by Daphne Clair
“Ask Jase,” she said.
Jase had told her he’d be stuck in Hamilton for a week—that he was needed there for a new project his team was working on, especially since he’d been spending less time there recently. “We’ll be doing overtime,” he said. “All of us.”
“I thought,” she said, “your whiz-bang technology eliminated the need to be on the spot.” Then wondered if she was sounding like her mother, pouting and wheedling to retain her husband’s attention when he said he had business to attend to. She shut her mouth.
He was saying, “There’s still nothing quite like a roundtable, face-to-face discussion, with all the members of the team sparking off each other—or someone calling to someone else across the computer room with a new idea to try, or saying, ‘Come and see this,’ or ‘I need a bit of help here.’ That’s how we work best.”
When he left her he kissed her long and lingeringly, withdrawing with obvious reluctance. “Don’t forget me,” he said, tweaking her hair. “I’ll be back.”
He phoned her twice during the week, but they were short, unsatisfactory conversations—no sweet nothings whispered down the line. His forte, she thought with wry amusement, was action rather than words. Maybe that was one reason he’d accepted her embargo on discussing his sister’s behaviour.
When he did arrive on her doorstep he carried a bunch of roses—red roses. She wondered if he knew they were supposed to signify love, but perhaps that bit of romantic folklore had passed him by. Extravagantly florist-wrapped in traditional cellophane and coloured paper and tied with a bow, they smelled heavenly too.
He said, “See, I am a flower guy after all when the occasion warrants it.” And his kiss was everything a woman might have expected after a week apart. But when the bouquet was crushed between them she made a small protesting sound and eased him away.
“Sorry,” he said. “Did you get a thorn?”
“They don’t have any,” she assured him.
“They don’t?”
“Florists’ roses are bred without them these days.” She fingered a velvety petal, inhaling their perfume. “Sometimes the scent gets bred out too but these are lovely, thank you.”
He caught her hand and sniffed at her fingers, then kissed them one by one, taking the last one into his mouth while his eyes teased.
She shuddered all the way to her toes with sheer pleasure, and he lifted his head, his eyes glazed. He said, “I want to take you to bed right now, but I’m trying to be civilized—and anyway, I’ve got something to tell you. Go and put those things in water or whatever, and maybe I should do the same myself. Only that would mean getting naked, and if I do that…”
She laughed, and left him. It occurred to her she’d never laughed so often as she had, in bed and out of it, since Jase became her lover.
When she came out of the kitchen with the flowers in a vase he was lounging on her new velvet-covered sofa, his feet up, shoes off, and hands behind his head against a plump, soft cushion.
“You bought new furniture,” he said.
“Yes.” She blushed despite herself. She had seen the sofa—deep and wide and a rich ruby-red, with its own fat, soft matching cushions—in the window of a furniture store, and had immediately fantasised lying on it with Jase, snuggling together, kissing, making love.
She put his flowers down on the low parquet table that she’d decided would complement the sofa better than the previous steel and glass oblong.
“Come here,” Jase said, swinging his denim-clad legs down and patting the fabric beside him.
“Don’t you want a drink or something?”
“I want you,” he said. “Right here with me.”
She couldn’t help smiling, no doubt a dopey, smitten smile that betrayed everything she felt about him. For once she didn’t care, sitting primly beside him on the roomy sofa, laughing when he grabbed her and pulled her to his chest, bringing up his legs again to tangle with hers.
She rested her head on his shoulder, playing with a button on his blue cotton shirt, and said, “What did you want to tell me?”
“Rachel’s back.”
“Back?” Her hand stilled. She raised her head to look at him, trepidation thrumming inside her.
“With Bryn. They’re together again.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“BRYN made me give up her address,” Jase said. “We had a…full and frank discussion, as the politicians say.”
“He didn’t hit you again?” Samantha scanned his face for telltale marks.
“No. It was a near thing. But it wouldn’t have worked. I would never have told him except—”
“Except?”
