by Penny Jordan
She couldn’t have objected even if she had wanted to. They were outside the club almost before she could draw breath. Someone had brought the car round for them, and Jaime bundled her into it with something less than his usual finesse.
Just as he was about to follow her, a small group of people emerged from the club, and Shelley tensed as she recognised Sofia among them.
‘Leaving so soon?’ The dark eyes swept malevolently over Shelley’s pale face as Sofia moved closer to Jaime. ‘We’re going on to Sancia’s. Why don’t you come with us?’
‘Not tonight, thanks, Sofia.’
Jaime stepped away and Sofia released his arm. Aching with tension Shelley expelled a pent-up breath. Just listening to the other woman talking to Jaime had unleashed an intense wave of jealousy inside her.
They were back at the house far too soon. At the foot of the stairs Shelley paused, confused by her own conflicting emotions. Half of her wanted Jaime to insist that she stayed in Portugal and married him straight away; the other half urged her to act with caution.
Just because they had bumped into one of his ex-woman friends tonight there was no reason for her fears to intensify like this. Jaime hadn’t made any attempt to conceal the truth from her, and he had certainly not seemed to encourage Sofia, for all the other woman’s obvious desire for him. Which of them had instituted the affair? How long had it lasted?
She longed for Jaime to take her in his arms and kiss away all her uncertainties, just as she longed to be able to ask all the questions tormenting her—but she couldn’t, and as she hesitated and turned to look at him he swore thickly.
‘I’m coming up to your room with you, Shelley.’
‘Your mother!’
Her protest was as instinctive and as age-old as time, even as her pulse leapt madly with excitement, but he pushed it aside, muttering rawly, ‘It’s late. She’ll be in bed. Don’t push me away tonight, querida; dancing with you, holding you…’
He looked at her and Shelley knew that she wanted to be in his arms as much as if not more than, he wanted her to be there. It was the wrong way to silence her fears, but she knew of no other.
They walked to her room in mutual silence. Jaime waited until they were safely inside to hold out his arms and say softly, ‘Come here.’
The soft command made her jump.
‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ he groaned as she walked slowly towards him, but nevertheless his arms closed round her, his mouth finding the soft curve of her throat and tasting the sweetness of her skin.
Shelley felt her flesh melt from her bones. This was what she wanted…what she had wanted all evening.
‘I should stop this now and go straight to my room.’ The words were muffled against her skin as his mouth moved over it, his hand pushing aside her hair so that he could explore the tender area behind her ear.
‘No…’
His mouth left her skin, his hands cupping her face so that he could look into her eyes.
‘No what?’ he asked softly. ‘No, you don’t want me to touch you?’
She paused for the space of a heartbeat and then said huskily, ‘No, I don’t want you to leave me.’
The thud of his heart seemed frantically fast, the pressure of his arms as they closed around her driving the breath out of her lungs.
‘Only this afternoon I promised myself I wouldn’t do this.’ The words were scarcely audible as he muttered them against her skin, his lips feathering light kisses along her jaw, her chin and then the corners of her mouth. She could hear him murmuring soft, indecipherable words between the kisses, but her ears couldn’t comprehend what it was he was saying. All she knew was that if he did not kiss her—really kiss her properly within the next few seconds—she was going to die.
In the end she was the one who wound her fingers into his hair, tugging his head down so that she could reach his mouth. It tasted hot, the flavour of his after-dinner brandy lingering on his lips. She touched them with her tongue, savouring the taste, and then touched them again.
‘You taste of bran—’
The words were cut off by the heated pressure of his mouth on hers, the frenzied thrust of his tongue making her whimper with delight.
Her hands clung to his shoulders, her nails digging into his skin, her senses reeling. He had never kissed her like this before, with this desperation, this need. Earlier he had seemed so controlled. Until Sofia appeared at their table, in fact. She pushed the thought away, not wanting to heed it. Now he was touching her, kissing her like a man driven beyond self-control.
She felt his hands on her body, moving urgently against her breasts. She could feel their heat through the thin silk, sense his growing passion. Instinctively she arched against him, eagerly accommodating her body to the stroking pressure of his hands. She wanted him to touch her. She ached for it.
His mouth was hot and urgent on hers; his hands slid to her waist as he braced her against him, moving so that he could cradle her between his thighs.
The intimacy of their embrace seared her, her body moving instinctively against his as she felt his arousal, her fingers tugging impatiently at the buttons of his shirt as she felt her senses whirl frantically out of control. His hands moved over her back. He seemed to be trembling slightly. They moved downwards, cupping her bottom, pressing her against him.
Shelley heard him groan as he tore his mouth from hers and buried it in her neck. Through his shirt she could feel the heat of his body. ‘I shouldn’t be doing this.’
She heard the raw anger in his voice and felt him straining every muscle to get himself under control, but she didn’t want him to be in control. She wanted him like this, aroused and hard against her, touching her with a fierce need that brought to life within her something achingly primitive. She wanted to tear off his clothes and her own. To touch his skin, to feel him move within her.
