‘Yes, I get the picture!’ he drawled, laughing softly and nuzzling her throat with his mouth. ‘And next time I do it—if I’m ever stupid enough to do it again, which I doubt—please feel free to hurl the nearest saucepan at me and tell me to do the cooking myself.’ He lifted his head, eyes wry. ‘As I did when you walked out on me.’
She bit her lip, eyes loving. ‘Oh, did you, darling? Did you really? I can’t imagine you cooking in the kitchen! You were so utterly opposed to it.’
‘I had to learn that men and women aren’t defined by stereotypes.’
Her lashes flickered and she said slowly, ‘My God, yes… that’s exactly what I had to learn.’
He waited, arms holding her, eyes loving and patient.
‘You see, darling,’ she began unsteadily, ‘when I walked out on the man I loved—’
He kissed her nose tenderly.
‘I felt compelled to behave in a faintly unfeminine way.’ Her eyes flickered up, seeking and finding under- standing. ‘It was as though I completely rejected the woman in me. I was a career girl now, I said to myself, and the only thing I lived for was ambition. Mountains to climb, awards to win, people to impress—that kind of thing. There was no room in my life, or my heart, for love. I certainly never even thought about love- making. The very idea would have been ludicrous. My body was for the screen, for the gym, to be honed to perfection with four-hour daily workouts, endless dieting, and perfectly fitted glamorous clothes. It was to be ad- mired, looked at, worshipped—but not touched.’
‘It…’ he said softly, arching black brows.
She stared at him for a long moment in astonishment. ‘Oh,’ she said huskily, shocked, ‘yes, I see what you mean.’
‘You completely lost touch with yourself as a human female,’ he murmured deeply, and there was pain in his eyes which told her he understood. ‘Forgot that you were not made for career alone, but for love, lovemaking, child-bearing—’
‘Oh, darling!’ she whispered unsteadily, clutching his broad shoulders. ‘I really did reject myself as a woman when I left you, didn’t I? How obvious it seems to me now! More obvious than it ever has over the last three years of work, work, work. All that ambition, and look what it did to me! I lived a completely one-sided life, without a thought for my feelings or the needs of my body! I just drove myself endlessly in the pursuit of—’
‘Fame,’ he said gently. ‘The same thing as me. And don’t ever hate yourself for it, darling, or feel angry about it. Don’t forget it’s one of the reasons we are able to love and understand each other. That’s worth more than any regret. The only problem you encountered was that you weren’t experienced enough in life to make sure everything balanced.’
She frowned, studying him thoughtfully, knowing there was something important in what he said.
‘I learned a long time ago,’ he told her softly, ‘that you have to balance your life. You need work, sure, es- pecially if you’re very ambitious. And you need achieve- ments. Milestones, if you like, in a long road leading to whatever your final goal happens to be. That way, you know you’re getting there. You get the thrill of success, without the final reward, and it keeps you going.’ He laughed. ‘Like a chocolate bar when you need instant energy!’
Christie laughed too, relaxing in his arms, blue eyes shining. ‘Oh, those chocolate bars! Darling, you can’t imagine how thrilled I was with Oscar! I just felt like the cat’s miaow!’
‘You are the cat’s miaow!’ he drawled softly, kissing her full pink lips. ‘And I want to see you win best actress with Tigresse.’
Her eyes widened. She hesitated, tensing in his arms, because the very mention of that film was now enough to send her into paranoid panic, every memory con- nected to it bringing back feelings of fear, distrust and loneliness.
‘Hey,’ he said softly, reading her expression, ‘you know that I love you, don’t you? And that my love goes right down to the bone.’
She paused, then nodded, still afraid of the mention of that wretched film.
‘And you know,’ he said, kissing her, ‘that I’m very proud of you. Of your work, I mean. The quality of your acting, and the way you’ve carved this very big niche for yourself, out here in my world, the film industry: Hollywood.’
Flushing with pride, she nodded, a smile beginning to appear on her full lips as she felt the trust coming back, bringing love with it like a sunlit tidal wave.
