint himself on her desire so that no other man cou
ld ever unlock its sweetness. He wanted her, Sander acknowledged, and he fed the fast-surging appetite of his own arousal on the sound of her unsteady breathing, interspersed with sobs of pleasure, as he sucked on the hard peaks of her nipples and kneaded the soft flesh of her breasts.
Ruby arched up towards him, her hands clasped on the back of his neck to hold him against her. She had thought that Sander had already taken her to the utmost peak of sensual pleasure, but she had been wrong. Now, with the barriers between them down, she knew that what had gone before had been a mere shadow of what she was feeling now. Lightning-fast bolts of almost unbearable erotic arousal sheeted through her body with every tug of Sander’s mouth on her nipples, going to ground deep inside her, feeding the hot pulse already beating there, until merely arching up against him wasn’t enough to appease the savage dragging need possessing her. Instead she had to open her legs and press herself against him, her breath catching on a grateful moan of relief when Sander responded to her need with the firm pressure of his hand over her sex.
Against his hand Sander could feel the heavy pulsing beat of Ruby’s need. It drove the ache within his own flesh to a maddening desire to take her quickly and hotly, making him fight for the self-control that threatened to desert him when he parted the swollen outer lips of her sex to find the wetness within them.
It was almost more than Ruby could stand to have Sander touching her so intimately, and yet at the same time nowhere nearly intimately enough. His fingertip rimmed the opening to her sex. A fresh lightning bolt shot through her. She could feel her body opening to him in eagerness and hunger, heard a sound of agonised relief bubbling in her throat when Sander slid one and then two fingers slowly inside her.