Loving

‘It isn’t.’ Blake’s voice was so harsh, his face so shuttered and forbidding that she wondered what personal anguish lay behind the curt words, but could not bring herself to ask.

‘So,’ he told her, ‘given that sexually we both agree that we’re extremely compatible, I submit that we change the rules of our partnership.’

‘Change the rules?’ Sapphire was so surprised that she could only repeat what he had said, staring uncomprehendingly up at him. For an instant there was something in his eyes that warmed the ice-coldness of her heart, but it was gone almost immediately his voice crisp and businesslike as he said firmly. ‘Yes. We agreed that our relationship would be a platonic one lasting just as long as …’

‘My father lives,’ Sapphire finished for him, her face white. For a few hours she had forgotten her father’s condition. Mentally castigating herself she tried to concentrate on what Blake was saying. ‘Now I’m suggesting that we lift that self-imposed ban; that we make our marriage a real one in every sense of the word, to be …’

‘Set aside when we no longer desire one another?’

‘Is that what you want?’

His eyes narrowed as he waited for her response, and Sapphire felt a quiver of apprehension deep down inside her. Had he guessed how she felt? It was pride and pride alone that kept her from crying out that she wanted to be with him for ever; that she wanted to share his life and his bed for just as long as her life lasted. Instead she said lightly, ‘Yes, of course.’

A mask seemed to drop down over his features, his eyelids lowering to conceal his thoughts from her. ‘Very well then,’ he said at last. ‘If those are your terms, then for as long as our desire lasts, so does our marriage.’ He stood up, stretching lithely, and completely changing the subject said calmly, ‘Snow’s melting. I’ll just go out and check on the foal. Why don’t you have an early night? You still look washed out.’

Very flattering, Sapphire thought wrathfully ten minutes later, luxuriating in a deep scented bath of deliciously hot water. She wasn’t going to question Blake’s abrupt volte-face, nor his suggestion that their marriage continue. Perhaps he was hoping to quench his desire for Miranda with her. Perhaps the fact that Miranda was now married broke Blake’s own personal code of be

haviour, Sapphire didn’t know.

One half of her urged flight and safety, reminding her of all the pain he had already caused her, while the other whispered that life without him had been arid, dead; and that perhaps his desire for her could flower into something stronger and more permanent if it was carefully nurtured and protected.

She lingered so long in the bath, deep in thought, that the water started to cool. A draught from the door as it opened made her shiver and she turned round thinking it must have swung open.

‘You’ve been in here so long I was beginning to wonder if my suggestion was so offensive to you that you’d decided you preferred a watery grave to another night in my arms.’

The sight of Blake standing beside the bath, looking down at her, was so unexpected and startling that she could barely breathe. ‘I was thinking,’ she told him huskily, shivering again as her skin chilled. ‘I’m sorry if you’ve been waiting for the bathroom.’ How formal her voice sounded, her expression hunted as she looked past him to where she had left her towel, trying not to think about the hunger that had started to unfurl inside her at the thought of ‘a night in his arms’.

‘It’s large enough for us to share,’ Blake drawled reaching for his electric razor, and wiping some of the steam off the mirror above the basin as he plugged it in and switched it on.

‘Blake, it’s cold in here …’ He was halfway through shaving when she finally plucked up the courage to remind him, albeit obliquely, that she wanted to get out of the bath. He finished what he was doing, rubbing his jaw experimentally. ‘I thought you always shaved in the morning,’ Sapphire muttered crossly. Why couldn’t he take the hint and leave her in privacy to get ready for bed?

‘So I did,’ he agreed blandly, unplugging the razor and turning round to lean indolently against the wall, watching her, ‘but married men, my sweet, always shave at night. It saves wear and tear on delicate feminine skin,’ he pointed out, grinning openly when she started to blush. The colour seemed to start at her toes and wash up over her body until it reached the swell of her breasts, now barely concealed by the cold bubbles, ‘and if you’re cold, why don’t you get out of the bath?’ He saw her tense and instinctively try to submerge more of her body beneath the bubbles and leant towards her. ‘Why so shy? You weren’t this afternoon.’

