Reawakened by His Touch

by Penny Jordan

  Somewhere on the outer periphery of her mind was the fact that this time she had quite definitely burned her boats behind her; there was no way now that Jonas would ever believe she did not love him. Having come to that realisation, it seemed futile to even think of trying to resist him; it would have been impossible anyway.

  She felt his fingers thread through her hair, holding her head so that she couldn’t avoid the drowning ravishment of his kiss.

  Shamingly, when at last he released her mouth, her lips clung protestingly to his. His tongue touched them lightly and then he was releasing her and pushing her firmly back into her seat.

  Standing up, he studied her for several seconds while she cursed the hot betraying colour scorching her skin, dreading whatever he might be about to say.

  It was every bit as bad as she had anticipated.

  ‘You do love me, don’t you?’ he said at last.

  What was the point of denying it? ‘Yes. Probably almost right from the first time we met, but I didn’t want to admit it. I was frightened, you see… Frightened of loving someone again and losing them the way I lost Rick.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘You must find all this quite amusing.’

  Heavens, how on earth was she going to endure this? Even her voice was betraying her, shaking over the words.

  ‘Must I?’ His hands cupped her face, tilting it so that she was obliged to look at him. ‘Do I look as though I’m amused?’

  She looked at him, and trembled at what she saw in his eyes, unable to believe the hungry, aching way he was looking at her. Then he groaned and said her name huskily, half laughing. ‘Dear God, Sara, what you’ve put me through!’

  She was in his arms, and he was kissing her with all the passion and need she had dreamed of, pushing her blouse out of the way so that his mouth could caress her throat and shoulder. She shivered and gasped in pleasure as his hand found her breast.

  ‘Do I feel as though I’m amused?’ he demanded, pulling her hard against him so that she could feel his arousal. ‘I love you, you crazy, blind idiot; I think I fell in love with you the moment I saw you! And all you could do was keep on telling me about Rick.’

  He kissed her again, and she moved wantonly against him, enjoying his smothered indrawn breath.

  ‘Enough,’ he told her thickly, releasing her and pushing her gently away. ‘Explanations first, lovemaking later.’

  ‘Mmm. I think I’d rather have the lovemaking first,’ Sara protested happily, but she let him settle her comfortably beside him on the settee and put her head contentedly on his shoulder.

  ‘I can’t tell you what it did to me when you ran out of the bedroom like that. I tried to warn you about the carpet, but it was too late…’ She looked up at him, catching the anguish in his voice.

  ‘I should never have said what I did to you, but I was half out of my mind with rage and jealousy. First you tell me you don’t love me and never will, then when I make love to you you tell me you were pretending I was another man. You’ll never know how much that hurt me. After the way you’d responded to me in my arms, I was convinced you must feel something for me. I suspected all that talk about only loving Rick and just wanting me for sex was a protective wall you were hiding behind, but when you told me you’d pretended I was Rick, I knew it didn’t matter a bit whether I thought you loved me or not, if you wouldn’t let yourself believe it. That’s why it came as such a kick in the teeth when you calmly announced that you loved me. All I could think was that you’d decided to go on playing your little game of pretending I was Rick. You couldn’t ever have him, so I was the next best thing…’

  ‘It wasn’t like that at all,’ protested Sara softly. ‘Although I can follow your reasoning.’

  ‘It was such an abrupt about-face. Right up until our marriage you kept on saying you loved Rick, and then suddenly…’

  ‘Not quite as suddenly as all that,’ admitted Sara huskily. ‘I knew I loved you the night we made love…’ She saw him looking at her and added softly, ‘Before we made love, in actual fact, but it was such a shock; I was so terrified you would find out how I felt…and so nearly demented by my own fear of loving anyone, that I lied to you and told you I’d pretended you were Rick. You see, even though you’d said to me that you were beginning to fall in love with me, I didn’t want you to love me. I was frightened of loving or being loved because I felt it would only lead to pain.’

  ‘We’ve both made mistakes. I tried to rush you into loving me before you were really ready. I was scared to death of losing you even then.’ Jonas looked sombrely at her.