“He loves her. She didn’t believe that—and maybe he didn’t know himself how much until she left him. She was wrong about everything. So—” he reached up to pull her head down against him again, and kissed her hair “—I told her about us and she’s fine with it.”
Rachel admitted she was wrong? And magnanimously gave her approval of their relationship?
Samantha shut her eyes, trying to keep a lid on her rising anger, to blot out all but the warmth of him against her cheek, his arm hugging her close, the growing hardness pressing snugly between her thighs, the hot, tingling dampness it aroused.
His arm tightening about her, he lifted her head again, holding it between his hands. His eyes were intent and purposeful. “I love you, Samantha Magnussen. And I want the world to know.”
She stared at him in confusion, and he frowned. “Sam?”
It was what she’d wanted, longed for, despaired would never happen. But something cold and ominous was uncurling deep inside her.
He said, “Samantha.” And he kissed her, shifting aside so that her back was wedged against the warm velvet, her head pressed into a cushion. Jase’s legs wound around hers, the unmistakable erection imprisoned by his jeans pressing at her groin.
The kiss was thorough and persuasive and full of want and need and promise. But the growing, resentful fury inside her turned hot and pulsing and rose to her throat. She didn’t kiss him back.
His weight restricted her movements, but she managed to push against him, her hands tight fists, and he drew away, his eyes glazed with passion. “What is it?” he murmured, and kissed her cheek, then shifted his body a little, giving her room. “Am I too heavy?”
“Yes.” Pushing his legs out of the way, Samantha stood up, her own legs trembling. She was heated and flushed on the outside, and hurting and furious on the inside. Her head was buzzing and her temples throbbed. She felt she might burst into flames any minute. It was as if another person, an alien presence, had taken over her body. “Too heavy, too thick and too sure of yourself!” Her voice didn’t sound like her own, high and thin and much too loud. “If you really loved me, you wouldn’t have waited until now to tell me!”
“I thought you—”
“Until your sister gave you permission!” Still in that alien voice. But she couldn’t stop herself—or the shrew who now inhabited her skin.
“That’s not how—” Jase began forcefully.
She cut in, “Now you believe me?” She had her hands on her hips like the proverbial fishwife, horrifying some small, rational part of her mind. But there was something intensely, dizzyingly liberating about standing over Jase, who seemed glued to the sofa, transfixed, an arrested, oddly calculating expression on his face.
“Did she tell you why she lied?” Because there was no excuse that Samantha could think of. Not a viable one. “I must remember to thank her for putting you straight.”
“Sam,” he said, with irritating patience, which for some reason made her want to kiss him. Or hit him.
“My name’s Samantha!” she spat, trying to regain her usual sang-froid and treat him with the icy contempt he deserved. Though inside something was splintering apart, maybe her heart. She heard her voice wobble, and—terrified she was about to cry—deliberately whipped up her temper again. “And you can take that holier-than-thou, superior look off
your face! Rachel might be fine with us, but I’m not! Not if you—”
“Samantha, listen to me!” She could see he was holding on to his temper, and that only fuelled hers.
“Why? You didn’t listen to me!”
Deaf to everything but her own rage, she stepped back, almost tripping over the forgotten table behind her, she heard the vase of flowers rock and instinctively turned.
Red roses were for love. They blurred before her eyes, that were hot with tears, and without thought she snatched the vase up, whirled and emptied its entire contents over Jase, saying, “And that for your damned flowers.”
She saw his eyes widen, anger thin his mouth. He’d thrown up his hands automatically in defence but too late—he was soaked all the way to his crotch, one rose lodged in his thick hair, others on his legs and surrounding him on the sofa or the floor, droplets running down the velvet to the carpet.
He let out an explosive word she’d never heard him use before, making her flinch, then his mouth opened and he let out a roar…of laughter.
Still laughing, he lay back on the sofa, dislodging the rose from his hair. Samantha stood over him, totally confounded and indignant, the angry tears drying on her cheeks.
