‘That’s not what I’m talking about, and I think you know it.’ Two paces brought Ben to stand directly in front of her, his wide-shouldered stance overpowering her senses. Holding her huge violet eyes with the shadowed darkness of his he removed his suit jacket, slowly tossing it onto the nearest armchair, then loosened his tie.
Caroline’s mouth went dry. She took a quick, ragged intake of breath. She could feel the heat of that intensely virile body just inches from her own, and the heat was melting her.
Instinctively, her tongue peeped out to moisten the aridity of her lips, lips that suddenly felt too full and lush. And his brooding eyes followed the involuntary, betraying movement and he said soberly, ‘Ah, yes, I remember that nervous little gesture from moments before the first kiss we ever shared. And exactly how I helped—like this, remember, Caro?’ His dark head dipped as his mouth met hers, no other part of their bodies touching, his tongue laving the quivering fullness of her lower lip, leaving the sensitised skin slick and supple, finding the parting, making an easy entry to the helplessly willing sweetness within.
Her blood sang, the electric brush of his lips and tongue was just as she remembered, the pleasure almost too much to bear. As much as she wanted to close the tiny distance between them, to wrap her arms around him, press her aching breasts and thighs against the hard maleness of him, she resisted. The slow, seductive melding of their mouths was exquisite torment enough.
And it should not be happening, the last dying vestige of common sense reminded her, acidly recalling his off-hand rejection of the night before.
But the voice died, drowned in the clamour of her raging pulse beats. His love-making had always been a drug, something she couldn’t do without. Something her body had been silently crying for during these last barren, lonely years.
When he lifted his head after timeless, delirious moments his breathing was as ragged as her own, his fingers not quite steady as he reached to take the tortoiseshell clip from her hair, setting it free to fall in midnight-dark glossy abandon to her shoulders.
‘It used to be much longer,’ he murmured thickly. ‘It used to cloak your breasts with silk, inviting me to kiss the rosy buds that hid behind it. You knew how to tantalise me, Caro. Do you remember?’
Remember? How could she ever forget? Memories of how wonderful and perfect they’d been together had always been buried deep in her mind, not taken out and examined—she’d learned more control than that—but there all the same, indelibly imprinted, denying her any sexual interest in any other man.
Had it been the same for him? The concept was difficult to take in, especially as her brain seemed to have stopped working.
Slowly, with explicit intent, he began to undo the tiny buttons of her shirt, his eyes focused on what he was doing, the backs of his fingers grazing her burning skin, making her incapable of any coherent response when he said darkly, ‘Twelve years is a long time, Caro. Too damned long to be left in limbo.’
He slid the shirt from her shoulders and bent to briefly suckle her blatantly engorged nipples through the creamy lace of her bra and she whimpered softly with the tormenting pleasure of the short, insistent tugs of his mouth. She laid her hands against his chest, palms down, feeling the heat and vibrant strength of him, the heavy beats of his heart and knew she would soon be unable to stand without support because every last one of her bones had turned to water.
‘Years of wanting what most men want, a wife, a family,’ Ben asserted, his voice holding a trace of bitterness. His knuckles pressed against the softly feminine curve of her tummy as, having disposed of her belt and dealt with the zip he began to slide her trousers down over her hips. ‘Of wanting a good, long-term relationship and not being able to deliver, of being unable to commit to any other woman because no other woman came close to what I remembered of you.’
Naked now, apart from insubstantial briefs and bra, she was open to his darkly anguished eyes, vulnerable, captivated by him as she always had been, but pricked to suspicion by the strong note of torment in his voice.
Treachery! her internal warning system whispered and she said, almost incoherently, ‘You bought that painting—’
‘As a reminder that things are not always what they seem, or what you want them to be,’ he repeated. And then, as if he saw the beginnings of understanding, of resistance in her eyes, he laid a finger across her mouth, ‘Don’t speak. Just give yourself to the moment,’ and enfolded her in his arms, his mouth finding the tender hollow just below her ear, his lips moving with slow eroticism as he murmured, ‘You always liked this, and you still do, don’t you? Admit it, Caro.’
As if the tiny moan that escaped her was admission enough he lifted her in his arms, holding her close as he carried her into the adjoining bedroom.
A hazy impression of a cool masculine atmosphere, the tiny-paned windows open to the warm spring air admitting the perfume of early-flowering honeysuckle, a carved oak bed. A huge bed.
Her unresisting body sank into the soft duvet as he laid her down and removed the last scraps of creamy lace. ‘As perfect as ever.’ His dark gaze caressed her nakedness. ‘The years have been kind to you, Caro.’
The slight catch in his voice touched her heart with pain. Instinctively, she held out her arms to him, needing to hold him close, to banish whatever it was that was hurting him. But he straightened up, his beautiful mouth forming the command, ‘Wait’, and began to unbutton his shirt, removing it, and then those elegantly tailored trousers, tossing the expensive garments aside as if they were old dusters.
His lean, whippy young adult’s body had matured spectacularly; His shoulders wide and strong, his chest deep and faintly dusted with dark hair. Yet there wasn’t an ounce of spare flesh beneath the olive-toned skin that gleamed with health and vitality.
Caroline swallowed awkwardly around the sudden lump in her throat. Fully aroused, he was magnificent and the air throbbed with expectancy, with the inevitability of what was happening between them and, as he lowered himself beside her, laying his hand on the heated mound of her aching desire she searched his face for the lover he had been, longing to find him again, to hear the words of white-hot passion he had bewitched and had captivated her with, longing with an intensity that shook her slight frame and set her veins on fire.
But as his gently questing fingers found the slick core of her and just before his mouth took hers in a drugging kiss, he murmured raggedly, ‘You want me, and I need this. I need, finally, to prove to myself that what you were to me is only in my mind. That you’re no different from any other woman.’
She must have fallen asleep. The earth-shattering, multi-climaxes of their love-making, coupled with the near sleepless night had exhausted her. Caroline struggled to come properly awake beneath the light warmth of the duvet. Twilight filled the room and she was alone.
Of course she was alone. Tears stung the back of her eyes and tightened her throat. Ben had calculatedly used her, had got her out of his system. It was as simple and as devastating as that.
When he’d told her exactly how and why he was using her she’d been too far gone in the sexual delirium that only he could make happen to do the right thing: to slap his sinfully beautiful, arrogant face and walk away.
Tears coursed unheeded down her pale cheeks. They were both damned: he for so cold-bloodedly using her, she for allowing it to happen.
But his blood hadn’t been cold, had it? Hot, white-hot passion had driven him and she—she had been incandescent.
Angrily, she swiped at her wet cheeks with the back of her hand and scrambled off the bed, snatching up her bra and briefs and scampering through to the sitting room to collect the rest of her discarded clothing. Throwing them on all anyhow, not because she was afraid Ben might walk in on her—he had got what he wanted and probably wouldn’t want to see her any more than she wanted to have to face him—but because she had to get out of this house, the house that had never, in all of her life, held any happiness for her.
It was too late now to make the necessary arrangements to get back to London. Besides, she felt emotionally wrung out, in no fit state.