by Penny Jordan
‘They’re fully booked,’ Liam informed her, frowning as he studied her pale face and defeated expression.
In all the years he had known her he had seen her go through many highs and lows, but he had never seen anything affect her as badly as this.
She felt things so fiercely, so passionately, there were no comfortable shades of grey in Samantha’s emotional reactions, only blacks and whites.
She hadn’t loved James and in losing him she was not losing a lover she was losing a potential father for her children. It was her pride and her belief in her own judgement that was hurting her now, that and her longing for a child, and it was typical of her that she didn’t want to be with anyone, even someone as close as her own twin sister.
He glanced through the sitting room of his suite to the closed bedroom door and then looked at Samantha.
‘You could always stay here,’ he offered.
‘Here...in your room.’ Samantha frowned. ‘But...’
‘It isn’t a room, it’s a suite,’ Liam pointed out. ‘You can sleep in the bedroom, I’ll sleep in here on the sofa. It’s only for one night, after all...’
He was right, Samantha could see that. The effects of the alcohol she had consumed were wearing off now but she still felt tired and heavy-headed.
‘Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind. Only, I’ll sleep on the sofa,’ she told him firmly, adding, ‘It makes much more sense, Liam, after all, you are much bigger than me and it is your room.’
Much bigger. How often did she get to say that to a man? Samantha wondered ruefully, but in Liam’s case it was true. He was a good few inches taller than she and he had the physique to match his height.
It was a mystery to her how he managed to keep so fit given the demands of his career. She knew he played tennis and that he enjoyed walking. Whenever he could he back-packed into the mountains.
‘You should try it sometime,’ he had teased her once when she had shuddered over the lack of civilised amenities his vacations involved.
‘What, without a proper bed or a shower...or anything.’ She had grimaced fastidiously. ‘No thanks.’
‘What do you mean, no showers,’ Liam had objected with a wicked glint in his eyes. ‘Nature provides some of the best ones there are. Believe me there is nothing but nothing to compare with standing under a cool mountain waterfall and then swimming in a lake so clear that you can see the bottom...’
‘Yeah, and having to share it with coyotes and bears and heaven knows what else, as well,’ Samantha had objected. ‘Like I just said, no thanks.’
‘You don’t know what you’re missing,’ Liam had told her softly. ‘There’s nothing like the cool clean feel of mountain water over naked skin...nothing like cooking out in the open air.’
‘Skinny-dipping and barbecues might be your scene but they most definitely are not mine,’ Samantha had informed him censoriously.
Liam had still been laughing as she walked away from him, head held high.
She had been much younger then, of course.
Her head was really beginning to ache. Wearily she stifled a jaw-stretching yawn and then a second one.
‘Come on. You’re exhausted,’ Liam told her. ‘I guess there’ll be some spare bedding in one of the closets, I’ll go find it whilst you use the bathroom....’
CHAPTER EIGHT
SAMANTHA WOKE UP and gave a small grunt of pain. The sofa, pretty though it was, had never been designed to be used as a bed and certainly not by a full functioning woman of six foot plus. She winced as she sat up and her contorted muscles howled their protest.
She looked at her watch. She had been asleep for less than two hours.
Now that the alcohol had cleared from her head she was depressingly aware of the failure of her mission.
What were her chances, she wondered, of persuading Saul Crighton to give her a job with Aarlston-Becker thus saving her from the humiliation of having to return home and face Cliff?
She closed her eyes. They felt dry and gritty and her lips, when she touched them with her tongue tip, felt sensitive and faintly swollen—a legacy from Liam’s kiss?
That had been such a dangerous thing for her to allow to happen. Now, with her head clear of the effects of the wine and champagne she had drunk she could see just how her behaviour must have looked to Liam. He would have been less than human if he hadn’t... If he hadn’t what? Taken her to bed? Certainly nothing she had done or said would have given him the impression that she wasn’t willing—anything but!
Go to bed with Liam... What a thought... He was the last person... Abruptly Samantha tensed.
Go to bed with Liam... Seduce Liam into giving her a child... Liam, as she already knew, was a very highly sexed man—look at the number of girls he had dated—and anyway, anyone could see just by looking at him how sexy he was. With Liam there would be no need to coax or coerce him into responding; no need to be delicately guarded or femininely passive. Go to bed with Liam. It was impossible. Conceive Liam’s child... No, she couldn’t, it was totally out of the question, just a mad thought conjured up by her despair and the loneliness of the night.
What she was thinking, contemplating, was total and absolute madness. Was it? Wasn’t she, in seducing Liam into impregnating her, merely following the deepest instinct of her sex? There could be no doubt that genetically Liam was an A1 choice. He was highly intelligent, physically strong, with the kind of skills that any child would rejoice in inheriting.
Maybe so, her sterner and more cautious inner self argued, but he was not a man who could be a father to her child in all the ways that were so important to her.
Did such a man exist? her other more emotional self protested. She had thought she had found the perfect husband in James and look how wrong she had been.
But, to have a child outside marriage and by Liam...her parents...her family... Bobbie would... Never mind her own strong feelings about shared parenthood.
