Frankly, his response alarmed her. Hadn’t she just given him the perfect opportunity for a fight? She knew him well enough by now to know that he wasn’t the sort of man who tolerated female attacks with equanimity, so why was he not ramming home his point?
Sara felt his arms slide around her waist and she stiffened, then began to melt.
One touch. That was all it took. When he bent to rest his mouth against the nape of her neck, she felt the bones in her body soften.
‘If you feel that strongly, then of course I won’t try and barge in on your little nuclear family.’ Somehow he made that sound as though it was a criticism of her but she was losing the will to fight because his teeth were now gently nipping the side of her neck and making her legs feel very shaky in the process.
‘Is that why you’ve been dodging me during the day whenever I’ve been down?’ he murmured, reaching forward to switch off the tap and then replacing his hand a little further up her torso, beneath her left breast, in fact. ‘It’s perfectly understandable.’
Sara made a concerted effort to shift herself around, which she managed to do successfully, only to find that his long, lean body had no intention of moving. He kissed the tip of her nose. Then very gently kissed her mouth.
Why, why, why? Why couldn’t he help her along and be as predictable as every other man on the face of the earth? Because if he was, she thought to herself, then you wouldn’t have fallen head over heels in love with him. Nor would she still be falling, even though she knew full well what he was about.
She heaved a small sigh of resignation and coiled her arms around his neck, drawing him down so that his gentle kiss could be replaced by her more urgent one.
Wrong response. Definitely not in accordance with her well-thought-out plans. Definitely not a sensible manoeuvre when it came to protecting her vulnerable heart.
‘I’ve made pudding,’ she managed to protest.
‘It. Can. Wait.’ He punctuated the three words with hungry kisses. When he strode towards the kitchen door and slipped the latch down, all Sara could do was wait in the familiar nervous excitement for him to be back close to her.
‘Now,’ he murmured, pulling her to him and winding his fingers into her hair, ‘I can think of a hundred more pleasurable things we can do than argue.’ He smiled slowly. ‘Well, only one, as a matter of fact, but that can be done in a hundred different ways, mm?’
Not a hundred, as it turned out. In fact, the kitchen proved the venue for the appetiser only and Sara had never before imagined that a kitchen table could be that satisfying an instrument in lovemaking.
Her floaty dress, which she had worn as an armour against his advances, didn’t stand a chance. Not that he removed it. Just pushed it up to her waist, where it bunched around her, leaving him free to tug down her underwear so that he could explore the honeyed moisture between her legs. If the floaty dress didn’t stand a chance, then neither did she, when it came to his ability to arouse her. All she could do was lie back, her head flung over the back of the chair, and enjoy his full attention.
She didn’t want to come, fought against it, but the insistent flicking of his tongue against her sensitised bud proved too great a stimulation to resist and the waves of pleasure rushing through her in rapid succession left her moaning and writhing until she shuddered to her explosive orgasm.
Afterwards, face flushed, she lay limply with her dress still inelegantly at her waist, breathing heavily.
‘Delicious dessert,’ James murmured with a wicked smile and Sara looked at him drowsily.
‘That’s the corniest line I’ve ever heard.’ She smiled back and ran her fingers lightly through his hair. He was still squatting in front of her parted legs and he placed a very tender kiss right there.
‘Now, shall we go backwards?’
‘Go backwards?’
‘Enjoy some main course…’
For which the sitting room, with its big, soft sofa, proved just the right place. The curtains were open and the light was fading but there was still enough to bathe the room in a dusky, mellow hue. Through the French doors, the rolling scenery made her feel as though they were making love out in the open.
‘Simon’s upstairs, sleeping,’ Sara said feebly.
‘And we’re downstairs, pleasuring one another. I’ve locked the door, so there’s no need to worry, and we’ll hear him anyway if he wakes up.’
This time, there were no clothes to stand between their bodies. Sara looked at him as he stood in front of her, disposing of his, and idly thought that he had a magnificent body, lean, strong, powerful and utterly lacking in self-consciousness.
And when he looked at her, he made her feel the same way. Her nudity was something she basked in and his keen eyes flicking appreciatively over her unclothed body was a massive turn-on. The fact that she had already been pleasured did not mean that he couldn’t arouse her again. And again and again.
Afterwards, while Sara lay supine on the sofa, James strolled across to the French doors and closed the curtains, then he switched on one of the table lamps.
‘What about the pudding I’ve slaved over?’ she teased contentedly, looking up at him as he stood over her. She yawned and stretched and he smiled at her. A vision of absolute satisfied fulfilment. He could stay there forever feasting his eyes on her smooth, pale body, watching the way her breasts moved when she raised her arms above her head so that the pink nipples were large circles beckoning him.
‘You stay right where you are.’ He began shoving on some clothes, just boxer shorts and trousers and, as an afterthought, his shirt, which he didn’t bother to button.
‘Don’t be silly, you’re the guest.’ But she just stretched again, languidly, and raised her heavy eyes to his.
