Gabriel woke with a start. She glanced up at the window, but the curtains were drawn and the lamps lit, and a look at her watch shot her bolt upright when she saw it was nearly eight in the evening. While she was sleeping Adam had covered her with a light travelling rug. Deeply touched, Gabriel threw it back and got to her feet, folded the rug quickly then looked up with a guilty smile as Adam came in.
‘Hello, sleepyhead,’ he said cheerfully, and bent to kiss her. ‘Do you feel better now?’
‘Much. But very untidy.’ She looked at his hair. ‘Have you been out in the rain?’
‘No. I had a shower. Do you want one?’
‘Just a visit to your bathroom and some repairs.’ She pulled a face. ‘Sorry to sleep so long.’
‘You obviously needed it, darling.’ He ruffled her hair. ‘You were sleeping so soundly I was tempted to carry you up to my big brass bed, but I thought you might misconstrue my motives when you woke up, and demand to go home.’
‘Not before I get fed again,’ she said, laughing. ‘After those pastries I thought I’d never want to eat again, but I warn you I’m hungry.’
‘Good. Dinner will be served in ten minutes, madam—so put a move on.’
Gabriel spent most of the ten minutes in front of the bathroom mirror, then went down, expecting to eat at the kitchen table, but Adam was waiting to direct her back into his sitting room.
‘Tonight we picnic,’ he announced. ‘So resume your seat on the sofa, Miss Brett, and dinner will be forthcoming.’
Adam had drawn up a low table to the sofa, with napkins, silverware and an opened bottle of red wine in readiness. Gabriel sat down, aware in every fibre that she was enjoying all this more than anything in her entire life before. She had been to smart parties with Jeremy, and enjoyed various forms of socialising, both with women-friends and other men. But nothing in her experience had come even near to giving her the pleasure of a quiet evening at home with Adam Dysart.
‘That’s a pensive look,’ said Adam. He put a large round tray down on the table, then stood back, smiling smugly. ‘So how does that grab you?’
‘That’ was an enormous, sizzling pizza, giving off mouthwatering aromas. Gabriel gazed at it in silence for a moment, then dissolved into laughter when Adam fetched three videos from the shelf below his television.
‘Pizza and a video!’ she gurgled, and he smiled smugly as he filled their wine glasses.
‘You approve?’
‘Oh, I do, I do,’ she assured him, still laughing. ‘You sure do know how to please a girl, Adam Dysart.’
‘I do my best,’ he said modestly, and began cutting the pizza into sections. ‘I ordered a Four Seasons to be on the safe side.’
‘Wonderful,’ said Gabriel and fell on the slice he gave her as though she’d eaten nothing all day. Falling in love was synonymous with lack of appetite, according to friends, yet she ate like a horse every time in Adam’s company.
‘That’s an odd look in those sleepy blue eyes of yours,’ said Adam, cutting a second slice for her. ‘Don’t you like the pizza?’
‘It’s superb,’ she assured him, sipping her wine. ‘But a rather strange thought just struck me.’
‘So tell me.’
‘I was wondering why I eat so much every time I’m with you.’
‘Because you’re relaxed and happy in my entertaining company,’ he said promptly. ‘Want some of this bread?’
‘Yes, please.’ She frowned. ‘By the way, how did you manage to get a pizza sent out to this part of the world?’
‘I didn’t. When you told me your art dealer was above such things I ordered the pizza from Conti’s and put it in my freezer in readiness.’ Adam helped himself to another slice. ‘Once I’d mentioned this particular form of entertainment I was determined to share it with you as soon as possible. Though I could have taken you to the cinema tonight, or the theatre, or to one of the nightspots—’
‘I much prefer this,’ said Gabriel emphatically. ‘Will you give me another slice, please?’
Adam gave her a look which took her breath away. ‘I’ll give you anything your heart desires, Gabriel. Always.’ His eyes crinkled. ‘But because it’s only some of Mario Conti’s famed pizza right now, hold your plate out.’
They polished off the pizza, along with several slices of bread, then Adam removed their plates and came back to refill their glasses. ‘Do you want coffee, or shall we go straight to the video?’
