by Penny Jordan
In his urgency to taste the delicious nubs of flesh that were being so innocently and irresistibly offered to him, Jon couldn’t wait to unzip Heaven’s dress, hungrily pulling the fabric down and quickly laying bare one soft round breast.
Heaven felt the shudder that went through him as he studied the feminine softness of her avidly for a heartbeat of time, gently rubbing her bare nipple with his thumb before guiding it into his mouth.
The sensation of his lips closing round her flesh, of him suckling on her bare flesh—carefully at first and then with far more urgency as his reaction to the taste of her overwhelmed him—made Heaven’s whole body contort with delicious pleasure. Willingly she gave herself up to the erotic sensation of Jon’s mouth tugging on one breast whilst his hand caressed the other.
Yearningly Heaven reached out to touch him, an erotic image of his naked body dancing behind her closed eyelids, her imagination tantalising and arousing her. Her fingertips found the buttons on his shirt and impetuously tugged at them.
The shudder that racked Jon’s body as she touched him had nothing to do with the cold beyond the passionate heat they had generated inside the car—and nor had the low male groan of need he gave as the hand that had been caressing her breast captured her wrist, pressing her palm flat against the soft, silky dark hair that arrowed downwards from his chest.
‘Lower,’ Heaven heard him growl pleadingly. ‘Lower, Heaven—touch me here,’ he begged rawly, moving her hand down towards his waistband as his mouth released her breast to whisper the tormented words against her lips.
All at once Heaven started to panic. She was behaving as though she and Jon had known one another for ever, as though it was the most natural thing in the world for them to be together like this, as though the intimacy they were sharing was so natural and preordained that to deny or obstruct it would be like denying one another air to breathe.
But their relationship wasn’t like that. She knew him, yes, had been attracted to him, yes, and yes, all right, had felt perhaps even more than mere attraction for him—had, if she was honest, hoped, even felt that he had shared the feelings she had experienced the evening he had taken her out. But this—this explosion of passion and intensity between them, this sense of coming home, of being completely at one with him—these were surely far too dangerous emotions for her to put any trust in.
She had, she reminded herself, already been on an adrenaline- and tension-induced high even before she had realised that Jon was one of Harold’s guests, and events since she had realised it had done nothing to help her come down from that high—far from it.
‘What’s wrong?’ she heard Jon ask her softly as he felt her tension.
‘Nothing…’ Heaven denied, and then added shakily, ‘This wasn’t meant to happen. I didn’t want…’
‘To be dragged off into the night and driven half the length of the country? Or to be made love to by me?’ he asked her wryly. ‘Which?’
‘Neither,’ Heaven lied primly, taking advantage of the fact that he had released her to hurriedly straighten her dress and turn her head slightly away from him so that he couldn’t see her face properly.
‘I’m sorry,’ she heard him apologising. ‘It wasn’t my intention to. You’re a very special woman, Heaven,’ he added in an even softer and very deep voice. ‘So special in fact that…’
He was starting the engine as he spoke, and set the car back in motion without finishing his sentence, but, even though she was desperately curious to know what he had been about to say, Heaven didn’t trust herself to ask him—nor him to answer her.
Along with the intense passion and sensuality of the lovemaking they had just shared there had also been a heart-tugging skein of sweetness and tenderness. Or was she just imagining it? Would the spell he had woven around her by reigning in the urgency of his passion be broken if she forced him to put what he was thinking and feeling into words and then discovered that he was not sharing her thoughts and feelings after all?
So much had happened so quickly—too much and too quickly, perhaps, Heaven rationalised as they rounded a bend in the road and she could see the lights of what looked like a small village ahead of them.
‘Not much further,’ Jon told her as they drove through the village, which was picturesquely sheltered by the surrounding hills of the Borders, its stone cottages hugging the winding road, the narrowness of the humpback bridge crossing the river that Jon drove over making Heaven breathe in automatically.
Ahead of them lay what was obviously the village’s main street, its bare trees currently adorned with Christmas lights.
It had stopped snowing, the sky clearing to reveal the stars, and Heaven couldn’t stop herself from exclaiming out loud, ‘Oh, Jon, it’s so pretty! So Christmassy.’
‘It may look pretty now,’ he responded, ‘but it has a rather bloody history. The actual border with Scotland isn’t very far from here and this village was the home of border reivers from the English side of the border and the target from those from the Scots side. When a truce was finally declared it was decreed that it would be celebrated and remembered annually at Christmas time, which means that Christmas for the villagers is a doubly special time of joy and celebration. It’s a tradition that everyone attends a special thanksgiving supper. We could go to it if you’d like?’
‘Could we…?’ Heaven began, her eyes shining, and then abruptly she stopped, reminding herself of just why she was here with Jon in the first place, the excitement dying out of her face as she asked him anxiously, ‘But Christmas is a week away and I can’t…’
‘You can’t stay…’ Jon finished quietly for her.
Heaven bit her lip and turned to look out of the car window. They had left the village behind and were starting to climb now, the road winding upwards through the hills. The snow lay more thickly on the road here, but not too thickly for Jon’s car, thank goodness.