‘Which, of course, means,’ he drawled with lazy intent, ‘that you have to make sure that I’m one hundred per cent satisfied, and you can stay right there and think of all the ways you can do that. In the meantime, I shall fetch us both our dessert, mademoiselle, just so long as you tell me where to find it.’
‘Larder. Just some iced brownies, I’m afraid. I’m lousy at desserts.’ But what joy having him fetch them for her. There was a throw on one of the chairs, and she really should cover herself with it, but the effort involved seemed a little bit too much. Besides, and she revelled in this thought, wouldn’t he just tear it off her the minute he returned?
She was aware of him returning even before he re-entered the room with the plate of brownies in one hand and two glasses of wine precariously in the other.
Sara propped herself up on her elbow and surveyed him as he deposited the wine on the table in front of them, then sat on the sofa by her, depressing it with his weight.
He dipped his finger into some icing and held the finger out to her lips, which she proceeded to suck with her eyes tantalisingly fastened on his.
‘Good?’
Sara nodded.
‘Well, I’d better try some for myself, in that case.’ At which he repeated the exercise, but instead of proferring his finger to his own mouth he spread a sample on one of her nipples and then…oh…she could only moan as he licked it off very thoroughly before doing the same with the other aching nipple.
She was like a cat being stroked and stretching itself to its fullest so that the stroking could last forever.
Forever.
James didn’t pause in his ministrations of her eager body. The realisation crept over him and it was something that he had known for a while.
Forever.
It was a good place to be.
CHAPTER NINE
JAMES sat at his desk, his long legs stretched out in front of him, planted solidly on the shiny, polished surface. At least he knew that there would be no interruptions of any kind. Everyone had gone home. He had all the time in the world to reflect. Shame that the reflections were of such a sordid nature, but then he had had ample time to consider that it served him right.
From the minute he had laid eyes on Sara K
ing, he had stupidly thrown all his natural caution to the winds. Even when she had spun him her pathetic little story about not wanting him around because she wasn’t prepared to have an affair, he had gone, only to return the minute she had crooked her finger. And how his stupidity had returned to bite him.
He looked coldly at the small black and gold bag burning a hole on the desk. Thinking about the ring inside only made him more enraged, but, like Sisyphus toiling up the mountain, it seemed that he had no choice but to stare at it and grimly acknowledge his misplaced trust.
Of course, he would have to deal with it. He had been played for a fool and he had no intention of allowing her the luxury of thinking that she had got away with it.
He swung his long legs from the desk and within minutes he was on the phone, making arrangements with his pilot for his flight up to Scotland. Then he slipped the bag into his jacket pocket. Touching it made him grimace with distaste but he almost enjoyed the feeling of repulsion because it was a strong and necessary reminder of the fact that he had been taken for a fool.
The helicopter would leave in an hour and a half. By the time he made it up to the Highlands, it would be after ten. His mother would probably be asleep. He hadn’t told her that he would be arriving a day ahead of schedule. He hadn’t known it himself, not until this afternoon.
If he had any sense, he would leave the inevitable meeting with Sara until the morning, but he wasn’t feeling sensible. Besides, he told himself, she would have Simon around in the morning. The minute she realised that he was on to her she would hide behind her son, knowing full well that a full-blown argument would then be out of the question. And James felt ripe for a full-blown argument.
Far from calming him, the flight up gave him a little more time for his rage to intensify.
His mind wandered back to the conversation he had had with Lucy Campbell, who had called him at work simply on the spur of the moment because she happened to be in London. They had had lunch at one of the trendier places that Lucy adored because they gave her the opportunity to look at people and know that they were looking at her.
Lord knew, he would never have found out about the conversation she had had with Sara but a couple of glasses of wine had put her in a mellow mood, and, from teasing him about the fact that the Rectory had passed him by, she had confided that she had explained his desire to get his hands on it to the current owner, just, she had admitted sheepishly, to see her reaction. Jealousy pure and simple, she had admitted airily. After all, hadn’t she been after the biggest fish in town for most of her years? But, now she had got herself a boyfriend with whom she was head over heels, she could be open and honest.
It had taken him only a matter of seconds to work out why Sara had suddenly decided, out of the blue, to get in touch with him, to throw herself at him. Revenge through seduction. He didn’t care what her reasons had been. All he could feel was his own raw pain and all he could think was that he had been on the brink of proposing marriage, of becoming the vulnerable idiot once again.
Vulnerable. Idiot. Two words that had never before entered his vocabulary, or anyone else’s for that matter, when it came to describing him.
As predicted, it was almost a quarter past ten by the time the helicopter touched down on the estate and getting on for ten-thirty when his car pulled up outside the Rectory.
He hadn’t even bothered to go into the manor. Instead he had gone straight from helicopter to car, with his briefcase slung into the back seat.
As he had half expected, the lights were out at the Rectory. If she was up in bed she probably wouldn’t hear him banging on the kitchen door, so he went to the front door instead and kept his fingers depressed on the bell until he heard the shuffle of footsteps. There was no peephole in the door. The Rectory had never been updated to include such modern conveniences. There was, however, a key chain and she opened the door just enough for him to see her peering out at him with a frown. The frown turned to delighted surprise.
