The City-Girl Bride

Maggie gasped as he caught hold of her, but not out of shock or protest. No, it was her own reaction to him that caused her to tremble so violently. She could feel the rapid tattoo of Finn’s heart, even through the muffling folds of her coat. But she wasn’t feeling him through her coat at all, she recognised dizzily as Finn parted it and slid his hands inside it.

‘Nothing,’ she heard him whisper in a thick openly aroused voice. ‘You aren’t wearing anything at all.’

‘I was in bed,’ Maggie responded in a voice she had intended to be indignant but which in reality had become soft and slurred with reactive need.

‘In bed…in my bed. Have you any idea how much I’ve been aching to be there with you?’ Finn told her. ‘Ever since…’

‘Ever since I got here?’ Maggie questioned, striving to keep her balance in the midst of a passion that was threatening to totally overwhelm her.

‘No,’ Finn told her starkly. ‘Ever since you left it.’

It was too much. Helplessly Maggie gave in, closing her eyes in subjugation to her own feelings.

‘There hasn’t been a single night since then when I haven’t wanted you,’ Finn was whispering to her as he bent his head towards hers and slowly started to kiss her—slow, seductive kisses, strung together in an erotically dazzling chain that would tie her to him for ever, she suspected, as her body melted into his and his fingertips stroked her neck from her jaw to her collarbone, raising an erotic line of goosebumps that gave away her longing for him.

‘Which is it to be?’ she could hear Finn whispering as his lips found and then probed the warmth of hers. ‘Your bed or mine? Mine’s nearer

…Or we could always try them both…The fire’s still warm in the drawing room. Have you ever made love in front of a fire, Maggie, with the firelight highlighting every delicious inch of you, and your lover’s body to keep you warm…?’

Maggie shuddered in mute pleasure at the images the hypnotic seduction of his voice was conjuring up for her. ‘No…’ Her denial was a strangled sound that tore at her throat, making her close her eyes against the acid burn of her own tears as she wondered how many other women Finn might have shared such a pleasure with, whilst she had never…

‘No…? Oh, of course, I was forgetting. Open fires and city living don’t exactly go together, do they?’

There was a harshness in his voice now that physically hurt her.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ her honesty compelled her to tell him. ‘Since I don’t—I haven’t…There isn’t…’ Her voice started to tail away. She didn’t want to talk, to spend time dealing with the cumbersome delay of words, and she certainly didn’t want to be forced to think about the other women who might have shared Finn’s life. What she wanted, all she wanted…Maggie gave a small shiver as she tried to ignore what she was feeling. What was it that happened to her whenever she got physically close to Finn that affected her so strongly, that made her feel that what was happening between them was the most important thing in her life?

‘What are you trying to tell me, Maggie?’ Finn demanded grimly, cupping her face with his hands and looking down into her eyes so that there was no way she could hide her expression from him. ‘That there hasn’t been anyone else?’ He gave her a derisive look. ‘Do you really expect me to believe that a woman as intelligent, as desirable, as downright impossible to resist as both of us know you are, lives the life of a celibate?’

It frightened Maggie to realise how much pleasure it gave her to hear him describe her in such a way—and how much more the rawly sensual message in his eyes was giving her.

‘I wanted to concentrate on my career,’ she told him truthfully. ‘And that hasn’t left me any time for…for relationships.’

The way he was looking at her made her heart slam so heavily into her chest wall that she gasped out loud.

‘Oh, Maggie…Maggie…’

She gasped again at the fierce note of male passion she could hear in Finn’s voice as he slid his hands into her hair and bent his head to kiss her.

‘You do things to me that no other woman has ever done, do you know that?’ she heard Finn whispering passionately to her several minutes later as he raised his mouth from hers.

She could feel their breath mingling as he lowered his head again, and the fine tremors running through her body echoed the much fiercer shudders galvanising his.

Wrapped in one another’s arms, they made their way slowly towards the drawing room, their journey there interspersed with fiercely passionate kisses and Maggie’s softly breathy little moans of pleasure as Finn’s hands caressed her naked body. But it was the sight of the firelight playing on his body as he released her briefly to remove the duvet from the sofa and place it in front of the fire that sent such wild surges of arousal through her that Maggie couldn’t help herself from making a small strangled cry of longing.

‘What is it?’

The look of frowning anxiety he gave her as he dropped the duvet and came towards her made her blush a little at the explicitness of her thoughts. And then, as though he had guessed them, his frown gave way to a look of heavy-lidded sensuality that made her bones feel as though they were melting as it skimmed lazily over her body, and a heat that had nothing whatsoever to do with the fire burned through her.

‘Finn…’ she protested, so shocked by her own desires that she immediately blamed him for causing them. Prior to knowing Finn she had lusted after a pair of new shoes far more strongly than she had ever lusted after a man—but now…

‘Come here,’ Finn commanded softly.

Helplessly Maggie went to him, knowing that he was not so much demanding something from her as giving her the right to take whatever she wished from him.

‘City lady, country man,’ Finn whispered to her as he smoothed her skin with his hands, making her shudder as rivulets of hot, swift delight ran over her. ‘We’re poles apart, and yet there’s never been anyone I’ve ached so much to be close to.’

Awed by the intensity of the feeling she could hear in his voice, Maggie closed her eyes against the tight ball of emotions she could feel blocking her throat. When she could finally manage to speak all she could say was a choked, ‘Well, you are close to me now.’