Heaven could feel her eyes starting to close as waves of tiredness washed down over her. Sleepily she snuggled deeper into her comfortable seat and then, as Jon swung the car off the road and down a gravel drive, she sat up abruptly and asked him, ‘What on earth is that?’
‘Home,’ Jon responded, laughing, obviously enjoying her surprise.
’Home?’ Heaven stared in bemusement at the ancient tall square slit-windowed tower looming in front of her. ‘You live here?’
‘Yes,’ Jon confirmed with a smile, bringing the car to a halt on the gravel and causing the building’s security lights to come on, further illuminating the building and the soft warm stone from which it was built.
‘But what is it?’ Heaven asked in fascination as she studied the tower’s unfamiliar shape, height and its narrow, almost slit-like windows. That it was very old was obvious.
‘A peel tower,’ Jon told her promptly, and then explained, ‘They were fortified homes built by those who lived on the border, very often, I’m afraid to say, using stone they “acquired” from Hadrian’s wall. The tower acted as a protective place of retreat for the family should they come under attack, and it has to be said that it was equally used as a means of holding captive goods and even people they themselves had purloined on their own reiving trips across the border.
‘Originally there would have been a collection of wooden shelters at the base of the tower to hold their livestock, with the family accommodation at the top of the tower where it was deemed to be safer. Because of their height the towers also served as good lookout points. On a clear day from here you can see right across the border for miles. Of course this particular tower was renovated and modernised quite some time ago—before I bought it in fact.
‘I was staying in the village some years ago and heard that it was up for sale. I’ve always loved the Borders and buying it was certainly a hell of a lot less expensive than going for a Cotswold cottage.’
‘Just imagine the stories it could tell,’ Heaven breathed.
‘Mmm…’ Jon agreed. ‘It’s said locally that one misty November
night a long time ago—ideal weather for stealing your neighbour’s sheep—the then owner of this tower decided to break the truce which existed between him and his neighbour and set off to reive his cattle. When he reached the farm he discovered that the only person there was the seventeen-year-old niece of the farmer who was visiting from Edinburgh, so as well as taking his cattle he also took his neighbour’s niece. However, apparently she was so beautiful and so good that our border reiver fell completely in love with her, and, much more unlikely, she with him, and rather than leading to another bloody feud his abduction of her led instead to a wedding.’
‘They lived happily ever after,’ Heaven laughed.
‘Can you doubt it?’ Jon laughed back as he opened his car door and went round to open Heaven’s door for her.
As she followed him towards the tower, Heaven found herself instinctively moving a little closer to him. It wasn’t that she was afraid of anything—no, of course not—but she still jumped and gave a small startled gasp as something rustled in the ivy that clothed the front wall of the tower.
‘It’s all right; it’s just an owl,’ Jon comforted her as he pushed open the door and switched on the lights, but he still took her hand in his, holding it comfortingly, and Heaven didn’t make any real attempt to pull away from him as they walked into the tower together.
As she stood with him in the hallway Heaven blinked in surprise.
‘Oh, but this is lovely,’ she enthused as she studied the plain soft cream plaster walls and the rustic iron wall sconces that held the lights. Plain coir matting covered the floor and the three doors which opened off the hallway were all of dark polished wood, like the stairs which led upwards.
‘That door leads into the kitchen,’ Jon informed her, indicating the door immediately in front of them. ‘The other two rooms are my study and a rather small, cold sitting room; the main living room is on the next floor. Come up and I’ll show you it and the bedrooms on the floor above that.’
The living room was huge.
‘This must take up the whole of this floor,’ Heaven guessed.
‘It does,’ Jon agreed. ‘The main drawback of this place so far as I’m concerned is having the kitchen and this room on separate floors, but it’s a drawback which is more than made up for by the panoramic views you get of the countryside from here. On a clear day you can virtually see as far as the coast.’
Heaven nodded sleepily as she tried and failed to stifle a yawn.
Like the hallway the living room was furnished simply with coir matting and three huge sofas covered in natural creamy white linen.
Heaven yawned again and immediately Jon frowned, exclaiming, ‘You’re tired! Come on; I’ll take you up and show you your room.’
As he guided her towards the stairs, Heaven reflected that just once in a while it felt surprisingly good to relax and let someone else take charge.
Two doors opened off the upper landing and Jon pushed open the right-hand one for her, switching on the light inside the room and then ushering her inside.
‘Both bedrooms have their own en suite bathroom,’ he told her as she blinked sleepily around the room, but it was the large and oh, so comfortable-looking bed with its traditional brass bedstead and its heavenly plain bed-linen that her gaze kept on returning to.
‘Look, why don’t I leave you to get ready for bed,’ Jon suggested gently, ‘whilst I go down and make us both a hot drink? You’ll find plenty of towels in the cupboard in your bathroom, along with a spare toothbrush and all the usual necessities. Mrs Frazer from the village, who comes in to go over the house for me and keep an eye on things, believes in being equipped for all emergencies.’
