Too Short A Blessing. PENNY JORDAN

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      As she headed back home, her earlier tension lifted; she could even mock herself a little for her slightly ridiculous flight from Jonas Chesney. What could the man do to her, after all? All that panic over a kiss. It had been so long since any man had kissed her that she had quite naturally over-emphasised the effect he had had on her.

      By the time she turned off the main road into the rutted lane she was feeling pleasantly relaxed and calm, a feeling which disappeared as she swung round a bend and had to brake hard to prevent herself colliding with the Land Rover slewed arrogantly across the road, preventing her from getting past.

      Although she wasn’t yet sufficiently familiar with her new habitat to recognise one Land Rover from another, she guessed immediately to whom this one belonged. With her heart pumping at something approaching twice its normal rate, she got out of her car and hurried angrily towards the Land Rover. How dared he leave it there like that? Had he no thought for others … no consideration? No doubt while the cottage had been empty he had got used to considering the road his private property.

      The resentment and anger that had fuelled her impatience exploded into furious disgust as she rounded the Land Rover and then came to an abrupt stop, almost unable to belive what she was seeing.

      Jonas was half kneeling, half crouching on the far side of the vehicle, the wriggling body of a small boy face down across one hard thigh. Momentarily too shocked to do or say anything, Sara was freed from her temporary stunned paralysis as one calloused hand descended on the boy’s jean-clad rear end.

      Sara didn’t stop to think or to check her words, her horrified, ‘Stop that at once!’ causing the hand to pause in mid-air.

      As Jonas turned a grim and unrepentant face towards her, the child took advantage of his momentary lack of concentration to wriggle free and dart off into the trees at the side of the road.

      Swearing briefly, Jonas stood up and, fearing that he was going to pursue the child, Sara grabbed hold of his forearm, her eyes snapping with anger and disgust.

      ‘Don’t you dare go after him, you bully!’ she said fiercely. ‘I ought to report you to the police for what you were just doing.’

      ‘Go ahead,’ she was told bitingly, the grey eyes arrogantly disdainful where they should have been guilty. ‘I’m sure Sergeant Rowson would be most grateful to you.’

      The sarcasm in his voice grated on her nerve endings. Staring up at him, Sara suddenly became aware of the fact that her fingers were still clenched round his arm. His skin felt warm and firm, the dark hairs sensually rough against her palm. She had the most extraordinary desire to let her fingertips stroke along his skin. Releasing him as though his flesh burned, she stepped back from him with flushed cheeks.

      ‘Why were you hitting that child?’ she demanded breathlessly, hearing the weak unsteadiness in her voice, and resenting him for causing it.

      His mouth curled disdainfully as he drawled, ‘Firstly for trespassing on my land …’ He watched as the indignant colour burned her skin, and then stopped the impulsive protest trembling on her lips by adding, ‘but most importantly for this …’

      He kneeled down again, his lean hands parting the thickly luscious grass with a gentleness that was oddly in contrast to the determined way he had been punishing the boy.

      Puzzled and apprehensive, Sam looked down, her stomach tensing as she saw the small cluster of eggs lying on the grass.

      ‘Robbing birds’ nests isn’t something we approve of round here,’ he told her grimly. ‘That young lad just happens to be Sergeant Rowson’s nephew. His parents have recently been divorced, and the Sergeant and his wife are looking after the boy for a while. He’s been city born and bred, and naturally he’s having some trouble adjusting. This isn’t the first time I’ve caught him doing this. Last time I warned him what the punishment would be. I wasn’t doing it for the pleasure of it, you know,’ he told her with a grimace of disgust. ‘But the boy needs to know that rules have to be obeyed.’

      ‘I can understand that,’ agreed Sara stiffly. ‘But you’re not related to him; why not leave it to his uncle to punish him?’

      ‘Because by the time I’d found and told the Sergeant and he had got round to dealing with him, the boy would probably have forgotten what he was being punished for. I don’t believe in torturing kids with the threat of punishment to come,’ Jonas said bitingly, ‘whatever you might choose to think. Besides, punishment on the scene of the crime is invariably more effective. The first time I caught him stealing eggs I explained to him just exactly what he was doing, and I had hoped that would be enough. Obviously it wasn’t.’

      He saw her face and smiled sardonically. ‘That doesn’t suit you at all, does it?’ he mocked. ‘You’d much rather see me as the villain of the piece, the sort of man who enjoys inflicting physical pain.’ He grimaced slightly and came towards her, saying softly, ‘I thought this morning that I detected a certain amount of animosity towards me, cerebrally, at least. Well you know what they say about giving a dog a bad name, don’t you?’

      She was in his arms before she could move, her brain too dazed to comprehend what had happened. She shuddered as his hand cupped her jaw, tilting her face up to meet the hard pressure of his mouth, her body knowing that he was going to kiss her before her mind could assimilate the knowledge.

      Shockingly, her pulses quivered frantically at the first touch of his mouth.

      He was kissing her in anger, Sara recognised, making her take the place of the boy she had unwittingly helped to escape, but something was going wrong, because although his mouth was hot and hard, it wasn’t anger but passion that fuelled its aggressive demands on her own, and, horrifyingly, she was responding to it. A thick moan was stifled in her throat as his teeth bit sharply into the fullness of her lower lip, tugging on it so that his tongue could touch the inner softness of her mouth. He pushed past her firmly closed teeth as she was forced to draw breath, unleashing a dark need in her that couldn’t be controlled by reason.

      Helplessly, Sara clung to him, shocked to discover that her arms were round his neck, her fingers clutching at his hair, her body pressed intimately along the length of his.

      The kiss went on and on, her lips clinging hotly to his, her tongue powerless to resist the erotic sucking motion that drew it into the heat of his mouth.

      A terrible weakness made her tremble against him, the sound he made deep in his throat as he tugged her shirt out of her jeans and slid his hands against the bare skin of her back distantly touching her consciousness.

      His heart slammed erratically against his ribs, its unsteady beat driving into her own body, his legs parting so that he could cradle her against the aroused heat of his thighs as he leaned back against the bulk of the Land Rover.

      His mouth left hers to explore the pale column of her throat, his fingers deftly unfastening the buttons of her shirt.

      She knew she ought to stop him, but the effect he was having on her was too overwhelming, the shock of what was happening to her so immense that she couldn’t bring herself to believe it was real. This couldn’t really be her, standing in plain sight of anyone who happened to walk past, allowing a man she neither liked nor really knew to practically tear the clothes from her body with one hand while the other gripped her hip and crushed her possessively against the pulsing force of his body!

      While Sara’s brain fought to comprehend what was happening to her, her treacherous body СКАЧАТЬ