by Penny Jordan
‘We can discuss all that later,’ he told her curtly. ‘Right now, like the rest of the team, all I want to do is get home to bed. You do realise that if I hadn’t remembered about this damned quarry, you’d have been there until morning, if not longer, don’t you? And just what the hell were you playing at when I arrived, for God’s sake?’ he shouted at her, fingers clenching into her shoulders as he shook her roughly. Once given life it seemed as though his anger couldn’t be quenched, and Sapphire listened in silence as it flowed moltenly over her. Blake was angry … It was a phenomenon she had never witnessed before. Before he had always been so cool and in control.
Other members of the team alerted by his whistle were hurrying towards them, and he stopped berating her, turning instead to assure them that she was quite safe.
‘She slipped off the path and luckily for her landed on a ledge,’ was the explanation he gave his co-rescuers, and after Sapphire had endured some well-deserved chaffing on the subject of her carelessness Blake started to guide her towards where he had left his Land Rover.
‘I’ll call at Flaws and let Simon have the good news,’ one of the men offered. ‘It’s on my way, and you’ll both be wanting to get back home. Hot baths and a good mug of toddy, put the pair of you to rights …’ He winked over his shoulder at Blake, and Sapphire felt the warmth seep up under her skin as she intercepted the very male look they exchanged. And the worst of it was that deep down inside her she still yearned for Blake to take her into the warmth of his bed and hold her until all the nightmare details of the day faded into oblivion.
Instead she had to sit with him in the Land Rover, the tense quality of the silence stretching between them acting on her nerves with all the torment of a thumbscrew. When the Land Rover eventually came to a halt in the farmyard she was out the moment Blake cut the engine, shocked to discover how weak her legs felt as she clung wretchedly to her open door.
‘You should have waited for me.’ The terse, unsympathetic words brought tears of weakness and pain to her eyes, but thankfully it was too dark for Blake to see them. She wanted to protest when he walked round to her and hauled her carelessly into his arms, but she knew that she just didn’t have the strength to object.
Upstairs she lay on the bed where he had dropped her knowing that she couldn’t endure sleeping with him now. Not that he was likely to want to. Her mouth twisted bitterly. Had he, like her father, hoped they might have a child—preferably a son who could inherit the rich Flaws acres he coveted? Was that why … Unable to endure the torment of her thoughts she gave a low moan, rolling on to her stomach.
‘Can you manage to get undressed or …’
Until Blake spoke she had forgotten she was still wearing her outdoor clothes.
‘I can manage.’ Her voice was colourless and completely dry.
‘Sapphire, we have to talk.’
Was that uncertainty and pain she could hear threading through the determined words? Anger hardened her heart. Whatever he might be enduring through guilt and fear of losing Flaws was nothing compared with her own agony. ‘Tomorrow,’ she told him briefly. ‘I don’t want to talk tonight Blake … I need to think.’ It was a lie, but at least it got him out of her room.
When he had gone she struggled exhaustedly to remove her clothes, almost crawling into the bathroom. Her legs were bruised and scraped where they had rubbed against the rough stone of the quarry walls, the abrasions stinging with the hot water. Bathed and dried she went back into the bedroom, tensing as she saw Blake waiting there.
‘I already told you, I don’t want to talk tonight Blake,’ she told him rudely. ‘I’m tired, and so if you don’t mind …’ Glad that she had had the forethought to take her nightdress into the bathroom with her, she swept past him with magnificent disdain, hoping that he wouldn’t guess how vulnerable and hurt she was really feeling.
‘It’s a bit late for this isn’t it?’ Lean fingers reached out and tugged at the fine lawn fabric. ‘After last night …’
‘Last night is something that should never have happened and would never have happened if I’d known …’ Sapphire gasped out loud as Blake’s fingers moved from the frill of her nightdress to the vee of its neckline, stroking softly over the upper swell of her breasts.
‘You think not?’ Blake’s voice was soft, almost detached, but there was nothing detached about the look in his eyes Sapphire realised, her heart starting to thud with powerful, heavy thuds. ‘I’m getting tired of playing “let’s make believe”, Sapphire,’ Blake told her thickly. ‘Last night you wanted me, and tonight I could make you want me again.’
