by Penny Jordan
‘I’d better get back,’ she told her father. She couldn’t put off facing Blake for ever. From somewhere she would have to find the determination to remind him that their marriage was a strictly platonic one. Not that he could really want her, she reminded herself bitterly.
‘You stay right here,’ Mary scolded her. ‘You’re in no fit state to be driving after that faint. Blake’s coming to take you home. He’s getting one of the men to drive him over in the Land Rover. He’ll be here in ten minutes or so.’
Shakily Sapphire drank her tea. Why had Blake rung Flaws Farm? Had he perhaps gone back the house this morning and wondered where she was? She frowned, and then tensed as she heard the familiar sound of a Land Rover engine.
‘Here he is now,’ Mary announced going to look out of the window. ‘I’ll go down and tell him where we are. No, don’t you get up,’ she told Sapphire sternly. ‘I’m not too happy about that faint of yours. You must try and take things easy for a few days. Put on a few pounds, perhaps. I know it’s fashionable to be slim but you seem to have been overdoing things.’
‘Now she’s back with Blake, she’ll soon fatten up a bit,’ her father prophesied. ‘There’s nothing like a happy marriage.’
Sighing Sapphire turned her face away. What would her father say if he knew the truth? But he mustn’t know the truth, she thought in panic. She could already see the effect their re-marriage had had on his health; he was marvellously improved. It couldn’t last for long of course, but she daren’t take the risk of him discovering the truth.
She heard Mary go downstairs and then return several minutes later accompanied by Blake. Where earlier she had been shocked to see how much healthier her father had appeared than she had anticipated, now she was equally startled by the pallor of Blake’s skin and the tense, bitter, brooding darkness of his eyes.
‘Mary tells me you fainted.’ His voice was almost accusatory.
“It was just the shock of finding Dad out of bed,’ she told him knowing how feeble her explanation sounded, but not able to tell him in front of her father of her fears when she had entered the strangely silent house.
She started to get out of the chair, but Blake forestalled her, striding over and bending to pick her up, ignoring her protests.
‘Let him carry you,’ Mary placated. ‘I don’t want you falling down those steep stairs. No, she’s perfectly all right,’ she told Blake who had turned to question her, ‘she just needs to rest a little and get her strength back.’
When he had installed her in the passenger seat of his car Blake started the engine, his face grim as he drove the car out of the cobbled yard.
‘What did you want me for?’ Sapphire ventured once they were out on the road. ‘You rang Mary to find out if I was there,’ she pressed when he turned to frown at her. ‘You must have wanted me for something …’
‘When I went back to the house and found you missing,’ Blake told her harshly, ‘it struck me that you might have decided to renege on our bargain.’
It took several seconds for the words to sink in. ‘You mean you thought I had left with Alan?’ Sapphire said incredulously, ‘But …’
‘But he wouldn’t take you, believing that you and I are lovers?’ There was a cynically bitter twist to Blake’s mouth, his eyes as hard and cold as the snow-encrusted stone walls they were driving past.
‘No! I …’ Oh, what was the use trying to get through to him when he was in this sort of mood, Sapphire thought despairingly. Reaction from her faint had started to set in. She felt sick and tense; in no condition to cope with Blake’s biting sarcasm. This was the Blake she remembered, she thought miserably; this hard, cynical man who seemed to be driven by demons she could not comprehend; who seemed to take pleasure in humiliating her.
The moment the car stopped outside the backdoor, she reached for her seatbelt, but Blake was too quick for her, moving swiftly round to her door, and lifting her out of her seat, even as she protested that she could manage.
‘What made you faint, Sapphire?’ he demanded as he carried her upstairs to their room. ‘No wonder you put up so little fight when I suggested we re-marry. But you weren’t completely truthful with me were you? What happened? Wouldn’t he marry you when he knew that you were carrying his child?’
She was too stunned to answer him. He dropped her unceremoniously on the bed, where she simply lay, staring at him.
