‘I…yes, I suppose I should. If you could arrange it?’
She nodded, but decided not to push it further for the moment. She didn’t want to box Tom into a corner. He was clearly torn between paternal feelings towards Ellie and sheer funk at the idea of having responsibility for a small baby.
Still, she felt hopeful as he touched his daughter’s soft cheek with a finger, before handing her over, and he said goodbye with the words, ‘See you soon.’
Cass saw him later, in fact, but only in passing. She’d gone upstairs to bath Ellie and prepare her for bed, when she glanced out of the nursery window. It looked onto the forecourt where Dray now stood with Tom. They were deep in conversation but Cass was too high up to catch it.
She couldn’t decide whether they were quarrelling or making up until the moment of parting when the two brothers clasped each other in a hard male embrace and she saw the relieved smile on Tom’s face. What Dray felt remained a mystery as his back was to her.
Cass returned to the business of settling Ellie for the night. She had her asleep by eight p.m., then with some reluctance went back downstairs. She didn’t feel much like staging her own reconciliation with Dray but she hadn’t eaten anything since lunch.
As usual the temporary housekeeper had prepared a meal. Sometimes they ate, side by side, in the kitchen. Tonight, a cold buffet had been laid out in the dining room. Cass was glad of the venue, because it was easier to maintain a distance in more formal surroundings.
Dray also seemed in no hurry to mend any fences. Having poured her wine, he sat to his meal at the opposite side of the table and lapsed into brooding silence.
The Cold War had returned. Perhaps it was just as well. She had grown too relaxed when he’d been civilised to her.
Now she was on edge once more, watching the scowl on that handsome face, waiting for it to be redirected from his food to her. For her own part, she found it easier to drink rather than eat.
When he glanced up, it was to observe her empty wine-glass. He leaned across the table to refill it without comment.
Cass drank that second glass, too, aware it was going straight to her head but not really caring. She felt a need to be anaesthetised to the whole situation.
‘Another?’ He held the bottle of wine to the neck of her empty glass.
‘Why not?’ She raised her glass slightly.
‘Why not indeed?’ he echoed on a hard note and, having poured the remainder of the white wine into her glass, got up to open a bottle of red stored in a cabinet. ‘Let’s you and I get drunk, then we can both blame the wine,’ he added as he sat down again and filled up his own glass.
Cass could have ignored the remark, should have ignored it. ‘Blame the wine for what?’
She gave him a stony stare.
He smiled back. However, it was a smile that never reached the eyes.
‘For what’s about to happen.’
Leave it, a voice of reason dictated but Cass was no longer listening to it.
‘And what’s that exactly?’
Cass had suddenly discovered a reckless streak of her own. Did she expect him to back down?
Of course he didn’t. He wasn’t the kind of man who did. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted him to, either.
He barely paused before drawling back, ‘Well, first we’re going to fight a little because that’s what we do and we’re good at it, then we’re going to make love because we both want it and we’re even better at that… Or don’t you remember?’
Cass remembered, all right. How could she not? He was looking at her as if he already had her undressed and in his bed.
She was shocked he’d been so direct but otherwise not shocked at all. Sex had been the driving force for their first liaison. Talk of love had just been an attempt to dress it up.
‘No comment?’ He arched a brow. ‘Does this mean we can skip the fight part and go straight onto the main event?’
‘No, actually it means—’ Cass finally found her voice ‘—flattered as I am by such a romantic proposition, I think I’ll skip that part, too, and go straight to bed… Alone!’ she added hastily before he made any more of it.
She suited actions to words, and, pushing back her chair, made for the door.
She heard his chair scrape on the wood floor and an instruction to, ‘Wait!’ but she kept going, out into the hall and the stairs beyond.
By the time she’d reached the landing, halfway to the first floor, she realised he was following and it was already too late. She ran up the next flight and along the corridor to the door enclosing the attic staircase, but he caught her up and spun her round.
‘Let me go!’ she snapped at him, more angry than frightened.
‘I will in a moment,’ he promised, ‘so there’s no need to panic. I’m not about to do anything you don’t want.’
That was the trouble—what did she want?
‘I have to go and check on Ellie,’ she insisted.
His eyes slid down to the waistband of her skirt. Clipped to it was the baby listener. Its lights were green, indicating no distress.
‘Try again,’ he suggested.
‘All right,’ she fumed, ‘I have to get away from you before I do something we’ll both regret.’
The threat hardly fazed him as he drawled back, ‘I won’t regret it.’
‘I meant: slap you!’
‘I know.’
‘And that doesn’t bother you?’
‘Last time you slapped me, we ended up making love.’
It was statement of fact rather than boast, but Cass still railed against it.
‘That was an aberration—your words—and it isn’t going to happen again,’ she retorted, jerking her arm free, ‘so if that’s all you want from me—’
‘No, it’s not all I want from you.’ His mouth thinned to a line. ‘If it was, don’t you think I’d look elsewhere? You’re not the easiest woman in the world, you know.’
‘Really?’ Cass scoffed at this remark. ‘I was under the impression you thought the very opposite.’
‘I was talking personality,’ he countered, ‘but, if you want to talk about the other—’
‘Not particularly,’ she cut in.
