She trembled all over with that need, her breath a pained rasp in her throat as she looked down at Jaxon with hot and heavy eyes. Just the sight of his lips clamped about her, drawing her nipple deeper and deeper into his mouth with each greedy suck, caused another rush of heat between her restless and throbbing thighs.
‘Jaxon …!’ Instead of deepening that pleasure, as she so wanted him to do, it seemed as if Jaxon began to ease away from her, gently kissing her breasts now, his hands once again a soft caress against her back. ‘Stop playing with me, please, Jaxon!’ she pleaded throatily.
‘This isn’t a sensible idea, Stazy,’ he groaned achingly, even as his arms dropped from about her waist before he straightened away from her.
Stazy looked at him searchingly for several long seconds, easily seeing the regret in his eyes before a shutter came down over those twin mirrors into his emotions. ‘Jaxon …?’ she breathed softly.
He gave a shake of his head, his expression grim. ‘We both know that you’re going to end up hating me if I take this any further …’
‘You’re wrong, Jaxon.’ She gave a disbelieving shake of her head, continuing to stare up at him dazedly as she pulled her dress back up her arms to hold it in front of the bareness of her breasts with one hand while she pulled the material down over her naked thighs with the other.
‘I am?’ he prompted huskily.
‘Oh, yes,’ Stazy breathed softly. ‘Because I couldn’t possibly hate you any more than I do at this moment!’ Her eyes glittered with humiliated anger now, rather than tears.
Jaxon knew he fully deserved that anger—that he had allowed things to go much further between them just now than was wise when Stazy was already feeling so emotionally vulnerable. But he also knew that Stazy was wrong—she would definitely have hated him more if they had taken their lovemaking to its inevitable conclusion. And on the plus side—for Geoffrey and Little, that was!—Stazy was now far more angry with him than she had been earlier with either of them!
That, in retrospect, was probably the best outcome. He was scheduled to leave here at the end of the week, whereas Geoffrey and Little would both be around for much longer than that.
Jaxon kept his expression noncommittal as he stepped fully away from Stazy, his shaft throbbing in protest as he did so. No doubt another cold shower—a very long cold shower!—would be in order when he got back to his suite of rooms. ‘There’s the possibility you might even thank me for my restraint in the morning …’ he murmured ruefully.
‘I shouldn’t hold your breath on that happening, if I were you!’
‘Stazy—’
‘I think you should leave now, Jaxon.’ It was definitely anger that now sparkled in her eyes.
‘Fine,’ he accepted wearily. ‘But you know where I am if you can’t sleep and feel like—’
‘Like what?’ she cut in sharply. ‘I thought we had both just agreed that this was a very bad idea?’
‘I was going to say if you feel like company,’ Jaxon completed firmly. ‘And I don’t remembering saying it was a bad idea—just not a very sensible one, given the circumstances.’
‘Well, “given the circumstances”, I would now like you to leave.’ Her chin rose proudly as she held his gaze.
Jaxon gave her one last regretful glance before doing exactly that, knowing that to stay would only make the situation worse.
If that was actually possible.
‘THAT really wasn’t very clever, now, was it?’ Jaxon looked at Stazy impatiently as he entered the drawing room almost two hours later, to see her pacing in front of the bay windows, now dressed in a thick green sweater and fitted black denims, with her red-gold hair neatly plaited down the length of her spine.
She shot him only a cursory glance as she continued to pace restlessly. ‘Shouldn’t you be fast asleep?’
He closed the door softly behind him. ‘Little came and knocked on my bedroom door. He seemed to think I might like to know that you had tried to take my Harley in an attempt to go and see your grandfather tonight.’
‘The traitor …’
Jaxon gave a rueful shake of his shaggy head, having quickly pulled on faded denims and a black tee shirt before coming downstairs. ‘Exactly when did you take the keys to the Harley off my dressing table …?’
‘When I heard the shower running in your bathroom.’ She had the grace to look a little guilty. ‘I am sorry I took them without your permission, but at the time I didn’t feel I had any other choice.’
‘Is that your idea of an apology?’
‘No.’ She sighed. ‘It was very wrong of me, and I do apologise, Jaxon. My grandfather would be horrified if he knew!’
‘I’m horrified—but probably not for the same reason!’ Jaxon gave her an exasperated glance as he too easily imagined what might have happened if she had managed to ride the Harley. ‘How could you even have thought taking my motorbike was going to work, Stazy, when there are enough guards patrolling the grounds for them to hear a mouse squeak let alone the roar of an engine starting up?’
‘I didn’t even get the bike out of the garage,’ Stazy acknowledged self-disgustedly.
There had been no excuse for what she had allowed to happen in her grandfather’s study earlier that evening, and just thinking about those intimacies once Stazy reached the privacy of her bedroom had been enough to make her want to get as far away from Bromley House—and Jaxon—as possible!
Admittedly it had taken a little time on her part, but once it had occurred to her that she could ‘borrow’ the keys to Jaxon’s Harley and then take the less used and hopefully less guarded back road out of the estate to leave, she hadn’t been able to rid herself of the idea.
Unfortunately, as Jaxon had already pointed out, just starting up the engine had brought three of her grandfather’s guards running to where the motorbike was parked at the back of the house. Quickly followed by the humiliation of having the keys to the motorbike taken from her before being escorted back inside.
With the added embarrassment that Jaxon now knew exactly what she had planned on doing too. ‘Obviously I didn’t really think beyond the idea of going to London to see my grandfather,’ she accepted guiltily.
‘Obviously!’ Jaxon gave a disgusted shake of his head. ‘You could have been killed, damn it!’
In retrospect Stazy accepted that her method of leaving Bromley House really hadn’t been a good plan at all. Not only had starting the engine sounded like the roar of an angry lion in the stillness of the night, but there had still been no guarantee that she would have found it any easier to leave by the back road. She would never know now.
No, in retrospect, taking the Harley hadn’t been a good plan at all. And, if Stazy was being honest, she now admitted it had also been an extremely childish one.
Why, oh, why did just being around Jaxon make her behave in this ridiculous way …?
She gave an impatient shake of her head. ‘I just feel so—so useless, having to sit here and wait for news from my grandfather.’
Jaxon’s expression softened. ‘I’m sure Geoffrey is well aware of exactly how you feel, Stazy—’
‘Are you?’ she said warily.
‘Yes.’ He sighed. ‘Look, it’s almost one o’clock in the morning, and no doubt the kitchen staff all went to bed hours ago. So why don’t the two