‘No!’ The harsh denial was out before she could stop it and the moment it was said Sapphire knew she had made a mistake. It was almost as though something snapped inside Blake, some fine thread whose snapping unleashed a savage tumult of emotions that demanded expression.
Her moaned protest of ‘Blake you can’t do this’, went unheard as he picked her up and carried her over to the bed, stripping off her nightdress with ruthless, hard fingers, his touch a thousand times removed from that of the tender lover of the previous night.
‘I know you want me, damn you,’ Blake muttered in a tortured whisper against her skin, bruising it faintly with the pressure of lips suddenly savage with pent-up emotions whose origins she could only guess at. His thumb brushed her nipple and Sapphire felt the unmistakable flowering of her body, her cry of despair mingling with Blake’s murmured triumph.
As he bent his head to touch her treacherous body first with his tongue and then his lips Sapphire felt the first weak tears of broken pride slide from her eyes. In the darkness Blake lifted his head and stared at her, his thumb touching the dampness of her face.
‘You’re crying. Why?’ If she hadn’t known better Sapphire might have believed that the pain in his voice was real; that the anguish in his eyes was because he couldn’t bear to hurt her, but she did know better. She turned her head away from him too weak to stem the tears.
‘Don’t touch me Blake,’ she begged huskily, ‘Please … just leave me alone.’
She closed her eyes and felt the bed shift under his weight. When she opened them again he had gone.
Sleep was a long time coming. She could hear Blake moving about in his own room; the noises of the old house as it settled into sleep disturbing tonight instead of vaguely comforting. Tomorrow she would have to tell Blake she was leaving him. No running away this time. She would tell him this time that she was going, and that she was never going to come back. A sob stuck in her throat and suddenly she was crying as she could not remember doing in a long time, tearing, painful sobs that left her chest aching and her eyes sore.
‘SAPPHIRE, are you awake?’
Slowly she turned her head. Blake was standing just inside the door, his hair ruffled and on edge, his shirt half-unfastened, a cup of tea in one hand. ‘I’ve brought you a drink,’ he told her unnecessarily when she lifted her head from the pillow.
‘What time is it?’ Sapphire glanced at her watch, dismayed to see that it was midmorning. ‘Shouldn’t you be out working?’
It was obviously the wrong thing to say. Blake’s mouth thinned, anger hardening his eyes. ‘It’s all right,’ she muttered huskily. ‘This time I’m not going to run away. This time when I leave …’ She broke off stunned by the sudden blaze of heat turning his eyes molten gold, which died just as quickly when she started to finish her sentence. Surely Blake couldn’t want her to stay? Not for herself, she told herself cynically, but perhaps for the farm. The thought sickened her as it had done ever since it had first come into her mind all those years ago.
‘I’d better get up.’
‘Sapphire we have to talk.’ Blake’s voice sounded thick and hoarse, and now that she looked at him properly she saw that beneath the healthy tan of his face he looked drawn and tired.
‘We can talk downstairs,’ she told him reasonably, feeling very much at a disadvantage in bed while he stood, virtually fully dressed, in front of her.
She hadn’t put another nightdress on after he had left her and the remnants of the one he had torn off her body lay on the floor at her side of the bed.
‘No, now …’ One stride brought him alongside the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight as he sat down next to her, one lean arm imprisoning her against his side should she have any thoughts of trying to turn away.
‘All right …’ he admitted tiredly when she said nothing. ‘I know I shouldn’t have done it … you’ve every reason to hate me for it, God knows, I knew when your father suggested it that it was a crazy idea, but then when a man’s as desperate as I was, any idea, no matter how crazy, has its appeal.
