‘But all these years! You’ve kept me away from Aysgarth…’
‘Not because I didn’t want you there. I wanted it all too badly. I was too proud, too easily convinced by Rory that you preferred him to me. I told myself I wasn’t prepared to come second to my brother in your life, and then I saw you again and I knew it didn’t matter a damn what place I had in your life as long as I could persuade you to share it with me. Is it true, Rebecca? Do you love me?’ he asked her, framing her face in his hands.
‘Yes.’ The admission trembled past her lips. She turned her head and said uncertainly, ‘You’ve booked us a double room.’
Frazer laughed, and she realised with a small pang how long it was since she had heard him laugh like that, naturally and easily. Suddenly he looked younger, gentler.
‘As a matter of fact, I’ve booked two double rooms, but I suppose I could always be persuaded to share yours, if that’s what you want.’
Her heart had started to pound far too heavily.
‘Why did you leave the other hotel?’ she asked obliquely.
‘Because if we’d stayed, I was afraid I might do something I’ve promised myself I’ll never do, and that’s use violence against another human being.’ Frazer saw her face and reassured her, ‘Not you, you idiot…never you. I meant Rory. When I stood in that doorway and saw the look of fear in your eyes, I could have killed him there and then. I wanted to kill him,’ he added painfully, ‘and then I heard what you were saying to him, and suddenly it wasn’t just Rory I hated, it was myself as well…for what I’d done to you in believing him, for what I’d done to us.’
He started to kiss her and she trembled wildly in his arms, not the adult woman she was, but suddenly the young girl she had been, desperately and despairingly in love with a man who seemed way, way beyond her.
‘You can’t know how often I’ve dreamed of holding you like this,’ Frazer whispered fiercely against her mouth, nibbling gently at it, teasing her lips with the tip of his tongue until she was in danger of forgetting everything other than her need to be part of him. ‘You were sixteen when I first looked at you and knew that it wasn’t merely affection that I felt for you, but you were so young…too young to make the kind of commitment I wanted you to make.’ His fingers gently traced the line of her jaw. ‘You don’t look much older now. Did you know that Rory taunted me with the fact that you’d been lovers, told me how you’d responded to him? How you’d begged him, how you’d said…’
Rebecca silenced him by putting her fingers against his mouth.
‘None of it was true,’ she told him shakily. ‘None of it.’
‘No.’ Frazer’s eyes went bleak. ‘I ought to have known, to have guessed. My only excuse is that my love blinded me to the truth.’
Someone knocked on the door and he released her reluctantly. It was the waiter with their sandwiches.
‘The very last thing I feel like doing right now is eating,’ Frazer whispered as he took Rebecca back in his arms after the waiter had gone. ‘I want to stay with you tonight, Rebecca, but the decision must be yours.’
She was a woman now, not a girl, but she still felt oddly shy as she told him, ‘I want you to stay, but there’s something I should tell you first. I’m not…I don’t have any form of…of protection.’ She found she couldn’t look straight at him. ‘You see, I haven’t…that is, this…’
‘I’m going to be your first lover, and, not having anticipated such a momentous event, you haven’t had the forethought to provide yourself with any kind of contraception—is that what you’re trying to tell me?’
It was several seconds before she realised that he was quite deliberately teasing her.
‘You knew all the time!’ she protested. ‘And you let me…’
‘I overheard you telling Rory that there hadn’t been anyone,’ he admitted, ‘but, chauvinist male that I am, some insecure vulnerable part of me wanted to hear you saying it.’ He was smiling at her, but there was regret in his eyes. ‘I wanted to hear not just that you loved me but that you trusted me as well. However, I’m afraid I’ve spent far too many nights on my own cursing fate for giving you to Rory and not to me to be able to place any reliance on my own self-control.’
He was already releasing her, moving away from her, and suddenly Rebecca couldn’t bear it.
‘Frazer, please don’t go,’ she begged him. ‘Please, I want you to stay.’
She saw him hesitate and her heart trembled.
‘If I touch you now, you know what’s going to happen, don’t you?’ His voice was muffled and strained, an unfamiliar possessiveness glittering in his eyes. ‘But you’ll want to wait until your parents come home to get married.’
He almost groaned the words, and suddenly her body was on fire. She took a step forward and said simply, ‘I don’t want to wait for anything. We’ve already waited far too long.’
‘And if I make you pregnant?’ Frazer’s voice was strained and harsh.
Rebecca looked him straight in the eye.
‘Then we’ll tell my parents the truth and explain to them why we got married without them, very quickly and very quietly. Besides, it might be for the best. A big wedding could be awkward.’
‘Because of Rory?’ Frazer asked broodingly. ‘He’s got one hell of a lot to answer for.’
‘Forget him,’ Rebecca advised him. And then, with a boldness she had never imagined herself possessing, she crossed the final barrier of space that parted them and slid her arms around him, saying huskily, ‘Forget about him and make love to me, Frazer. I’ve wanted you to so much.’
She felt him tremble at that last admission. His arms closed around her, his mouth brushing tender kisses along her jaw until he found her mouth, and then quite suddenly he wasn’t tender any more, but fiercely passionate and demanding.
They undressed one another quickly and eagerly. Frazer paused to cherish the hard points of her breasts with kisses that quickly turned from adoration to desire, making her arch supplicatingly towards him, her quickened breathing impeded by her surprised sounds of pleasure.
Long before he laid her down on the comfortable bed, positioning himself above her and looking searchingly into her face, she was ready for him, rising eagerly to meet his first tentative thrust into her body, welcoming it with such heat and pleasure that his own caution deserted him and he cried out her name as desire quickened between them, bonding them like an unseen all-powerful current.
To sleep wrapped in the arms of the man one loved, protected by the bulk and warmth of his body, must surely be one of life’s most special pleasures, Re
becca reflected drowsily, snuggling closer to him.
* * *
SHE WOKE UP FIRST, well before dawn, and, after the first realisation that it hadn’t all been a dream, couldn’t resist the temptation to reach out and touch him; at first simply to reassure herself that he was actually there and then later, because she couldn’t resist the sensation of his skin beneath her fingertips, of his sleepy and yet total acceptance of her touch.
Lost in the new and proprietorial pleasure of investigating this territory that was now hers, she slid her hand to his waist and then lower.
‘Can’t a man get any sleep around here?’ Frazer grumbled in her ear, but his hand was already trapping hers against his body, encouraging it in an exploration of intimacy that made her pulses race.
‘Now see what you’ve done to me!’ he complained teasingly against her ear.
But he didn’t seem in the least displeased; far from it, Rebecca reflected dreamily as he drew her down against him and made tender lazy love to her with his hands and his mouth, arousing her so slowly and gradually that it wasn’t until she started to tremble with the need to have him inside her that she realised the extent of his restraint and self-control.
Their lovemaking was intense and explosive, an almost violent unleashing of shared emotion and need that kept them locked in one another’s arms long after their desire had climaxed.
‘I hope I haven’t made you pregnant,’ Frazer murmured softly to her. ‘Much as I want you to have my child, I need some time to have you to myself first. It isn’t going to be easy,’ he warned her. ‘The twins…’
‘Still resent me,’ Rebecca said wryly. ‘Yes, I know. But in time…’
‘I can’t send them away,’ Frazer told her honestly. ‘They’re too young to understand.’
‘I don’t want you to,’ she told him. ‘They need you, Frazer. You’re virtually all they have.’
He looked at her for a moment, then said softly, ‘And you’re all I want. All I’ve ever wanted. All I ever shall want.’
* * *
MAUD AYSGARTH heaved a sentimental sigh as she watched her nephew coming down the aisle with his bride.