Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN

to rest against her bare breast. Tiny quivers of sensation flooded her body, tiny pinpoint darts of pleasure emanating from the vulnerable place below her ear that he was caressing so slowly and deliciously with his mouth.

      ‘Turn round,’ she heard him instructing her softly. ‘I want to kiss you properly.’

      This time the build-up was more leisurely, the caresses he bestowed on her body and she on his, with both their hands and their lips, more intimate and prolonged, but the final outcome was the same—an explosion of white-hot passion that engulfed the two of them, causing them to cry out and cling to one another as the full flood of their shared need ripped through them both.

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      THE next time Bobbie opened her eyes, it was daylight and she was on her own. As the memories of the physical intimacy and oneness they had shared and the emotional intimacy and commitment they had not came back to her, she closed her eyes and wept silent tears of pain and grief. Pain for the hurt she knew lay ahead of her, and grief for the loss, the stillbirth, of the love she knew she could simply never allow to exist and that certainly did not exist for Luke.

      The neatly embroidered, entwined initials on the pillowcase caught her eye. Carefully she traced them with the tip of her finger, the same gently stroking touch of exploration she had used on Luke’s body last night.

      This bedlinen had been embroidered by a long ago Crighton bride. A Crighton bride! That was something, someone, she would never be. Hot tears burned the back of her eyelids. Where was Luke? She must not let him see her like this and suspect what she was feeling.

      What she was feeling... What was she feeling? Did she really need to ask herself? Hadn’t her reaction to him, to last night, already told her, forced her to confront the truth she had been avoiding and trying to suppress virtually from the moment they met? She was in love with him; she loved him.

      She closed her eyes and swallowed hard, a small sound of anguish bubbling in her throat. No, not that, she couldn’t, she must not... Where was her pride? Her self-respect, her sense of self-worth and self-preservation?

      And where, too, was Luke?

      The flat felt oddly empty. But surely he wouldn’t have left her here alone to make her escape.... Not after what he had said to her yesterday. Not after the threats he had made, the fury he had exhibited.

      Cautiously she swung her legs out of the bed, and wrapping the duvet around her to cover her nudity, she padded over to the bedroom door and opened it.

      ‘Luke...?’

      No answer.

      She froze as someone suddenly began knocking urgently on the outer door. Whilst she hesitated, wondering whether or not to answer it, she heard Olivia’s voice calling through the door.

      ‘Bobbie. Quick, let me in.’

      When she unlocked the door, Olivia practically fell through it. She looked flushed and slightly on edge, Bobbie noticed, as though she was excited, and she hardly seemed to register Bobbie’s state of undress or the fact that she was on her own.

      ‘Look, you’ve got to get dressed,’ she commanded quickly, ‘and please hurry. I can’t explain now.’

      ‘What...?’ Bobbie started to protest, but Olivia was already urging her back towards the bedroom.

      ‘No, don’t ask me,’ she said. ‘I can’t explain now. But you must hurry. Please...’

      Still hesitating, Bobbie asked her uncertainly, ‘Is this...is it Luke?’

      ‘This has nothing to do with Luke,’ Olivia answered her, adding in some surprise as she finally realised he wasn’t there, ‘Where is he, by the way?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ Bobbie replied honestly.

      ‘Oh well, I’m afraid we haven’t time to wait for him,’ Olivia told her determinedly, ‘even though I know you probably want to.’