  ‘When I realised you and Rick had never been lovers, it gave me the kind of primitive pleasure I’d always taught myself to despise. That’s why I overreacted so much when you told me you’d pretended I was Rick. I’d been congratulating myself because I thought you’d cared enough about me to take me as your first lover, when in reality you weren’t making love with me at all—or at least that’s what I thought.’

  ‘Even before you made love to me I knew you aroused me in a way that Rick never had,’ Sara said. ‘And knowing that only increased my fear. I didn’t want to feel like that about you, because…’

  ‘Because you were frightened of losing me as you lost Rick,’ Jonas finished softly for her. ‘Life doesn’t come with any guarantees, Sara, but whatever the future might hold, at least we have this now.’

  ‘Yes.’ She shivered suddenly, wondering what would have happened if she had gone through with the abortion and gone to London. When she voiced her thoughts, Jonas looked at her gravely.

  ‘It wouldn’t have altered my feelings for you,’ he told her softly. ‘Somehow I’d have found you, persuaded you that you couldn’t live without me, although I must admit I felt the gods had finally decided to smile on me the day I found you in Dorchester. I’m sorry about the baby,’ he added soberly, ‘I should have been more careful, but somehow at the time… It hadn’t occurred to me then that you and Rick had never been lovers.’

  ‘We were rather reckless,’ Sara agreed, ‘but I’m not sorry to be having your child, Jonas.’ She shivered with pleasure at the way he looked at her.

  ‘You’ve no idea how I felt when I saw you fall. It flashed through my mind that you might lose the baby because of my cruelty, and I knew that you wanted it. I lashed out at you in a fury because you’d hurt me. I told myself you couldn’t possibly mean it when you said you loved me. I thought you were lying to me. It was only later when I’d had time to calm down, when I’d spent hours sitting at your bedside and praying that you were going to be all right, that I realised that you just might possibly have meant it. You can imagine how that made me feel,’ he added wryly.

  ‘What convinced you?’

  ‘The way you avoided looking at me when I asked you if what you’d said was true. That—and of course this,’ he murmured softly, taking her in his arms and touching his mouth almost teasingly to hers.

  Sara was reluctant to let him go, her eyes darkening slightly as he stood up.

  ‘Come on.’ He tugged her to her feet, the gleam in his eyes belying his cool drawl.

  ‘Where are we going?’ She was envisaging being roped into helping him with the evening watering, but then he laughed and said softly, ‘Dr Heathers said it might be a good idea if you were to spend your first couple of days at home in bed. I fully intend to make sure that you do.’

  ‘It’s four o’clock in the afternoon!’ Sara exclaimed, but it was only a half-hearted protest, quickly changing to a smothered sound of pleasure when he silenced it with a teasingly provocative kiss. Her arms slid round his neck, her fingers burrowing into his hair, and when he released her mouth she buried her face against him, breathing in the scent of him appreciatively.

  When she opened her eyes he was looking at her with an openly fierce hunger. Her fingers curled into the open neck of his shirt, her breathing suddenly accelerating.

  ‘Jonas!’

  Her voice held all her pent-up desi
re and love for him, and she felt his response in the sudden tensing of his muscles. His hands cupped her face and he looked down into it as though he was memorising each individual feature, his voice raw and husky as he muttered, ‘I love you more than I imagined I could ever love another human being, Sara. Finding the words to tell you how much is too difficult and time-consuming. That’s why I’m going to show you instead.’

  Without a word she gave him her hand and walked with him towards the stairs. She had been lucky, far more lucky than she privately felt she deserved.

  At the top of the stairs Jonas paused and turned her to face him, his expression grave as he said softly, ‘You know, I think if we have a son I’d like to call him Rick after all. Partially as a reminder and partially as a thank you.’

