by Penny Jordan
Immediately Brough reached for her, rescuing the half-empty mug she had been about to drop, gathering her in his arms as he told her gruffly, ‘I know exactly what Cox wanted... He’s gone, Kelly. You’re safe—forget about him...’
‘No, you don’t understand,’ Kelly protested, but it was impossible to keep on trying to form rational thoughts and make difficult and painful explanations when Brough was holding her so tightly, one hand stroking her hair whilst the other tilted up her chin so that he could look down into her eyes.
‘I should never have gone home and left you last night,’ he whispered rawly to her. ‘I certainly didn’t want to...’
‘I didn’t want you to either,’ Kelly admitted bravely, adding tremulously, ‘Oh, Brough, I wanted you to stay so much, but...I still can’t quite believe all this is happening...that you and I... It frightens me a little,’ she admitted, her tongue as well as her self-control loosened by the potent mixture of shock and alcohol. ‘I’ve never been in love before, never wanted... Loving someone means risking that they might hurt you and—’
‘I could never hurt you, Kelly,’ Brough interrupted her to tell her passionately. ‘And I know that you would never hurt me.’
‘How can you know that?’ Kelly protested nervously. ‘Brough, there’s so much about me that you don’t know...’
‘Mmm...so much about you that I still have to discover...’ Brough agreed softly as his lips started to caress her willing mouth.
‘Brough...’ Kelly whispered, but it was only a token protest. There was nothing she wanted more than to be held like this by him, kissed like this by him, unless it was to lie naked in bed with him, his body her only covering, his hands caressing her, leaving hers free to explore him...
‘Mmm...well, if you’re sure that’s what you want, I’m certainly not going to argue with you,’ she heard Brough saying hoarsely as he gently stepped back from her and turned her to face the kitchen door, and it was only then that Kelly realised that what she had thought were her most private and unspoken thoughts she had in fact spoken out loud to him.
‘Oh, Brough...’
Her face pink, she looked helplessly at him, but far from being shocked by the desires and wishes she had expressed he was looking at her as though...as though... Kelly felt her heartbeat start to pick up. Suddenly she was finding it extraordinarily difficult to breathe properly; suddenly her mind was full of the most extraordinarily detailed and sensual images of them both together; suddenly she couldn’t wait to make those private wanton thoughts a reality.
It took them almost ten minutes to reach the bedroom, primarily because Brough insisted on stopping virtually every foot of the way to hold her and kiss her and tell her that she was the most wonderful, the most wanted thing that had ever happened to him.
‘I never imagined you could be like this,’ Kelly breathed in ecstatic pleasure as the look in his eyes confirmed that he meant every romantic word he was saying to her. ‘When we first met, you seemed so disapproving...so...’
‘So desperately afraid of revealing to you just how totally and completely I’d fallen for you,’ Brough admitted softly as he cupped her face and very slowly started to kiss her.
Dizzily Kelly clung to him. They were in her bedroom now, and Brough was very carefully, but very thoroughly and determinedly, starting to remove her clothing whilst continuing to kiss her with a passion which caused her heartbeat to slow to a sensuously heavy thud and her body to melt into eager compliance and longing.
This was not how it was meant to be for a modern woman. She was supposed to take her own initiative, remove her own clothes and expect her lover to remove his with equally mature independence, and when a modern woman did make love it was an open-eyed, clear-minded ‘I know what I’m doing and why’ thing. Wasn’t it?
So why was she, who considered herself to be such a thoroughly modern woman, simply standing there, not merely allowing Brough to dictate the pace of their lovemaking but positively yearning for him to do so? Why was she experiencing this unfamiliar, heady sense of pleasure and excitement, of anticipation and, yes, just a tiny thread of nervousness as well, at the thought of what lay ahead? Why, much as she wanted him, ached for him, loved him, did she actually want him to be the one, initially at least, to show her how much he loved and wanted her?