‘And you also know,’ he smiled lazily, ‘that you’re the perfect choice for the role of Lelie. Now—no bad memories, darling, and no false modesty. Come on, now. Be the woman I love, and am proud of, and want to see succeed on her own terms, her own merit, her own talent…’
Christie lifted her head, a cool smile on her full mouth and a very amused, ambitious, loving, self-assured look in her tiger-lily eyes.
‘Yes…’ he said thickly, still smiling, but with a trace of sexual excitement at this display of her personality at its most powerful. ‘Oh, yes, Christie McCall. You will play Lelie the Tigresse in my film, or I can promise you there’ll be hell to pay!’
She gave a slow laugh of incredulous pleasure, which turned to deep emotion, tears stinging her eyes as she buried her face in his strong neck with waves of love flooding through her heart.
‘Oh, Jared!’ she whispered huskily. ‘I can’t believe you’re treating me as an equal! I respected you so much, still do, always will, and I was so afraid you despised me, looked down on me…’
‘But you know I don’t, you must know,’ he said thickly against her hair. ‘And you know I never really did.’ He lifted his dark head, looking her in the eye. ‘You do know that, don’t you?’
‘I know it now,’ she confessed huskily, and he shook his head.
‘No, you knew it then, Chris. Or I would not have been the man to take your virginity.’
She studied him in breathless wonder, suddenly seeing his thought process and understanding it.
‘You were twenty-five years old when I met you,’ Jared said softly. ‘Beautiful, sexy, charming, intelligent and loving… yet no man had ever got further than a kiss with you. Why? No, don’t tell me, darling. I already know—or at least, I think I do. I’ve had a chance to think deep and hard about it over the last three years, and the answer I’ve finally come up with is that you may look like a sex bomb, but the truth is, you’re a love bomb.’
She laughed softly, lowering her lashes.
‘A lot of women are interested in nothing but men,’ he said deeply. ‘They spend their lives thinking about boyfriends, taking boyfriends, sleeping with boyfriends, talking about boyfriends—nothing but men, men, men, their whole lives through.’ His dark eyes studied her with deep love and understanding. ‘But you, Chris… you’re only interested in two things. Your dreams—and your integrity.’
‘Darling, I fell in love with you when I first saw you.’ she whispered. ‘I was in that newsagent’s, dreaming— just as I always did. Dream, dream, dream… of all my successes, my glories, the films I’d make and the awards I’d win. Then I looked up with an I’ve-just-won-ten- Oscars smile, and saw you staring at me. I felt my heart miss a beat, and thought, Good heavens! A man!’
He laughed like mad, his voice husky.
‘Then you followed me out of the shop, and I thought, Oooh! This is the first time I’ve ever wanted a man to try and chat me up!’
He laughed again, kissing her neck.
Christie lifted her face, smiling. ‘You did chat me up. You chatted me up very thoroughly. And I thought, Hello! He really is gorgeous! I wonder who he is and what he does—and then, I wonder what it’s like to be kissed by him…’
His smile faded slowly, heart beginning to thud like a drum as he stared down into her face and sexual desire suddenly sprang at them with a fierce hiss of steam and heat and intolerable necessity.
‘Oh, God, Chris…’ he said thickly as she felt that powerful manhood spring into hard excitement against her belly.
She was breathing thickly, her
heart banging violently as she ran her hands over his powerful chest, her mind filling suddenly with vivid, searing images of their nudity.
‘I forgot what it was to be a woman,’ she said huskily. ‘I forgot until I saw you again, here, at Casa Camarra. I’ve been so lost, Jared. So hopelessly lost in the fog of ambition, and I drove myself too hard, too fast, never letting myself stop for a minute in case I found I was a failure as a woman—’
‘You were never a failure as a woman,’ he said thickly. ‘You were just young and needed time to come to terms with who you really were, what you really wanted out of life. Just as I needed that time, too. We met too soon, Chris, that’s all it comes down to. We just met too soon for either of us to cope with love, let alone a marriage of equals.’
