‘Pig,’ she murmured under her breath, knowing he wouldn’t be shivering like she was. He scarcely felt the cold beneath all that sinewy muscle and he could easily have offered to have taken her room when he had informed her of how cold it was. Instead of which he had expected that she would lightly take herself off to bed with him!
Restlessly she turned over, tugging the duvet grudgingly around her. She heard Jared moving about in the room across the landing; water running in the en suite, then the sound of the big bed creaking as he got in.
She didn’t know how long she lay there awake and shivering, certainly long after he had fallen asleep, she was sure. At one point, jumping out, she groped around in the darkness and the wardrobe for her grey overcoat and threw that down on the bed. She had to warm up soon, she thought, or she’d die of hypothermia!
More than once, worn down by circumstances and the strain of the past two days, she felt sleep start to claim her, only to find herself awake a few moments later, still shivering with the cold.
Wanting to use the bathroom, she lay there for some time, growing more and more awake while she tried to summon up the courage to get out of bed. Eventually, telling herself things weren’t going to get any better no matter how long she lay there, she scrambled out and raced to the bathroom, darting back only to misjudge in the darkness the exact length of the ottoman that stood at the foot of the bed.
Stubbing her toe on one corner, she stumbled against it with an almighty clunk and then, hopping painfully, managed to grope her way along the duvet and dived back into bed, shuddering not only from the cold, now, but also from her numb and bruised toe.
Facing the window, with her eyelids screwed tightly shut against all the discomfort, she wasn’t aware of anything else until she heard Jared ask deeply from the doorway, ‘What is it? What the devil’s going on? Are you all right?’
‘No.’ Her teeth were chattering so much she could barely speak. ‘I can’t stop shivering,’ she admitted, past caring now.
‘You little fool.’ A few swift strides brought him across the room.
Without wasting any time he was ripping back the duvet.
‘Come here,’ he growled, sliding in beside her, and with that he was pulling her into his arms.
CHAPTER SIX
HIS body was hard and warm as he turned her into him, its merciful heat enveloping her, seeping through into every last shivering cell.
If he had been wearing a T-shirt when he had come in, then he must have pulled it off to give her the maximum benefit of his body temperature, Taylor thought with a violent shudder, crushed against the crisp dark hair that furred the deep contours of his chest.
He was wearing shorts in some soft, stretchy fabric that left no mystery about his potent manhood, and she could feel the roughness of his hair-covered legs as they entwined with the smooth cool silk of hers.
‘That better?’ he asked hoarsely.
It was. She couldn’t tell him how much, and all she could do was groan her gratitude from within his powerful embrace.
His broad back felt like warm velvet beneath her clinging fingers, and she could feel the play of powerful muscle beneath the smooth skin. He smelt good too, of cedar and a familiar underlying musk that had her nostrils dilating, greedy for as much of his warm scent as they could hold.
‘You shouldn’t have got that cold.’ His tone was lightly abrasive. ‘You should have come in and told me.’
‘You were asleep,’ she argued by means of a feeble excuse. Already she was feeling better. His body was like a furnace and the bed was becoming nicely warm at last.
‘No, I wasn’t.’
Wasn’t he? Against the warm satin of his shoulder, her brow puckered. Why not? What had kept him awake? ‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’
She felt the deep wall of his chest expand slightly. ‘Evidently not,’ he scolded, releasing a curiously ragged breath.
A small satisfied sigh escaped Taylor. She had stopped shivering at last. In fact, she was virtually glowing now.
‘Warmer?’ His voice was a lilting caress against her hair.
She murmured an affirmation, and suddenly realised that it wasn’t just his proximity that was warming her blood. Inside her something stirred, something born out of hunger and denial that her body recognised, and to which it was responding, seemingly with a will of its own.
From somewhere in the depths of her consciousness a little voice was struggling to be heard, but her ears were deaf to its futile warning.
She caught the shuddering breath that Jared drew and at the same time became aware of her own shallow breathing, knew that he had to have noticed it too.
Way down in the centre of her abdomen she felt the deep throb of desire, felt its molten message pierce her loins, her aching flesh, the tightening aureoles of her small breasts.
Pulled by something beyond her own volition, she moved restlessly against him, her legs unconsciously massaging the coarse length of his, her body thrilling to the full exciting knowledge of his arousal.
‘Taylor…’ It sounded like a growl, or a hopeless plea, she wasn’t sure which. She only knew that whatever she was feeling, he was feeling it too.
She could almost touch the leashed power of his aggressive virility, the tight-wire tension that packed every nerve and sinew of his body.
For a fraction of a second, her self-preservation shrieked at her to draw back, but it was already too late.
As he groaned, then pushed her on to her back, her senses were already leaping to meet their own destruction and when his mouth came down over hers she arched towards him with a stifled cry, lost in a conflagration of her own need.
Oh, dear heaven! How had she lived without this!
The stubble of his jaw was abrasive on her skin, rough and unbearably arousing, while their mouths blended, breathless and devouring, demanding a deeper knowledge of the other that each knew could only be reached in the most elemental way.
Shudders racked her body as his hard hands slid under the soft fabric of her tunic, seeking, claiming, kneading the slender curves of her eager hips. His massaging fingers moved to splay across the small span of her waist, and Taylor caught her breath as they slid along her ribcage to trace, with tantalising skill, the outer edges of her breasts.
He was and always had been a consummate lover, knowing exactly when to make her wait and when to grant her pleasure. But now she sucked in a breath, moving convulsively against him. How could he deny her when she wanted him so much!
‘Oh God…’ he breathed as though she strained his self-control, and slid his hands over her breasts now as reverently as if he were fondling priceless treasures.
‘Jared…’ It was a small sobbed sound, torn from her as he slid down and pushed back her tunic so that his mouth could close over one breast, his fingers caressing and moulding and teasing the other into throbbing tumescence before his mouth claimed that one too, drawing it into its erotically suckling warmth, sending an agony of exquisite pleasure down through her lower body.
Her fingers were luxuriating in the thickness of his hair, both hands eagerly caressing him, reacquainting themselves with the curve of his head, the coarser hair that formed his sideburns, the hard, exciting structure of his cheek and jaw.
Little murmurs of pleasure escaped her as his lips and hands rediscovered her, spasms bringing her straining against him—this man of whom she could never have enough—inviting, accepting him as sole licensee of her body.
She could feel the fullness of his arousal pressing against her beneath the