Because she loved him enough to do so! Because she trusted him enough! Because there was, after all, something inalienably sweet and precious about admitting, allowing herself to be so vulnerably female in his presence, in being able, for the first time since childhood, to acknowledge a need for another person, for their love...their touch...
‘Brough...’
She shivered in delicious pleasure as he slid her top away from her body and then gently unclipped her bra, freeing her breasts to his gaze and the softness of the air against them. As she felt and saw her nipples peak into hard, excited, aroused nubs of flesh, Kelly knew immediately what was responsible for their arousal—or rather who. It wasn’t cold in her bedroom and, anyway, she undressed in here every night without her body reacting like this.
‘Beautiful...beautiful...’ Brough murmured thickly as he reached out and gently traced the curve of one breast, brushing its softness with his finger, the lightest of light touches, and yet it was enough to send a sensuous shudder of sensation curling through her entire body.
‘Beautiful,’ Brough repeated as he bent his head and, cupping her breast very carefully, kissed one erect nipple and then the other, and then repeated the whole process again and then again, and each time his mouth returned to graze and suckle on one swollen point the other ached jealously for the loss of the delicious pressure of his mouth against it.
‘Brough...’
Heavy-eyed, Kelly bent her head towards him, leaning its weight on his downbent shoulder. Beneath her cheek she could feel the fabric of his shirt. Quickly she started to pull it free of his waistband, making a little frustrated sound of protest deep in her throat, a small feline growl of longing as she realised that unless and until she unfastened the buttons of his shirt and physically removed it from his body she was going to be denied the sensation of his skin against her own which she craved so much. But if she did that he might have to stop kissing and caressing her breasts in that delicious way.
But somehow Brough seemed to have divined her thoughts, because he gently eased her slightly away from him, kissing her deeply on the mouth as he lifted her hands to the front of his shirt and then, whilst he was still kissing her, placed his own hands over her breasts, gently teasing her erect nipples with his thumbs and fingertips. Already sensitised by the erotic attention of his mouth, they reacted to this extra stimulation by causing such a curling, coiling, tightening feeling to gather deep inside her body that Kelly cried out in soft protest against the intensity of what she was feeling.
Her fingers stilled over the task of unfastening his shirt and then, as the sensation within her body refused to be controlled, her actions quickened, becoming urgent and demanding, her lips pressing tiny hungry kisses against Brough’s jaw, his throat, and then lower, following the reckless speed of her fingers as she tugged and wrenched at the recalcitrant buttons, the progress of both her hands and her mouth only halted when she suddenly realised that she had reached the barrier of his belt.
Now it was Brough who was losing control, groaning rawly as he took her hands and guided them over his body. The feel of him even through the fabric of his clothes, hard, hot and aroused, filled her own insides with a heaviness, a dull, unfamiliar ache, and an instinctive knowledge that there was only one way, one way it was going to be eased...satisfied...
Kelly needed no encouragement nor coaxing to remove the rest of his clothes. Now she was a modern woman, wanting her man and not ashamed for him to know it, proud of her own body, her own sexuality as he stripped the rest of her clothes from it with a fierce eagerness that matched and fed her own l
onging.
When they were both completely naked she looked at him and then told him breathlessly—and meant it, ‘Brough, you are so beautiful. So perfect...’ Hot-faced with female appreciation, she ran a delicate but oh, so possessive fingertip down the length of him, teasingly avoiding the thick dark shaft of aroused manhood that was almost awesomely powerful to her as a woman—in some ways an almost primitive visual reminder of the human race’s sexuality and its genetically encoded gift and goal of ensuring its own continuity—and yet still somehow a reminder of how very vulnerable a man could be, how very much in need of a woman’s love and even of her protection of his maleness, of her appreciation of it and of him.
Very, very gently and carefully, caringly, Kelly reached out and ran her fingertip the entire length of the engorged shaft, lovingly circling its tip, smiling a mysterious, sultry, female smile of power and love as she caught Brough’s audibly indrawn breath and saw the fierce leap of passion darkening his eyes before he closed them on a helpless moan of aching male pleasure.
