by Penny Jordan
‘You can always join me if you want to cool down.’ The mocking taunt followed him across the room as he closed the bathroom door behind him. Once he was gone Sapphire struggled into her nightdress. The fine pearl grey silk seemed to emphasise her curves rather than conceal them, the deeply decolleté, lace-trimmed neckline outlining the curves of her breasts in explicit detail. One thing she was sure of. When Blake came back from the bathroom he would find her deeply and safely asleep. As she lay down and pulled the covers over her, keeping as close to the edge of the bed as possible she wondered bitterly if he had come to her room deliberately to torment her, or if he genuinely did believe if he wasn’t there to prevent her she might have gone to Alan.
Letting him think that she and Alan were lovers was her only means of protection, she acknowledged, closing her eyes, her body tense. Once Blake found out they weren’t, it wouldn’t take him long to discover that she still loved him and then she would be completely at his mercy.
Nothing had changed, she thought bitterly, forcing herself to breathe evenly, and then a small inner voice corrected her, one thing had changed apparently. Blake, for some reason, now seemed to find her physically desirable. Or was his desire for her simply a frustrated sexual longing for Miranda who presumably now shared her favours between Blake and her husband? Nausea, deep and wrenching, tore into her as Sapphire pictured them together. No, please God not that, she whispered squeezing her eyes closed as though she could blot out the pictures. She had been through all this once before and suffered all the torments of the damned picturing Blake with Miranda, imagining their bodies entwined in the act of love; sharing its heated ecstasy and its languorous aftermath—pleasures which had been denied to her, and she wasn’t going to endure them again. She couldn’t.
She heard Blake come back into the room and tensed as he snapped off the lamp, and pulled back the covers. The sarcastic comments she had expected about the way she was huddled on the edge of the bed never came, and to her chagrin within minutes of getting into bed, Blake appeared to be fast asleep!
As she struggled up through dense layers of sleep the first thing Sapphire realised was that at some time during the night she must have turned instinctively towards Blake, because now, instead of lying with her back to him, curled up on the edge of the bed she was actually curved against his body, her head pillowed on his shoulder.
Luckily Blake was still asleep and therefore unable to witness her weakness. As she started to move away from him, the second thing Sapphire realised was that he was sleeping nude. Perhaps she ought to have expected it; but during the brief days of their marriage he had always worn pyjamas, the jackets of which he had invariably tugged off at some time during the night, she remembered. Lost in her thoughts; seduced into inert languor by the warmth of his body, she was reluctant to move, even while acknowledging that she should; surely there could be no real harm in indulging herself in these few brief seconds of pleasure. But her conscience prodded her, and unwillingly she started to move away.
‘Going somewhere?’ Blake’s voice, still husky with sleep, rasped tantalisingly against her sensitive skin, making her shiver with a reaction somewhere between delight and dread.
‘It’s light,’ Sapphire told him unnecessarily, trying to edge away from him without drawing his attention to what she was doing, and failing abysmally as he rolled on to his side, pinning her against him with one arm.
He was so close now that she could feel the intimacy of his body heat; the warm, muskily male scent of his skin clouding her reasoning processes, so that it no longer seemed quite so imperative for her to move. Much more pleasant to give in to the allure of remaining where she was.
‘I thought you’d want to be out, checking on the stock.’ Conscience made her make the feeble concession to saying what she felt she should, but Blake brushed her protest aside.
‘The men will be doing that, because I did the last round last night—we’re very democratic up here,’ he drawled teasingly. ‘I must say it was quite a surprise to wake up and find you in my arms. I seem to remember that last night you couldn’t get far enough away from me.’
‘I didn’t know what I was doing,’ Sapphire defended herself, ‘I must have turned over in my sleep and when …’
‘You’re used to sharing a bed with someone? Like you do with your lover?’ Blake accused harshly, ‘Is that what you were going to say?’
‘And if it was?’ Sapphire flung back at him recklessly. Anything to keep him from discovering just how much she was affected by his proximity.