“Don’t you laugh at me!” She dropped the vase unheeded to the floor and threw herself at him, pounding on his chest with her fists, not caring that her dress—the dress he’d liked so much—was absorbing water from his clothes, or that despite an “Oomph!” of surprise at her attack and then an “Ow!” a second later he was still laughing while trying to fend her off with raised arms.
She landed a punch in his lower midriff that made him grunt and the laughter stopped, but it remained in his eyes. “Queensbury rules, please,” he reproved, still grinning wolfishly. “That one was unladylike. Try aiming for the chin.”
The hell with rules, she told him mentally, her eyes delivering the message. She did aim for his face, but he caught her wrist in an iron grip, easily holding her away. “Having fun?” he inquired grimly.
She was on top of him, along the length of his body, and he suddenly parted his thighs, clamping her hips between them. She shifted backward, trying to get a purchase to drive her knee into his groin.
“Oh, no!” he said, and grabbed her other wrist, deftly turning and letting her fall with a soft thump onto the carpeted floor, following her down. “Not that bit, darling,” he chided. “We might need it later.” He imprisoned her legs again with his, his hands holding her wrists behind her head.
“Not on your life!” she told him. “You blind, arrogant, conceited jerk!” She tried to head-butt him, but he was prepared for it and dodged, so she only ricked her neck and fell back against the carpet, squashing a rose, its scent rising about her. “And I’m not your darling, damn you!”
“You can do better than that,” he goaded. “You must know some proper cuss words.”
“I wouldn’t stoop so low,” she said, trying to rise above her baser instinct to let loose with every swear word she knew. He was taking his weight on his hands although they still held hers, but his pelvis was pressing urgently against her. She heaved her entire body upward, trying to dislodge him, but had no effect at all. “Let me go!” she said, injecting as much fury as she could into the command.
“Uh-uh. You might attack me again.”
Much good it had done her. She glared at him. “You can’t hold me here all night.”
“Mmm.” He cocked his head, apparently thinking, a wickedly considering look in his eyes. “I could tie you to the bed. We haven’t tried that yet.”
“Don’t you dare even think about it!”
The picture in her own mind shocked her. Even more shocking was her body’s primal reaction to it. Momentarily she closed her eyes, hoping he wouldn’t have noticed, then opened them again, to see his expression had changed, and caught her breath.
“Only if you want me to,” he said. And kissed her.
It was soft and sweet and tender and…surely loving? She tried to ignore the melting sensation inside her, remained stubbornly unresponsive to the gentle, persuasive movements of his lips, counted to ten, twenty, opened her eyes wide and found her vision filled with Jase’s closed lids and his dark, heavy lashes, her nostrils with his aphrodisiac scent, and she closed her eyes again tightly as tears burned her eyes and silently escaped anyway, to trickle down into her hair.
There was nothing she could do to stop them. Jase still held her hands imprisoned in his grasp while his mouth wrought heart-rending magic on hers.
Then his lips wandered to her cheek and he tasted the tears and lifted his head, his eyes shocked and concerned. “Oh, honey, don’t!” he said.
He started kissing away the tears that still spilled like a river despite her efforts. “It wasn’t the way you think,” he said. “I didn’t ask and Rachel didn’t tell me. She doesn’t need to.”
She opened her eyes and looked at him through the tears that still came. “You said she admitted—”
“That she was wrong about Bryn, shouldn’t have left him. Whatever. That’s their business.” He kissed her mouth briefly. “You were the one who didn’t want Rachel to know about us,” he reminded her. “I went along with it against my better judgement because you panicked at the idea.” He went back to kissing her cheeks, her earlobe, the line of her chin, wiping tears with his tongue, in between murmuring, “I thought you knew…that night I came to you…I told you it didn’t matter, remember? Do you really think…I could have loved you…made love with you all this time…?”
