by Susan Napier
She bit her lip, but the self-inflicted pain didn’t help banish the tears that stood in her eyes, blurring the dance of the sparks. She opened them wide and blinked, but then a strong pair of enfolding arms slid around and over hers, chasing away the chill, drawing her gently back against a warm column of hard flesh, and the tears spilled over her cheeks and dripped down into the crease of a tanned elbow.
The arms tightened and she felt Drake’s square chin skim over her shoulder at the nape of her neck, his head dipping and turning so that he could push his face into the side of her throat, his hard forehead nudging up under her jaw, his lips moving against her soft skin.
‘Ah, Katherine…I’m sorry…’ He began to rock her from side to side, his big hands compressing her upper arms, his hips directing but also passively supporting the sway of her willowy body.
A sob burst from her chest and she briefly struggled against his unbreakable grip.
‘Kate…’ he whispered against her throat. ‘Katie…’
It was the first time he had ever used the sweet diminutive of her name and that he should do it now just seemed too much. A second sob tore loose, and then another, and then the tears just wouldn’t stop. When she stopped fighting his hold he slid his arms down to her hips and turned her around, pulling her hands around his waist, drawing her head against his chest and rubbing the knuckles of one hand up and down her spine, continuing to rock her in rhythm to her sobs.
‘I don’t know why I’m crying; there’s nothing to cry about,’ she wept, her voice muffled in the folds of his linen shirt. ‘It’s not as if I’ve really lost a baby…just a silly delusion…What made me think I could be a good mother, anyway? I suppose you think I’m totally mad—’
‘Shh, Kate,’ he soothed, ‘you’re the sanest woman I know—you’re the one who anchors me to my humanity.’ He rested his cheek on the top of her tousled head. ‘You lost something precious to you this week, and even if it was just an illusion, why shouldn’t you be allowed to grieve for it?’
Her fingers clenched into his shirt, the beat of his heart against her jaw reverberating through her bones. ‘You don’t really care,’ she choked, lifting her head. ‘You’re happy that your life can go back to the way it was before…’
‘Not happy…sad.’ He tilted her chin up so that she could see the truth of his words in his sombre face. ‘In all the time I’ve known you I’ve never seen you cry, except at a movie. That made me feel safe. I don’t like to see you hurting.’
She looked up at him with drowned eyes, a ghostly silver in the half-darkness. ‘Then why…why did you walk away from me like that?’ she said rawly.
He brushed back the hair from her forehead, dislodging several grains of sand, which he stroked away from the top of her furrowed brows. ‘Because I’m a flawed human being, sweetheart. Sometimes I let the past get in the way of my better instincts. But I do learn from my mistakes and I’m here for you now, so you don’t have to bear this alone.’
He pressed his lips to her crumpled forehead, smoothing it out with a string of gentle kisses that drifted to the corner of her damp eyes, and down to her salty cheeks and bite-swollen lips. His soft murmurs of tender reassurance and the rocking cradle of his arms, the feather-light touch of his mouth stroking her reddened eyelids closed, and the achingly sweet brush of his cheek against hers both lulled and enticed her into a dreamy state of contented acquiescence.
So that when she found herself upstairs in Drake’s luxurious grey and blue bedroom, being divested of her clothes, she was only mildly curious.
‘What are you doing?’ she murmured through tear-thickened vocal cords as Drake’s comforting arms withdrew so that he could pick up a remote control to draw the blue silk drapes and dim the squat bedside lamps to an intimate glow.
‘Getting comfortable,’ he said, pulling the white shirt over his head without undoing the buttons, and discarding it carelessly on the thick silver-grey carpet. He did the same with her top and was deftly drawing her salt-stained shorts down her legs when she bestirred herself to weakly protest.
‘I haven’t had a wash. You can’t look at me; I’m all grubby—’
‘I don’t mind. Hop out,’ he ordered and threw the shorts on top of the pile of clothes when she unthinkingly obeyed.