  Very shakily Sara told him, ‘I think I’d like that. Sam told me not so long ago that I loved Rick the way a girl does her first love, but that it wasn’t a woman’s love for a man. I wouldn’t admit it at the time, but he was right. He also told me that Rick would never have wanted me to mourn him for the rest of my life. He was right about that as well. I’ll remember him in the way that a girl always does remember her first adolescent love, and in time I think I’ll even learn not to feel guilty because I never did and never could love him the way I love you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Only the huskiness of Jonas’s voice betrayed how much her words meant to him, but the touch of his fingers against her skin conveyed a need of a different kind, one that caused her to abandon all thoughts of the past and urge him with mutely imploring eyes to fulfil the promise implicit in his touch.

  When he picked her up and carried her towards the bed, she knew that there would never be anyone who could mean to her what Jonas did, and as he laid her gently on the bed and leaned down to kiss her, she prayed that she would never be called upon to face life without him.

  ‘Love me,’ she murmured the words against his lips.

  ‘I’m going to!’

  * * * * *

  Now, read on for a tantalizing excerpt of USA Today bestselling author

  Carol Marinelli’s next book,

  BOUND BY THE SULTAN’S BABY

  The second in her Billionaires & One-Night Heirs trilogy!

  Sultan Alim spent one forbidden night with Gabi—when he encounters her again, she refuses to name her child’s father. Alim will seduce the truth out of Gabi, even if he has to lure her under false pretenses. Alim knows he craves her, but does he desire her as his mistress or bride?

  Read on to get a glimpse of

  BOUND BY THE SULTAN’S BABY

  CHAPTER ONE

  GABI DERAMO HAD never been a bridesmaid, let alone a bride.

  However, weddings were her life and she thought about them during most of the minutes of her day.

  From way back she had lived and breathed weddings.

  Gabi was a dreamer.

  As a little girl, her dolls would regularly be lined up in a bridal procession. Once, to her mother’s fury, Gabi had poured two whole bags of sugar and one of flour over them to create a winter wedding effect.

  ‘Essere nerre nuvole,’ her mother, Carmel, had scolded, telling her that she lived in the clouds.

  What Gabi didn’t tell her was that at each wedding she made with her dolls, she pretended it was her mother. As if somehow she could conjure her father’s presence and make it so that he had not left a pregnant Carmel to struggle alone.

  And while Gabi had never been so much as kissed, as an assistant wedding planner she had played her part in many a romantic escape.

  She dreamt of the same most nights.

  And she dreamt of Alim.

  Now Gabi sat, flicking through the to-do list on her tablet and curling her long black hair around her finger, trying to work out how on earth she could possibly organise, from scratch, an extremely rushed but very exclusive winter wedding in Rome.

  Mona, the bride-to-be, stepped out of the changing area on her third attempt at trying on a gown not of Gabi’s choice.

  It didn’t suit Mona in the least—the antique lace made her olive skin look sallow and the heavy fabric did nothing to accentuate her delicate frame.

  ‘What do you think?’ Mona asked Gabi as she turned around to look in the mirror and examined herself from behind.

  Gabi knew from experience how to deal with a bride who stood in completely the wrong choice of gown. ‘What do you think, Mona?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mona sighed. ‘I quite like it.’

  ‘Then it isn’t the gown for you,’ Gabi said. ‘Because you have to love it.’

  Mona had resisted the boutique owner’s guidance and had completely dismissed Gabi’s suggestion for a bright, white, column gown with subtle embroidery. In fact, Mona hadn’t even tried it on.

  Gabi’s suggestions were dismissed rather a lot.

  She was curvy and dressed in the severe, shapeless dark suit that her boss, Bernadetta, insisted she wear, so brides-to-be tended to assume that Gabi had no clue where fashion was concerned.

  Oh, but she did.

  Not for herself, of course, but Gabi could pick out the right wedding gown for a bride at fifty paces.

  And they needed this to be sorted today!

  Bernadetta was on leave and so it had fallen to Gabi to sort.

  It always did.

  The bigger the budget, the trickier the brief, the more likely it was to have been put into the ‘Too Hard’ basket and left for Gabi to pick up.

  They were in the lull between Christmas and New Year. The wedding boutique was, in fact, closed today, but Gabi had many contacts and had called in a favour from Rosa, the owner, who had opened up just for them.