‘Oh, God, that feels so good,’ he told her throatily, and then, opening his eyes, he admitted, ‘Too good, Kelly; if you do it again I don’t know...’
‘You don’t know what?’ Kelly teased, obliging him with an opportunity to find out as she delicately ran her fingertip back up the way it had just come.
‘I don’t know whether to kiss you...or...’
Far too quickly for Kelly to stop him, he grabbed hold of her, rolling her down onto the bed and very gently keeping her there as he carefully parted her thighs, kissing the inner flesh of each one before looking up at her uncertain face and smiling tenderly at her.
‘No,’ Kelly protested, guessing what he was going to do and knowing instinctively that once she felt his lips, his mouth against that most vulnerable and sensuously responsive part of her body there was no way she was going to be able to hold back the response that had been building up inside her ever since their first kiss.
But of course she knew that Brough wasn’t going to listen to her denial, and she knew as well that there was no way she really wanted him to do so.
The gentle brush of his lips against the soft mound of her sex was the most blissful, the most sensual, the most erotic and achingly beautiful sensation she had ever experienced, she told herself dizzily. And then, for good measure, she told Brough as well, interspersing the words with soft, husky, imploring pleas for him to stop before...because... Her voice finally trailed away into a soft sob of delirious pleasure as the dragging ache inside her changed shape and texture and form and became a living, pulsing, fiery sensation that exploded sharply inside her in a cataclysmic surge of pleasure which to her surprise left her not drained and empty but somehow feeling as though she was just on the edge of some previously unguessed and undreamed-of new universe of delight, heralded by the tiny but unmistakable little excited pulse that still throbbed inside her body.
Very gently, but very determinedly, she urged Brough towards her.
‘I want you,’ she told him shakily. ‘I want you now, Brough...’
‘Now,’ he repeated, but he was already responding to her, answering her, his body starting to move within hers slowly and then with gathering pace, gathering force, so that with each thrust he lifted her and carried her a little further, a little closer towards the goal her body now so desperately craved.
‘Yes, now,’ she whispered back. ‘Now, Brough...now...now... Oh, Brough... Brough... Brough...’
She could feel the world exploding around her, the whole universe filling with light and love and Brough.
Brough... Brough whom she loved so much, whom she would always love so much...who loved her...
Satisfied, satiated, Kelly snuggled down into his arms. Sleepily she remembered that there was something she had to tell him, something she had to say...something...
Her eyes were already closed, her breathing slowing...
Tenderly Brough curled her into the warmth of his own relaxed body.
There had been a moment, a heartbeat, just then, when, just before the end, he had felt his eyes start to burn with emotional tears. Strange how, until he had met her, he had never even known how much he had wanted to find her, how desperately he must secretly have been searching for her... How good and right she would feel and how complete she would make his life.
He must remember to tell Eve that when he was trying to explain to her why Julian Cox wasn’t the man for her.
Kelly!
God, but he loved her...had loved her, he now recognised, the moment he saw her, even though she had been behaving in a way which he now knew was way, way out of character. He started to frown. There were still things they needed to discuss. She had originally claimed Cox as an old friend, but the way he had been behaving towards her earlier had been anything but friendly.
His frown deepened as he heard a familiar sound from the landing where he had left his jacket. Gently easing his body away from Kelly’s, so as not to disturb her, he padded towards it, flicking the receiving switch on his mobile phone. An unfamiliar voice on the other end of the line announced that he was Brough’s grandmother’s GP.
‘She’s had a fall—a neighbour found her. We’ve admitted her to hospital, but unfortunately she’s developed pneumonia. It can happen with elderly patients...’
‘I’m on my way,’ Brough told him grimly.
Back in the bedroom, he quickly dressed. Kelly stirred in her sleep and opened her eyes, frowning as she saw what he was doing.
Still half asleep, she questioned anxiously, ‘Brough...?’