‘I do. I always have a shower before I see you,’ she fretted, trying to hide herself behind her arms. ‘I need to feel that I’m clean, and look my best, and smell beautiful…’
He took her hands, gently saluting the one that still showed signs of bruising from the extracted splinters, and placed them over his shoulders, spanning her slender waist with his big hands and nuzzling her pouting mouth with more of those butterfly kisses. ‘You’re just as appealing to me au naturel,’ he murmured reassuringly. ‘You smell like a real woman; I like that better than any artificial fragrance…a woman of the sun and sea and beach.’
He licked at the tracks of her tears on her face and she gave a sad, salty chuckle.
‘You feel like Koshka, only your tongue is softer.’
He gave her some more of his soft tongue, and took advantage of her distraction to unfasten her bra, letting out an exclamation as a thick crust of dry sand fell away with the cups, leaving her bare breasts coated with a fine dusting of pale grit, the minute grains of quartz sparkling in the lamp-light.
‘I need a towel, I’m all sandy,’ she said self-consciously, wrinkling her nose and trying to ineffectually brush away the grittiness.
‘Fairy dust from your fairy castle,’ he said huskily. ‘Here, let me be your towel…’ He replaced her hands on his shoulders and used the tips of his fingers to whisk delicately over and around the soft mounds, stroking his thumbs where the sand clung stubbornly to her milk-white flesh. He bent his head to blow gently at the recalcitrant grains, watching her breasts rise and tauten, the soft pink nipples puckering at the caress of the warm, moist zephyr. He pushed her to sit on the bed and picked up his shirt, kneeling in front to her to tenderly buff around the ruched peaks with the butter-soft linen, his eyes darkening as she flinched and gave a sudden gasp.
‘Oh, a button.’
He looked at the balled shirt in his hand, its pearlised buttons gleaming amongst the folds of fabric. ‘Did it catch against you?’
She nodded.
‘Like this…?’He deliberately turned the shirt and scraped a smooth, hard button against her sensitised nipple.
‘Oh…’ She shuddered, her eyes widening, her head tipping back, and he did it again, scraping the little disc back and forth across the swollen peak until it deepened from pink to mauve, then according the same delicious punishment to her other breast.
‘Oh…they…oh, don’t,’ she gasped unconvincingly as the blood thinned in her veins, rushing into her breasts and pooling between her thighs, easing her sorrowing heart of some of its coagulated heaviness. She closed her eyes and groaned, racked by a piercing yearning.
‘They’re almost clean now,’ she heard him murmur throatily. ‘I just need to…’ and suddenly the fabric was replaced by his warm breath again, and then his mouth, licking around her areolae, suckling gently but firmly at the twin peaks.
‘Would you have nursed our baby like this?’
Her eyes flew open with shock to meet his hot gaze, smouldering at her through his thick lashes, his lips still drawing tautly on her nipple, enfolding it inside his mouth in the hot curl of his tongue.
She plunged her hand into his hair and pulled his head away. ‘How can you ask that?’
He looked at her pointed breasts, cleansed of sand but glistening with the evidence of his possession. ‘I don’t want you to be afraid to talk about it. I don’t want you to think you have to pretend it never happened. You would have been a good mother, Kate, never doubt it.’
The reminder made her feel guilty all over again. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this…’
‘But it’s making you feel better, isn’t it?’
She quivered with confusion. ‘I’m not going t
o have sex with you,’ she said fiercely. Men always reduced everything to sex!
‘All right…we’ll just get into bed and cuddle together—you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ he suggested persuasively, reaching over to fold back a corner of the blue silk counterpane and show her the crisp white sheet. ‘You’d never let us do that before. You’d allow the requisite few minutes for a post-coital cuddle, but as soon as there was any danger of either of us drifting off to sleep you’d be up and moving about, suggesting things to do or getting dressed to leave.’
‘I thought that was what you wanted…’ she said, bewildered and intrigued by this seductively tender alien who had apparently taken over Drake’s body.
‘Well, you were wrong. I like having you close. I wanted to make love and be able to fall asleep to the feel of you in my arms.’ His eyes had fallen to her filmy white lace panties, and his finger began to toy with the elastic at the top of her leg.