‘Then there must be other things you’re missing, beside a warm body in bed beside you at night,’ Blake countered softly. Sapphire couldn’t tell if it was challenge or anger that turned his eyes to molten gold, but even as she moved away from him, his fingers clamped into her waist, refusing to let her go. As she struggled to free herself her breasts brushed the taut skin of his chest and even through the fabric of her nightdress she was overwhelmingly conscious of the contact, closing her eyes against a sudden too-painful image of skin against flesh, of Blake stroking and caressing her.
‘Open your eyes,’ Blake demanded harshly, shattering the erotic bubble of her thoughts. ‘You aren’t going to pretend it’s someone else who’s holding you in his arms, Sapphire.’
‘Who was it who taught you to be so arousingly responsive?’ he muttered, his eyes on the swift rise and fall of her breasts, her nipples pressing urgently against the fine fabric of her nightdress, in wanton supplication of the caresses her mind had envisioned so very recently.
Sapphire felt a wave of shame course through her. How could she be behaving in such an abandoned fashion?
‘Who?’ Blake pressed. ‘Your precious Alan, or another lover?’
‘Does it matter?’ Hot tears stung her eyes, caused as much by his cruel blindness as her own weakness. He was the only man she had ever met who could touch the deep inner core of her femininity; he was the only man with the ability to unleash her desire.
‘Perhaps not.’ The heat had gone from his voice to be replaced by a cynical blandness. ‘That it has been achieved at all is miracle enough I suppose. When I think of the way you used to shy away from me.’
Shy away? Sapphire stared at him. What about all the times she had willed him to make love to her? What about the times she had lain in this bed praying that he would stretch out and touch her?
‘I think it’s time we were getting dressed,’ she told him hurriedly, trying to dispel her tormenting memories.
‘So, you haven’t changed completely,’ Blake drawled. ‘You still run away from situations you find unpalatable. Well, this is one occasion my dear wife, when you can’t run. Unless, of course, you want me to pursue you, and carry you back to this bed?’
‘Why should you want to do that?’ Sapphire tried to sound sophisticated and amused but instead her voice was a breathy, hesitant whisper, Blake’s smile telling her that she had not succeeded.
‘Do I really have to tell you?’ He leaned towards her, the fingers of his free hand curling round the strap of her nightdress and slowly sliding it down her arm. The bedcovers had slipped down to her waist during their earlier struggle, and Sapphire watched like a rabbit transfixed by the hunter as Blake leisurely revealed the creamy slope of her breast.
‘You’ve changed,’ he murmured, studying her until the colour ran up under her pale skin. ‘You’re fuller here,’ his thumb skimmed the outline of her breast, resting so briefly against her nipple that she couldn’t be sure whether the caress was deliberate or accidental, ‘and narrower here.’
His fingers touched her waist, and she shivered convulsively, her throat dry and tight with the aching need she could feel burning up inside her. She wanted to slide her fingers into the crisp darkness of his hair, to hold his head against her breast, and caress the male contours of his body. Shame and fear mingled into a stomach-tensing cramp as she tried to fight against her feelings.
‘Do you like this?’ Blake slid the nightdr
ess free of her breast cupping it with his palm and stroking his tongue along the valley between it and its twin, his thumb making erotic patterns around its rosy peak.
‘No.’ Her denial was a choked, strangled lie.
‘I think you mean yes.’ Blake was so lazily self-assured that Sapphire started to tremble. ‘Well, Sapphire,’ he pressed, ‘did you mean yes?’ All the time he spoke to her he was teasing, nibbling little kisses closer and closer to her nipple. Heat coursed through her veins. Part of her wanted to flee; to get as far away from him as she could, and the other part wanted to be so close to him that not even the fragile thinness of her nightdress was between them. She ached for the feel of Blake’s mouth against her breast; his hands on her body, but as though to punish her for her fib, his kisses stopped tantalisingly short of their goal, and with memories of past rejections to the forefront of her mind Sapphire could not, would not guide his mouth to the place she most wanted it to be.