He ignored her. ‘Then, yes, all right, perhaps I was a fool to believe your sister—’
‘No perhaps about it,’ she cut in again.
‘But I wanted you, regardless. I wanted you even if you slept with every man you met. I went on wanting you long after you dumped me,’ he admitted in a low tone fused with desire.
Cass was finally reduced to silence. Had he really felt so strongly? Had he hurt as she had?
‘And I still want you, Cass,’ he added unnecessarily.
Cass didn’t doubt it, but she shook her head all the same. Wanting wasn’t loving. Wanting was transient.
He lifted a hand and brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers.
A shiver of longing went right down her spine but Cass fought the feeling.
‘Don’t!’ She took a step back from him.
His eyes creased at the rejection. Injured pride? What else?
‘Why not?’ he demanded unsteadily.
‘Why?’ she countered. ‘Unfinished business?’
‘What?’
‘Is that all I am to you?’
‘No,’ he denied, ‘and if you let me, I’ll prove it.’
If she let him, he’d finally get over her, but where would she be? Lost for ever. Much better to break the spell now.
‘You didn’t like being dumped, did you?’
His face darkened, telling her she’d hit the nail on the head.
‘Who does?’ his voice harshened. ‘You think that’s what this is about? Getting my own back?’
He obviously didn’t like her questioning his motives. Was she right? Were they reliving old times so Dray Carlisle could come out a winner this time?
‘Well, if it is, there’s no need,’ she replied flatly, ‘because I didn’t actually finish with you,
Dray. That was down to Pen and our own gullibility.’
He was silent for a moment, not comprehending. ‘What are you saying?’
‘Our last date at that restaurant,’ she relayed, ‘I went as planned. Pen only got round to telling me you’d gone to Paris when I returned home. At the same time she let me believe you weren’t on your own—and no, I don’t mean with Tom.’
‘You expect me to believe this?’
‘It’s up to you but it’s the truth.’
He remained suspicious. ‘I called late that night. You still weren’t home.’
‘Yes, I was…I was upstairs.’ She’d been upstairs, crying her eyes out.
He frowned in recollection. ‘Your sister answered the phone and promised to have you call me. I phoned the next day and it was then she told me that you’d moved on to someone new. I thought she had it wrong. I was so sure I drove straight from Heathrow to your house and sat, waiting for you. You never showed.’
‘I’d gone to a relative’s in Leeds rather than sit around the house, moping,’ she relayed, ‘so you see, we’re much in the same boat, imagining the other had dumped us.’
His eyes widened as he finally appreciated the fact that it had been Pen’s deceit which had caused them to part first time round and none of Cass’s doing.
‘Why are you telling me this now?’ he eventually asked.
‘It’s why you still want me, isn’t it—’ she held her head at a challenging angle ‘—the one girl who dared to end it before you did? Only I didn’t. I was left hanging, just like you.’
I was left devastated, she could have said, but that was really her business. He knew enough to salvage his pride and walk away.
Somewhere along the line, however, she’d miscalculated, because, whatever reaction she’d anticipated, it wasn’t a humourless laugh.
‘You don’t believe me?’ She didn’t hide her resentment; after all, she’d just bared her soul—well, half bared it, anyway.
‘Actually, on balance I think I do,’ he replied to her surprise. ‘It’s plausible, at any rate.’
‘What’s so funny, then?’ she demanded.
‘The idea that my wanting you is merely an act of revenge,’ he returned, ‘except it isn’t funny. It’s sad. That you have such a low opinion of yourself—’
‘Hold on a second!’ She hadn’t told him the truth so he’d then go and psychoanalyse her. ‘If that’s a comment on anyone, it isn’t me.’
‘Isn’t it?’ He raised a brow. ‘It couldn’t be that I want you because you’re the brightest, toughest, most real woman I know.’
‘I—I…’ Cass could think of no response.
It didn’t matter. Dray needed no encouragement to continue.
‘Or because each time you smile, a rare event, admittedly—’ his lips quirked briefly ‘—I discover anew how beautiful you are.’
His eyes said he meant every word; they held her captive, even as she shook her head. Then it was hands, reaching to clasp her waist and draw her to him.
‘Or perhaps it’s because I’ve spent night after night, imagining you naked, imagining touching your soft breasts, running a hand down your belly, hearing those little moans you give…’ He trailed off, his breath a whisper against her cheek as he buried his face in her hair.
The tenderness of it overwhelmed Cass. Trembling, she heard the thunder of a heart beating hard—hers, his, the two as one? She shut her eyes but was still aware of the male scent of him. He pressed his lips to her temple. She finally surrendered to her emotions, and, turning, blindly sought his mouth with hers.
His kiss was all she longed for, all she feared. Desire was like the blood in her veins; it rushed too fast, making dizzy her senses, hurting her heart as only he could do.
Her head was already swimming, her legs fluid, when he picked her up in his arms and carried her to the nearest room.
His, of course.
CHAPTER TEN
HE STOOD her on the rug next to the bed. They were shadows in the half-light. He continued to kiss her hard, holding her head steady with one hand meshed in her hair, while the other unzipped her skirt until it fell to the floor. He drew her body to his. She felt his manhood rising against the softness of her belly. She trembled.