She clamped her legs together to halt a molten gush. What if he found sand in her panties?
‘I’m not taking them off…’ she said weakly.
His finger hooked under the fabric. ‘I think you should,’ he advised. In contrast to hers his deep voice was compellingly certain. ‘They’re a bit tight, and you want to be comfy…’ And before she could blink, or accuse him of calling her fat, they were whisking through the air.
‘All right, but you have to keep your jeans on,’ she warned, her white bottom flashing as she scrabbled hastily under the covers and peeped out at him, using the sheet to cover the beginnings of a smile.
He looked disappointed but contented himself with merely unsnapping his top button to relieve the pressure behind his zip.
He climbed into the bed facing her, snuggling tantalisingly—but not crushingly—close, his hot chest just far enough away to rub her breasts with every indrawn breath, his big hands stroking her back, his heavy thigh lying over the top of hers, the centres of their bodies pressed together, the springy curls at the base of her belly catching against the rough denim bulging tightly in his crotch.
Their heads nestled on thistledown softness, their noses almost touching at the sloping intersection of their luxury pillows.
‘This is nice, isn’t it?’ he said, one hand moving down to cup the globes of her bottom, adjusting her more securely against his lower body, and she felt his voice in the hard tips of her breasts where they fenced with his flat nipples.
‘Y-yes…’ she said uncertainly, feeling the familiar throb of excitement pulse in her veins.
The longer she lay there, the worse it got. She didn’t want him to want her only for sex, she realised restlessly, but their thriving sex life was a healthy expression of their intense mutual attraction, and, as such, was an indivisible part of her love.
As her temperature rose she could feel his skin absorb and radiate more heat until it began to get uncomfortably hot under the covers. And yet still he made no move to acknowledge or ease the growing tension in their bodies. In spite of his earlier seductiveness, Drake was going to refrain from any sexualised affection because she had insisted she wanted it that way. He was showing that he respected her wishes above his carnal desires, when what she really wanted was not restraint, but reckless proof of life.
Kate impatiently kicked off the smothering covers. ‘You can make love to me now.’
Drake reared up on his elbow. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked tensely.
She dug her nails into his arms impatiently. ‘Yes, I’m sure…Drake, I want you—I want you to make love to me here, now!’
He didn’t need a third invitation. Nor was there any long-drawn-out foreplay. He tossed off the covers and swivelled them sideways on the bed, tugging her hips to the edge of the mattress, sliding backwards until his feet struck the floor. Propping himself over her on one braced arm, he opened the fastening of his jeans and pushed himself deeply inside her, uttering a thick, guttural sound of satisfaction as she lifted her hips to guide him home. With a twisting jerk of his hips he seated himself even more tightly between her spread legs, the muscles in his thighs rippling under the denim as he braced his feet against the floor, bent his hungry mouth to her breasts, and began the deep, hard, thrusting rhythm that they both urgently needed, bringing them quickly to a mutual, violent convulsion of groaning ecstasy.
Twice more he racked and then wrenched her body with convulsive pleasure before turning off the lights and finishing with a long, slow, sensual loving that left them panting and weak with sweet exhaustion. Then he pulled the sheets firmly back around them, arranged her to his satisfaction…facing away from him with her bottom spooned by his hips…and tucked his arms around her, sealing her back to his smooth chest.
‘And now,’ he informed her with yawning satisfaction, ‘now we cuddle up and go to sleep together like all good lovers do!’
CHAPTER TEN
TWO weeks later, Kate tiptoed up the hall to stand outside the firmly shut door to Drake’s office, pressing a warning finger to her lips as she looked down at Prince, trailing at her heels, who looked to be winding up for an inquiring ‘wuff’.
She raised a hand to knock and dropped it again, chewing at her lip. The door shut meant that Drake wasn’t to be disturbed—they had arranged that all-important signal right from the start. If she came over and his door was shut, she went away again.
Except in dire emergencies. Which this wasn’t—well, not as Drake would class it, anyway…
‘I can hear you thinking!’
