by Penny Jordan
‘Abbie…Abbie…’
Had his voice really held such a deep, almost guttural note of male arousal and awareness of her female power all those years before? Abbie rather thought not. Then he had always been the one in control, even if it had been a loving, careful, protective type of control. Now, she suspected, without knowing how she had come to any such knowledge, he was nowhere near so much the master of the situation. She could feel his hands trembling against her breasts, and when his thumb-tips caressed her hard nipples his body reacted just as intensely to that stimulation as her own.
She could feel his breathing quicken and his heart start to race as she teased his mouth with hot, biting kisses, tasting not just the musky male heat of his mouth but the euphoria of her own power to command his sexuality and arousal as well.
‘Oh, God, have you any idea what you’re doing to me? How much I’ve wanted this…ached for it…hungered for it…for you?’ Abbie heard him demanding as her mouth teased its way along his throat and down over his jaw. Her heart started to thump heavily in recognition of the excitement she had felt earlier. Remembering just what her then almost shy kisses at the base of his throat had been a prelude to.
Would he remember? Would he? And if he did how would he react? Or would he…?
Her heart leapt in a mixture of excitement and nervous uncertainty as her lips touched first the damp of his Adam’s apple and then slid moistly downwards. She could feel the heat suddenly burn up under Sam’s skin, the sweat beading his throat as he started to shudder so deeply and violently that for a second it actually alarmed her.
But when she made to withdraw from him his hands clamped round her arms, holding her against his body as he begged, through gritted teeth, ‘Oh, God, Abbie, don’t stop now, for God’s sake. Don’t stop now… If you only knew…’
The rest of what he was trying to say was lost as his body became convulsed by a second series of shudders against her, and her own desire and arousal rose up to meet his own, her tongue-tip lapping eagerly at the moistness of his skin, her mind automatically registering the words he was saying to her and reacting to them as he demanded urgently, ‘Touch me, Abbie… Undress me…my shirt…yes…that’s it…unfasten it…’
She was trembling so much that in the end she had to use both hands, wrenching the buttons free rather than easing them through the small holes, but Sam seemed unaware of her clumsiness, or of any damage she might have inflicted on his shirt, his chest expanding rapidly as he drew in a deep breath of air and then raised his hands to slide his fingers into her hair and urge her towards his body. She could feel his spine arching, his body taut as she kissed the hot male flesh she had exposed.
His skin was tanned darker than she remembered, but the texture of it, the feel and the smell—especially the smell—was exactly the same. She could feel wetness against her face as she leaned her head against his chest and felt the familiar prickle of his body hair tickling her skin. But it was several seconds before she recognised that it was caused by her own tears.
Tears…from her…for what?
Bewildered and confused, she lifted her hand to her face, but Sam forestalled her, his fingers gentle, tender almost, as he touched her damp face and then lifted his fingers to his mouth, tasting her tears, his eyes darkening as he said roughly, ‘Oh, God, Abbie. What have we done to each other, to ourselves? Why have we…?’
Abbie could feel herself starting to tremble. She didn’t want to talk about what had happened. She didn’t want to resurrect the past and risk destroying what they were sharing now. She didn’t want to have to analyse and dissect what had happened… to bring to life the pain she had always made herself deny she had ever felt. She was too afraid that if she did…once she did…
Quickly she turned her head and started to kiss Sam’s chest. Fiercely, almost angrily at first, and then more lingeringly, savouring its taste and texture as her heightened emotions relayed the familiar flavour and scent of him to her. One small, hard male nipple was temptingly close to her lips. She moved her head slightly and let them close gently over it, savouring the texture of it, turning her tongue slowly and then more boldly over it.
She could feel Sam’s body tense and then tremble. Somehow or other one of her hands had slid down his chest and was resting just above his belt. She could feel him draw in his breath as she slowly and deliberately started to circle his nipple with the tip of her tongue. She waited until he had started to relax slightly and expel his breath and then she closed her mouth around him and very, very slowly started to suck.