He began to drag down her tights. Any protest was stifled by the mouth still covering hers. She could only moan in her throat as a hand moved over her hips, exploring skin bared, sliding briefly, tormentingly, between her thighs.
When he finally raised his head away, she was mute. When he knelt to take off her shoes and tights, she was paralysed. He left her with just the thin barrier of bikini briefs.
He pressed his face to the V at the top of her legs and kissed and bit her gently through the silk until desire coiled and uncoiled like a snake and the intensity of it made her flinch. She grasped at his hair, but not to push him away. He was already moving, following his hands upwards, licking and kissing the flesh exposed as he gradually pushed up her sweater until, meeting no resistance, he pulled it over her head.
The cool of the night air touched Cass’s heated skin but she was immune to it. She was like a doll, without a will of her own, waiting to be played with. She was perfectly compliant as he enfolded her in his arms and once more sought her lips with his.
Only now his kiss was an act of possession, raw and intimate, an invasion as his tongue entered her mouth like the thrust of sex, and she was shocked out of her passivity. She whimpered aloud, clutching at his shoulders, digging into them as she unconsciously twined her body to his. He backed her towards the bed, a hard thigh parting hers. She closed her legs round it. He raised her hips and rubbed her body to his until she was warm and wet through the silk of her underwear and moaning her pleasure into his open mouth.
When he suddenly broke away from her, she thought for a moment that his sanity had returned, and she would go crazy. Then she heard the rustle of his shirt. He was unbuttoning it and she realised he was just slowing things down.
He took her hand and made her touch him, splaying her fingers out against his body. Heat rose from taut muscles. She stroked the damp hair on his chest. He moved her hand downwards to the buckle of his belt.
He wanted her to undress him. She understood. This was to be no seduction. She had to come to him willingly or not at all.
She could do no else. It was like a hunger. She hadn’t known she had it. Now she was dying of it.
She unbuckled the belt with shaking fingers and tried to undo the top button. It was awkward or she was too nervous. Three years had passed since she’d last been intimate with this man.
‘It’s all right.’ He touched her cheek with his lips and she sensed rather than saw the smile on his handsome face. ‘I’ll do it.’
He half lifted her onto the high bed and she leaned back against the headboard. He finished undressing. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness and she could make out the shape of him, broad and powerfully masculine. If there was a moment to stop this, it was now.
But she said nothing. She had no use for words when their bodies could say it all. From the beginning it had been that way, from the day of her sister’s wedding when, virtual strangers, they had come together on this bed.
He lay down beside her and drew her to him. He was totally naked. She hadn’t realised. Hard flesh pushed against her thigh. The idea came to her that she wouldn’t be able to hold him. Her mouth went dry.
He unclipped her bra and pulled a strap down one arm to expose her breast. She held her breath as the back of a hand lightly brushed against a nipple; she gasped aloud as he took it in his mouth. Tongue and lips and teeth licked and tasted and bit on her swelling flesh while she raked her nails on his shoulders.
He serviced both breasts until she was writhing beneath him, then he moved a hand down to the flat of her abdomen. It slipped between the silk of her briefs and her skin and reached for the warm, damp centre of her desire. He parted the wet, swollen lips and slid a long finger inside her and she shu
ddered against it, her muscles in spasm. Instinctively she drew her legs up against this intrusion.
‘Shh. It’s okay, okay,’ he whispered in the darkness, ‘I won’t hurt you.’
He made soothing noises even as his fingers began to stroke deep and slow inside her, and she wanted to cry: not hurt her? How could he do anything else? Her body was on fire for him, beyond physical pain, but her heart would do the suffering.
Yet she didn’t call a halt. She couldn’t. She needed this as she needed food and drink to live.
She lay there, letting him touch her in ways no other man had, moaning with the long-forgotten pleasure of it, urging him on until the thrust of his fingers was so strong she almost came round them.
He stopped just in time and left her hanging there, on the edge, while he straddled her, then he grabbed both her hands and held them above her head as his mouth slid down her front to once more suckle her nipples, leaving her aching for the full act.
She arched her hips to his and finally, without warning, the full length of him entered her. Her first cry was startled, half pleasure, half pain, before it all returned to her. How he filled her, every part, how he moved, hard and powerful, how it felt, rising to meet each shaft. And how perfect it was, making love with this man, how unbearable, a sweet agony as she wrapped her legs round him and he drove into the core of her until they both fractured in ecstasy.
Still they didn’t talk. They lay there, catching their breath, thoughts too fragmented for words, and, when they eventually turned to the other, it was to make love again, slowly this time, then fast and brief, and once, with an edge of desperation, as if it might be the last chance.
When dawn eventually crept through a gap in the curtains, it was Cass who woke first. She gazed at the man on the pillow beside her. She tested her heart and found it doing acrobatics. Last night hadn’t cured the illness, just made it worse.
He opened an eye and caught her watching him. He smiled languorously, last night obviously on his mind, too. He reached for her but she sat up, away from him. There was no longer the cover of darkness to hide her feelings for him.
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