They spent a long time touching and tasting in front of the flickering fire, the thick rug soft and warm and the room shadowed and dim from the stormy, dark day outside their haven. They explored each other with uninhibited sensual pleasure, Victoria's fears of how he would react when he saw her naked long since put to rest. He did find her beautiful and desirable—it was there in his eyes and the gently passionate caresses of his mouth and hands—and she so needed to be loved. The last seven months bad been a barren desert of pain and anguish, and after the last few days she couldn't have resisted him; it was as simple as that. The future was the future, this was now, and she was only human. He was her husband and she adored him.
'Zac, I want you,' she whispered at last in a trembling whisper.
They were both liquid with desire, but she had sensed the deep restraint he was putting on his own passion and understood the reason for it, but now she captured his manhood in her fingers, guiding the silken force between her thighs.
'Tory, I don't want to hurt you.' He had drawn back a little, raising himself on one elbow to look down at her, soft and smooth and flushed, stretched out in sensuous abandonment beneath him. 'It's been so long and I want you so badly.'
'I know, I know, and you won't, it's all right.' She stroked him slowly, feeling him quiver beneath her fingers and relishing the power she had over this proud, hard man as she watched him close his eyes and arch his back. And then he twisted his body round, moving her so she found herself sitting astride him with his thighs beneath hers, her rounded belly and ripe, voluptuous breasts gleaming in the glow from the fire.
She guided him into her slowly, the ache at the core of her needing his hard strength, and then she began to move, softly, sensuously, watching his face as she felt his body move and contract. She loved him, she loved him more than life itself, and she needed him. Just this once she needed to know he was all hers, that his mind and body were centred on her and her alone.
The rhythmic undulations were coming thick and strong, and, as on their wedding night, Victoria felt herself going into another world that was all colour and touch and sensation. His possession was complete, and all the more precious because of the sensitivity he had displayed—his desire to put her well-being before his own sexual satisfaction.
The peaks of pleasure went on and on, until the final shuddering climax released a simultaneous fierce ay of release that splintered the light behind her closed eyelids into a million prisms as they moved together as one—one body, one heart-shattering fusion. And then she collapsed against him, utterly spent, and his arms encircled her, drawing her into his body.
'Zac?' It was a full five minutes later. 'Are you awake?' He stirred, drawing her closer into the heady male warmth of him as he said, his voice soft and satisfied, 'What is it?'
'Your daily, Mrs Watts—what if she should—?' 'It's her day off.' The fire spluttered and glowed in a shower of red-gold sparks, and as she snuggled deeper he said, 'This day is ours, Tory, just ours,' echoing the poignantly sweet refrain of her heart.
CHAPTER NINE
'What do you mean, nothing's changed?'
She had known it was coming, known he wouldn't like what she had to say, but nothing had prepared Victoria for the look of sheer rage on Zac's face as she faced him over the dining table.
The day had been an infinitely sweet one. They had dozed on the rug in front of the fire, Zac's body encircling her in its warmth as he had curled himself about her, until, in spite of Zac's body heat, Victoria had begun to feel chilled. And then Zac had warmed her, slowly, sensuously, until the fire that burnt so blazingly hot in the grate had been nothing to the one inside Victoria. She just couldn't believe how he could make her feel.
Like before he had been mindful of her condition, but by the time he had kissed and stroked her all over, his mouth more intimately erotic than she could ever have thought possible as it searched out her secret places, she was melting for him.
Nothing had disturbed them in their little idyll—-not the fierce wind and rain from the stormy day outside as it beat on the window in wild, blustery squalls, nor the fax in the corner of the room as it bleeped and whirred and obediently laboured on, not even the answering machine, which Zac had turned down so low that the constant messages were nothing more than faint whispers.
r /> They'd loved and laughed and then loved and laughed some more, until, as the morning had faded into afternoon, Zac had heaped more coals and logs onto the fire, and, after dressing Victoria in his bathrobe, padded into the kitchen in search of a snack for them both as naked as the day he was born.
October had changed into November during Victoria's sojourn upstairs—it had been her birthday on the thirtieth and Zac had given her a beautiful diamond pendant and matching bracelet and earrings—and by five o'clock the evening had been as dark as midnight, the storm clouds still scudding across a sky from which a timid moon gave out a thin hollow light now and again before being swallowed into oblivion.
Zac had led her upstairs slowly. She'd been tired and he'd known it, the bruised shadows under her eyes and her swollen lips bearing their own testimony to a day of love, but when he'd followed her into the bathroom it was Victoria who drew him with her into the shower cubicle, kissing him passionately as he took her in his arms.
In the weeks that followed, Victoria could never remember that day without experiencing the erotic thrill of Zac's soapy hands moving over her body, and the feel of his own hard, powerful chest and buttocks and thighs beneath her fingers as she'd washed him in turn, her fingers exploring as they stroked his wet body.
And then he'd dried her gently and massaged rich fragrant moisture cream over her breasts and the swollen mound of her stomach, moving on to her arms and legs, even her feet, before he'd slipped his robe over her again and led her into the bedroom.
'Go to sleep for a while.' He drew back the covers as he spoke, his voice soft. 'There are a couple of things I have to deal with downstairs, and then we'll eat Do you want to go out for a meal, or shall I order something in? Indian, or Chinese maybe? Or there's an excellent Italian place opened nearby?'
'Chinese.' She smiled at him, her eyelids heavy.
'Sweet and sour? Chop Suey? Chow Mein?'
'You choose.' She couldn't believe how exhausted she felt.
'Okay.' He bent down and stroked a silky strand of hair from her cheek, his eyes as warm as black velvet as his fingers caressed the full contours of her lips before he straightened and pulled the covers more closely around her. 'Go to sleep, my love,' he said softly, his smile incredibly sweet as he gazed down at her, drowsy and flushed in the big bed, before he walked to the door.
She must have slept—she was sure she had—but some time later she was suddenly wide awake, and in spite of all the intimacies they had shared it was the look on Zac's face in those last few minutes he had been with her that brought scalding hot panic flooding into every nerve and sinew.
She sat bolt upright in the bed as the awareness of how stupid, how incredibly criminally stupid she had been fully dawned. She'd gone back on every promise she'd made to herself.
There was more to love than loving somebody. She shut her eyes tight, moaning deep inside her with silent despair. The person you loved had to love you back, and it had to be the right sort of love. And Zac's wasn't.
Oh, he was good at the tender endearments, and he could be thoughtful, gentle—incredibly gentle for such a big man, Victoria thought sickly. But that extra something—the something that meant commitment, heart-and-body commitment—just wasn't in his psyche. And she'd known that; she had no excuse.