by Penny Jordan
‘But not mine,’ Sara snapped back shortly. It unsettled her seeing him in this distant, almost cool mood. When he picked her up outside she had steeled herself against further passionate declarations of his feelings for her, but instead he was treating her as though she were almost a complete stranger.
For some reason her ire seemed to increase his amusement; his smile deepened, and Sara fought against acknowledging how attractive he looked with that teasing glint in his eyes, his stance, as he leaned over the bed towards her, subtly emphasising the smooth hardness of his body.
What on earth was the matter with her? Sara chided herself. There was no reason at all for her to be aware of him like this; he was not aware of her in the same way; he was not disturbed by her proximity, or by the sensation of her breath against his skin as he leaned across her to tug away the disputed jeans. Whereas she… She swallowed numbly, trying to deny the effect he was having on her, but the sensation curling hotly through her stomach refused to go away. She wanted to reach out and touch him, to breathe in the smell of his skin, to…
In fact she was so deeply caught up in her battle against the effect he was having on her senses that when he drawled softly, ‘Radically different, is it, or is it simply that no mere human male can be permitted to look upon the body once possessed by Saint Richard?’ initially the import of his sarcastic comment was almost lost on her. And then abruptly she realised what he had said, and her skin burned with an anger that was heightened by her own knowledge of just how ambivalent her feelings towards him actually were.
It was obviously true that it was possible to feel desire without love—without even liking, she thought bitterly, wondering wryly what he would say if he knew that her reluctance to part with her jeans sprang from her own awareness of her vulnerability towards him. No doubt he would be extremely amused, especially after the way she had rejected him.
But as she had told him then, it was merely a sexual attraction she felt for him; the fascination of the moth for the flame, she thought angrily, that part of the human nature that is relentlessly drawn towards that which it knows will do it the least good.
The touch of Jonas’s fingers against her skin as he deftly cleaned and then bandaged her swollen ankle was cool and clinical. He hadn’t even so much as glanced at her body, never mind evinced any of the uncontrolled passion she had sensed in him the night he told her he was falling in love with her.
A combination of shock and alcohol, plus lack of food, was making her feel distinctly drowsy. Her head suddenly seemed to be too heavy for her neck, and found its way automatically on to the softness of a down pillow. She was aware of her ankle being released and of missing the human warmth of another’s touch against her skin. She tried to protest, but the words became a thick, unintelligible blur on her tongue. She was conscious of movement within the room, of the light gently being shut out, and then there was nothing but a deep, dark pit of welcoming sleep.
She climbed reluctantly out of it some time later, conscious of being forced to part from a dream that had been intensely pleasurable. In it, she had not been lying alone, she thought drowsily; someone else had been with her, holding her, touching her… Rick, of course… No, not Rick. Rick had been in her dream but he had been an irritant, a barrier which stood between her and the man whose arms she so desperately wanted around her. The man. What man? Jonas!
Like tiny ripples quickly growing on the stillness of a millpond, the shock spread outwards through her body, until she was confused by what was reality and what was not. Her head felt muzzy, her thoughts disordered and vague. Her ankle ached, but not badly. The room was unfamiliar to her, the curtains making it dark and clothing unfamiliar objects in deep shadows.
Gradually reality crept back. She had been dreaming about Jonas, dreaming that Jonas was making love to her, but then Rick had come between them, and Jonas had gone away from her. She shuddered deeply, caught up in a fierce spiral of physical desire. She tried desperately to cling to the fading image of Rick, but, like a talisman that had lost its power, his features no longer had the ability to blot Jonas out of her mind.
Instead, Jonas’s were the features that formed within her skull, his the touch she remembered against her skin. Jonas’s touch…impossible, and yet there was no denying the very real ache deep inside her, the almost gnawing need she had to be kissed and caressed by his mouth and hands.
Beneath the bedspread she moved restlessly, trying to escape from what her body was telling her, her hand accidentally catching the heavy lamp beside the bed and sending it crashing to the floor.
