by Penny Jordan
The air in the room was clean and slightly cold, so that Maggie shivered a little.
Watching her, Finn remembered how cold he too had found the farmhouse when he had first moved in. It didn’t possess any central heating, but he had grown used to its lack of modern conveniences.
As she shivered again Maggie instinctively moved closer to Finn, seeking the warmth of his body. The sensation of his arms closing around her was so intense that it rocked her on her heels. As they kissed Maggie felt as though Finn’s warmth was wrapping itself all around her, enfolding her. She could feel his hands moving over her body and she started to tremble. Not with cold now, but with a growing ache of need.
Unable to resist their temptation, Finn explored the taut shape of Maggie’s breasts. Her nipples, tight and erect, pressed into his palms through the fine silk of her shirt. Opening his eyes, he absorbed the eroticism of their tautness pushing against the fabric before slowly circling them with his thumb-tip.
Maggie had forgotten that she had ever been cold now. Feverishly she slid her palms over Finn’s naked torso. She ached to see all of him. To touch all of him, and now, oh yes, right now.
She had just made the very interesting discovery that when she trailed her fingertips across his collarbone and then down his arm his whole body shuddered in sharp response, and when she placed her hand flat against his chest and then moved it lower, so low that it was resting on the belt of his jeans, that shudder became a whole lot more intense.
His own hand was travelling the length of her spine, taking her mind off the way he was reacting and focusing it instead on the way she was feeling. Arousal, hot and sharp, lifted her skin in tiny goosebumps against his touch, as though it just couldn’t get close enough to him.
She exhaled softly as Finn’s hand moved to the buttons on her shirt, and then found that the sensation of his fingertips brushing against her naked skin as he unfastened them was making it impossible for her to breathe in again.
As he pulled the fabric back from Maggie’s body Finn acknowledged that what was happening between them was destroying virtually every belief he had about what he wanted from life.
Watching him, and seeing the open, raw male sensuality blazing out of his heavily-lidded eyes, Maggie exhaled.
The feel of her soft sweet breath gusting warmly against his bare skin made Finn grit his teeth against the ferocity of his reaction to her. The air ached with the sexual tension stretching between them.
As Finn leaned forward to kiss first one of her naked breasts and then the other, Maggie moaned sharply, her body arching towards him in mute supplication.
It was too much for Finn’s self-control; she was too much for his self-control. Quickly removing the rest of her clothes and his own, Finn lifted Maggie onto the bed.
The coldness of the cotton duvet beneath her bare back made Maggie shiver, but the heat of her desire for Finn soon burned away that cold. Her body throbbed with longing for him, and the feel of his hands on her skin as he lowered himself against her and slid them beneath her to lift her hips to meet his own made her cry out, a wild tormented female sound of need that echoed the turbulence darkening her eyes.
‘Finn,’ she cried out his name as she wrapped herself around him, pressing wild hot kisses against his skin, his throat, his jaw, his mouth, holding it captive with her own whilst her body shook. ‘Now, Finn,’ she begged him passionately. ‘Now.’
It was the force of the river at full flood, the warmth of the sun on a tropical beach, the cool magical clarity of a frosty sky married to the purity of newly fallen snow; it was every pleasure she had ever know intensified a million times. He filled her body with joy and her heart with an emotion so intense that it spilled from her eyes in pure gleaming tears and from her mouth in a golden sound of loving words. It was a revelation, and somehow an affirmation. It was a world she had always stubbornly refused to believe could exist and at the same time a world a secret part of her had always longed to inhabit. It was. It was Finn and it was love. And as her body came down from the heights his had taken it to and she lay drifting on the soft safe warm afterswell of pleasure, lying at peace in his arms, Maggie turned to look at the man who had just totally changed her life.
Gazing deep into his eyes, she lifted her fingertips to his face, tracing its contours wonderingly. Looking back at her, Finn took her hand and held it against his lips, tenderly kissing her fingers.
‘I love you.’