‘Oh, I confess you had me nicely fooled,’ Blake said bitterly. ‘It never occurred to me that you … We can hardly have our marriage annulled now,’ he continued sardonically, ‘and that being the case …’
He walked back to the bedroom door, calmly locking it and pocketing the key while Sapphire watched him in stupid disbelief. Blake couldn’t really believe that she was carrying Alan’s child, could he? If that had been the case she would never had consented to this ridiculous remarriage. Allan would have married her and willingly. Anger swept aside pain. How dare he accuse her of behaving so selfishly? She opened her mouth to tell him the truth and then closed it, her eyes rounding in surprise as he stripped off his sweater and shirt. His hands were on the buckle of his belt before Sapphire realised what was happening, her voice croaky and unsteady as she whispered, ‘Blake, just what do you think you’re doing?’
‘If you’re going to foist the responsibility for this child off on me, I might as well have some of the pleasure of fathering it,’ he snarled furiously at her. ‘It might not be my child, Sapphire, but you are my wife, and since it looks like this time I’m stuck with you, I might as well get whatever I can get out of it …’
‘I thought all you wanted was my father’s land,’ Sapphire gritted back at him. ‘I won’t make love with you, Blake,’ she warned him. ‘I …’ Her breath was trapped in her throat as he stepped out of his jeans, flinging them on to the floor. Clad only in dark briefs his body was that of a man used to an active life. Unwillingly Sapphire felt her glance slide helplessly over his broad shoulders, and down across the width of his chest. Dark hair arrowed downwards across the flat tautness of his stomach, and a mad desire to reach out and trace its erotic path rose up inside her. Quelling it, she tore her gaze away, shaken by the force of her reaction.
Two strides brought Blake to the edge of the bed. Leaning down he grasped the lapels of the cotton blouse she was wearing and Sapphire tensed, blue eyes meeting gold. Her breath stifled in her throat as Blake’s fingers curled into the fabric, the glitter in his eyes one of dark menace as he jerked forcefully at the cotton. Buttons flew in all directions as the blouse tore, unable to withstand the violence he was doing it. Sapphire knew she ought to have felt fear; terror even, but what she did feel was a wild surging excitement; a primaeval emotion that seemed to spring from her innermost being and burst into life, fuelled by the dark determination she could read in Blake’s eyes.
He found the waistband of her denim skirt, unsnapping it and sliding down the zip. She tried to push him away, tensing as she heard the almost feral snarl of anger he gave as he removed her clutching fingers and tossed aside her skirt.
Wearing only her bra and briefs she stared up at him as he loomed over her, willing her body not to communicate to his her unwilling arousal. Despite the rage she could feel emanating from him, she couldn’t forget that this was the man she loved; and that the mere sight of his body was enough to bring leaping pulses to life inside her, fuelling a burning ache that instinct told her only his possession could assuage. She remembered how he had deliberately aroused her only that morning and her eyes darkened unknowingly, her tongue touching the dry outline of her lips. Above her Blake growled menacingly, and her eyes met his, reading the eternal message of rage and desire that glinted there.
‘Thinking about him, were you? Pity you fainted so unpropitiously this morning,’ he taunted, ‘otherwise I’d never have suspected you could be pregnant. Despite it all you still have a look of … almost innocence about you.’
His eyes darkened over the last few words, almost as though they caused him pain, and mi
ngled with her own resentment that he could so easily think so little of her Sapphire felt a thread of aching response. She wanted to be in his arms, she acknowledged wistfully; she wanted the warm heat of his body against hers; his hands caressing her, his lips … A shudder seemed to tear through her, visible in the brief convulsion of her body, escaping in a faint sigh that was lost as Blake gripped her hair, tangling his fingers in it, forcing her face up so that he could look into her eyes as he muttered thickly, ‘Forget him,’ and then bent to silence her protest with the fierce possession of his mouth.
This was no tentative, explorative kiss, but an explosion of raw emotions, too strong to be confined in neat pigeonholes labelled ‘anger’ or ‘desire’, but instinctively Sapphire recognised and responded to them, unaware that her fingers were digging into the muscled smoothness of his shoulder, until Blake released her abruptly.
‘No wonder he wanted you,’ he told her hoarsely, his fingers stroking lightly down her shoulder and then erotically over the taut outline of her breast, his warm breath fanning her bruised lips. ‘If you always react like that I’m only surprised that he didn’t want to keep you—or was it the thought of the child that put him off? Is that why you were so quick to accept my offer, Sapphire? Because you knew he didn’t want to marry you?’