Luckily it was unharmed, but Sara was still crouching on the floor, looking at it, when the bedroom door was thrust open and Jonas strode in.
‘I’m sorry… I woke up and knocked the lamp over.’
How constrained and tense she sounded! She dared not look at Jonas in case he should somehow divine her state of mind.
‘I’ve no idea what time it is,’ she said jerkily, keeping her back to him, trying to fill the thick silence with something…anything that would stop her from turning round and throwing herself into his arms. What on earth was wrong with her? She didn’t love him…she didn’t even like him. But she wanted him. Oh God, how she wanted him! Crouching here on the floor, she only had to close her eyes to feel the satin-smooth glide of his skin against her own, to taste the hot savagery of his kiss, to…
‘It isn’t that late. You’ve been asleep for an hour or so, that’s all. By the way,’ he added casually, ‘Sam rang and suggested you spend the night here.’ When she made no comment he added drily, ‘I dare say that’s more for his sake than yours. He and Vanessa don’t get many opportunities to be alone.’
‘You know they’re getting married?’
She kept her voice low so that he wouldn’t hear the panic in it. She was to stay the night. Oh God, how on earth was she going to endure it? She barely recognised herself in the woman she had suddenly become, a woman who ached so much for the physical possession of the man standing behind her that it took a concentrated effort of will not to stand up and beg him to make love to her.
‘Yes.’ His voice was clipped, giving her no indication of his feelings on the subject, although his curt, ‘What will you do when they do?’ reminded her that she couldn’t rely on having a home with her brother for ever, no matter what he might say.
Turning round and standing up slowly, like an old person, she said carefully, ‘I’m not sure. Go back to London, I suppose. I’ll have a better chance of finding a job there.’
He swore so unexpectedly and graphically that she swayed where she stood, grabbing hold of the bed as she inadvertently put her weight on her bad ankle.
It all happened so quickly, Jonas’s arms coming round her to support her, that she wasn’t sure if he had cursed first, or if she had stumbled.
‘You shouldn’t be out of bed,’ he told her harshly.
A tremor of intense excitement ran liquid heat through her veins, the pleasure of having him so close to her so intoxicating that it blinded her to everything else. In a voice she barely recognised as her own, she whispered provocatively, ‘Then you’ll just have to put me back, won’t you.’
She felt the tension grip his muscles in the same second as it hit her what she was doing. And then the panic that clutched at her stomach was gone as she remembered what he had said about not wanting merely sex from her. It must surely be her overcharged imagination that told her that the intensely passionate look in his eyes meant anything, but when he slid his hands slowly down her bare arms, and asked huskily, ‘Does that mean what I think it means?’ she wondered if she hadn’t been extremely foolish after all.
It bemused her that she, who had managed to stay so sensible and controlled in Rick’s arms, should feel this irresistible urge to abandon common sense completely whenever Jonas touched her. And when he touched her the way he was doing now, the merest stroking of his fingertips against the quiveringly sensitive flesh of her inner arms, she felt as though
she would rather die than let him stop what he was doing to her.
‘I want you to make love to me.’
She could hardly credit that she had actually said the words, until she felt the sudden slam of Jonas’s heart against his ribs, its fierce kick registered by her own muscles.
‘Do you know what you’re saying to me? No, don’t bother answering that,’ he said thickly as he dragged her into his arms and held her there.
As she felt the heat coming off his body, reality intruded sharply into her dream world and she tensed, saying huskily, ‘I thought you didn’t want this. That you didn’t want sex from me…’
‘Is that what I said?’ He held her slightly away from him, looking down into her eyes with a faintly brooding expression while his hands cupped her face, his fingers stroking behind her ears and down her throat.
His mouth hovered close to hers, and, shamingly, Sara knew that she wanted its heat and possession, to the extent that she was quite wantonly urging her body forward, and parting her lips.