As soon as she heard the door close behind him Heaven walked over to the bed. She only intended to touch it, to test it, just to see if it was as deliciously comfortable as it looked, but for some inexplicable reason touching it became sitting on it, and sitting on it became lying on it, so that when Jon returned he found her curled up fast asleep on the edge of the bed still fully dressed.
Very gently he tried to wake her but when he realised how deeply asleep she was he hesitated for a moment, wondering whether to simply cover her with a spare duvet and leave her as she was. But he knew enough about women to recognise that when she woke up in the morning and discovered that she had slept in the only clothes she had to wear she would not be very happy and so, still frowning, he bent down and started to remove her shoes.
The bedroom light was still on, and he wasn’t sure if it was for her benefit or his own that he stopped what he was doing and went and switched it off before returning to complete his self-appointed task in the semidarkness, which, if he was honest, did little to conceal the feminine beauty and desirability of her naked body from him. In fact he could see far too much, arousing the urgency and intensity of his own male hunger and desire for her.
The temptation to remove his own clothes, to slide beneath the bedclothes with her, to hold her in his arms was so strong, so intense, so demanding that he felt himself literally grinding his teeth together as he fought to control it, bending instead to scoop up the clothes he’d removed, but as he straightened up his resolve wavered. She looked so adorable, so…kissable…so…so Heaven, lying there with only her face and her soft hair visible above the bedclothes, that he just had to bend down and kiss her very gently on the mouth.
In her sleep, Heaven smiled against his lips and her own clung softly, to him—softly, temptingly… Sternly Jon made himself withdraw from her.
If he couldn’t share the intimacy of her bed with her then at least his clothes could share the intimacy of the washing machine and dryer with hers, he told himself ruefully as he closed the door behind himself and went to strip off his own things before taking them down to the kitchen to put them in the washing machine.
At least she could have clean clothes in the morning even if they were the same ones she had worn the previous day. After he’d pushed everything into the machine and selected a suitable washing cycle he paused to scoop up the single small item which had fallen onto the floor, quickly picking up the tiny pair of pretty lacy knickers and pushing them hastily into the machine before closing the door on them and on his own tantalising erotic thoughts.
Eighteen months ago when he had first set eyes on Heaven he had been attracted to her. The evening he had taken her out he had known that that attraction was deepening into something more, something much stronger, and by the end of the evening he had known… sensed… But then had come all the trauma and tragedy of Harold’s cruel manipulation of her situation and he had forced himself to acknowledge that he was the last person Heaven would want in her life.
But now fate had thrown them together again and it hadn’t taken that intoxicating interlude in his car earlier on to make him realise that far from lessening his feelings towards her the intervening months had only strengthened them.
But what about her feelings for him? She had certainly been responsive to him earlier this evening; he knew she was not the kind of woman to indulge in casual sexual intimacy with anyone and the sexual and emotional chemistry they had generated between them certainly argued well for the future he hoped they would have together.
The future. The smile which had begun to curl his mouth suddenly disappeared. Before he could invite her to think about sharing that future with him there was the present to be dealt with—the present and his unpleasant ex-brother-in-law.
His mouth compressing grimly, Jon mentally reviewed the information Heaven had given him.
As he walked out into the hallway he glanced ruefully towards the stairs leading up to Heaven’s bedroom, to Heaven, both literally and metaphorically, he acknowledged. He fought the temptation to ignore his responsibility towards his sister, sternly admonishing himself for the highly erotic and passionately emotional nature of his thoughts as he turned away from the stairs and headed instead for his study.
Once inside he firmly closed the door and then sat down at his desk and switched
on his computer.
He had begun to think he would never find a lever with which to manoeuvre his ex-brother-in-law into giving his sister and their children a fairer financial settlement, but now, thanks to Heaven, he suspected that at last he had. And what a lever. A grim smile curled his mouth as he set to work.
CHAPTER FIVE
HEAVEN stretched sleepily and luxuriously and then opened her eyes. Abruptly she sat bolt upright in her bed—no, not her bed at all, she recognised as she snatched up the duvet which had fallen away from her body to cover her naked breasts and warily glanced around her unfamiliar surroundings.
She was not at home in London any more, she was in Scotland, in an ancient border fortress which had once been the home of wild border reivers, and which was now the home of Jon.
Jon. Just thinking about him made her toes start to curl and her tummy flutter in a way that had nothing to do with nervousness or apprehension.
If she sat right up in the high bed she could see through the window to the hills that lay beyond it—white with snow beneath a blue sky from which shone a brilliantly sharp winter sun.
In London it would no doubt be dull and grey and damp; in London she would have been waking up in her admittedly very warm and cosy Chelsea home, her haven—but how long would it have remained her haven once Harold had discovered her identity and tracked her down? And in London there would have been no Jon.
A rosy blush suffused her face. She only had a very vague memory of their arrival the previous evening, but one thing she was very clear about and that was that she had most certainly not undressed herself. Which meant…which meant…
* * *
Jon stretched his taut muscles under the sharp, hot sting of the shower. He had finally gone to bed at six o’clock in the morning, very pleased with what he had done. He smiled broadly to himself as he contemplated Harold’s reaction to the discovery of just how much Jon knew about his underhand, not to mention virtually fraudulent business dealings.