‘The TV’s your Christmas present, before you object,’ he said softly. ‘That’s not breaking any conditions of the separation, is it?’

His eyes were almost black in the dim light, with tiny dancing flames from the reflection of the fire, and his hard mouth was twisting in a smile that was very self-deprecating. He looked big and dark and all male, and the force of her desire frightened Marianne to death.

She dropped her lids and fought to gain control of her feelings. ‘I don’t suppose so,’ she said carefully, her voice trembling a little. ‘But I haven’t got anything to give you.’

He didn’t reply, and then, as she lifted her gaze to his dark face and saw the look in his eyes, she knew the heat which had begun in the core of her was staining her cheeks deep pink.

It was Zeke who broke the moment, which had become electric, as he turned towards the food, saying, ‘I couldn’t get all I would have liked to without a fridge, but I dare say we can survive on that lot for a couple of days.’

‘A couple of days?’ she queried warily.

‘You wouldn’t deny a starving man Christmas lunch?’

‘You don’t look starving.’ He looked, well, he looked sensational, she thought weakly.

‘No?’ The hunger she had seen in his eyes a few moments before was even stronger as he turned to face her fully again. ‘Looks can be deceptive,’ he said with wry dark humour, a strange little smile playing about his hard mouth.

Their eyes met and held, and Marianne felt her heart begin to beat faster and faster. ‘Zeke—’

‘No, don’t say anything,’ he said softly, moving swiftly to her side as she stood looking at him uncertainly. His hands cupped her face gently before his fingers stroked some errant strands of silky curls back from her temples. ‘Don’t say a word, Marianne. Can’t we take the next two days as something apart from real life? We won’t talk about the past or the future, just live hour by hour in the present and pretend we’re the only two people in the world.’

She stared at him, her hands resting against his broad chest, and she could feel the rapid beat of his heart beneath her fingers. The twinkling lights from the little Christmas tree and the warm rosy glow from the fire brought the magic of Christmas into the room, and she knew she wasn’t going to resist him. Mrs Perry had said she’d made the most of each day with her Harry and that she had no regrets, that she’d packed a lifetime of loving into just a few months.

She had two days, and she was going to make the most of them. It might be crazy—it was almost certainly crazy, considering he hadn’t made any promises and nothing between them was resolved—but she was going to do it anyway.

She drew a long, shaky breath, and then lifted her hand to his mouth, tracing the firm lines of his lips with one finger. ‘Kiss me, Zeke.’ It was an answer in itself.

‘The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.’ She had read that somewhere recently, and as Zeke’s mouth took hers she embraced the thought. She loved him; nothing else mattered.

He was kissing her deeply and passionately, and as she wound her slim arms round his neck and kissed him back, fiercely, he growled low in his throat, causing her to arch further into the taut hardness of him.

They undressed each other with feverish, frantic haste, and then they were naked in the dim light of the shadowed room, her slender body pale against the darkness of his tanned male flesh. He was unashamedly aroused, and as his hands roamed her body she gloried in the power she had over this big, ruthless, powerful man. He wanted her and she wanted him, wanted to feel the silky hardness of him inside her and know that she was joined to him in an act as old as time itself.

He was breathing hard, his broad, hair-roughened chest rising and falling as he fought for control, and then he moved her to arm’s length, in order to drink in the sight of her. She stood in front of him proudly, her head uplifted to his gaze as his hungry eyes moved down the pure line of her throat, the full, rich ripeness of her breasts with their jutting peaks, the flatness of her smooth stomach and long shapely lines of her legs.

‘Beautiful. So, so beautiful,’ he murmured thickly, his voice shaking. ‘I want you so much…’

She stepped forward and rubbed herself against him with a brazenness she had never displayed before, and, inflamed by her boldness, he picked her up in his arms, carrying her over to the sofa and laying her gently on the coverlet. She lay stretched out before him, loose-limbed and pliant, and he knelt down on the rug and took the hardened tip of one breast into his mouth as his hands caressed her flesh.

The pleasure was so piercing as to be unbearable, and as she writhed and moaned his hands and mouth continued to caress and kiss every inch of her until she was trembling uncontrollably, her head moving frantically from side to side in a vain effort to combat the exquisite sensations he was drawing forth.

When he joined her on the sofa she was more than ready for him, utterly surrendered to the raging passion that had taken him over. He drove himself deeper and deeper into the moist, delicate sheath, and

the contractions that had had her panting beneath his lips and hands exploded into a glorious, tumultuous release for them both, the world shattering into a million pieces.

They lay quietly afterwards, Marianne circled close in his arms as the flickering firelight played over their entwined bodies, and as a deep lassitude swept over her Marianne let herself slip into it. She was aware of the steady beat of his heart, the intoxicating, familiar feel of hair-roughened flesh against her smoothness and the sweet murmur of carols from the TV in the background, but it was all like a warm blanket covering her senses.

How long she slept she didn’t know, but when at last she roused herself it was to the knowledge that the curtains were drawn against the dark sky outside and she was wrapped round with her duvet.

‘Zeke?’

‘I’m here.’ He answered immediately, and when in the next moment he stepped into her vision she saw—with a touch of wryness—that he had come expecting to stay. Although the short towelling robe could hardly be called clothing, it was more than she was wearing beneath the duvet, and she suddenly felt unaccountably shy.

‘Don’t move; I’ll be right back.’ He grinned at her as he ducked away, reappearing almost immediately with an opened bottle of wine and two glasses, which he placed on the floor next to the sofa. ‘Move over.’

He discarded the robe with magnificent unconcern for his nakedness and joined her beneath the duvet before reaching down and pouring two glasses of the deeply coloured and fruity red wine, which smelt of damsons and spices. ‘I vote we spend Christmas just like this,’ he said huskily, the lightly rough friction of male skin against female arousing them both. ‘With brief visits across there for food and drink, of course, which we can then eat here too. What say you?’

With his arm about her shoulders and her head resting against his chest she could only nod her agreement; words were quite beyond her at that point. If this wasn’t heaven on earth she didn’t know what was.

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