She heard him groan as his mouth closed over hers, the sound intensely exciting. One of them was shaking, or was it both of them?
‘Perhaps you’re right after all,’ he muttered, taking his mouth momentarily from hers. ‘Perhaps it is just sex. You’ll have to overlook my foolish romantic yearnings; they obviously blinded me to reality.’
Was that bitterness or contempt that ran through his voice like a thread of steel?
‘Whatever it is between us, I know that you find it as irresistible as I do, don’t you?’
His teeth were taking tiny little bites at her lower lip, his tongue stroking and touching, its erotic movements driving her into a delirium of desire.
‘Yes… Yes…’ She heard the hoarse moan as though it had been made by someone else, but at least he had acknowledged now that it was simply sex between them; that made it easier for her to endure the fierce need that burned inside her. Wanting him in a purely sexual way was not a betrayal of Rick.
‘And sex is all you want from me, isn’t it?’
The harshness of his voice momentarily broke through her arousal. Blinking warily at him as she focused on the grey heat of his eyes, she said unsteadily, ‘I don’t want anything from you.’
The sound he made deep in his throat made her shiver, her muscles clenching, as his hands slid up under her tee-shirt, uncovering her breasts, his hands cupping them as he rubbed his thumbs slowly against her hard nipples.
‘Liar,’ he whispered rawly against her ear. ‘You want this.’ Her response to the deliberate intimacy of his thumbs against her sensitive skin made him laugh softly. ‘And this…’ His mouth found hers, touching and teasing her parted lips, until with a small moan of need she flung her arms round him and dragged his head down so that she could fasten her mouth on his.
For a few seconds he stayed passive beneath her feverish assault, and then, momentarily lifting his mouth from hers, he muttered thickly, ‘And so, God help me, do I!’
She couldn’t stop her body vibrating with a shudder of pleasure when he started to kiss her, his mouth fiercely demanding that she held nothing back, warning that if she didn’t give him the response he sought he would take it anyway.
It was nothing like the tender kisses she had shared with Rick; nothing like them at all, and to her shame she found that beneath the pressure of Jonas’s mouth she felt more a woman than she had felt at any other time in her life.
They kissed with a famished need that a minute detached part of her brain registered with awe. It was alien to her personality to react like this. She had always enjoyed Rick’s gentle lovemaking, but she had never felt any urge to take it beyond the limits he set on it; she had been content to let Rick set the pace, but now she knew that if Jonas were to stop touching her she would use every bit of feminine power she had to make him want her.
Just then she felt him move away from her, his breathing harshly unsteady against her ear as he levered himself upright.
Before she could speak he said thickly, ‘Too many clothes.’ And in the semi-light filtering through the closed curtains Sara watched him tug off his shirt and jeans.
His body was every bit as masculine as she had imagined, her fingers trembling slightly as she touched the sharp ridge of his spine. His skin felt hot, his muscles clenching as her hand slid round to his hip. He was wearing a pair of white briefs which he also tugged off and dropped on the floor before coming back to her.
It seemed ridiculous that she had reached the grand old age of twenty-five without ever seeing the male body so intimately before. She had seen Rick in his swimming things, of course, but, minimal though they had been, it wasn’t the same. There was something primitive, and even a little threatening, about the strong, clean line of Jonas’s body as he turned back towards her and was caught momentarily in the half light.
A dark ribbon of hair curled down the centre of his torso, spreading and thickening where it reached the top of his thighs. His arousal was so obvious that Sara automatically averted her eyes, feeling her skin flush with heat. But the heat wasn’t caused by embarrassment. She ached to reach out and touch him, to reassure herself that he was real, that his desire for her was real, and not just a continuation of her earlier dream.
‘Don’t look at me like that.’ His voice was raw and unsteady, causing her to tense and look up into his face.
Had she done something wrong? ‘Why not?’
Her own voice was huskily unfamiliar, sharing the tension she had heard in his.