How could she explain that that had been different; that then in the heat of passion her own nudity had not disturbed her, but that now in the small confines of the bathroom, with Blake still fully dressed, it did?

All she could manage was a cross, ‘You seem to forget that unlike you, I’m not used to … to …’

‘Living with someone? The only person I’ve ever lived with is you, Sapphire.’ As he spoke he was unfastening his shirt buttons. When he had finished he tugged it off, revealing the tautly muscled expanse of his chest. Her breath seemed to lock inside her as Sapphire tried to drag her hungry gaze away from his body.

‘Since you won’t get out of your own volition, and since I’m too much of a gentleman to let you freeze, I’ll just have to help you, won’t I?’ Blake drawled, and as he leaned towards her, Sapphire realised why he had removed his shirt, and tried automatically to evade him. The small tidal wave her hurried movements caused soaked Blake’s jeans, but didn’t prevent him from lifting her out of the bath. His chest felt warm and hard against her water-chilled damp flesh, a shivering that had nothing to do with the cold raising goose bumps over her sensitised skin.

‘Blake!’ Her half-shocked protest was ignored. ‘You’re soaking wet,’ she pointed out breathlessly, trying to clamp down on her rising excitement and totally unable to do so. This close she could see the pores in his skin, the mingled scent of sweat and heat coming off it provocatively arousing.

‘We both are,’ he agreed, slowly letting her slide to the floor, while reaching for her towel with his free hand, ‘but it can soon be remedied.’ His eyes never left her face as he enveloped her in the large soft towel and then slowly started to rub her dry.

Within seconds of his touching her Sapphire had forgotten how chilled she had been. Her body seemed to be bathed with heat, consumed by it everywhere he touched her. She had never dreamed that something as mundane as drying her damp skin could be so unbelievably erotic but the gentle friction of the towel against her skin, in Blake’s hands became an instrument of exquisite pleasure that delighted and yet intruded unbearably, stopping her from savouring the touch of Blake’s hands against her skin—a touch she now burned and hungered for even more than she had this afternoon. He only had to touch her and she went up in flames, she realised shudderingly, almost lightheaded with desire.

‘Blake.’ His name was a muffled protest and a plea, lost against his chest as she gave in to an overwhelming urge to reach out and touch him, pressing trembling lips to the hard column of his throat, and glorying in his responsive shudder.

‘Tell me you want me.’ The hoarse command was one she couldn’t resist.

‘I want you.’

The towel fell away as he picked her up and strode through into the bedroom. Against her body she could feel the fierce thud of Blake’s heart, pounding out an unmistakably erotic message, his body, hard and urgent as he deposited her on the bed, tugging off his wet jeans before joining her.

‘Show me how much,’ he demanded thickly, tracing an erotic pathway downwards along her throat, his fingers burning fiery brands of possession against her skin as he cupped the silky skin of her breast, delicately stroking the hard nub of her nipple. This time Sapphire responded immediately without hesitation, knowing with one corner of her mind that mingled with her desire and love was a tiny thread of desperation urging her to take as much of him as she could while she could—memories to store up to keep her warm on those nights when her bed would be cold and empty without him. As though her yearning hunger reached out and unleashed some deep core of need within him Blake reacted to her passion, touching her, kissing her with a barely restrained ferocity that left her weakly clinging to him like a drowning person to a raft. His touch, his need, the words of passion and hunger he muttered into her ear, took her far beyond the shores of love and out into an ocean so deep she knew that without him she would sink and never ever re-surface.

Fierce tremors of pleasure raced through her body, each lingering caress making her arch and invite with a sensuality that left one corner of her mind half-shocked. Could this really be her, touching Blake with a far greater intimacy than she had ever envisaged; stroking and kissing the taut male body until Blake cried out in a delirium of need, reaching for her, taking the fullness of one breast deeply into his mouth and laving it with the moist heat of his tongue.

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