Anger flared hotly inside her. ‘You already seem to know all the answers, Blake,’ she responded brittly, ‘so why ask the questions?’
‘Perhaps because I’m hoping I don’t.’ His thumb was rubbing lightly over the thin silk covering her nipple and Sapphire squirmed slightly beneath the tormenting caress, trying to clamp down on the feelings he was arousing inside her.
‘What’s the matter? Doesn’t my touch appeal to you as much as his? I can make you want me, Sapphire.’
‘No!’ Her denial was meant as a plea for him not to carry out his threat, but Blake chose to ignore it.
‘You think not?’ he muttered into her throat, searching for and finding the fast-beating pulse that gave the lie to her denial. She could smell the warm musky scent of his body—inflaming her own with a subtle sexual chemistry that made her languorous and weak. The rough hair on his chest rubbed abrasively against her skin as he moved, biting delicately into her skin, making her shiver almost deliriously with pleasure. The fine silk of her bra and briefs was a barrier between them that tormented her, denying her the intimate contact of skin against skin that she now craved and when Blake’s hands slid round her back to remove her bra she expelled her breath in a pent-up sigh of relief he couldn’t fail to understand. Soft colour filmed her cheeks as he looked down at her, his smile tormentingly cruel.
‘Still expect me to believe you don’t want me, Sapphire?’
What could she say? That he had misunderstood her initial remark? She turned her head aside, not wanting him to see the betraying sheen of tears she knew wasn’t far away and then gasped out loud as she felt the stinging nip of his teeth against the swollen curve of her breast. Hard on the heels on the initial burst of pain came a pleasure so intense that her eyes widened in acknowledgment of it.
‘Don’t expect me to believe you haven’t been touched like that before,’ Blake told her thickly, watching her, ‘or like this.’
Ripples of pleasure spread shiveringly through her body as his tongue stroked and teased the aching fullness of her breasts, making her tense and arch in a mindless frenzy of need she hadn’t known herself capable of feeling. She dimly heard Blake’s suddenly harsh breathing in counterpoint to her own quick shallow breaths, and then his hands slid to her waist, gripping its slenderness until his mouth opened over first one nipple and then the other, tasting, sucking, tugging, while Sapphire felt she would explode with the intensity of pleasure building up inside her.
Unable to stop herself, she moaned Blake’s name, reaching up to stroke the hard contours of his back with hands suddenly desperately eager for the feel of his skin against them, scattering wild, impassioned kisses over his shoulder, using her teeth to deliver delicate little nips that drew a hoarse groan of satisfaction from his throat.
All sense of restraint and commonsense abandoned, Sapphire didn’t allow herself to think or reason. This was Blake who she still loved as desperately now as she had done when they first married; and if he had accused her so unfairly, well what did it matter now that she was in his arms and he was touching and kissing her with a hunger that her body recognised even if her mind could not. It was a hunger that fed and matched her own, his body whispering to hers that it too had starved and ached for this tumultuous pleasure they were now sharing. Despite the fact that they had never before made love, there was nothing tentative or exploratory in their embraces. Sapphire responded to the intimacy of Blake’s touch as intuitively as though they had been lovers for years. Her lips brushed the flat hardness of his nipple and she registered the surprised shock of pleasure jolting through him. His eyes closed, his mouth warm against the indentation of her waist, as she lay half-pinned beneath him, indolently admiring the sculptured perfection of his body.
She ran her fingers lightly down the dark arrowing of hair, stopping when she reached his briefs. He tensed, and then demanded thickly, ‘Touch me, Sapphire.’
She let her fingers stray exploratively over the thin cotton of his briefs, her touch slightly hesitant and unsure, her heart thudding violently in response to the small, liquid sound of pleasure emerging from Blake’s throat. Heated, muttered words of praise and encouragement overwhelmed all her shyness and reserve. When Blake tugged off his briefs her breath caught in her throat, her eyes unknowingly widening slightly.