‘It’s all right,’ he told her. ‘Go back to sleep. I’ve got to go... I’ll explain later...’
Her eyes were already closing again. She was exhausted, he recognised, the shock of Cox’s attack on her no doubt now taking its toll along with the brandy he had given her and the intensity and passion of their lovemaking.
His mind raced ahead. He would have to tell Eve about their grandmother. But he didn’t want the additional delay of driving home. He would call her on his mobile. Dear God, but he hoped Nan was going to be all right. She was a fighter, he knew that, but a serious fall at her age, followed by the complication of pneumonia... No wonder the doctor had sounded so grave.
Quietly Brough let himself out of Kelly’s flat and headed for his car.
CHAPTER NINE
‘AND YOU’RE SURE that Nan’s going to be all right?’
‘Yes, Eve, the doctors say she’s over the worst now, and although they want to keep her in hospital for observation they’re confident that she’s on the mend,’ Brough assured his sister gently as he heard the concern in her voice.
He had arrived at the hospital just as his grandmother’s pneumonia entered its most critical stage and had sat with her, willing her to draw strength from him and pull through, holding her hand tightly in his, even though the doctor had told him kindly that she was probably not aware of his presence. At one point she had turned her head, opening her eyes as she looked at him, and Brough had felt his eyes smart with tears as she’d called him by his grandfather’s, her late husband’s, name.
It was now ten o’clock at night, three hours and ten minutes since he had left Kelly. He was longing to speak with her, and longing even more to be with her, but first he had an important brotherly duty to perform.
‘Eve, I appreciate that this might not be a good time to tell you this. You know that I’ve never been exactly happy about your relationship with Julian Cox, but I’ve no—’
‘Brough, before you go any further, there’s something I have to tell you,’ Eve interrupted him nervously.
Brough felt his heart sink. He knew how loyal she was, and how trusting, how stubborn as well, but surely if he told her that he had actually found Julian attacking Kelly...
‘Eve—’ he began.
But she overruled him, begging shakily, ‘Brough, please let me speak. I’m so nervous about telling you this, but I’m legally an adult now, and we’ve both talked the whole thing through, and even if you, as my trustee, withhold the allowance from my trust fund from me it wouldn’t stop us. We love each other, Brough, and we want to be together. We have to be together. Oh, Brough, I love him so much,’ she told him, the emotion in her voice so strong that Brough almost felt the air around him humming with it. ‘If you’d ever been in love yourself, you’d understand... I don’t want you to hate me for what I’m doing, but even if you do...’
Brough closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He hated having to do what he was going to have to do...hated having to destroy her dreams...her love, but what option did he have when he knew what Cox really was?
‘Eve,’ he said gently. ‘I’m sorry, I understand everything you’re saying, and you’re wrong—I do understand what it means to be in love, to love someone; but you can’t marry Julian Cox.’
The silence that followed his announcement was so complete and so intense that for a moment Brough thought she had actually hung up, and then he heard her saying shakily, ‘Brough, I’m sorry; I haven’t...I didn’t... It isn’t Julian I’m in love with...’
Now it was Brough’s turn to be silent.
Not Cox. Then who? What...?
‘It’s Harry,’ Eve blurted out.
‘Harry!’ Brough repeated in bemusement. ‘Harry—’
‘Harry Lawson,’ Eve explained, adding ernestly, ‘You remember he was at the ball we went to...’
‘You mean the Harry who was escorting Kelly?’ Brough questioned her sharply.
‘Yes. But there’s nothing between them. He was simply escorting her because his cousin had asked him to,’ Eve told him defensively, before adding eagerly, ‘Oh, Brough, I love him so much and so, I know, will you.’
‘Yes... Yes...I’m sure I shall,’ Brough agreed obediently, mentally reviewing what little he knew of Harry. A pleasant, solid-looking young man, phlegmatic in the extreme, Brough would have guessed, reliable, solid, trustworthy, an excellent foil for his sister’s far more vulnerable and fragile personality.