When he eventually released her mouth it felt bruised and slightly swollen, and yet the sensation was a pleasurable one, her lips acutely sensitive to the light kisses he caressed them with as he murmured softly, ‘Let me take this tee-shirt off, I want to feel you against me, Sapphire.’
His hands were already gripping the edge of her tee-shirt, and to her shame Sapphire knew a wild impulse to help him. Once she had fantasised about seeing their bodies intimately enmeshed; the paleness of her fair skin against the gold-bronze of his and now, treacherously, that memory resurfaced making her protest only a token one as Blake tugged the stretchy fabric up over her body.
Her figure had changed in the intervening years, she knew; her shape no longer that of a young girl. Her waist had narrowed, but her breasts were fuller, more mature, crowned with deep pink nipples, at the moment veiled from Blake’s intense scrutiny by the lacy fabric of her bra.
‘Beautiful,’ he murmured huskily, his thumb stroking caressingly along the edge of the dainty lace and down into the hollow between her breasts.
Desire seemed to explode like fireworks deep inside her, stunning Sapphire with its intensity. She had desired Blake before, but surely never with this consuming, all-important depth, that pushed aside every other emotion as trivial and not to be considered. She wanted to respond to him with every feminine nerve ending; she wanted to feel his hands and mouth against every inch of her skin; and she wanted the freedom to caress and know him in exactly the same way. The knowledge that she could feel like this was shocking and yet exciting; freeing her suddenly from the fear she had always had that somehow she was not quite 100 per cent feminine; that the deep inner core of her was cold and un-functioning. No other man had made her feel like this, certainly not Alan.
Alan! She tensed, suddenly shocked back to reality. Blake’s fingers were curled round the lacy cup of her bra, his eyes so brilliantly gold as he stared down at her that she found herself blinking, half-dazzled by their glitter.
‘Blake, I don’t want …’ She shivered as he cut off her protest by bending his head and brushing his lips provocatively along the delicate skin exposed above the white lace.
A tumult of sensations poured moltenly through Sapphire’s veins. She made a small sound, meant to be a protest, but which emerged as a soft cry of pleasure as Blake’s fingers eased back the lace and his lips followed the path they made until they found the aching centre of her breast, being teased into wanton erectness by the caressing movement of his fingers.
Awash with pleasure Sapphire was barely aware of Blake unsnapping her bra, and exposing her other breast until he repeated his tormenting caresses on it with a nerve-racking delicacy that left Sapphire shivering and aching beneath an onslaught of pleasure she hadn’t believed could exist.
‘You respond to me as though no-one’s ever touched you like that before,’ Blake muttered rawly, cupping her breasts possessively as he looked up at her. ‘I expected you to be more blasé.’
As she shuddered in reaction, he moaned thickly, ‘Don’t do that, you make me go up in flames, just thinking about …’ His sudden tension alerted Sapphire to the sound of a vehicle arriving in the yard.
‘Damn,’ Blake swore softly. ‘The last thing I feel like right now is leaving this bed.’
His words brought Sapphire back down to earth, making her shrink in self-disgust from her own behaviour. How could she have behaved so foolishly? She was lucky that Blake didn’t appear to have guessed how much she still cared about him … Stunned, Sapphire stopped what she was doing. That wasn’t true, she didn’t care about Blake at all … But if that was true, why had she reacted to intensely to him … why had her body welcomed him as its lover? She didn’t still love him; she couldn’t … but deep inside Sapphire knew that she was only deceiving herself. If sex was really her only motivation she could have found that with anyone of a dozen or more attractive men whom she had dated since leaving Blake, but she hadn’t wanted to. She had remained sexually cold to them. She still loved Blake all right, and deep down inside her she must have known it all along, even though she had tried to hide from the truth.
Sick at heart, too numb almost to pull on her tee-shirt, she heard someone knocking on the back door, and hurriedly completed her task.
‘I’ll get it,’ she told Blake, too disturbed to turn and look at him.
The rich smell of their evening meal filled the warm kitchen as Sapphire hurried across it, her hair as uncombed and her face free of makeup, her lips no doubt still swollen from Blake’s kisses. A flush of embarrassment stained her skin as she pulled open the door, and then came to an abrupt halt, stunned by the sight of the very last person she had expected to see standing there.
‘Alan,’ she managed weakly, staring at him, thinking how out of place his dark business suit and obviously new sheepskin jacket looked—and how alien he seemed to her. She had only been away from London for a few days, but already it seemed like another life-time.
‘Your father told me you were here,’ Alan frowned. ‘I’ve been to make arrangements to get the car back. You really should have been more careful, Sapphire, and what are you doing here?’ he demanded waspishly. ‘I expected to find you with your father, instead he directed me here … or rather his housekeeper did. Not a very forthcoming woman, but then I suppose it’s only to be expected from these country types. Aren’t you going to let me in?’ he asked her querulously. ‘It’s freezing out here, and what on earth are you wearing?’ He surveyed her jean-clad figure with open disapproval. ‘Sapphire, what’s going on, I …’
‘Why don’t you tell him, darling?’
Blake’s voice from the other side of the kitchen made Sapphire wrench her head round in open-mouthed disbelief. Clad only in a towelling robe, Blake stood by the door, arms folded, hair tousled, the sight of his bare chest and long lean legs making Sapphire go weak at the knees, treacherous, reactionary sensations warming the pit of her stomach.
‘Sapphire, who is this?’ Alan demanded.
‘Blake,’ Blake offered, answering for her, and walking towards Alan, proferring his hand, ‘Sapphire’s husband.’
‘Husband!’ Alan practically goggled, and watching him Sapphire knew that no matter how she might have chosen to deceive herself, when it came to it, she would never have married Alan. The emotions she felt for him were lukewarm nonentities when compared with the fierce, tumultuous feelings she had for Blake.
‘Yes, Sapphire and I have decided to give our marriage another try,’ Blake told him calmly.
‘Marriage. You told me you were divorced,’ Alan accused Sapphire. ‘When did all this happen? Why didn’t you say something when I rang?’
‘I wanted to tell you, Alan, but …’
‘I was hoping your father would put me up for the night. It’s too late to drive back to London now, and there isn’t a decent hotel in miles.’
‘You can stay here,’ Blake offered, stunning Sapphire with his offer. ‘There’s plenty of room. If you bring in your case I’ll take it upstairs for you—it will give you and Sapphire a chance to talk.’
Sapphire had expected Alan to refuse, but instead he walked out to his hired car and returned with an overnight case. When Blake took it upstairs Alan demanded, ‘What’s going on? When you left London you were going to marry me, now …’
‘I’m sorry, Alan, but I didn’t want to tell you over the phone. I thought you’d ring again before coming up here, and everything’s happened