‘Well, then, perhaps you prefer this?’
She was eased out of her nightdress before she had time to object, the embarrassment of Blake’s thorough scrutiny of her nude body outweighing all other considerations as she struggled to tug the bedclothes up over her, and Blake effortlessly restrained her. A mocking smile curved his mouth, but it was the showers of gold lightening glittering in his eyes that made Sapphire tense on a sudden spiral of excitement.
His fingertips stroking her hip and then following the line of her body downwards sparked off a showerburst of heady pleasure that she fought to conceal, swallowing the small gasp of delight that threatened to betray how she felt. She badly wanted to touch Blake as freely as he was touching her, to taste the warm maleness of his skin and feel his body come alive beneath her hands.
‘You have the loveliest skin.’ Blake was still touching her, drawing spiralling patterns against her thigh which transmitted an intensity of heat totally at odds with the lightness of his touch. His voice had a velvet, mesmeric quality that lulled her tense muscles into languorous relaxation. She wanted to purr almost, like a small satisfied cat, Sapphire realised on a stunned wave of surprise; she wanted to stretch and arch beneath those teasing fingers; to prolong the tormenting love play and instigate some of her own.
‘Sapphire?’
The sound of her name made her turn her head to look at Blake, her eyes unknowingly a deep, dense purple blue.
‘Open your mouth,’ Blake commanded softly, ‘I want to kiss you.’
It was heaven and hell, the zenith of pleasure and the nadir of despair. It was life and death; light and dark, and she was no more capable of resisting him than she was of denying that she loved him.
She clung to him, obeying the wordless commands of his mouth, responding with deep, driven intensity of emotion she had not known she could feel, abandoning every last vestige of pride and self-defence as her fingers locked in his hair and she clung with unashamed need to the greater strength of his body.
When at least he released her mouth, he studied its bruised softness for several seconds, his eyes eventually lifting to her bemused eyes, before he kissed her again, this time letting the moist warmth of his lips soothe the sensitive stinging skin of hers.
‘You liked that.’ It was a statement, not a question, rich with self-satisfaction, the long, lingering look he gave her body that of a man who knows exactly what effect he has had on the woman in his arms. His fingers traced a lazy pattern around and between her breasts, trailing downwards to her waist.
Excitement and urgency arched her body upwards, mutely seeking closer contact with his.
‘I think you were right after all. It is time we got dressed.’ His words were like snow being trickled down her spine. Sapphire couldn’t believe she had heard them. She wanted to protest, to demand to know why he had aroused her so deliberately and turned away from her, but her pride would not allow her to. If Blake could behave as though what had just happened between them meant nothing to him; if he was completely unaffected by the explosion of love and need which had gripped her, then so was she.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SAPPHIRE DELIBERATELY dawdled getting dressed, not wanting to face Blake. As she had hoped, when she walked into the kitchen half an hour later there was no sign of him, but the sight of Alan sitting morosely at the table, a mug of coffee in front of him brought her to an abrupt halt.
‘So you “hate” him do you?’ he sneered bitterly. ‘Some way you have of showing it! And to think I held off taking you to bed because I didn’t want to stampede you! Oh, it’s all right, Sapphire,’ he grimaced, the anger deserting him, as he raked tired fingers through his hair. ‘He’s told me all about it; how the two of you decided to give your marriage another try. I just wish I heard it first from you that’s all.’
‘I’m sorry, Alan.’ Shakily Sapphire sat down, knowing that Alan had every right to feel angry and resentful. ‘I didn’t tell you over the phone because … because I didn’t think it was the right thing to do. I didn’t realise that Blake intended us to be re-married quite so soon.’
‘You’re happy with him?’ His voice was abrupt, tight with a pain that made Sapphire’s heart ache in sympathy.
‘I do love him,’ she told him, avoiding the question.