Muffled by the near soundproof door, Drake’s voice made her jump.
‘Woof!’ yelled Prince at the sound of his master’s voice, clearly letting her off the hook. Or so she thought.
‘You may as well come in, Kate.’
She cracked the door open and poked her head in, pushing Prince back with a firm hand.
‘I wasn’t going to knock,’ she told him. ‘I was going to wait. Have I wrecked your train of thought?’
He angled his head down and looked at her over the top of his narrow spectacles. She had been charmed to discover that he wore the neat, gold-rimmed reading glasses when he worked for prolonged periods at his desk. She had teased him that it made him look like a ‘proper writer’, but he had got her back by wearing them the next time they made love, and forcing her to admit that they made him look incredibly sexy.
‘Do you want the polite answer, or the truth?’
‘The polite answer, please,’ she said, pushing the door wider.
He threw down the gold-topped pen with which he had been correcting pages and took off his glasses.
‘You’re looking rather frazzled.’
‘I’m frizzled and frazzled,’ she said, fingering through her salt-laden locks. I don’t seem to have any water.’
‘Low tide classified as an emergency now, is it?’ he asked, but his brown eyes were amused as he rocked back in his chair, lazily stretching his arms before tucking his hands behind his head. ‘If you wait twelve hours I’m sure it’ll come back in again.’
‘I mean at the house. I went to have a shower and nothing happened. None of the taps are working, either. The rental agent said to phone a plumber, but apparently he doesn’t work weekends in Oyster Beach…unless you have too much water. He’ll come for a flood but not a drought. Would you mind if I used your guest shower?’
He gave her an impatient look. ‘You know you don’t have to even ask, you can shower here whenever you like—or have a soak in the spa.’ His eyes glinted. ‘I know you like a long, leisurely bathe, so that your skin is soft when you stroke on those silky body lotions.’
He was reminding her that more than once he had applied them for her, revealing a wicked talent for erotic massage…
‘Thanks,’ she said in an effort to stay focused on her errand. ‘I’ve been down on the beach all morning and I think I’ve brought half of it back with me.’
He looked approvingly at her glowing colour. ‘Aren’t you glad I persuaded Marcus to give you an extra month’s holi
day?’
‘Persuaded? Blackmailed, more like!’ she laughed.
Impossible to believe now that she had initially rejected Drake’s suggestion that she spend a few more leisurely weeks at the beach, but he had been very persuasive and hadn’t hesitated to use her area of greatest vulnerability.
‘You’ve just gone through a very emotionally draining experience; you owe it to yourself to fully recover before you plunge back into the fray,’ he had lectured. ‘Didn’t the doctor say something about your stress levels helping to send your hormones all out of whack? Marcus will work you into a nervous breakdown if you’re not careful. I know he regards you highly but that doesn’t mean you should let him persuade you that you’re completely indispensable—that’s just his way of cracking the whip and making least-work for himself. Another month isn’t too much to ask when you’ve worked for him continuously for so long, and your health is at stake. I bet you’ve hardly had a day of sick leave in your whole career. He owes you a long-service sabbatical at the very least—’
‘Well, I suppose I could phone and ask…’ she said uncertainly, tempted by the thought of a few more stolen weeks alone with her lover, and yet at the same time mistrustful of her current state of blissful irresponsibility. This was her healing time and she and Drake were consciously living it from moment to moment, taking each day as it came and carefully putting aside any reference to the future.
‘Don’t ask him, tell him!’ And when she baulked at that he shrugged and seemed to give up.
But when she finally borrowed Drake’s phone to make the toll-call, she found Marcus strangely affable, chuckling fatly in her ear and reassuring her that her job would be waiting for her however long she decided to stay away, that she was worth her weight in gold and that any research she wanted to do for a private client while she was away was okey-dokey with him.
‘You went behind my back!’ Kate confronted Drake as soon as she’d hung up the phone, trying hard to be angry.
‘It was for your own good. Someone had to play hard-ball on your behalf.’