‘I almost told you how much I love you that night, but you misunderstood me again and thought I was going to say I loathed men.’
He came towards her like a man in a trance. ‘You love me?’ he asked disbelievingly.
Too late Stacy realised she had given herself away. There would be no turning back now, Jake wouldn’t let her go. ‘But it still wouldn’t work, Jake,’ she backed away from him. ‘I won’t become a prisoner of your love. I have friends, male friends—not lovers,’ she added hastily. ‘And I’m not going to give them up.’
‘Tell me you love me.’ He seemed not to have heard her impassioned pleadings. ‘Oh, God, Stacy, tell me you love me!’
The agony in his voice was her undoing. ‘I love you, Jake. Oh yes, I love you.’ She went willingly into his arms, longing for the feel of his lips on hers, for the full arousal she could instantly feel in him.
They were hungry for each other, their kisses heated, their caresses fevered. Jake was shaking by the time they drew apart, his breathing ragged as he fought for the control that neither of them seemed able to regain.
‘Marry me, Stacy,’ he groaned. ‘Please!’
‘But your jealousy—’
‘We’ll have to fight that together. I’m warning you that if you don’t soon say yes I’m going to make love to you right here and now, regardless of your flatmates.’
‘Perhaps if we just became lovers that would be best for both of us.’
He looked angry. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Affairs aren’t as difficult to end as marriages,’ she said softly, evading his searching gaze. ‘My way you could be free any time you wanted to be.’
‘I don’t want to be free ever again. I can assure you that I’ve never been in love before, my marriage to Margaret was a mistake from start to finish. I know I’ve been unreasonable with you, but I love you so much, and I want to marry you. I want you for all time, Stacy.’
He had used that word to her so many times before and yet she knew that this time he meant it in a different way. The wanting was his way of loving, of needing—and she could deny him no longer.
‘And my work?’ she asked.
‘I won’t stop you doing anything you want to do.’
She was aware that at this moment he would deny her nothing, and she didn’t like his vunerability. ‘And children?’
‘Only if you want them.’
‘Oh, I want them, but do you?’
‘My child growing inside you,’ he said huskily, wonderingly. ‘Oh yes. And it will be a beautiful daughter, with her mother’s glorious red hair and sparkling green eyes.’
‘Or a son with his father’s arrogance and charm.’
He laughed softly. ‘Do I have charm?’
‘When you want to have.’
‘And is my charm working now? Are you going to marry me?’ The lines of strain at his nose and mouth were back again, evidence of his tension. ‘Can you bear to live with a man who loves you so much it’s almost made him crazy with jealousy?’
‘I can, as long as he never forgets that I love him in return.’
‘You’ll never regret it,’ he promised as he once more claimed her lips.
Stacy hoped she wouldn’t, but there was still that vague feeling of unease at the back of her mind.
* * *
They were married three weeks later, their honeymoon one of idyllic love on one of the Greek islands. Stacy had to admit to a certain amount of tension on their wedding night, but Jake had not hurried her at all, introducing her to all the pleasures of her body with a gentleness that had finally taken her by storm.
After that night they had become slaves to the desire that engulfed them whenever their eyes happened to meet, the time of day and place seeming unimportant. They lived in a hazy world of eating, sleeping and making love, the outside world forgotten by both of them.