His hands found her hips, and he should have heaved her from his body. Instead he gripped her flesh and urged her on to a stronger, faster rhythm. His own hips began to rise and fall, and it felt incredible.
God, but she was so hot in there. So hot. He could feel his own blood heating even further, racing along his veins like molten lava. The volcano of his desire would not be contained this time. Or controlled. It surged higher and higher with each drumbeat of his madly pounding heart, and then it was erupting, flooding into the already spasming heart of her womanhood, dredging raw groans from his parched and panting lungs.
When the climax had passed, he reached up to bring her down so that he could kiss her, wanting to feel the heat of her mouth as well.
He was startled to encounter the wetness of tears running into the corners. He didn’t know what to say; could think of nothing but to cradle her close, to stroke her back and say whatever came to mind.
‘Don’t cry, darling. Please don’t cry. God, but I can’t bear it. Hush, sweetness. There’s nothing to worry about. Nothing. As I said before, I’m a good guy. And I can see you’re a good girl. We’re good people. Hush, my loveliness. Hush. Go to sleep, there’s a good girl. Yes, that’s it. Go to sleep.’
They both went to sleep... eventually... though Luke took quite a while to come to terms with what had just happened. He hoped he was right. Hoped that she was a good girl. If not, he’d just done the stupidest damned thing he’d ever done in his whole life. Slept with a perfect stranger. Without protection. Then, to top it all off, he’d fallen in love with her...
‘All finished, Mr St Clair.’ The chair snapped upright and the nurse moved to unclip the paper bib around his neck.
Luke’s black eyes blinked open to stare blankly into her smiling face. His gaze went to the clock on the wall. Eleven-fifteen. He’d been at the dentist over half an hour and he hadn’t felt a thing! Unless one counted what had been going on within his head. And his heart.
An impotent rage simmered beneath the cool façade he presented to the dentist and his nurse as he thanked them and said goodbye, and then to the receptionist as he paid his bill. In cash.
‘I hope you enjoy your stay here in Australia, Mr St Clair,’ she said, reminding him that he still sounded like an American.
‘I’m sure I will,’ he returned, trying to keep the grim satisfaction out of his voice. ‘Enjoy’ was probably not the right word, but he had no doubt that this visit was going to be memorable. At last he had a name to put to his obsession. A name and a past. He would leave no stone unturned till he came face to face with the woman who’d haunted him all these months.
And when he did?
God only knew what he was going to do. Be cause he didn’t.
‘Would you mind if I took one of those old magazines with me?’ he asked the receptionist. ‘It has a picture in it of an old friend of mine.’
‘Take it, by all means.’ And me too if you like, her eyes seemed to be telling him.
Unfaithful bitch, he thought as he strode over to the corner table. They were probably all unfaithful bitches, all the beautiful women in this world.
He snatched up the magazine in question, not giving the girl a second glance as he stuffed it under his arm and strode angrily from the room.
CHAPTER THREE
HIS mother was waiting for him in the coffee-lounge, a cup of capuccino in front of her, a jam and cream doughnut to her left, a newspaper to her right and a plastic shopping bag at her feet. She shut the newspaper on Luke’s approach and folded it, frowning up at him as he scraped out the chair and sat down.
‘What’s wrong with you now?’ she said. ‘Couldn’t you get your tooth fixed?’
He resisted the urge to scowl. Five minutes he’d give her, then he’d be off in a taxi to the nearby airport, where he would rent a decent car. He needed his own wheels. And the privacy that went with them.
‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ he said. ‘I’m fine. My tooth’s fine. The weather’s fine. Life’s fine.’
‘Then why are you still in such a foul mood?’
‘Lord, what is it with you? Do you have some special mother’s antenna that can pick up my mood at twenty paces? I’ve just walked in and sat down. How could you possibly gauge my mood? I hadn’t even spoken when you made your instant judgement.’
‘You were walking cranky,’ came her simplistic but accurate observation.
He couldn’t help it. He had to laugh. There was no hiding anything from his mother. Which reminded him. He slipped the magazine from under his arm onto a spare chair and thought of something to say to distract her.
‘Tell me, Mum. Were you ever unfaithful to Dad?’
‘Heavens to Betsy! What a question!’
‘That’s no answer. That’s an evasion.’
‘I needed a moment to catch my breath. Might I ask what’s brought such a question on?’
‘Well, you’re a good-looking woman. From photographs I’ve seen when Dad married you forty-five years ago you were pretty stunning. Stunning women have temptation put in their way, whether they’re married or not.’
Grace wondered which stunning married woman her son had been getting mixed up with, but tactfully refrained from asking. This time.
‘I won’t say I didn’t have my offers,’ she answered truthfully. ‘And I won’t say I wasn’t tempted, once or twice. But I managed to stay faithful to your father. Technically speaking, that is.’
Luke blinked his shock at her. ‘Technically speaking?’ he repeated rather dazedly. ‘What do you mean... “technically speaking”?’
‘Well, I did let a man kiss me once for a few seconds longer than I should have.’
‘Oh, is that all?’
‘I thought it was pretty terrible of me at the time. But he was awfully good-looking. And very charming. I was flattered to death that he fancied me. He was only in his early thirties and I was a silly forty-one at the time, thinking I was over the hill and desperate for some attention. He gave me some.’
‘And would have given you a whole lot more if you’d let him,’ Luke said drily. ‘Who was he, this Casanova?’
‘No one you ever met. He was Danish, visiting Sydney one summer. Your father met him down the local pub and was silly enough to invite him home for supper one night.’
‘And you let him kiss you that very same night?’ Luke could not contain his surprise.
A small blush of guilt stained his mother’s normally pale cheeks. ‘As I said,’ she muttered, ‘he was very charming.’
‘So how did it happen? And where was Dad, damn him?’
‘Watching TV, as usual. Eric offered to help me with the washing-up, and he sort of cornered me against the kitchen sink. At first I was shocked. But when he started kissing me, I have to admit I liked it. Oh, I stopped him before things went too far, but after he left I thought about him a lot. I knew which hotel he was staying at—since he’d made a point of telling me—and I actually rang his room one day. But when he answered I panicked and hung up.’
‘I see...’
‘Do you, Luke? I doubt it. I loved your father, and he was a good lover when he was younger. But time and familiarity can do dreadful things in the bedroom. Boredom sets in, and your father did work terribly hard. Most nights he was too tired. Our sex life had deteriorated to a quickie once or twice a month, and I was silly enough not to know what to do about it. So,