Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ if her reaction was caused by anger or ... or what? Not physical awareness of Luke, surely...not physical arousal, physical responsiveness to him.

      ‘If this is some kind of joke...’ she began warily as she tried to step back from him.

      ‘It’s no joke,’ Luke responded grimly. ‘No joke at all,’ he repeated in a much softer tone as he bent his head towards her and his hands started to slide caressingly down over the curves of her behind, pulling her even more intimately into his own body so that... Bobbie held her breath, the sensation of Luke’s body against her own somehow activating a dangerous physical transformation within her and an even more dangerous reaction without. She had experienced physical arousal before, physical attraction, and she knew perfectly well just how illusionary and charismatic it could be—and how meaninglessly empty—but this sensation, this feeling...this emotion that held her in such shocking and powerful thrall, was far too intense and overwhelming to be that. It was more, much more, than the provocative thrust of Luke’s body against hers and the fierce primal throb of desire quickening within her own, more than the sexually charged atmosphere of heat and need she could feel shimmering around them. So strong that she could almost reach out and touch it, taste it...just as she felt she wanted to reach out and touch and taste Luke himself.

      All of those feelings, no matter how strong, how shocking, how unwanted they were to her, were capable of analysis and explanation; a cause for them could be found and once found they themselves could be dismissed. But there was no cause, no means of analysing or understanding, never mind denying or dismissing that shock wave of emotional oneness and rightness she had experienced as Luke drew her close to him; that bewildering notion that somehow she had found that special wondrous place; that special wondrous person who was her real home, that knowledge that somehow or other Luke had reached out and touched the very core of her innermost being and that because of that ... because of him the whole of her life would be changed for ever.

      Bobbie had always assumed that one day she would fall in love deeply and permanently and she had hoped that when she did that love would be returned; that together she and her beloved would form a close-knit unit that would one day expand to include the children she hoped they would have, but it had never occurred to her that loving could ever be like this; that from one moment to the next, one heartbeat to the next, she would suddenly and irrevocably know the man she loved and know just as intensely her love for him could never be destroyed.

      ‘Luke...’ As she said his name on a shakily expelled breath, he covered her mouth with his, his hands coming up to cup her face and hold her still beneath his kiss. His thumb caressed the delicate curve of her cheek as his mouth moved equally caressingly on hers.

      To Bobbie it seemed the most natural thing in the world to respond openly to him, reaching out to hold him, opening her mouth to him and welcoming the demanding thrust of his tongue within it with a soft, throaty murmur of delight.

      Even their mouths might have been made to fit together, she acknowledged hazily as she purred her pleasure into his caressing mouth, arching her throat beneath the stroking touch of his hand, feeling her pulse quicken and her body tense as her nipples tightened beneath her clothes and the urge to press herself even closer to him became too strong to resist.

      ‘Luke...’ As he started to lift his mouth from hers, she whispered his name protestingly, reluctantly opening her eyes, their pupils dilated with passion, her expression softly drugged with all that she was feeling as she caught hold of his arm, intending to guide the hand he had let fall from her throat to her breast. And then, abruptly, she realised what she was doing and with whom, and like someone coming out of a trance her body stiffened as she cried out fiercely, ‘No!’

      ‘No,’ Luke agreed tersely as he, too, stepped back. He looked almost as shocked as she felt herself, Bobbie recognised, but that was impossible. There was no way he could be feeling the same emotional turmoil she was experiencing; the same anguished jolt of recognition and yearning so strong that it left her feeling physically dazed and weak, coupled with fear and panic and the self-protective need to blot out and deny the existence of such feelings to remind herself that he was, at best, a man she should treat with circumspection and caution and, at worst, someone who could turn out to be her most powerful foe.

      And yes, she had quite definitely mistaken that look of shock she had thought she had seen in his eyes, she acknowledged achingly now as she looked at him and saw the hardness of his compressed mouth and the cold way he was watching her.

      ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ she told him shakily.

      ‘Why?’ he asked derisively. ‘Because Sam, whoever he is, wouldn’t like it?’

      For a moment Bobbie simply looked at him and then said quietly before she started to turn around to walk away from him, ‘Sam is not a he, she’s a she, and she’s also my sister, my twin sister,’ she emphasised.

      ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he challenged her as he deliberately blocked her way.

      ‘To catch a bus,’ she replied simply.

      ‘I’ve already told you, I’ll drive you home.’

      Bobbie toyed briefly with the idea of not just defying him but also of actively pushing her way past him, but as her eyes met his she read a warning in them that she would be very foolish to try to do so. It was a rather odd sensation to be aware of being so femininely vulnerable and powerless as she had lost count of the number of men over the years who had made jokey and not-so-jokey remarks to her about not wanting to get on her bad side, hinting that because of her height she was somehow less emotionally a woman than her shorter sisters.

      In a face to face confrontation with Luke, she was all too likely to come off the loser, she recognised, and he certainly had no inhibitions at all about getting on her wrong side. Silently she turned round and walked back to the car.

      ‘So Sam is your twin sister,’ Luke commented once they were both in the car and he had driven out of the car park. ‘Have you any other family?’

      ‘Why the sudden interest in my family?’ Bobbie asked him.

      ‘Perhaps because I’m curious to know the reason for your interest in mine,’ Luke returned silkily.

      Bobbie bit her lip. She had walked straight into that one.

      ‘I have a brother. My parents are both alive and so is my grandfather on my mother’s side. And although both my parents were only children, their parents came from large families, so we have any number of great-aunts and uncles as well as a whole string of second and third cousins.’

      ‘Twins are normally very close,’ Luke commented. ‘Are you and your sister?’

      ‘Yes,’ Bobbie affirmed curtly.

      ‘You must miss her.’

      ‘Yes. I do.’

      ‘Presumably she couldn’t come with you?’

      ‘No, she couldn’t,’ Bobbie responded in a tone of voice that indicated she didn’t want to answer any more questions, but Luke refused to take the hint.

      ‘Why was that?’ he pressed.

      ‘She had other commitments,’ Bobbie told him repressively, turning her head to look out of the window into the darkness as an added signal that she didn’t want him to keep interrogating her. So far as she was concerned, her sister was not a subject she wanted to discuss with him.

      ‘Other СКАЧАТЬ