The sound that rattled in his throat seemed to have been dragged from the very depths of his body. His arms closed so tightly around her that she felt he might almost crush the breath out of her lungs.
‘If you don’t stop that right now, I’m going…’ she heard him protest thickly, his voice dying away as she deliberately increased the delicately sensual pressure of her mouth, her own excitement and arousal kicking into a higher gear as she acknowledged the pleasure it gave her to know how dangerously close to the edge of his self-control she was pushing him. If she could arouse him so much just by doing this, how would he feel…what would he do…what might happen if she touched him more intimately? Teased just a little bit more provocatively…? If she…?
‘There’s only one way to make you see what you’re doing to me and that’s to give you a taste of your own medicine,’ she heard Sam telling her, his voice unexpectedly taking on a much firmer note as he caught her completely off guard by swinging her up into his arms and holding her there as he headed for the kitchen door.
One hand was holding her imprisoned whilst she clung onto him, half afraid that he might drop her, and the other… The other, she realised with a small start of excited nervousness, was reaching for the fastening of her bra…
‘Where are you going? What are you doing?’ she demanded breathlessly, her protest drowned out by her small gasp of surprise not so much at the ease, rather more at the delicious feeling of pleasure it gave her to know that the only thing that now lay between the feel of his hands…his mouth on her body…was the thin silkiness of her top.
‘I’m taking you to bed, where I can show you exactly what it feels like to have someone tormenting you, playing with you the way you were just doing with me, and what the consequences of such dangerous behaviour are,’ Sam told her, mock seriously, adding smoothly, ‘Unless, of course, you’d rather stay down here? That kitchen table looks just about the right height—although perhaps at your age your back can’t take—’
‘There is absolutely nothing wrong with me—neither my age nor my back,’ Abbie interrupted him hotly. ‘I am, after all, still six years younger than you are, Sam, and it’s pretty obvious that you’re hardly incapable or past it…’
‘I’m delighted to hear that you think so,’ Sam told her, laughing at her and adding wickedly, ‘But shouldn’t you perhaps reserve such unstinting praise until it’s actually deserved? And I do intend to deserve it,’ he added slowly, and this time there was no laughter in his eyes nor his voice, Abbie noticed as her heart gave a terrifying and unnerving bump and her nipples, to her consternation and embarrassment, suddenly peaked so hard that they were clearly discernible beneath her top.
Sam had seen them, she knew, and the sight of him focusing his attention on them visually, whilst his mouth opened and his tongue-tip touched his upper lip, aroused a feeling inside her body that made her shockingly and shamefully aware of just how little it would take now for him to bring her to complete physical fulfilment.
The first time she had reached orgasm had been an earth-shattering and unfamiliar experience for her, the pinnacle of a slow, tender journey. To have to acknowledge now that merely the thought of him touching her, suckling on her sensitively aroused nipples, was virtually enough to cause her to reach that same pinnacle was intensely disturbing.
‘Don’t move, Abbie,’ she heard Sam warn her thickly, ‘because if you do there’s no way we’re going to make it thro
ugh that door, never mind as far as your bed.’
At first she thought he had actually read her mind and knew what she was feeling, but as she gazed in shaken bemusement into his face she realised that it was his own arousal he was referring to.
‘This can’t be happening,’ he heard her protesting as he carried her upstairs. ‘We aren’t a couple of teenagers. We don’t even…’
‘We don’t what?’ Sam demanded gruffly as he walked through the open bedroom door and gently slid her to her feet, standing with her body to his body so that she could feel each and every inch of him against her. ‘We don’t have a right to feel desire? To want each other…? Who says so? Not our bodies, Abbie. Not our senses…not our emotions… They all say… They all say…’ he repeated, and his voice slowed and thickened as he reached out and held her face.
He kissed her slowly and gently at first, and then more urgently, as though he just couldn’t help himself, as though he had starved for her, hungered for her, as though she was the only woman he had ever wanted…as though he knew that he was the only man she had ever wanted.