Tousled red hair streaming down her back, eyes still drowsy but sexily so, mouth curving into a smile of greeting as she unlatched the door. It all added up to a woman eagerly pleased to see her man unexpectedly.
The woman should go into acting. She would be a natural candidate for an Oscar.
He wondered whether she had simulated pleasure when they had made love as well or had she ground her teeth together and stuck it out because, at the end of the day, all she wanted was a chance to pay him back?
It galled him to think that, as he followed her into the kitchen, he was still half hoping that his conclusions had all been wildly off course.
‘What on earth are you doing here, James?’ she tossed over her shoulder. ‘I thought you were supposed to be flying in tomorrow.’
‘My business dinner was cancelled so I thought I might as well come a few hours earlier than planned. Pleased to see me?’ He revelled masochistically in the need to hear her beautiful lips formulate their ready lies. She didn’t let him down. In fact, she swung around and wound her arms around his neck so that she could draw him towards her, and instead of pulling back he attacked her mouth with an aggression that startled her. Though not for long. If she could fake passion then she did it very well, he thought, because her mouth almost immediately responded to his urgent plunder and her body curved against his. He could feel himself get hard in response and he roughly pushed her away.
Oh, no. Not tonight. Sex was definitely not on the menu tonight.
‘Were you sleeping?’ he asked, leading the way to the kitchen so that she was obliged to fall in step with him.
‘What’s wrong?’
James turned around to find her staring at him from the door, a small frown replacing her earlier expression of delight.
‘Wrong?’
‘You seem a little…strange.’
‘Must be the stress of work,’ he lied smoothly, watching her watching him. She was just a little too observant for his liking and it irked him to realise that she possessed, unusually for a woman or at least any of the women he had ever slept with, a talent for reading his moods.
She seemed to accept the explanation, at least for the moment, and filled the gap by chatting about what she had been up to. Buying school uniforms for Simon, getting to meet a few more of the local women her own age at an informal coffee morning for some of the mums at the school, trying to bake a cake and oh, she had bought six chickens and intended to have farm-fresh eggs every day.
James listened to this saga of rural contentment without saying anything. Eventually, Sara’s voice dwindled away and the silence was not the kind she had become used to with him. It wasn’t the companionable silence they always shared. This quiet had an edge to it and it frightened her.
‘Why is work so stressful at the moment?’ she asked, searching for the most obvious explanation for his peculiar behaviour. She must be imagining it, of course, because why else would he have come to see her at this time of the night if not to be relaxed in her company?
‘Work is always stressful.’ He had made a pot of coffee and he handed her a cup, removing himself to the opposite end of the kitchen table, from which he could inspect her from a relative distance. ‘Didn’t you find that when you worked in London?’
‘Well, yes.’ She tried a bright smile but it felt worn at the edges. It was late, even though she no longer felt tired, and the expression on his face was disturbing her at some indefinable level. ‘But then with a child in tow, life tends to be stressful at the best of times.’ More silence in need of filling. And not a move to touch her. By now they would normally be all over one another, unable to stop themselves from touching, like teenagers exploring one another for the first time instead of two adults who had already made love more times than she could remember.
‘So, living here must be a dream come true.’ He shot her a cool smile and noted with satisfaction the dampening effect it had. The lovely mouth began to droop and her eyes took on a guarded wariness that still had some power,
infuriatingly, to pierce the part of him that he had galvanised into self-mending.
‘I’m not sure about a dream come true,’ Sara said with a hesitant smile. ‘But yes, there’s a certain magic that I would never have believed to exist when we first arrived.’
‘No?’
For some reason she had never confessed the immediate dislike she had felt for the place when she had first arrived. Hiding away in the Rectory rather than going into the town now seemed like a distant dream. Perhaps she had shied away from that little admission because to insult the Highlands would have been to insult him. And then later, she found that she couldn’t.
But now she felt uncomfortably goaded into rambling on.
‘I guess it was such an enormous change from London. Well, you of all people must know what I mean, but then it’s always been different for you because you’ve always lived here.’ Now she could hardly believe she had stuck it out in London for so long, and with Simon as well. Mad. ‘When I first came up, well, I was convinced that I’d done the wrong thing. It had seemed like fate when I found out that I’d been gifted this place and I grabbed hold of the opportunity with both hands, but leaving London was a wrench. I’d become accustomed to the noises and the chaos and the way that everything was lived in the fast lane. Always. A bit like your mum must have felt when she moved up here.’
Mention of his mother made his lips thin. His dear mama was not going to like this turn of events. She had developed a great deal of affection for Simon and for Sara too, come to that. Her pointedly tactful silence on the subject of her son finally finding the woman of his dreams was proof galore that that very prospect had been running through her head.
‘Course, Simon adores it up here.’ She was wittering. She nervously gulped some of her coffee and wondered whether he would take up the conversation if she remained silent or whether he would just sit there, with that disconcerting, forbidding expression on his face, until she began wittering again.
‘So you’ve said before.’
‘I’m sorry. Repeating myself. Must be getting old.’
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