Maggie could see shock followed by an intense burn of emotion darkening Finn’s eyes as she said the simple words.
Saying them had shocked her as well—so much so, in fact, that she immediately longed to call them back, wondering frantically why she had ever uttered them, furiously angry with herself for the vulnerability they were now causing her to feel. As though desperate to escape them she tried to turn away from Finn, but he refused to allow her to do so, taking hold of her instead, his hands gentle on the tense resistance of her body.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ he asked her quietly.
‘Nothing,’ Maggie lied sharply as she tried to evade the quiet depth of his searching gaze.
‘Yes, there is.’ Finn contradicted her. ‘You’re angry because you said you love me.’
‘No,’ Maggie denied fiercely, but she could tell from the expression in Finn’s eyes that he didn’t believe her.
‘I don’t know why I said it.’ She tried to cover herself. ‘It must have been some kind of knee-jerk adolescent reaction to the fact that we…’
When she stopped Finn supplied softly for her, ‘That we made love? Is that what you’re trying to say?’
Maggie shook her head. She had been intending to use the words ‘had sex’, if for no other reason than to remind herself of just what the reality of their situation was. But something in Finn’s eyes had warned her against doing so.
‘We’re both adults, Maggie,’ Finn was telling her gently. ‘Why should it be so difficult for us to use the word ‘love’ about what we’ve just shared, about one another? There was love between us. And to deny that…’
He paused and shook his head, whilst Maggie, thoroughly unnerved by what he was saying burst out sharply, ‘We hardly know one another. We can’t.’
‘We can’t what?’ Finn challenged her. ‘We can’t tell one another that we’ve fallen in love, even though it’s true? We can’t mention it? Show it to one another…like this?’ And then he was reaching for her, wrapping her in his arms and holding her so tightly that she could hardly breathe as he told her with fierce raw male intensity, ‘I don’t know how this has happened to us or why, Maggie, but I do know that now that it has…’
As his fingers stroked through her hair Maggie revelled in the mute tenderness of his touch, its confirmation of his admission of love. ‘Now that it has what?’ she asked him.
‘Now that it has…this…’ Finn responded.
As he started to kiss her his fingertips slid seductively down her spine. Voluptuously Maggie closed her eyes on a tiny moan of helpless resignation. There would be time later for her to analyse her feelings and get them back under her own control. For now…
For now there was nothing she wanted more than the feel of Finn’s flesh against her fingertips, the feel of Finn himself against her.
A triumphant smile curved Maggie’s mouth as she lifted the lid from the casserole she had just removed from the Aga and sniffed the delicious aroma emanating from it. For this evening’s supper they would be eating coq au vin, thanks to the slightly battered cookbook she had unearthed from deep inside one of the kitchen cupboards.
Or chicken casserole, as Finn would no doubt describe it.
Finn. Helplessly, knowing how much she would regret her foolishness and berate herself mentally for it, Maggie closed her eyes and succumbed to the temptation to slowly and lovingly mentally recreate every single inch of him.
Four days ago she hadn’t even known he existed, and wouldn’t have cared if she had; three days ago she had known
, but could have quite definitely contemplated a world without him. But now…Now…A loving dreamy smile softened her mouth, her emotions too powerful for her to ignore. She still felt bemused by the speed with which they had fallen in love—bemused by it when she wasn’t desperately trying to remind herself of all the reasons why it was impossible for her to behave in such an irrational and impulsive way, allowing her emotions to control her instead of the other way around—and completely, totally enchanted, enthralled and enraptured by Finn himself.
And somehow, without knowing quite how, and totally against her better judgement, she had allowed Finn to convince her that what they felt for one another was too wonderfully special to be ignored. They were in love. They whispered it to one another in the sleepy relaxed closeness of shared spent passion, moaned it to one another in its tumultuous throes, cried it out to one another as they climbed its heights together, vowed it to one another in barely spoken tender triumphant post orgasmic mutual bliss. They were in love.