‘No coffee, thanks. What kind of film do you like?’
“Irrelevant. Tonight we watch what you want.’
‘You’re spoiling me!’
‘I’m glad you noticed. Which one do you fancy?’
She chose a romantic comedy the film critics had praised, and as the opening titles rolled gave Adam a crooked little smile as he settled beside her. ‘I hope the love scenes in this won’t be too explicit.’
‘Why? Afraid they’ll inspire me to fall on you with ravening lust?’
‘No! But some scenes make me want to hide behind the sofa, even on my own.’
‘If it gets that bad we’ll turn it off and watch the golf!’
The film was amusing, well acted, and eventually Gabriel began to relax when none of the actors showed signs of flinging themselves on each other. Adam slid an arm round her and she leaned against him, relishing the contact with his lean, muscular body as she laughed at the funnier moments in the film. Towards the end there was the inevitable love scene, but conveyed with tenderness rather than passion, and afterwards Adam switched off the video recorder and took her in his arms.
‘There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?’
Gabriel shook her head and lifted her face to his. ‘Quite tame, really,’ she whispered.
‘I can do better,’ he said huskily, his lips almost touching hers.
‘Show me.’
Adam obeyed, to such effect that after a few minutes both of them were gasping for air. ‘I can’t do this,’ he said hoarsely, and put her away.
Gabriel stared at him, wild-eyed. ‘Why not?’
‘If I kiss you any more I won’t answer for the consequences.’ He put a finger under her chin and raised her face to his. ‘We’ve been playing house, and it feels so right, so good, that every instinct is hammering at me to take you to bed. But, hell, Gabriel, I’m afraid to put a foot wrong where you’re concerned.’
‘You won’t,’ she said gruffly.
Adam sat very still. ‘What are you saying?’
‘Do I have to spell it out?’ she said crossly. ‘Surely you can tell I want you to make love to me!’
‘And then what?’ he demanded. ‘I take you home and tomorrow we go on as though nothing had happened? You already know how I feel about you. But that little list of yours skated round your feelings for me.’
‘I’m not sure of them,’ she confessed. ‘Because of my appetite, I mean.’
He stared at her blankly. ‘Appetite?’
‘All the women I know go off their food when they fall in love, and rabbit on about how perfect the man is.’ Gabriel took in a deep breath. ‘It’s not like that for me. With you, I mean.’
Adam retreated to the other end of the sofa. ‘How was it for you before?’ he asked conversationally. ‘Did you lose your appetite over other men in the past?’
‘No. But then, I’ve never been in love before.’ She swallowed. ‘But I must be in love with you, because I miss you so badly when I don’t see you, and I’m so happy all the time we’re together.’ She smiled at him, shaken by the sudden heat in his eyes. ‘I don’t know what else to say.’
‘Oh, yes, you do, Gabriel!’
She licked the tip of her tongue round lips which dried at the tone in his voice. ‘You mean that you won’t actually make love to me until I give you some kind of encouragement?’
‘I don’t need encouragement,’ he said explosively. ‘In fact, I want you so much you should be marvelling at my restraint this very moment. But I insist that you give me a very specific f
orm of reassurance.’
She looked at him in silence for a moment, then licked her lips again and blurted, ‘I—I think I must love you, Adam.’
‘Again,’ he said inexorably, moving closer.
‘I love you,’ she whispered. ‘How many times must I say it?’
‘Every day for the rest of your life,’ he informed her, and took her in his arms, his kiss leaving her in no doubt that he meant every word.
CHAPTER TEN
IT WAS a long time before Gabriel could speak, or even summon her thinking processes to put words together, but at last, when Adam raised his head long enough for her to breathe, she smiled at him in sleepy-eyed challenge.
‘Is the offer still open?’ she asked unevenly.
Adam, equally breathless, gave her a dazed look. ‘Offer?’
Gabriel nodded. ‘Regarding your big brass bed.’
His eyes grew diamond-bright. ‘Are you by any chance asking to sleep with me, Miss Brett?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
She smiled. ‘I’ve slept enough today for a while.’