‘A man could be in danger of forgetting that he’s only mortal under a look like that,’ Blake told her throatily, sliding his hand round her throat, his thumb under her chin tilting her face up to meet his.
Passion blazed into life as they kissed, her mouth opening willingly to admit the penetration of his tongue, seeking, taking all the warm sweetness she gave up so willingly.
Blake’s free hand was resting possessively against her thigh, a heavy warm weight that tantalised and excited her, her own fingers stroking and cajoling the strong muscles of his back, sliding round to investigate the sharp angles of his hips, moving in restless, roving urgency as she responded to the hunger in Blake’s kiss.
He released her to tease a chain of moist caresses in a line that investigated the valley between her breast and the slight well of her stomach.
The restless urgency in the pit of her stomach increased and in obedience to its commands Sapphire brushed her own lips against the firmness of Blake’s belly, thrilling to the sudden tension in muscles finely tuned to her light touch. His skin tasted warm and slightly salty, its flavour almost addictive. Lost in the veil of pleasure touching him had revealed to her, she let her lips travel where they wished barely aware of Blake’s harsh groan of protest until he snatched her up, rolling her beneath the constraining weight of his body, parting her legs with his thigh, muttering her name like a litany as his fingers touched her intimately, making her yield and ache for his possession.
Far beyond remembering the accusation that had preceded their lovemaking, Sapphire wasn’t ready for the unexpected burst of pain. Her muscles tensed immediately, shock mingling with hurt as she fought to understand the too-swift transition from pleasure to pain.
Above her she heard Blake curse, a fiercely bitter sound, his body withdrawing from hers. Suddenly the pain was gone, and shamelessly she clung to him, refusing to let him go, her eyes pleading mutely with him as her fingers dug into his shoulders, her soft, ‘Blake, please …’ dragging an anguished mutter of response from his throat as he tensed and then shuddered and her body melted in welcome to his, her senses singing with pleasure.
Never had pleasure seemed so tangible, her body was awash with it, glowing, so supremely fulfilled that she wanted to tell the whole world. Stretching indolently she turned her head. Blake was lying inches away, his eyes open, his expression sombre. Of course, this wasn’t the first time
he had experienced such feelings—not by a long way.
‘There’s never been anyone else, has there?’ he asked the question in a flat voice that drained her pleasure as effectively as a tap being turned on. Sapphire shook her head.
‘Then for God’s sake why didn’t you say so?’
No need to ask if he was regretting making love to her. It was there, written all over his face, etching into his scathing voice.
‘I didn’t think you’d listen.’ She turned away from him, not wanting him to see how vulnerable she was. Neither of them had mentioned love … but silently in her heart she had told him how she felt about him, just as her body told his how much it worshipped and adored him,
‘So you decided to let me find out for myself?’
‘I didn’t think I could have stopped you.’
‘Half-a-dozen words or so would have done it—”I’m still a virgin”, for instance.’
Sapphire arched her eyebrows, turning back to face him. ‘And you’d have believed me?’ She turned away again. ‘I’d better get dressed …’
‘No.’ Blake’s voice was sharp. He swung himself out of bed. ‘No, stay here and rest for a while, I’ll go down and make you a drink.’
‘I’m not an invalid, Blake,’ she protested, flushing as his eyes studied her pale skin and slender body. Still bathed in the warm afterglow of their lovemaking she hadn’t bothered to cover herself, but now she felt a need to do so, chilled by the way Blake was studying her. Was he comparing her to Miranda? She felt sick at the thought.
‘You’re not exactly in the peak of health either,’ he told her still watching her. There was a dark, brooding quality to his look that saddened her. Was he already regretting what had happened?
She reached out towards him, her eyes unconsciously pleading, ‘Blake, I …’
‘Stay here and rest.’ He had his back to her and was already getting dressed. Feeling dejected, Sapphire huddled beneath the bed-clothes. Plainly Blake didn’t want to talk to her. She closed her eyes, knowing she should regret what had happened but knowing that she did not. Where was her pride? When Blake left the easy, weak tears of physical release flowed for a few seconds and then stopped. By the time he came back with her tea Sapphire was fast asleep. He stood watching her for several seconds with shuttered eyes, before turning to leave, his face grim.