Sinful Nights: The Six-Month Marriage / Injured Innocent / Loving. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ Blake, for some reason, now seemed to find her physically desirable. Or was his desire for her simply a frustrated sexual longing for Miranda who presumably now shared her favours between Blake and her husband? Nausea, deep and wrenching, tore into her as Sapphire pictured them together. No, please God not that, she whispered squeezing her eyes closed as though she could blot out the pictures. She had been through all this once before and suffered all the torments of the damned picturing Blake with Miranda, imagining their bodies entwined in the act of love; sharing its heated ecstasy and its languorous aftermath—pleasures which had been denied to her, and she wasn’t going to endure them again. She couldn’t.

      She heard Blake come back into the room and tensed as he snapped off the lamp, and pulled back the covers. The sarcastic comments she had expected about the way she was huddled on the edge of the bed never came, and to her chagrin within minutes of getting into bed, Blake appeared to be fast asleep!

      As she struggled up through dense layers of sleep the first thing Sapphire realised was that at some time during the night she must have turned instinctively towards Blake, because now, instead of lying with her back to him, curled up on the edge of the bed she was actually curved against his body, her head pillowed on his shoulder.

      Luckily Blake was still asleep and therefore unable to witness her weakness. As she started to move away from him, the second thing Sapphire realised was that he was sleeping nude. Perhaps she ought to have expected it; but during the brief days of their marriage he had always worn pyjamas, the jackets of which he had invariably tugged off at some time during the night, she remembered. Lost in her thoughts; seduced into inert languor by the warmth of his body, she was reluctant to move, even while acknowledging that she should; surely there could be no real harm in indulging herself in these few brief seconds of pleasure. But her conscience prodded her, and unwillingly she started to move away.

      ‘Going somewhere?’ Blake’s voice, still husky with sleep, rasped tantalisingly against her sensitive skin, making her shiver with a reaction somewhere between delight and dread.

      ‘It’s light,’ Sapphire told him unnecessarily, trying to edge away from him without drawing his attention to what she was doing, and failing abysmally as he rolled on to his side, pinning her against him with one arm.

      He was so close now that she could feel the intimacy of his body heat; the warm, muskily male scent of his skin clouding her reasoning processes, so that it no longer seemed quite so imperative for her to move. Much more pleasant to give in to the allure of remaining where she was.

      ‘I thought you’d want to be out, checking on the stock.’ Conscience made her make the feeble concession to saying what she felt she should, but Blake brushed her protest aside.

      ‘The men will be doing that, because I did the last round last night—we’re very democratic up here,’ he drawled teasingly. ‘I must say it was quite a surprise to wake up and find you in my arms. I seem to remember that last night you couldn’t get far enough away from me.’

      ‘I didn’t know what I was doing,’ Sapphire defended herself, ‘I must have turned over in my sleep and when …’

      ‘You’re used to sharing a bed with someone? Like you do with your lover?’ Blake accused harshly, ‘Is that what you were going to say?’

      ‘And if it was?’ Sapphire flung back at him recklessly. Anything to keep him from discovering just how much she was affected by his proximity.

      ‘Then there must be other things you’re missing, beside a warm body in bed beside you at night,’ Blake countered softly. Sapphire couldn’t tell if it was challenge or anger that turned his eyes to molten gold, but even as she moved away from him, his fingers clamped into her waist, refusing to let her go. As she struggled to free herself her breasts brushed the taut skin of his chest and even through the fabric of her nightdress she was overwhelmingly conscious of the contact, closing her eyes against a sudden too-painful image of skin against flesh, of Blake stroking and caressing her.

      ‘Open your eyes,’ Blake demanded harshly, shattering the erotic bubble of her thoughts. ‘You aren’t going to pretend it’s someone else who’s holding you in his arms, Sapphire.’

      ‘Who was it who taught you to be so arousingly responsive?’ he muttered, his eyes on the swift rise and fall of her breasts, her nipples pressing urgently against the fine fabric of her nightdress, in wanton supplication of the caresses her mind had envisioned so very recently.

      Sapphire felt a wave of shame course through her. How could she be behaving in such an abandoned fashion?

      ‘Who?’ Blake pressed. ‘Your precious Alan, or another lover?’

      ‘Does it matter?’ Hot tears stung her eyes, caused as much by his cruel blindness as her own weakness. He was the only man she had ever met who could touch the deep inner core of her femininity; he was the only man with the ability to unleash her desire.

      ‘Perhaps not.’ The heat had gone from his voice to be replaced by a cynical blandness. ‘That it has been achieved at all is miracle enough I suppose. When I think of the way you used to shy away from me.’

      Shy away? Sapphire stared at him. What about all the times she had willed him to make love to her? What about the times she had lain in this bed praying that he would stretch out and touch her?

      ‘I think it’s time we were getting dressed,’ she told him hurriedly, trying to dispel her tormenting memories.

      ‘So, you haven’t changed completely,’ Blake drawled. ‘You still run away from situations you find unpalatable. Well, this is one occasion my dear wife, when you can’t run. Unless, of course, you want me to pursue you, and carry you back to this bed?’

      ‘Why should you want to do that?’ Sapphire tried to sound sophisticated and amused but instead her voice was a breathy, hesitant whisper, Blake’s smile telling her that she had not succeeded.

      ‘Do I really have to tell you?’ He leaned towards her, the fingers of his free hand curling round the strap of her nightdress and slowly sliding it down her arm. The bedcovers had slipped down to her waist during their earlier struggle, and Sapphire watched like a rabbit transfixed by the hunter as Blake leisurely revealed the creamy slope of her breast.

      ‘You’ve changed,’ he murmured, studying her until the colour ran up under her pale skin. ‘You’re fuller here,’ his thumb skimmed the outline of her breast, resting so briefly against her nipple that she couldn’t be sure whether the caress was deliberate or accidental, ‘and narrower here.’

      His fingers touched her waist, and she shivered convulsively, her throat dry and tight with the aching need she could feel burning up inside her. She wanted to slide her fingers into the crisp darkness of his hair, to hold his head against her breast, and caress the male contours of his body. Shame and fear mingled into a stomach-tensing cramp as she tried to fight against her feelings.

      ‘Do you like this?’ Blake slid the nightdress free of her breast cupping it with his palm and stroking his tongue along the valley between it and its twin, his thumb making erotic patterns around its rosy peak.

      ‘No.’ Her denial was a choked, strangled lie.

      ‘I think you mean yes.’ Blake was so lazily self-assured that Sapphire started to tremble. ‘Well, Sapphire,’ he pressed, ‘did you mean yes?’ All the time he spoke to her he was teasing, nibbling little kisses closer and closer to her nipple. Heat coursed through her veins. Part of her wanted to flee; to get as far away from him as she could, and the other СКАЧАТЬ