‘Oh, God, Abbie,’ she heard him whisper in muffled anguish as his mouth slid down over her body, leaving a damp trail on the fabric of her top before finally closing over her breast, drawing hungrily on her nipple, suckling on it, rolling his tongue around it, nibbling it gently and oh, so mind-destroyingly erotically with his teeth, so that Abbie wanted to rip her top off herself and hold him against her.
She couldn’t remember them getting undressed, only the sweetly savage pleasure of their shared nakedness, of her own recognition that all that had changed about his body was that it was even more potently male than ever, and all that had changed about her own was that it was even more keenly responsive to him.
She tensed briefly once, hesitant, trembling with a mixture of uncertainty and unbearable longing as Sam knelt in front of her, gently removing her briefs, first planting kisses in an erotic circle around her navel and then moving lower, so that she was trembling violently with arousal and emotion by the time he buried his face against her naked body, breathing in the scent of her, openly delighting in the warm, damp feel of her body hair against his skin.
‘No,’ Abbie protested, trying quickly to withdraw from him as his lips brushed the delicate flesh of her groin. If he touched her now he would find her so wet, so ready for him…and if he didn’t…
The small moan she gave must have alerted him to what was happening to her. Must, she recognised in hot dismay, have reactivated some old memory of the signs and sounds of her arousal, because his hand immediately gently covered her sex, almost as though he was trying to comfort and steady her, and then he was lifting her onto the bed and following her down onto it, unashamedly displaying his own arousal…
What was it about the sight of that one special man’s arousal that could literally make a woman feel weak at the knees? Fill her with a mixture of awe and protective awareness at the unexpected beauty of something that was both so proudly male and almost ridiculously vulnerable, so strong and yet so potentially weak, so dangerously easy for the right woman to arouse and excite, and even more dangerously easy for her to destroy and deflate. The wrong word, the wrong action…even just the wrong look.
‘What is it you want, Abbie?’ she heard Sam asking her huskily. ‘My hand…my mouth…my body…’
‘You. I want you,’ Abbie heard herself moaning back in frantic response, and her own thoughts were forgotten, overtaken by the relief of Sam touching her, lowering himself against her so that she could feel him, so that she could open her legs and wrap herself around him, silently urging him to move closer, closer, deeper and yet even deeper, until she was matching the shockingly easily remembered rhythm of his thrusts, moving with them and against them, their voices rising and mingling as they cried out to each other in mutual need and arousal, mutual exultation and ecstasy, as their bodies exploded into almost immediate orgasm. And then low-murmured whispers of mutual exhaustion as the words of praise and pleasure were whispered in each other’s ears…
* * *
Abbie opened her eyes in sleepy confusion. Sam wasn’t sleeping on his normal side of the bed. Her body was all tangled up with his and her hair was trapped underneath his arm.
Sam… Abbie came abruptly wide awake. This wasn’t then, some twenty years ago. This was now… Now—and she had done the unforgivable and unbelievable. And, what was more, she hadn’t just stopped at doing it once. To her chagrin she recognised that she must have eventually fallen asleep in Sam’s arms, her body so sated and exhausted by the pleasure he had given her that she hadn’t even had time to move away from him, because she was still lying where she had been the last time they had made love, in that easy, comfortable, gentle spoon position they had discovered in the early months of their marriage…
Sam must have reached out for the duvet they had kicked to one side earlier, when their lovemaking had been anything but gentle or easy, because it was lying over and around them both, and in the dim light she could see the way their clothes were scattered all over the bedroom floor… She made a move to pull away from him, but in his sleep Sam tightened his hold on her.
She really ought to wake him up, to tell him… She really ought… She gave a small yawn and then another deeper one; the temptation to snuggle back down again next to him was too overpowering to be ignored. After all, what harm could it do now? In the morning they could discuss what had happened, acknowledge that it had been a mistake…something best forgotten, ignored… A physical reaction between them that neither of them had really been able to control and which, she suspected, had caught them both off guard.