  Rosa would not push them out, but they had to meet Marianna, the functions co-ordinator, at the Grande Lucia at four.

  ‘Why don’t you try Gabi’s suggestion?’ Fleur, the mother of the groom, said.

  It was a little odd.

  Usually this trip would be taken with the mother of the bride or her sister or friends, but it would seem that it was Fleur who had first and last say in things.

  Fleur was also English, which meant that, in order to be polite, Gabi and Mona did not speak in Italian.

  Yes, it was proving to be a long, tiring day.

  And they would be back tomorrow with the bridesmaids!

  Reluctantly, very reluctantly, Mona agreed to try on Gabi’s suggestion and then disappeared with the dresser.

  As Rosa hung up the failed gown she saw that Gabi was looking at another dress.

  Silver-grey, it was elegant and simple and in a larger size, and when Gabi held it up she saw the luxurious fall of the fabric. Rosa was a talented seamstress indeed.

  ‘It would fit you,’ Rosa said.

  ‘I doubt it.’ Gabi sighed wistfully. ‘It’s beautiful, though.’

  ‘The order was cancelled,’ Rosa said. ‘Why don’t you go and try it on? It would look stunning, I am sure.’

  ‘Not while I’m working.’ Gabi shook her head. ‘Anyway, even if it did fit, when would I get a chance to wear it?’ Her question went unanswered as the curtains parted and a smiling Mona walked out.

  ‘Oh, Mona!’ Gabi breathed.

  The dress was perfect.

  It showed off Mona’s slender figure, and the bright white was indeed the perfect shade against her olive skin.

  ‘If only she had listened to you in the first place,’ Fleur muttered. ‘We are going to be late for the hotel.’

  ‘It’s all taken care of,’ Gabi assured her, checking her list on her tablet. ‘We’re right on schedule.’

  Ahead of it, in fact, because now that the dress had been chosen, everything else, Gabi knew, would fall more easily into place.

  Measurements had already been taken but fitting dates could not yet be made. Gabi assured Rosa she would call her just as soon as they had finalised the wedding date.

  They climbed back into the car and were driven through the wet streets of Rome towards the Grande Lucia but, again, Mona wa
sn’t happy. ‘I went to a wedding at the Grande Lucia a few years ago and it was so…’ Mona faltered for a moment as she struggled with a word to describe it. ‘Tired-looking.’

  ‘Not now it isn’t.’ Gabi shook her head. ‘It’s under new management, well, Alim has been…’ It was Gabi who now faltered but she quickly recovered. ‘Alim has been the owner for a couple of years and there have been considerable renovations; the hotel is looking magnificent.’

  Even saying his name made her stumble a little and blush.

  Gabi saw Alim only occasionally but she thought about him a lot.

  Their paths rarely crossed but if Gabi was organising a wedding at the Grande Lucia and Alim happened to be in residence at the time then her heart would get a rare treat, and she was secretly hoping for one today.

  ‘Let’s just see how you feel once you’ve actually seen the Grande Lucia for yourself.’ Gabi suggested. ‘Remember, though, that it’s terribly hard to get a booking there, especially at such short notice.’

  ‘Fleur doesn’t seem to think it will be a problem,’ Mona said with a distinct edge to her voice, and Gabi watched as she shot a look towards the mother of the groom. From all Gabi had gleaned, Fleur had agreed to finance the wedding on the condition that it was held there.

  ‘It won’t be,’ Fleur responded.

  Gabi wasn’t so sure.

  Marianna, the co-ordinator, was rather inflexible at the best of times and they wanted this wedding to be held in just over two weeks!

  They made good time as the streets were comparatively empty. The rush of Christmas was over and even the Colosseum was closed to visitors.

  Gabi stifled a yawn, wishing that she could put up her own Do not disturb sign to the world for a while.

  She had hoped to spend the Christmas break going over the plans for starting her own business. Instead, she had again been called in to work through her leave. She was tired.

  Almost too tired to keep alive the dream of one day owning her own business.