‘Because it makes me ache to feel your hands against my skin,’ Jonas groaned into her ear as he leaned forwards to take her in his arms.
She was still wearing her tee-shirt, and she twisted instinctively within his embrace, wanting to be rid of it, wanting to be rid of anything that came between their two skins.
‘You want to take this off?’ His voice was hot and thick, making her shiver in hectic excitement, the erotically rough abrasion of his body hair against her midriff as he leaned into her making her gasp in pleasure.
As he had done before he slid his hands up under her tee-shirt, cupping her breasts. Her nipples were already hard and taut, pushing eagerly against the soft cotton, and when he bent his head and started to tease the twin spirals through the fabric of her tee-shirt Sara thought she would go mad with the frenzy of pleasure inside her.
Held captive by the superior weight of his body, she could only move her head protestingly from side to side and pluck impatiently at her tee-shirt as she tried to convey her need to have his mouth against her body without anything between them.
But Jonas seemed to be enjoying teasing her, keeping up his deliberate torment until the cotton clung to her skin in damp transparency. She had never experienced anything so erotic in all her life, and she shuddered protestingly beneath the slow caress of his tongue.
The skin on his hands was slightly rough, and where it touched her breasts beneath her tee-shirt, the delicate friction fed her growing desire for something more than his light caress.
Just when she felt she could not bear it any longer, Jonas moved swiftly, dragging her tee-shirt over her head and flinging it on to the floor, his mouth finding the hot pink crest of one nipple and tugging on it fiercely with a smothered groan of satisfaction.
As though an electric current passed through her body from that point of contact Sara found herself arching frantically against him, her head thrown back, the muscles in her throat cording as she raked her nails over his back.
She wanted him desperately Sara acknowledged, her body bathed in a heat that matched his own, as she moved instinctively beneath him and felt the shudder of need rip through his muscles as his hands slid to her hips, lifting her slightly, supporting her, caressing her.
Her thighs parted instinctively to accommodate him, her legs lifting eagerly to wrap round him as she welcomed the first smooth thrust of his body against and then within her own.
Despite the fact that he was her first lover there was n
o pain, just the merest pang of discomfort, but she thought he would not notice.
But despite the intensity of his arousal and desire, he did notice, checking slightly, his mouth leaving her throat as his eyes narrowed on hers, asking the question she could see forming on his lips.
Instinctively Sara placed her fingers against his mouth, letting her body tell him how much it welcomed and wanted him, her eyes widening with shock and excitement as she felt him move inside her.
Her fingertips still rested against his mouth. His lips parted, his tongue touching the soft pink pads, his teeth nipping delicately before he sucked her fingers into the moist heat of his mouth, his movements mirroring the erotic responsiveness of her body to his possession.
Heat bathed her body, her skin breaking out in a moist show of perspiration. His mouth released her fingers, his tongue touching the hollow of her throat, absorbing the tiny bead of sweat gathering there.
The urgency which gripped and drove her now was like nothing she had ever experienced before, the compulsion so great that she could barely comprehend the magnitude of it. Nothing mattered but the need to satisfy the urgent rhythm of his body, to…
As her senses started to explode in concentric spasms of pleasure she cried out unintelligibly, shuddering as she felt Jonas tense, his breathing ragged and hoarse, the sound of her name on his lips almost unfamiliar to her as he reached his own physical release.
Drowsily she decided it must be shock and weakness that made her cuddle up instinctively into the warmth of Jonas’s body as he carefully eased himself away from her, and gently stroked her tired limbs.
She heard him say her name and tried to open her eyes, but they felt as though lead weights were attached to them. She gave an inarticulate murmur, but was too exhausted to stay awake.
As she slid fathoms deep into sleep she was vaguely aware of the dull throb of her ankle—something she had totally forgotten while Jonas was making love to her—and of the delicious warmth of his body, its protective bulk curled around her.