Did any of them need to know? She could always pretend that the baby, her baby, was the result of a coolly taken clinical decision and an equally coldly clinical non-sexual act—an act which she had already vigorously denied to Bobbie that she could ever contemplate. And then there was Liam himself. But she wouldn’t be the first woman to choose to be a single mother.
Liam, with his political ambitions to consider, would probably be only too happy when faced with a fait accompli and her pregnancy confirmed to keep his own role in her baby’s conception a secret, a small inner voice tempted her dangerously.
No, what she was thinking was totally inconceivable. Tears filled her eyes. She so much wanted to be a mother. But, if she was going to pretend to the world that that was how her child had been conceived then why not do so, why take the risk of being rejected yet again, of having Liam turn away from her as James had done?
Why indeed, but in having Liam father her child she would have the security of knowing just what her baby’s genetic inheritance was. She owed it to her child, too, and as for Liam rejecting her, well, there was only one way she was going to discover whether or not he would.
In place of the night wear she did not have, she had wrapped herself in one of the hotel’s complimentary towelling robes after having undressed and showered and now, as she pushed aside the covers on her makeshift bed and stood up, its soft folds settled warmly around her body.
He wanted her, Liam had told her earlier, and even through the fog of alcohol her brain had retained those words, that admission, and when it came to wanting...
As she walked unsteadily towards the bedroom door Samantha felt her pulse start to rise and her breathing become fast and uneven. Perhaps those teenager longings and desires she had thought so transient had had far deeper roots than she had imagined and were not quite dead, after all.
Very gently she opened the bedroom do
or and walked into the room. Now that her eyes had accustomed themselves to the darkness she could easily see Liam’s sleeping form on the bed. A quick hot tug of excitement pulled at her heart, accompanied by a sharp sense of the awesomeness of what she was contemplating, but there was no hesitation or reluctance in the way she moved swiftly and softly towards the bed, waiting until she was close enough to lean over him and whisper his name against his lips before she said anything.
At her husky slightly tremulous ‘Liam,’ Liam woke up instantly, his body tensing, his eyes probing the darkness.
Samantha was leaning over him, her face, her mouth, so close to his that if he breathed a little deeply her lips would be touching his. He had no idea what she wanted but he knew, all too well, what he did. His body was making its needs all too urgently clear.
He lifted his arm to switch on the bedside lamp but Samantha stopped him, clasping his forearm and digging her nails a little into his skin in her urgency.
Liam closed his eyes. God, did she have the slightest idea what she was doing to him? He could smell the warm scent of her skin and her robe was so loosely knotted that he could see the full soft swell of her breasts.
The temptation to reach out and push the cloth aside to fully reveal her body, to slide his palm against the heavy fullness of her naked breast and tease the dark burgeoning flesh of her nipple into an aching peak so that she begged for him to take it in his mouth, was so strong that he had to grit his teeth to prevent himself from telling her rawly and explicitly what he wanted to do to her, how he wanted to make her feel...react...need and want him the way he did her. Under the bedclothes his own body was reacting to his thoughts as urgently as though he had actually put them into action.
Swallowing hard, he demanded shortly, ‘Sam, what is it...what do you want...?’
He had fed her the perfect line, Samantha recognised. All she needed now was the courage to take it...use it...
Beneath her fingertips the silky hair-covered flesh of his forearm felt so secure and steady. She guessed that, if necessary, it...he...could take the whole of her weight and support it...support her, without flinching and certainly without letting her fall...in any way...
The idea of Liam representing any form of security was a novel one and it made her eyes open a little wider in bemused recognition that she was standing on the brink of an unexpected discovery, but there wasn’t time to explore such thoughts right now. Right now...
She took a deep breath. Liam was still waiting for her answer. Using her free hand to unfasten the loose tie of her robe, Samantha deliberately slid it free of her shoulders, releasing his arm and leaning ever further towards him as she told him softly, murmuring the words in his ear, ‘What I want, Liam, is you...’ Then taking her courage in both hands, before he could say or do anything, she turned her head and placed her mouth very delicately and deliberately over his.
For a second the shock of what she was doing held Liam rigid and completely unable to move, but then, almost automatically, he reached out to grasp her shoulders so that he could push her gently away, the strong core of responsibility that was so much a part of his personality overriding the predatory male instincts of his aroused body.
Samantha tensed as she felt his lack of reaction but she was not about to give up now, not without a fight. Reaching out she clasped his face with her hands and proceeded to deepen the intimacy of her kiss, probing the hard shuttered line of his mouth with her tongue, willing him with every ounce of her willpower to respond to her and then, just when she thought she was going to have to give up and admit defeat, she felt the shudder of reaction that ripped through his body, the dry hard heat of the closed line of his lips suddenly giving way as he turned from rejection to responsiveness. Her own body shuddered in relief and then, even more intensely, in almost shocking pleasure as his hands started to knead the tense muscles of her shoulders, his fingers spreading over her skin, massaging and stroking her flesh.