‘And obviously sexually you’re extremely compatible,’ Alan shocked her by saying. ‘Come on, Sapphire, I’m not a complete fool,’ he told her roughly, ‘when a man comes down for breakfast, looking like a well-fed predator, it isn’t hard to guess what’s put the smile on his face.’
She wanted to protest that he was wrong, but sensibly did not. Perhaps it might make it easier for Alan to accept the situation if he believed that she and Blake were lovers. Sadly she knew that their friendship was now over, and that once she and Blake had parted there could be no going back to Alan. She would miss him as one always missed good friends, but she did not love him, she acknowledged, her feelings from him came nowhere near to those she felt for Blake.
After he had breakfast Alan insisted on leaving. When he had gone Sapphire felt restless. On impulse she decided to go out for a walk, glimpsing Blake working in one of the snow-covered fields—just a small dark figure by a Land Rover, with something familiar in his stance that tugged at her heart.
Shivering in the cold wind she walked back to the house, still too restless to settle. She would go and see her father; she decided visiting him might help to keep her mind off her own problems.
Flaws farmyard was deserted when she drove in. Someone had cleared the worst of the snow away, and although the kitchen was redolent with the yeasty smell of baking there was no sign of Mary.
Terror, sharp and paralysing, gripped her for a second, a dreadful vision of her father, motionless, dying, rising up before her. The vision cleared and she hurried upstairs, her heart thumping; her pulses racing in aching fear as she pushed open the door to her father’s room and came to a full stop.
Far from lying close to death’s door on his bed her father was standing by the window, dressed in a pair of disreputable old trousers and a thick woollen jumper. He looked thinner than Sapphire remembered, but otherwise he was still very much the father of her late teens, his weatherbeaten face turned towards the window, his eyes on the distant snow-covered line of hills.
‘Back already,’ he commented without looking round. ‘I’ll just have a cup of coffee Mary and then …’ He turned and saw Sapphire, shock and something else she couldn’t understand leaping to life in his eyes.
‘Sapphire!’
The room started to tilt and spin and Sapphire heard a roaring sound in her ears, increasing in volume until it drowned out everything else. Dimly she was aware of her father calling for Mary, of blackness coming down over her, and then a thick, suffocating darkness that seemed to press down all around her.
When she opened her eyes she was sitting in her father’s chair, Mary standing anxiously at her side.
‘My, you gave us all a shock fainting like that,’ she told Sapphire worriedly. ‘Are you a
ll right now?’
‘Dad …’ Sapphire croaked unevenly, ‘when I came in and everywhere was so quiet, I thought …’
Shock, and something else she couldn’t name shadowed Mary’s eyes. She was about to speak when the door opened and her father walked in. Walked in, Sapphire noted dazedly, carrying a mug of tea.
‘Come on, drink this,’ Mary instructed her. ‘It will help allay the shock.’ The ‘phone started to ring and as Sapphire took the mug from her father Mary said briskly, ‘I’d better go down and answer that.’
When she had gone Sapphire looked at her father. ‘Sorry about this,’ she apologised huskily, ‘but you gave me such a shock …’
‘Aye, I’m sorry too, lass.’ Her father looked sad and disturbed. ‘I thought …’ He shook his head. ‘No, we won’t talk about it now, Sapphire. You’re in no fit state. You stay here and rest for a while and I’ll …’
He broke off as Mary came in her round face creased into a thoughtful frown.
‘That was Blake,’ she told them both. ‘In a rare old state, wanting to know if we’d seen anything of you.’ She looked at Sapphire and smiled. ‘That must have been some spat the two of you had to generate so much concern, and the pair of you not a week reconciled yet.’
Knowing that her father was watching her Sapphire summoned a light smile. ‘Blake wasn’t too pleased when Alan turned up last night,’ she told them, hoping she would be forgiven her small fib, but not wanting to let them guess at the real state of affairs between herself and Blake.
‘Jealous, was he?’ her father laughed. ‘Aye well, I suppose it’s my fault for sending the laddie over to you, but I thought it best.’
‘He’s gone now,’ Sapphire told them, and explained briefly.