Adam kissed her long and hard by way of response. ‘This,’ he said, against her mouth, ‘is the point where I should sweep you up in my arms and carry you up to my famous bed. But—’
‘I’m too heavy,’ she said, resigned, whereupon Adam got up, switched off the fire, then scooped her up in his arms.
‘Wrong,’ he told her, carrying her from the room. He set her down in the small entrance, and gestured at the steep, narrow staircase that took two sharp turns before reaching the upper floor. ‘If I carry you up there both of us would be black and blue by the time we got upstairs—’
‘Then in that case I’ll walk,’ said Gabriel. She grinned in shameless invitation. ‘In fact, I’ll run!’ She set off up the stairs at a speed that would have ended in disaster if Adam hadn’t been close behind to field her as she stumbled onto the landing.
‘Steady,’ he said, holding her close. ‘I want you in one delectable piece. And in case you’re in any doubt, I want you right now, my darling Miss Brett.’ He picked her up and took her into his room to lay her on his beautiful brass bed, then knelt over her and began to unbutton her shirt.
The tawny walls of the lamplit room glowed with a warmth Gabriel could feel mounting to fever point in her own body as the long, skilled hands undressed her. The process took a tantalisingly long time, due to Adam’s need to press his lips to every inch of skin he laid bare, until by the time he’d removed the last lace-edged scrap worn, Gabriel blushed to remember, in the hope of just such an occasion, she was on fire with longing for him.
Adam stood up to strip the clothes from his aroused body, his eyes moving over her with a look so tactile it was hard for Gabriel to lie still when she was dissolving inside, her nipples rising in wanton response to the dark, possessive gaze she could almost feel burning her skin, and she held up her arms in urgent welcome as Adam came down to her. She stretched full length beneath his hard, naked body, loving the feel of his weight on her, of his mouth on hers, every nerve and fibre responding to the touch of his caressing hands. His voice harsh with desire, Adam made verbal love that roused them to equal heights of frenzy as his mouth moved down her throat to her breasts and her stomach and lower, until fire shot through her as his tongue penetrated to find the throbbing epicentre of her longing. She gasped and clutched his hair, overwhelmed almost instantly by shockwaves of sensation which flooded her entire body, and Adam slid up the bed and took her into his arms, taking away the hand she’d flung across her eyes.
‘Look at me, Gabriel.’
Her lids rose slowly. ‘That wasn’t fair,’ she muttered, and Adam smiled possessively, smoothing her tumbled hair from her hot face as she buried her face against his throat. “I could never bear the thought of that before,’ she confessed, and touched the tip of her tongue to his skin, luxuriating in the taste and scent of hot, aroused male.
Adam groaned and crushed her closer, then raised her face to his. ‘And now?’
‘With you it’s different.’
‘And why is that?’
‘Because I —I love you, perhaps?’
‘Go to the top of the class, Miss Brett!’
‘Could you by any chance achieve that same, mind-blowing result in a different way, Mr Dysart?’ Gabriel whispered, undulating her hips against him. ‘A way that involves both of us this time?’
‘It involved us both last time,’ he assured her, ‘but this will be even better.’ His mouth took hers as he spread her hands wide and thrust himself deep into the moist, secret recesses of the body which yielded to his entry with such rapture Gabriel felt him grow rigid as he fought for control. ‘Darling,’ he gasped, and buried his face against her breasts, and she clasped him close for a moment before he began to move again, every muscle taut with determination to go slowly, but she arched against him in fierce, wordless demand, and he surrendered to the surging rhythm which engulfed them all too soon in a tidal wave of throbbing release.
It took a while for Adam to summon the energy to pull up the covers and roll over, taking Gabriel with him to lie in his arms with her head on his shoulder.
‘You look surprised,’ he said after a while, stroking her hair.
‘It’s so hard to believe.’
‘What is, exactly?’
‘That I’ve just been making love with Adam Dysart.’
‘Your arch enemy,’ he said, amused.
‘Not any more.’ She raised her head to look at him very directly. ‘Or didn’t I make myself clear just now?’
His eyes darkened. ‘It wasn’t just the heat of the moment?’