‘My forebears would be extremely flattered to know how eager you are to gain possession of Flaws’ land,’ Sapphire gritted at him. ‘Such a noble sacrifice …’ Some demon she had never suspected she possessed drove her on. ‘… even to the extent of giving up your mistress, but then that wouldn’t have lasted would it? How long did you intend to devote your attentions to me? Long enough to get me pregnant—to provide my father with a grandson? And we both know what a sacrifice that would have been, don’t we Blake? I should have remembered how much you loathed touching me, instead of deluding myself into …’ She broke off as Blake wrenched the bedclothes away, squirming away from him, trying to cover her naked breasts by folding her arms.
‘So I loathe touching you do I?’ Blake muttered huskily, tugging her arms away from her body and then cupping the rounded warmth of her breasts stroking their pink tips with rough thumb pads. A deep sensual warmth burgeoned somewhere deep within her, increasing in intensity when she felt the fine tremor in Blake’s hands. His eyes golden and fiery as the sun seemed to bathe her skin in molten heat, the expression she saw in their glowing depths as he bent his head to touch his lips first to one pink nipple and then the other making her wonder if she had suddenly completely lost her wits ‘Does this feel like I loathe the enticement of your skin beneath my fingers?’ Blake demanded rawly releasing her breasts to spread brown hands possessively against her rib cage. ‘Or this.’ Hot damp kisses filled the valley between her breasts, his lips exploring the tender column of her throat, teasing the line of her jaw, his teeth nipping delicately at the fullness of her bottom lip until her lips parted and the fine tremor of his body became an open spasm of need, his mouth savagely hungry as it possessed hers, his tongue pushing past her teeth to explore its inner sweetness.
Unable to stop herself Sapphire caressed the firm muscles under his skin, stroking his neck and shoulders and feeling the powerful surge of his body’s response.
‘I love you so much,’ Blake whispered as he lifted his mouth from hers, touching its swollen contours with his tongue as though unable to stop himself from doing so, ‘that’s my only defence. I nearly went crazy when you left me, hoping that you’d come back, telling myself that I’d find a way to get you back, and then when your father told me you were thinking of marrying again …’ She felt him swallow and saw the unmistakable truth darkening his eyes, shining in the unexpected tears that shimmered in his eyes.
‘You love me?’ She could hardly trust herself to say the words. How could that be true?
‘Always,’ he averred.
‘But you never made love to me, never …’
‘Because you were so young,’ he told her abruptly. ‘Because I knew I’d taken advantage of what was little more than an infatuation, using it to bind you to me when you’d barely had a chance to taste real life.’
‘I thought you didn’t want me.’
‘Not want you.’ He closed his eyes, and swallowed hard. ‘I wanted you so much I couldn’t trust myself within a hundred yards of you, but I wanted you as a man wants the woman he loves Sapphire, not as an adolescent boy wants the first girl he falls in love with. I was terrified of frightening you away, and yet I knew that once I touched you I wouldn’t be able to control myself; that I couldn’t play the controlled lover …’
‘And that was why you went to Miranda?’ she asked in a low voice.
‘I never “went to her” as you put it. Once, a long time before I fell in love with you she and I were lovers, but never since …’
‘But the other night …’
‘I wanted to make you jealous. To make you feel the same agony as I’ve endured over Alan. I spent the entire evening driving around in my car. After you’d gone out I rang her back cancelling the date.’
‘But you wrote her love letters,’ Sapphire told him, frowning as she remembered finding that incriminating evidence.
‘Love letters?’ Blake stared down at her.
‘Yes.’ Pain ached through her, her eyes clouding. ‘When my father told me you married me because you wanted the farm, and after I’d seen what you’d written, I knew I couldn’t stay … I saw the letter myself Blake, it was so full of … of need and love …’ She couldn’t go on, remembering as though it had been yesterday how she had felt.
Suddenly Blake’s frown cleared. ‘Stay here,’ he told her softly. ‘Don’t move.’
He was gone less than five minutes, during which time she had pulled the bedclothes back up round her body, but the first thing Blake did when he walked back into the room was to pull them down again. ‘I love looking at your body,’ he told her simply. ‘It makes up for all the years when I couldn’t. You can’t imagine how I felt when I found out you were still a virgin.’ His lips caressed one deeply pink peak, bringing it achingly to life, and then as though unable to resist the temptation, transferred to the other, adoration giving way to passionate need as he felt her body’s unmistakable response and Sapphire arched achingly, longing to curl her fingers into his hair and hold him against her, but the paper he had dropped on the bed caught her eye and she tensed, causing him to stop and pull her into the warmth of his body so that she was leaning against his thighs her head cushioned against his shoulder.