Indulging in a night of passionate sex with her ex-husband might not be the most sensible thing she had ever done in her life, Abbie acknowledged, but there had been extenuating circumstances and she knew it was something she would never do again. She was allowed to make some mistakes, wasn’t she? she demanded bravely of her nagging conscience.
He doesn’t love you, she reminded herself. You don’t love him. Maybe, she admitted, but they had loved one another once, and tonight…
Tonight what? Tonight she had succumbed to a need, a desire, a yearning she had not even really known she had had?
It was too late to regret what had happened now, she told herself tiredly. All she could do was a damage-limitation exercise and that included not getting herself into a panic right now over something she couldn’t really do anything about until Sam woke up and they could discuss the whole situation rationally—not something that was likely to happen if she insisted on waking him now, when he was so obviously very deeply asleep.
Tomorrow, she suspected, he would be as eager to dismiss what had happened as she was herself. Tomorrow… She gave another final yawn and closed her eyes, her body relaxing back into sleep.
At her side Sam opened his eyes and looked down into her face, his own expression sombre. Had he done the right thing or had he well and truly blown everything?
When she looked at him in the morning would it be with hate or—dared he let himself begin to hope the impossible?
Gently, very gently, he pulled her sleeping body closer to his own, taking her intimately close to his side and holding her there.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘MUM…Mum, what’s Dad’s car doing outside? Why…? Oh!’
Abbie sat bolt upright in bed, frantically clutching the duvet to her naked body, her face burning with a scarlet tide of guilt and embarrassment as Cathy burst into the bedroom and came to a stunned halt, her mouth rounding in a startled ‘O’ of shock as she stared at the two occupants of her mother’s bed.
‘Oh,’ she repeated, but this time her face was wreathed in smiles of intense, mischievous joy as she looked from Abbie’s flushed, embarrassed face to Sam’s far more impassively contained and controlled one.
‘Oh, this is wonderful, marvellous…just wait until I tell Stuart what’s happened. Oh, I’m so thrilled. When did it happen? When did you two
decide to get back together again? And fancy not saying anything…how could you keep it a secret? Oh, this is wonderful…wonderful. Oh, Mum, I’m so thrilled…’
Happy tears had filled Cathy’s eyes and they splashed down her cheeks as she ran towards the bed and hugged them both, Abbie first and then Sam, before turning round and rushing back to the door, calling over her shoulder as she hurried through it, ‘Stuart’s waiting downstairs. I made him drop me off because I was so worried about you, Mum, you seemed so down. If only I’d really known what was going on. Just wait until I tell him about this… Just wait until I tell everyone…’
‘Cathy,’ Abbie protested, having at last managed to control her shock enough to find her voice, but it was too late; she could already hear Cathy excitedly telling Stuart what had happened—or rather what she believed had happened.
‘Stuart’s as thrilled as I am,’ she announced, reappearing in the doorway moments later. ‘We won’t stay; it was just a quick call. Not, I’m sure, that either of you two will mind,’ she added mischievously, with an arch look from her parents to the clothes that still lay scattered so betrayingly on the bedroom floor. ‘Have fun,’ she added with a grin. ‘And remember,’ she added mock warningly, ‘always make sure you have safe sex.’
Safe sex. Abbie could hear Cathy laughing as she ran back downstairs. At her side she heard Sam clearing his throat and then apologising huskily.
‘I’m sorry…that was something I should have thought about last night, but…well, it’s not really been an issue for me for so long that—’
‘That what?’ Abbie challenged him bitterly, but keeping her voice low so that Cathy couldn’t hear them. ‘That you felt that it was all right to assume that I would have taken all the necessary precautions?’
She could feel reaction to what had happened setting in. A sense of angry helplessness and rage filled her as she contemplated the full consequences of everything that had occurred.