‘Yes, I can see that that’s true.’ She was trembling against him, her body powerfully aware of his, and of the sexual need vibrating between them as they struggled to talk, struggled not to take any notice of the throbbing of the blood, the desire in the mind, and the fire in the loins, the necessity, the hot, driving necessity to couple and mate. ‘And maybe that’s a part of my own mis- takes—the mistakes I made with you. I was so deter- mined to be successful that I sometimes felt I had to be a man to do it. To be like a man. To drive and drive, push and push, be determined and fierce and utterly uncompromising.’
‘But nature didn’t build your body like a man’s,’ he said thickly, hands sliding over her rear, fondling her, making the desire and necessity burn her until she felt her clothes almost sizzle. ‘So after your passionate and uninhibited affair with me you couldn’t cope unless you just shut the whole desire channel down.’
‘No, I couldn’t,’ she said, her hands firm and hungry and filled with desire as they moved over his shoulders, her eyes glazed as she stared at his body. ‘And I could only channel my drive into my career, and pretend to be capable of marrying without love, or desire, or physical needs. Simon and I loved each other as friends, allies— but not man and woman.’
‘And how do you love me?’ he asked fiercely.
‘As a woman,’ she said in an ardent, shaking voice as her arms linked around his neck and guided his head down. ‘Body, mind, heart and soul!’
His dark head swooped down.
Their mouths met fiercely.
They were both ready…
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THEY clung fiercely, their mouths almost on fire, bodies pressing together, and she didn’t want to think any more or talk any more, she just wanted his flesh moving against hers, making her a woman again for the first time in years, making her moan in pleasure at his ultimate male possession, so exquisitely barbaric as the male imposed himself on the female, and her mouth was open beneath his in symbolic acceptance of this ultimate truth of nature, her hands sliding through his thick black hair as she accepted him, accepted herself, accepted sexual destiny and everything it brought with it: love, peace, serenity, children, a home, a family…they were all quite apart from career, she saw that now, and they did not have to impose on ambition. She could be who she was in every area of her life so long as Jared loved her, stayed with her, made love to her…
He lifted her in his arms, carried her to the bed, his mouth inviting wanton behaviour as he licked her lips with his tongue, provoking the uninhibited in her, the animal.
‘Oh, Jared,’ she whispered thickly as he slid her down on to the bed.
He groaned deep in his throat, sliding his body on top of hers, and began to caress her, to undress her slowly with his fingers and his expertise, teasing a wanton re- sponse as he toyed with the straps of her dress, licking her lips, moving his hard male body against hers and giving a cool, sexy sound of excitement when she slowly slid her slender thighs to accommodate him. Now her hands were moving through his hair, and all was natural, animal, provocative—she was joining in the game, playing with him, sliding her hands up and down his back, making him groan harshly as her hands reached his taut buttocks, softly encouraging his body to press hard against hers for a second before her fingers skipped away in feminine dance, back up to his neck, making him shiver and kiss her deeper, tiring of the game, wanting to take control, really take control, show her exactly who was the man and who was the woman…
She moaned long and low as he turned her slightly, tugging down her zip, tugging down the beautiful satin dress.
‘Very sexy…’ he said thickly as her bare breasts bounced free, and she moaned, knowing he was taking control, wanting him to, needing him to as she let him make her helpless by keeping the straps of the dress mo- mentarily at her wrists while his strong hands cupped those full, aching breasts and stroked the fiercely erect nipples.
‘Oh Jared…’ she said incoherently, eyes closing, her body arching, free and willing and hot.
His dark head bent. His hot mouth closed over one nipple, sucking hungrily, sending hot needles of piercing sexual excitement through her body as she moved even closer against him, her hands deliberately helpless at her sides, the freedom she felt from the constraints of stereotypes in reality far outweighing the dangers of sexual stereotypes. She felt his hands moving down- wards, stroking the thick satin material up her thighs, teasing it up, making her moan in anticipation.
He licked at her bare breast, let his fingers slid between her spread thighs, and then he touched the burning, engorged, intolerably hot nub of flesh between them.