‘Is this what you read?’ he asked her gently, offering her the close written sheets. Sapphire only needed to read the first few words to nod an assent.
‘And because of this you left me? Oh! Sapphire …’ His voice broke and she felt the damp warmth of his tears against her skin. ‘I wrote them for you,’ he told her brokenly, ‘I wrote what I daren’t tell you! What I couldn’t in all honour show you … You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved and when I saw you standing on that ledge, about to go over into the pool, I didn’t know what I wanted to do most—strangle you or strangle Alan for hurting you so much that you felt you needed to end your life because of him.’
‘It wasn’t him, it was you,’ Sapphire told him urgently. Right now it was almost impossible to take in the enormity of what had happened; but that Blake was telling the truth when he said he loved her she didn’t for one moment doubt.
‘After Miranda told me the truth about my father’s illness I knew I couldn’t stay with you—not when really you loved her, and yet I didn’t know where I was going to find the courage to leave, loving you so much.’
‘I’ve never loved anyone but you,’ Blake interrupted fiercely. ‘I think you were all of sixteen years’ old the first time I realised how I felt about you. Miranda lied to you.’
Because she had been jealous. Sapphire now realised, but she had been clever as well, using her sophistication and experience to drive a wedge between them, no doubt hoping that Blake would turn to her once Sapphire had left him.
‘So many wasted years,’ she said sadly raising bleak eyes to meet his.
‘No … not wasted. You were too young for marriage at seventeen,’ Blake told her. ‘I would always have felt guilty and uncertain wondering if I had stolen from you the right to make your own choice of husband, but now I know that you love me. You do love me, don’t you?’ he demanded thickly, when Sapphire remained silent.
Part of her longed to tease him just a little, but the rest of her responded eagerly to the plea in his eyes, her body curling into his as she kissed him, lightly at first and then with growing need, breaking away from him only
to murmur huskily, ‘So much … Blake if you hadn’t arrived at the quarry when you did …’ A shudder wracked her body and she felt him tense in response. ‘Don’t,’ he commanded her rawly. ‘Don’t even think about it, just tell me you’ve forgiven me for lying to you about your father. I hated myself for doing it; for causing you pain—a pain I could see every time you looked at your father, but I was desperate to get you back; willing to do anything to stop you from marrying someone else.’
‘And having got me back how did you intend to keep me?’ Sapphire teased, forgiveness explicit in the look she gave him as she reached out to push the unruly hair back off his forehead.
‘Oh, I’d have thought of something.’ The old assurance was creeping back into his voice, but she didn’t mind. Now that she had seen his vulnerability she could accept the macho side of his personality more easily. ‘Such as?’ she whispered, feathering light kisses along his jaw and glorying in his responsive shudder.
‘Such as this … and this …’ Blake’s voice deepened, raw need underlying the husky words as he caressed her body, kissing her silky skin, words no longer necessary.
Now she really had come home, Sapphire thought contentedly abandoning herself completely into his keeping, revelling in the fierce thrust of pleasure seizing his body as he recognised her surrender, and she was never ever going to leave again. Closing her eyes she murmured the words of love she knew he longed to hear, for the first time saying them in complete trust that she would hear them back in return.
‘The stock …’ she reminded Blake weakly long, satisfying minutes later … ‘You …’
‘To hell with the stock,’ Blake responded thickly. ‘Right now I’ve got far more important things on my mind, like making love to my wife, unless of course she has any objections?’
A smile dimpled the corner of Sapphire’s mouth. ‘Only one,’ she told him gravely, ‘and that is that you’re wasting far too much time in talk instead of action …’
Retaliation was every bit as swift as she had envisaged—and every bit as pleasurable, the words of love she had longed to hear for so long caressing her skin in silken whispers as Blake took her back in his arms.