Cautiously Maggie had allowed herself to wriggle out of the protective straitjacket of emotional denial she had cocooned herself in for her own safety, to begin to believe in what she was feeling, to make plans…
This morning she had woken up to find Finn leaning over her, his head propped up on one hand whilst he looked at her.
‘What is it? What are you doing?’ she had asked him sleepily as she reached up to touch the rough stubble on his jaw with one delicate fingertip.
‘Watching you,’ had been his husky reply. ‘Did you know that you twitch your nose when you’re asleep?’
‘No, I don’t,’ Maggie had denied.
‘Yes, you do,’ Finn had told her lovingly. ‘And you part your lips just a little, so that I’m irresistibly tempted to kiss them to see if they taste as soft and warm as they look.’
‘If you don’t know that by now,’ Maggie had begun to challenge him teasingly, ‘when you’ve had enough opportunity to find out…’
‘No. Never, never, ever could I have enough of you,’ Finn had told her, adding with a dangerous glint in his eyes, ‘Want me to prove it?’
Laughing, she had pretended to try to escape as he reached for her and wrapped her in his arms.
‘Oh, I know it,’ Finn had confirmed, giving her a sexily smouldering dark-eyed look that had made her stomach muscles quiver in delicious anticipation. ‘And I know too that if I touch you here…’ His fingertips had brushed against her already taut nipple and Maggie had raised her hand to his collarbone, tracing its length with fingers that trembled slightly.
It had been gone ten o’clock when they had finally got up. An appallingly late hour for a farmer, Finn had told her.
He was out checking on the animals now. Soon he would be back, and then…
Maggie replaced the casserole in the Aga, concentrating on the weather forecast being broadcast on the radio.
The freak flood was subsiding, the forecaster announced, and no further cloudbursts were expected.
Which meant—which meant that she would be able to make it to the auction, Maggie decided in relief.
All morning whilst she prepared her coq au vin she had been making plans. The farm was only rented, Finn had told her that, which meant that Finn was free to return to the City with her. She closed the Aga door and frowned slightly. It did concern her a little, if she was honest, that a man of Finn’s age should only be renting a property—and as for his lack of ambition…But that could be remedied, she felt sure.
He was an intelligent man and she was convinced that with her encouragement and support he could soon gain enough qualifications to get a proper job in the City. Heavens, if she, with her connections, couldn’t help him then no one could. And she was fully prepared to support him financially whilst he retrained. It was true that it was a little hard for her to visualise him living in her small apartment, with its minimalistic elegance, but somehow they would manage. She would take him to a suitable shop and get him a decent suit, and then she would organise a get-together at one of her favourite ‘in’ restaurants so that he could meet her friends, perhaps one or two people with the right connections, so that he could begin networking.
Her mind working busily, Maggie continued to plan. They would have a small elegant wedding—thanks, perhaps, to her grandmother she was old-fashioned enough to want to give their love the commitment of marriage—perhaps at one of the City’s newly licensed and breathtakingly beautiful National Trust properties. They would honeymoon somewhere far, far away and ridiculously romantic, and frighten each other by remembering how easily they might not have met.
Happily engrossed in her thoughts, Maggie didn’t hear Finn come into the kitchen. Removing his boots, he stood for a few seconds watching her. Was it really only four days ago that he had considered her the most infuriating woman he had ever met? Smiling ruefully, he walked up behind her, wrapping his arms around her as he lowered his head to gently nuzzle the side of her neck.
‘Mmm…something smells good,’ he told her appreciatively.
‘My perfume,’ Maggie responded huskily. What was it about that touch of a certain man’s lips and only his that had the power to reduce a woman to this state of sweetly intense longing, to make her want to…?
‘No, I meant the dinner,’ Finn informed her.
Maggie pretended indignation as she leaned back in his arms. ‘It said on the radio that the river is going down,’ she told him, closing her eyes, wanting to purr with sensuality as his fingertips stroked down her arm and found the deliciously sensitive little spot just inside her elbow where last night the touch of his mouth had made her moan softly with pleasure as her body arched languidly into his.