‘Shelley, you’ve got to help me. Before God, if I don’t stop this right now, I’m going to break every vow I’ve ever made myself. What is it about you that makes me ache for you like this; that makes me ready to kill to have you in my bed? If I made love to you tonight you’ll have to marry me. I could quite easily make you pregnant…’ He looked down into her passion-flooded face and muttered hoarsely, ‘Do you have any idea what a temptation that is to me…to make sure of you here…tonight…?’
His words, his almost uncontrolled urgency, instead of frightening her seemed to only increase her own arousal. Common sense warned her that it was time for him to leave, that what he said was quite true and that if he stayed now—if she made love to him now—she would be committed.
‘If I stay with you now, I’ll never let you go…you know that, don’t you?’ he muttered when she remained silent. ‘Dear God, Shelley, say something,’ he pleaded harshly. ‘Tell me to stop. Help me!’
She felt him shudder as she reached up and cupped his face in her hands.
‘I don’t want you to stop,’ she told him unsteadily. ‘I want you to stay…I want you to make love to me, Jaime.’
Once the words were said it was too late to call them back; she could only marvel at her own outspokenness. For a moment neither of them moved, both of them seemingly held in the same gripping spell, and then Jaime stirred, taking both her hands in his and placing one of them against his heart.
It pounded erratically against her skin.
‘You’ve got precisely ten seconds to change your mind,’ he told her huskily, but as she watched the downward descent of his mouth towards her own, she knew that her mind was irrevocably made up.
CHAPTER SEVEN
JAIME kissed her slowly, tasting her mouth, and then more urgently as he felt her eager response. Her dress had a zip fastener and she shuddered as she felt him slide it down. The cool air against her skin raised small goosebumps, and as his hands slid over the bare skin of her back Shelley felt her nipples hardening in anticipation of his touch.
He picked her up and carried her over to the bed, kissing her gently on the f
orehead as he slowly slid away her dress. Her body felt tense with anticipation, her skin aching for his touch.
She lay on her back and watched silently as he shed his clothes, her eyes following the lines of his body. He was leanly made, smoothly muscled, and very, very male. It struck her almost as being ridiculous that he was actually the first totally nude man she had ever seen, and certainly the first one with whom she had shared such an intimate occasion.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and asked her sombrely. ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’
‘Why? Have you changed your mind? Don’t you want me now?’
She saw his body shake with tension-releasing laughter as he leaned towards her and mocked, ‘Does it look like it?’
She was glad that he couldn’t see her blush as he took her in his arms.
When he touched her she wasn’t capable of thinking of anything but how much she wanted him, and she suspected that he knew it. She had no defences at all against her own physical responsiveness to him and yet she felt, as his hands and mouth caressed her skin, that for all his claims about his inability to control his desire for her, somehow he was keeping a very contained hold over himself. For some reason it was an awareness that disturbed her, but she wasn’t given time to dwell on it.
She shivered as she felt Jaime remove her bra, his hands cupping her breasts, enticing her nipples to respond to the erotic stimulation of his touch.
As he bent over her, Jaime’s head was in the shadows, but the soft light coming in through the uncurtained windows revealed her body to him in exquisite detail. Shelley felt his shudder as his hands shaped her breasts, her skin tones fragilely pale in comparison to the lean darkness of his hands. As she looked down at her own body, she was feverishly aware of his hands; not only in the way they cupped and moulded her breasts, but also as a separate entity, a part of him. Although his skin felt slightly rough from his work on the vines, his nails were clean and well-shaped. They were good hands; clever, knowing hands that seemed to sense when to be gentle and when not. She drew in her breath on a shiver of pleasure as his thumbs caressed her nipples, and heard him take a harsh lungful of air.
He moved, his body straddling hers, and the light barred him with silver stripes. She reached out impulsively to touch his skin, shocked to find it so hot beneath her fingertips. His body seemed to generate a kind of eletricity that kept her fingers glued to his flesh.
Slowly she traced the shape of his collar-bone, aware that he was watching her, aware of the tension growing and tightening around them. His hands still cupped her breasts but his caressing movements had stilled as though he waited for something, for some sign. She touched the hollow of his throat, and felt its rigid tension as he tried to swallow.
‘Shelley.’
His head blotted out the light, his mouth moving on hers with blatant hunger, the rhythmically erotic movement of his tongue turning her hollow with delight.
Her voice silenced by the pressure of his mouth, she could only arch feverishly against him. Her breasts were pressed against his chest, her nails digging into his back. She felt him tense, his mouth leaving hers as he drew in a tortured gasp of air, and then his hands were holding her flat against the mattress while his mouth moved feverishly against her skin, devouring the soft silkiness of her throat and then moving downwards.
Her body felt heavy and yet light at the same time, governed by a slow pulsing tide.
‘Jaime…’
As though she had made some demand of him, he replied thickly, ‘Yes! Yes!’
His hands moved back to her breasts, cupping and lifting them to his mouth.
Sensation upon sensation quivered ecstatically through her, her body arching in feverish delight when his mouth closed hotly over her nipple. An abandonment she hadn’t known herself capable of experiencing made her cry out sharply, her hands clutching at his shoulders. When he released her nipple Jaime buried his head against her breasts, breathing harshly, his skin damp with sweat.