It must be her relief that was making her so responsive to him, Samantha decided dizzily as she twined her arms around him, eagerly opening her mouth to the probing force of his tongue.
He was the one controlling their intimacy now, his hands sliding down her arms and then gripping hold of her as he rolled back onto the bed, lifting the upper half of her body over him as he did so.
Delicious shivers of sensation were washing all through her as his actions brought the full weight of her breasts in tantalising close contact with his bare chest. The soft friction of the silky dark hair that covered it moving against her nipples as he kept on kissing her with ever-increasing intimacy made Samantha long to move closer to him, to press her body against him so that the tormentingly delicate friction became a soothing closeness that would take away the ache flooding through her body. She was lying half on and half off the bed, supported by Liam’s hands and totally vulnerable to whatever he chose to do to her, she recognised with a small thrill of sensation which she realised in bemusement was actually excitement.
She was the one supposed to be seducing Liam, she reminded herself severely, and not for the physical satisfaction of having sex with him, but for a more important and serious purpose, a purpose which did not necessitate the kind of long drawn-out sensual foreplay she sensed that Liam was now about to indulge in.
But, for some reason, instead of short-cutting events, Samantha discovered that she was actually encouraging them.
If Liam wanted to tantalise her by only just allowing the aroused peaks of her nipples to brush against the wonderful sensual stimulation of his chest then she guessed she might as well do a little tantalising of her own, perhaps by running her fingertips and then her nails along one smooth hard sloping shoulder, just oh, so lightly raking the skin there.
As she felt him shudder in response, Samantha smiled secretly to herself. His lower body and hers might be separated by the thickness of the bedclothes but her woman’s instinct told her that he wanted her.
A glorious sense of triumph and happiness filled her, a sense of strength and power, of freedom to be completely and totally herself. Joy bubbled up inside her and along with it a soft gurgle of laughter.
‘What’s funny?’ Liam demanded as he heard it.
‘Nothing,’ Samantha whispered back honestly against his mouth, lifting her head to rub her face tenderly against his as she told him, ‘I just feel so good...so...so happy...’
As he heard what she was saying Liam veiled his eyes with his eyelashes. Had she any idea just what she was saying to him? If he had any sense he would stop this right now before it got any further.
‘Liam...’
In his hold, Samantha gave a small wriggle of impatience and then determinedly caressed his throat with her mouth, lingering deliberately over the hard swell of his Adam’s apple until she felt him swallow in reaction to the sensuality of what she was doing. The words of soft denial he had been about to utter were lost, drowned out by the groan of longing that thundered in his chest. His hands slid from her arms to her breasts as he caressed them as he had imagined doing not just once, but a thousand, no a hundred thousand times in the years since she had reached maturity.
Lifting her further above him, he caressed the smooth warm swell of her breast with his mouth and then opened it over the dark ripe temptation of her nipple.
Samantha moaned sharply out loud as her body reacted to the swift suckling movement of his mouth, with a surge of pleasure so intense that it shocked her.
Her nails raked the warm flesh of Liam’s arms, her hips writhing frustratedly against the thick muffling barrier of the bedclothes.
‘Liam, Liam...’ She tugged impatiently on his hair, shuddering as explosions of pleasure racked her body when he continued to caress her breasts. It was like being lapped by an inner tide of feeling, a tide which grew increasingly strong with every surge it made, a tide whose swift undercurrents she could a
lready feel tugging deeper and deeper at the most private core of her being.
‘Liam.’
Frantically she pulled at the bedclothes, desperate to wrench them away so that she could get closer to his body, to the wonderful maleness of him, to the completion, the satisfaction, the oneness her body craved and which she knew instinctively only his could soothe and satisfy.
Logical reasoning had long since been abandoned. She was operating on instinct alone now, driven and possessed by it and by her need—a need that only Liam could satisfy.
‘I want you... I want you... I want you so much, Liam,’ she told him, frantically whispering the words against his hair, his throat, just any part of him she could reach out for and touch. When she felt him rolling her over onto the bed beside him she reached towards the bedclothes, fiercely pushing them out of the way, her fingers meshing with Liam’s as he did the same thing. Her eyes attuned fully now to the darkness quickly picked out the shape of his naked body as he pushed aside the duvet. Sharply she drew in her breath.
Watching her, Liam reflected that a man would have to be a saint not to react to the look he could see gleaming in her eyes as she studied him, so totally absorbed in visually drinking in every detail of him that she reminded him of a child unwrapping her Christmas presents.
Without the slightest hint of self-consciousness she reached out and traced the length of his arm, her eyes never leaving his body as she explored the flatness of his belly, but then as her fingertips touched the thick darkness of his male body hair she suddenly tensed and raised her gaze to his.
‘What is it?’ he asked her gruffly.
Samantha looked at him, her face slightly flushed.
‘You’re just so beautiful,’ she told him softly. She could see the way his whole body shook with laughter.
‘I’m beautiful...!’
Still laughing he reached up and took hold of her.
‘I’ll show you what’s beautiful,’ he told her huskily. ‘This is beautiful.’ He kissed one nipple slowly and tenderly. ‘And this...’