Her mouth curved in a wry little smile. ‘Didn’t you mean all those things you said, too?’
‘Every one. As I’ve told you before, my darling, I never say a word I don’t mean.’
Gabriel sighed, and wriggled closer. ‘I know this is probably terribly bad taste, and I shouldn’t ask, but did you say the same kind of thing to Della, and others before her? In the same situation, I mean?’
‘Never,’ he growled, and shook her gently. ‘Did you—do you, with your art dealer?’
‘No way. I’ve told you. It’s not that kind of relationship. I’ve never said anything like that to anyone, ever.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’ve never felt like this about anyone before.’
Adam let out a long breath and held her cruelly tight. ‘Neither have I. So now we’ve settled that, let’s talk about what happens next.’
Gabriel tensed, not sure she liked the sound of that. ‘What do you mean, exactly?’ she asked with caution.
He raised his head. ‘Listen.’
She obeyed, but the house was silent, the only sound the rain pouring down outside. ‘I can’t hear anything—only rain.’
‘Right.’ He eased her down on a pillow and propped himself up on an elbow to look down at her. ‘Are you going to insist I drive you back through this downpour?’
Gabriel wriggled further down in the bed, hating the very thought of it. ‘I should,’ she said reluctantly.
Adam slid down to share the pillow and drew her close. ‘Stay here with me,’ he said, in a tone which turned her bones to jelly.
‘I want to—’
‘Then stay.’
‘But I shouldn’t leave the house empty overnight—’
‘Why not? the security lights are working, the house is lit up like a Christmas tree as usual, and your car is parked outside. To the onlooker—though there’s no more likelihood of an onlooker than at any other time, particularly in this weather—the house looks as it’s done every other night since you’ve been there.’ Adam’s lips roved over her face. ‘Stay, darling. I’ll take you back tomorrow.’
‘You’re willing to leave Henrietta all alone?’ she teased.
‘As the alternative to this—and this,’ he whispered, his mouth moving down her throat, ‘I certainly am. Poor Henrietta’s dead and gone. But you a
nd I are very much alive, my darling. So stay.’
Shivering at the touch of tantalising, coaxing hands, Gabriel was ready to say yes to anything Adam Dysart wanted, and made it plain in a way which resulted in such passionate appreciation she had no desire to be anywhere in the world other than in Adam Dysart’s arms. But this time his control was so absolute she was soon desperate for the release he withheld inexorably until she resorted to methods which sent his control up in smoke as he granted her heart’s desire, gasping out words she responded to in kind as they held each other in the throes of fulfilment.
When Gabriel woke hours later she was alone, utterly disorientated for a moment in the wide comfortable bed so different from the one she slept in at Haywards. Adam! She sat bolt upright, her face hot as the events of the night came flooding back to take her breath away. She thrust her hands through her wildly untidy hair and slid out of bed, wincing as she caught sight of herself in a mirror. Pulling on her crumpled shirt to serve as dressing gown, Gabriel hurried across the small landing, thankful that wherever Adam was he wasn’t in the bathroom, and after a few urgent repairs went back to the bedroom to find Adam sitting on the edge of the bed in a short, towelling robe, drinking champagne.
‘That,’ he said, eyeing her from head to toe, ‘is an outrageously sexy get-up, my angel.’
‘It’s just a man’s white shirt,’ she protested, perching beside him.
‘No man ever looked like that in it,’ he assured her, and handed her a glass of champagne. ‘I thought the occasion merited a toast.’
Gabriel touched her glass to his. ‘What shall we drink to?’
‘To us.’
‘To us,’ she echoed, and grinned mischievously. ‘This is a bit decadent at three in the morning, Mr Dysart.’
Adam’s answering grin was deliberately lascivious. ‘Nice, though!’ He hooked a long arm round her waist and drew her close, then threw back his head and laughed as her stomach gave a very unromantic rumble. ‘Don’t tell me—you’re hungry!’
‘I shouldn’t be,’ she said ruefully, and rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. ‘Why is it that whenever I’m with you I need food?’
Restless Nights Page 12