‘Shelley, Shelley…’ He muttered her name over and over again, his mouth hot where he pressed it against her skin. She reached out to touch him, shivering with pleasure as she felt the heat of his skin beneath her hands.
He groaned, moving urgently against her, his voice raw with need as he protested, ‘You’re making it very hard for me to remember that this is your first time. I don’t want to hurt you.’
‘The only way you can hurt me is by not making love to me.’ She could hardly believe she was listening to herself, but her old habit of caution was something she seemed to have shed with her clothes. ‘I ache, Jaime,’ she told him huskily. ‘I ache for you here, inside me.’ She touched her body lightly and heard him draw a sharp breath, and then his hands were touching her, stroking her skin, moving over her with am impatient urgency that stirred her blood. He moved and for a moment she felt the full weight of him lying against her.
Shelley felt she couldn’t get close enough to him, couldn’t absorb enough of him into her. She arched frantically against him, sobbing with frustration as she felt him move away.
Dimly she heard him say her name and felt the soothing caress of his hands.
‘Slowly…slowly…’
Shelley didn’t want to go slowly, she was frantic for the feel of him against her, within her, and she reached out for him, caressing his body, running her hands down his ribs, feeling the taut contraction of his belly as her fingertips grazed his skin.
‘Shelley, Shelley, you’re making it so hard for me to remember…’ His voice was suspended as she touched his thigh and felt the instant tensing of his muscles. Soft hair covered his skin, and she stroked her fingertips through it, lost in a sensual voyage of discovery, forgetting her own needs in the pleasure of feeling how alive and warm he was beneath her touch.
When his hand suddenly clamped over hers, exerting a pressure that almost made her wince she looked up at him.
His eyes were almost black with desire, his bones showing sharply against his skin.
He was breathing jerkily, spacing out his words as though to speak each one was an effort, his voice strained and unfamiliar.
‘If you want to touch me then do it, but for God’s sake stop teasing me like that. Just how much control do you think I have?’
She could feel his heart racing, and her own picked up its hurried beat as he covered her hand and moved it against his body, showing her how he wanted her to caress him.
Beneath her touch she felt him shudder and heard him release his breath on a harsh moan, and then he was pushing her away from him, his hands and mouth absorbing the feel and taste of her skin. His hand slid between her legs, making her shiver in shock and excitement.
Tiny sounds of pleasure she wasn’t even aware of making interrupted the harsh sound of his breathing. She wanted him so much. She tried to tell him with her body and then with her hands, until at last the words couldn’t be silenced any longer, and they burst from her in a tortured plea for fulfilment.
‘Jaime, I want you. I want you inside me. Now…now!’
His body stilled, his hands framing her hot face, soothing its frantic movements. His mouth touched hers, and a quiver of fire ran through her, arching her up against him. She could feel him hard and aroused against her, but against her wasn’t enough.
The shocking intrusion of the Condessa’s voice as she called Jamie’s name in appalled tones froze Shelley to the bed. It was Jaime who carefully covered her with the sheet, blocking her from his mother’s view, before wrapping himself in the quilt and turning to face her.
Of the three of them he seemed the least embarrassed and the most in control. The Condessa looked white, and Shelley knew that her own skin was burning with embarrassed colour.
‘I though I heard you cry out, Shelley. I thought something must be wrong… I…’ The Condessa sank down into a chair. ‘Jaime, how could you do this? Shelley is living beneath my roof; under my protection. If any of the staff…’
‘Shelley has been t
hreatening to leave me and go home to England.’
‘Leave?’ The Condessa was openly appalled. ‘But no…you can’t do that, not now. You’ll have to be married just as soon as it can be arranged. Jaime, if your aunt Maria should get to hear about this! You know how much she always disapproved of me.’
Shelley wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry; the situation seemed ridiculously farcical. The days were surely gone when a man had to marry a woman simply because he was discovered in her bedroom, but she had forgotten what Jaime had told her about the Portuguese way of life, and now she found herself listening in shocked disbelief as the Condessa made it plain that she would brook no delay now in their wedding plans.
Without a word being said, Shelley received the impression that somehow Jaime was both amused and pleased by the shocking turn of events, and although he was careful to shield Shelley from any of the blame as he soothed his mother’s ruffled feathers, he made no attempt to dissuade her from her flurried plans for an early wedding.
Only when Jamie had assured her that he would spend no more than five minutes alone with her did she consent to leave Shelley’s bedroom.
Once the door had closed behind her Shelley faced him with a white face. ‘I can’t marry you at the end of the week, Jaime; it’s impossible. You know that I planned to go back to England…’
‘I’m afraid that’s not possible now, querida.’ He spoke softly, but there was an underlying hint of steely determination in his voice. ‘You can see how upset Mama was. She has always stood somewhat in awe of my father’s relations, and she is terrified that one of them will find out. If you were to return to England now I could be accused of seducing and then deserting you. In Portugal a man’s honour is still very important to him. I know you wanted time, but you must see now that it is something I can no longer give you. Surely tonight has shown you the pleasure there will be in our marriage? How much we need one another?’
Why was she arguing? She knew she loved him, but then it wasn’t her own feelings she doubted, it was his.