‘Yes, I know. I heard it too,’ he confirmed.
Still looking at him with eyes liquid with pleasure, Maggie reluctantly reminded herself of something she had to do. She hadn’t been able to speak with her grandmother—her grandmother was used to Maggie going away on business and being incommunicado for a couple of days or so, but Maggie wanted to telephone Gayle and ask her to let her know that she would soon be in touch.
Ringing herself was too fraught with potential hazards for Maggie to contemplate right now. Whilst Arabella Russell had never been the kind of person to sit in judgement on others, nor was someone who believed in imposing her own moral values on them, Maggie wanted to be in a position to explain to her grandmother just how she felt, as well as what had happened, in person. And, just as she did not feel comfortable with her grandmother worrying about what she was doing, neither did she feel comfortable with the prospect of Finn perhaps teasing her for worrying about an old lady’s sensibilities.
For an adult woman to be worrying about how her grandmother might react to the fact that she had made love with a man she had only known a matter of hours might seem justifiably risible in this day and age, but Maggie was not going to expose either herself or her grandmother to Finn’s potential amusement.
As he watched Maggie’s eyes darken and the expressions of concern and anxiety chase one another across her face, Finn was forced to acknowledge what he had determinedly pushed to the back of his mind ever since he’d overheard her phone call that first day. Namely, that he wasn’t the only man in Maggie’s life. Initially he had told himself that it didn’t matter, but of course it did, and it had mattered from the first moment he had kissed her; from the first moment he had wanted to kiss her, he corrected himself grimly.
There was nothing he wanted more than for them to be completely honest with one another. The love he felt for her demanded it. What would happen if he told her that he already knew? Perhaps…
‘Finn? May I use your telephone? There’s a phone call I need to make.’ Maggie could see Finn frowning as she blurted out her request.
‘Someone special?’ Finn asked her as lightly as he could, inwardly praying that she would open up to him, tell him about the someone else she shared her life with, and tell him too that what they now shared meant that her relationship with her existi
ng lover would have to end.
Someone special. Maggie tensed. Her grandmother was special, but she wasn’t ready yet to tell Finn about her, or to explain to him just why Arabella Russell mattered so much to her. The caution that had guarded her for so much of her life hadn’t entirely lifted its heavy barrier from her heart.
‘No…I just need to speak to my…my assistant.’
Finn knew immediately that there was something she was concealing from him. Silently he prayed that she would tell him what it was before…
Confused, Maggie waited for Finn to answer her. What on earth was it about a simple request to use his telephone that had brought such a darkly brooding look to his face?
There was nothing else for it, Finn acknowledged. If Maggie wasn’t going to tell him of her own accord then he was going to have to force the issue, to make his own position plain, put his cards on the table and tell her here and now what he was looking for from their relationship—that nothing less than total and complete commitment from her would satisfy him.
He knew that taking such a step was a gamble, a gamble which would have been dangerous even without the hidden presence of another man in her life, given the brevity of the time they had known one another. Still, it was a gamble he had to take; his love for her was forcing him to take it. He hoped that once Maggie knew just what he wanted from her she would drop her guard and tell him the truth.
Finn took a deep breath, and then, his hands cupping Maggie’s shoulders with firmly tender strength, he looked down into her eyes. ‘Before you do anything else, speak to anyone else,’ he emphasised, hoping she would guess that he knew who it was she really wanted to speak to, ‘there’s something I have to say to you—something I’ve never said or wanted to say to any other woman.’
He paused whilst Maggie tried to guess what was coming, impatient to get her phone call out of the way, let Gayle know that with the river no longer flooding she would soon be back in London, so that she could tell Finn about the exciting plans she had been making for both of them. Plans that meant that the sooner she did get back to the City, the sooner she could be starting to work on the wonderful life they would be sharing together.