‘Ah… ah…!’ She was breathless, twisting beneath him, her eyes closed and the tendons standing out in her neck, succumbing to her true womanhood at last, at the hands of a powerful man, a man who loved and under- stood her, a man who could fight her on every level and a man who could admire her success without being threatened by it.
This man could make her a woman.
She champed at the bit, in this, her final race. She was twisting like molten fire beneath him, yearning to feel those strong, long fingers sliding inside her silky briefs, longing for flesh on flesh, and everything natural.
Slowly, he slid those briefs down, making her moan in wet heat, her heart banging furiously as she waited, waited, felt his fingers stroking her inner thighs, sliding upwards, upwards, upwards…
‘Touch me…’ she whispered in hoarse urgency.
He did. She almost cried out in pleasure, but his hard mouth silenced her before she could draw agonised breath, and he kissed her deeply as she moaned in ec- stasy beneath his expert touch. The long finger stroked that burning nub between her thighs, and she felt her excitement spiralling higher and higher, then the swift slide to move inside her, making her gasp insensibly, her mouth parting as surely as her thighs to receive such pleasure…
When his finger moved back up to stroke her more sensitive flesh, she grew impatient to feel him inside her. Him. All of him—that long-forgotten but fiercely re- membered hard jut of flesh that made him man—and she wanted it so badly she was shaking, her fingers barely able to move the tie from that strong throat, or the buttons from that white shirt.
He shrugged out of his jacket, never lifting his mouth from hers, and she pushed his shirt off, moaning against his mouth in rising excitement. Oh, God, here was his flesh, that tanned, taut flesh across hard muscle, black hairs matting his chest as she stripped him to the waist, then began to lower her hands, slowly, exploringly, all over his powerful torso as he kissed her deeply, stroked her expertly, and prepared her with his love and sexual skill for the moment they needed to share so badly.
‘Darling…’ She could barely speak, her voice clogged with deep, animal breaths of desire. ‘Oh, make love to me… take me… oh, yes, take me, Jared… Jared!’
He moved against her, kissing her, stroking her, licking her lips, one hand between her wet, shaking thighs, the other sliding under her rear to cup her bare buttocks and press her gently, slowly against the fierce hardness be- tween his own thighs.
She almost went mad, kissing him passionately, ready to beg, but enjoying this, strangely, because the ex- citement was so strong, so deep, and so ful
filling after all this time, making her feel the dust falling from her body as it came to life under his body, his hands, until she was pulsing with life, radiant with it, pulsating from head to foot with rich, natural sensuality.
Suddenly, as though he knew she was ready, his right hand went to his trouser button, flicking it open as he continued to kiss and stroke her, then the flare of the zip, and she was moaning low and hoarse with antici- pation as he slowly, skilfully, pushed his clothes down to let that powerful, throbbing manhood free to burn against her inner thigh.
‘Oh, God…!’ she whispered thickly, and her hands sought him without thinking. He filled her hand, a thick, hot symbol of the male power, and she thrilled to feel it in her fingers, pulsing with hot blood, rigid as steel.
He was nude now, and so was she, their clothes now discarded, completely irrelevant, nothing mattering but the fact that they were in love, and love made this natural, good, right…
‘Tell me you want me, baby!’ he said thickly, sliding naked against her, tormenting her with his hard, hair- roughened flesh. ‘Tell me you love me…’
‘Oh, yes, I love you!’ she breathed hotly, kissing him, sliding her tongue over his neck. ‘I really want you…and I want to prove it, let you feel it without words…’ She slid her kiss over his neck, down to his chest, and he began to breathe faster as he realised what she was going to do, began to stiffen, his body thrusting forwards and vibrating in hot, disbelief, a long low moan coming from his throat as her mouth slid down, down, down…
‘Chris!’ He gasped out as she took him in her hot, sensual mouth. ‘Oh, baby…!’ He clutched her head, his body thrown forwards in fierce excitement as she rolled him with her wet tongue, inciting hoarse moans of terrible pleasure. ‘Darling… yes, yes, yes…!’
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