He thought she’d known? She struggled against the hold he still had on her wrists, twitched her head aside from his wandering mouth and glared up at him. The tears, thank heaven, finally stopped flowing. “I’m not a mind reader!” she told him in fury. That was his specialty. And even so he wasn’t infallible. “How was I to know, when you never said!”
“Didn’t know I needed to.” He gazed down at her with a quizzical look. “Any more than I needed to be told you love me.”
He knew? “What makes you think—” she started indignantly.
“I’ve been waiting for you to trust me,” he said. “Trust me enough to know that nothing Rachel or anyone could say would stop me loving you. Enough to say the words out loud. You can do it.”
She glared at him, her emotions so mixed she felt someone had picked her up and shaken her until she didn’t know which way was up.
He released her hands to cup her face and she tangled her fingers into the silky thicket of his hair and stared into his dark, perceptive eyes, then pulled him to her, kissing him fiercely, mindlessly, allowing all her love and fury and pain to tumble out in a maelstrom of unrestrained emotion, until after his first surprise he kissed her back the way she wanted—not gently but with an equally ferocious passion that stopped thought, overwhelmed reason, blotted out everything but the need to have each other now with no discussion and no preliminaries.
She moved one hand to his cheek, caressing the rough texture she’d come to love, having discovered its potential for mind-blowing titillation, and with the other guided one of his hands into the neckline of her dress to her breast, already peaked and longing for his touch.
He made a sound in his throat and raised his head again. “Bed,” he muttered.
“No.” She didn’t care that the carpet under her hip was wet, that they were wedged between the sofa and the table, and a rose lay in a hard little lump beneath her.
She tried to bring him back to her, but despite his glittering eyes and harsh breath he stood up, dragging her with him, then lifted her into his arms, ignoring her irritated thump at his shoulder and furious scowl. He carried her through to the bedroom, dumped her on the bed and held her down. “Samantha.” His voice was unsteady. “Say it.”
She said, “Shut up!” And kissed him again, her arms wound about his neck, her raised knee between his thighs.
He groaned deeply and gave in. When she shoved at his shoulder he turned over, holding her tight, their
mouths still fused as she ripped the buttons of his shirt apart and undid his belt while he dealt with the zip of her dress.
Jase tore his mouth away from hers. “Tell me!”
He gasped as she yanked at his shirt and pressed her bare breasts against his chest. Her mouth came to his, hot and inviting, and he let her help him out of his shirt, releasing her mouth again to get rid of her dress while her fingers fumbled with the buckle of his belt.
They stripped each other between kisses, apart for only moments. She reached for him, but despite his obvious, magnificent arousal, he grabbed her wrists again, holding her away, a determined grin on his face. “Say it, Sam,” he ordered in a Bogart gravel. “Tell me you love me.”
Her bare foot kicked his shin. Her face flushed, her body one burning all-consuming mass of desire, she panted, “You bastard, Jase! Of course I love you!” before she climbed on top of him again and slid herself onto him, hot and slick with need.
“So,” he said, his smile strained as she felt him swell inside her, “you do know some…real swearwords.”
She moved on him, holding herself up, inviting his hands on her breasts, watching his tautened face, his glazed eyes, until his mouth went rigid and he gasped, “Sam—I can’t…”
She felt him surge, and released her own intense, turbulent orgasm, wave after wave spreading throughout her body, up to the top of her head and down to the tips of her toes, taking her over completely for minutes, aeons, and when Jase turned them so she lay back on the bed, and kissed her temple, her eyelids, her open mouth, she came again and again in his arms, eventually exhausted and limp and damp with sweat, hardly noticing when he left her for a few moments, then returned to hold her against him.
Jase wasn’t even sure if she was awake. He felt exhausted himself, and exultant, and filled with tenderness for his difficult, brave, exasperating love.
It had been a spectacular meltdown, and exactly what she needed to let out all those myriad emotions she’d kept locked up for…how many years? One day he’d get her to tell him why.