‘It’s this way,’ she told him unnecessarily, indicating the rear ground-floor door.
Stepping past her, Brough inserted the key in the lock and then opened the door for her.
‘Thank you …’ Kelly started to say as she stepped past him, but it seemed he still did not consider his duty to be fully done, because he shook his head and stepped into the small hallway with her, glancing towards the stairs as he did so.
‘Would you like me to come up with you and look around?’ he asked her politely.
Immediately, Kelly shook her head.
In the hallway on a small console table was one of the first pieces of china she had painted. She saw Brough looking at it.
‘One of your pieces?’ he asked her.
‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘The inspiration for it came to me when I was on holiday in South Africa with my family.’
The piece, all greens and blues and surf-whites, always made her think of the magnificence of the Cape’s beaches. Such a dramatically beautiful country with such a horrifically cruel history. She touched the curving contours of the piece of china with gentle fingers. It held many happy memories—days when she had played with her brother’s children, running in and out of the surf with them, evenings when she had strolled along the beach with her parents and her brother and his wife. Very happy memories. She shuddered a little to imagine what they would think of her current involvement with Julian Cox.
‘Are you cold?’ Brough asked her, frowning slightly and taking a step towards her just as Kelly, too, stepped forward, away from the table.
Automatically, she put her hand out to prevent them bumping into one another as she shook her head in response to his question, but unwisely, as she did so, her gaze was drawn to his face and then his mouth.
The shape of it had been tantalising her all day—the sharp masculine cut of it, the sensual fullness of his lower lip, the dangerous and somehow illicit knowledge she had of just how it felt to have it moving on her own.
Now, just when she knew she needed to be at her coolest and most in control, her breathing had become erratic, her pulses racing, her pupils betraying the surge of feminine longing that was overpowering her.
Her brain begged her body to behave sensibly, her eyes to break contact, her breathing to slow down and become properly measured, but her senses had become flagrantly disobedient.
Very slowly Kelly lifted her gaze from Brough’s mouth to his eyes. It was like gazing into deep waters, so cool that they made her body tremble as though she had touched ice, and yet so hot that her bones felt as though they were going to melt. Every sense she possessed, every centimetre of flesh covering her body, suddenly seemed to have become a thousand times more sensitive than normal, a thousand times more receptive.
She could hear Brough breathing, feel the heat of each breath he drew against her skin, sensing even the tension that coiled like fine wire through his body, feeling just what was burning through him as she gave herself up to the dark blaze of passion she could see in his eyes.
Her body swayed towards him, seeking his strength and offering in return the promise of her own pliant responsiveness, the instinctive age-old body language of woman to man, yielding and promising, whilst at the same time demanding that he show that he had the strength, the manhood, to take up the challenge she was offering and to protect her weakness.
‘Brough.’ She whispered his name, her eyes heavy-lidded, mysterious, luminous with passion as she turned her face up to his, an enchantress, powerful and strong. Irresistible.
And yet she still placed her hands flat against his chest, as though to deny the promise in her eyes and the desire running through her body, heavy and hot as molten gold.
She could feel his arms wrapping around her, enfolding her, as he drew her close, so close that her hand could feel the wild, fierce, heady drumming of his heartbeat, fast and furious as a cheetah during the chase. Boldly Kelly kept her eyes open. His were hot, dark, deep, glittering with male arousal.
Once again she looked at his mouth, a wild thrill of elation gripping her body. Now she was the hunter, her body tight, coiled, waiting … hungry.
Their mouths met, hers wanton, responsive, and yet at the same time soft and waiting. Brough was kissing her, sliding his hands up over her back, caressing her over and over again, his body hard and powerful against hers. Her own body felt molten and plain, reminding her of glass before it was shaped and blown, liquid running free, waiting to be formed and shaped, a wild natural element that could be coaxed but never forced.
Brough’s hands were on her shoulders, gripping them hard as his tongue searched her lips for an opening. Eagerly she gave it to him, her own nails digging into the long muscles of his back.
She was experiencing a wildness within herself, a sensuality she had never encountered before, and it both exhilarated and terrified her. Beneath her clothes her breasts ached and peaked. No need for Brough to even lightly caress them to arouse her need for him, but when he did—!
Was that really her making that low, hungry, almost semi-tortured sound deep down in her throat? Was that Brough growling in fierce exultation beneath his own breath as his thumb-pad returned demandingly to caress and probe the taut peak of her nipple?
She wanted him. Wanted him … wanted him so badly. Wanted to feel his body, his skin, next to hers, his touch, his love …
Kelly made an urgent keening noise deep in her throat, her body arching against Brough’s in a sexual mixture of longing and pleasure.
Somehow all the barriers there had been between them, all her doubts and fears, her refusal to believe that it was possible for her to feel like this, for her to love like this, so immediately, so intensely, so unexpectedly were banished, vaporised by the sheer force of her feelings.
Now, here in his arms, she was all feeling, yearning, loving woman, her natural female instincts overturning the conditioning of modern society and its demands. As boldly as some long-ago ancestor might have done, she was recognising and claiming for her own her man and her right to love him.
‘Brough.’ She whispered his name throatily, a husky purr of aroused pleasure, heavy with sensuous promise shot through with love.
‘You feel so good. I want you so much …’ Was that her saying that, or was it Brough? Was she the one reaching for him or was he the initiator of their increasingly passionate caresses? The shadowy confines of the hallway, normally surely the last place she would have ever thought of as romantic, now seemed as private and protected as the most secret of sanctuaries. And it was a dizzying, tantalising thought to know that not so very far beyond its closed door lay her bedroom—her bed.
Her whole body shuddered as it wantonly followed where her thoughts were leading, where she already ached for Brough to lead her. A feeling of the most incandescent joy filled her; a sense of throwing off the past and turning to welcome the future and their love made her feel as though suddenly something unacknowledged deep within her had sprung to life, as though the person she had been before the wonderful, miraculous discovery that she loved Brough had been someone who was only half alive, someone who had been deprived of the true pleasures and meaning of life.
‘I don’t want you to go …’
As she murmured the words against Brough’s mouth she could feel him start to tense; his mouth left her throat, which he had been kissing and nibbling, sending a cascade of tiny erotic shivers all the way from the top of her head to her toes.
‘I don’t want to either,’ he whispered back as his thumb caressed her throat and then her jaw, slowly moving towards her mouth. ‘But I must. I’m expecting a call from Hong Kong—I had some business dealings there, which I’ve sold out of, but there are still some legal ends I need to tie up. And tomorrow I have to go to London to see my accountants. But when I come back …’
As he turned away he paused and then turned back, taking