by Penny Jordan
Her breathing suddenly changed, she murmured huskily, ‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that for the first time since we’ve met I can hold you in my arms like this, without any deceit between us, and I can kiss you like this—’ he bent his head, brushing her lips with his until she was clinging dizzily to his shoulders, her breath coming jerkily from half parted lips—‘without feeling that you’re thinking of Colin, or worse still, Jeremy. And I can touch you like this,’ he muttered throatily, sliding his hands beneath the thin silk of her jacket, finding the full curves of her breasts and caressing them urgently as he drew her against his body, kissing her with feverish intensity, showing her without the need for words that everything Lyn had said was true.
‘I love you, Kelly,’ he told her thickly at last, releasing her throbbing mouth to trace a line of kisses downwards, slowly unfastening the tiny buttons closing her dress. ‘So much that it’s an ache in my guts. I fell in love with you on sight, and then you nearly destroyed me with your ice-cold reserve, but I knew there was a living, warm woman inside somewhere, and I was determined to find her.’
‘And now that you have?’ Kelly whispered, shivering delicately with the pleasure of his marauding mouth, tracing pathways over her breasts.
‘Now that I have she isn’t going to escape until she’s promised to make an old man very happy—my father’s heard all about you from Lyn and he says if I don’t return to Edinburgh with you beside me, I can definitely forget about Marne and the chairmanship of the company. He admits that it’s far harder to persuade a woman to change her mind than it is to run a company, but he says I’m not the right man to fill his shoes if I can’t. Not that he’s really thinking of vacating them—at least not until we provide him with a brace of grandchildren.
‘Will you marry me, Kelly?’ he asked roughly in a different tone. ‘Will you?’
She raised herself on tiptoe, twining her arms round his neck, drawing his head down until she could reach his lips, murmuring her assent against them, feeling her body take fire from his as he tensed in response, letting her take the initiative until, with a groan, he pulled her tightly against him and her body melted into his, alive with the pleasure of the contact, revelling in the hardness of him against her without the barrier of his robe, her response urging him to swing her up in his arms and carry her—not to the bedroom, but to the fire, where the lamplight played revealingly over his features as he placed her carefully on the floor, bending tenderly over her as he drawled unsteadily, ‘This time there aren’t going to be any interruptions—I hope!’
‘Well, they certainly won’t come in the form of planes landing,’ Kelly agreed with a chuckle. ‘Oh, Jake,’ she whispered urgently, ‘love me, please love me!’ She reached up to pull him down against her, revelling in the tenseness of his body, the fine film of perspiration dewing his skin, the hungry pressure of his mouth as it possessed hers, obliterating all that was past and welcoming the future.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0402-7
MAN-HATER
First North American Publication 1983.
Copyright © 1983 by Penny Jordan.
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