‘No, I never feared that, not really. I’m not a complete fool, Neil. Julian had an unusually self-destructive personality, and I was too selfish and spoilt to see it when I met him. No, I knew you’d never hurt me, at least not deliberately, but I was frightened of the way I feel about you…frightened of getting into a situation which could only cause me pain. You see, I thought all you wanted was an affair. I thought you kept going on about my independence because you
wanted to make it plain to me that you didn’t want me permanently in your life.’
She heard him groan and then laugh. ‘When I think of the time we’ve wasted,’ he muttered huskily against her hair.
Somehow or other, both his hands had slid inside the robe and were caressing her body. Free of her fears, she was able to respond to him the way she ached to be able to. She felt him shudder as she pressed herself eagerly against him, moaning softly in her throat as his hands cupped her breasts, tantalising their hard, erect peaks.
She reached up to him and put her arms round his neck, urging his head down towards her own, her lips parting provocatively.
He touched them with his tongue, as though testing their texture and taste, and then stroked them moistly before sliding his tongue-tip between her teeth.
Rue moaned again against the deliberate thrust of his tongue, pressing deeper into him, shivering with pleasure when he parted the robe and pushed his thigh between hers.
She could feel the hard, hot pressure of his erection against her stomach. Her fingers clutched at his arms, her head bending back under the pressure of his kiss, her hips moving frantically against him in open invitation.
‘Somehow I always knew you’d be like this,’ he told her against her mouth. ‘Warm, eager…loving.’ Her hips rotated yearningly against him and he groaned, his body shuddering.
‘Have you any idea what you’re doing to me?’ he protested, and against his mouth Rue said huskily.
‘No, but if it’s anything at all like what you’re doing to me, I think…’
She gasped out loud as his hand swept down the side of her body and across the taut muscles of her belly, unerringly finding the place where she ached and pulsed so tormentingly, and as though he knew immediately how great her need was he picked her up and carried her, not into her own room, but into his, depositing her gently on the large bed.
‘I think this is not so much the first time we’re making love as the culmination of the way we should have made love that morning in your kitchen,’ he muttered as he stripped off his clothes and came to her.
His body was all muscle and taut, supple skin, warm like heavy satin, so pleasurable to touch that she felt almost drunk on the sensation of doing so, and for a while he let her, simply holding her while she gathered in through her fingertips a vast wealth of intense pleasure; and all the time, beyond that pleasure, lay another, deeper, sharper, waiting to be released…building like the tightening of a coiled wire to a pitch where she was almost quivering with the intensity of it, every part of her body so alive that she was practically vibrating with sharp anticipation.
At last he said quietly, ‘No more, Rue,’ and he took her hands away from his body and turned to her so that she could see what she had made him.
She was poised and waiting for him, her body moist and eager to receive him, anticipation strung so tightly inside her that his first slow thrust made her cry out her pleasure to him, wrapping herself around him and drawing him deeper and deeper inside her until her whole body pulsed in the same fierce rhythm that drove him.
Beneath her hands his back was slick with sweat, the scent of him enveloping her, the fierce drum of his heart pounding against her.
Even though she had never experienced it before, her body seemed to know instinctively how to invite his to drive ever deeper within it so that the pleasure built up into an almost unbearable tension, its sudden climactic release almost more than she could endure.
She felt the spasms of release shudder through Neil and clung to him, welcoming the heat of him within her own flesh, relaxing into his arms as he held her and stroked her damp skin, easing her down beside him, her head resting in the curve of his shoulder.
‘I’d forgotten that you’re still supposed to be recuperating,’ he apologised to her, but Rue only laughed.
‘I certainly need to now,’ she told him teasingly, watching the dark colour run up under his skin with possessive amusement.
‘It’s been one hell of a long time,’ he muttered, avoiding looking at her. ‘I gave up going in for casual affairs years ago, and the kind of life I’ve been living doesn’t allow for anything else.’
His confession surprised and pleased her.
‘How long is a long time?’ she asked him curiously.
‘A couple of years at least,’ he admitted. ‘That’s why I’ve been finding it so damned hard to keep my hands off you. You’re committed to me now, Rue,’ he told her rawly. ‘And don’t even think of changing your mind, because I’m not about to let you go. You realise that you could already be carrying my child?’ he added starkly.
Rue had, but only in the last few seconds. Oddly, she found the thought tantalisingly pleasurable.
‘In that case, I suppose I’ll have to make an honest man of you,’ she teased him, letting him see the love in her eyes, adding with a small secret smile, ‘Of course, I might not be pregnant…’
‘Do you want my child?’ Neil demanded hoarsely, correctly reading the message in her eyes. His were glittering almost feverishly as he waited for her answer, and she realised, as she had not before, how much the thought of a wife and family really meant to him.
‘Yes,’ she told him honestly, suddenly feeling very shaky and emotional. ‘Yes, I do.’ She reached out and traced his mouth with her fingertip. ‘I want our children very much indeed, Neil.’
‘But your work…your independence…’