‘Yes?’ His eyes hadn’t left hers for a moment.
‘You could let go a little more, delegate at times,’ she said carefully. ‘You have some good executives working for you—they have to be good to survive at Buchanan Industries! You needn’t be there so early in the morning and work so late.’
‘Maybe.’ He still had made no move towards her.
‘And…and me?’ She didn’t want to ask, she just wanted to fly into his arms and believe all was well, but she couldn’t. She needed and loved him more than life itself, but she was still frightened of the future. ‘You would be happy for me to go to college and train for a career, Zeke?’
A muscle moved in his hard jaw but the devastating grey eyes didn’t blink. ‘You want the truth?’ he asked grittily.
She nodded, terrified of what she was going to hear.
‘I don’t want you to see or speak to anyone but me,’ he ground out painfully. ‘That’s the truth. I’m working on it, Marianne—hell, you couldn’t call me anything I haven’t called myself—but I’m not there yet and I can’t pretend. But…’ He paused, and for the first time since he had walked into the bedsit she saw his face relax a little. ‘I know that would be no good for you and you’d be unhappy, desperate. Reason says I want you to be everything you want to be, and my heart says the same thing; it’s just in here—’ he tapped his forehead with a hand she saw was shaking ‘—when I start thinking, imagining what it would be like if you left me—’
‘I won’t.’ She moved to him then, but still he didn’t take her into his arms, his body rigid. ‘I couldn’t.’
?
?You can’t say that,’ he said bleakly.
‘I just did.’ She stared up into the dark handsome face and found herself wondering for a moment how this man, this powerful, fabulously rich, wildly handsome man, who only had to snap his fingers to have women fighting over him, could be so destructively insecure. And what he saw in her that made him love her so passionately. ‘Could you leave me?’ she asked gently. ‘Could you walk away from me for someone else?’
‘That’s different.’
‘Why?’ she pressed softly. ‘Why is it different?’
‘It just is,’ he ground out with painful flatness.
‘Zeke, if you hadn’t come here today, if we had carried on living apart for months, years, decades, I still wouldn’t have wanted anyone else but you,’ she said softly. ‘Don’t you see?’
‘I’m trying.’ It was wrenched out of him, and now he pulled her violently into him, crushing her mouth beneath his as his hands moved hungrily over her body. ‘Believe me, I’m trying.’
Marianne responded blindly, the lonely weeks since Christmas making her desire white-hot as she tangled her fingers in his dark hair, matching the urgency of his need movement for movement, kiss for kiss, as they stripped the clothes from each other in feverish haste.
‘I’ve missed you. Hell, how I’ve missed you.’ He held her trembling body away from him for a moment, his arms outstretched and his hands spanning her slender waist as he drank in the sight of her womanly curves and hollows. ‘You’re so beautiful, so incredibly beautiful, my love,’ he said huskily.
‘So are you,’ she whispered shakily, gasping at the air as the powerful masculine body in front of her filled her vision and took away her breath.
And then she was in his arms again, their hands and lips moving over each other and creating burning rivulets of desire. She could feel the thrust of his body against her softness and as his knee parted her legs she pressed into him, accepting his manhood into the moist warmth between her thighs as he lifted her off her feet and she wound her legs round his hips.
Sheer molten ecstasy was sending contraction after contraction radiating from the very centre of her being, and as she felt him shudder and then emit a hoarse groan of pleasure, the world shattered into a million brilliant pieces beneath her closed eyelids and she found herself in another dimension, another universe of exquisite fiery sensation.
She wasn’t aware she was crying as she felt him draw shuddering breath after shuddering breath, deep into his lungs, their bodies locked together and her head buried in his shoulder. And then, as she raised her head and looked into his face, she felt the salty hot trail down her face.
‘I love you,’ she whispered shakily, willing him to draw it into himself and accept it completely. ‘More than you will ever know. You are my sun and moon, my reason for living. I’m only half alive when I’m not with you.’
But even as they kissed again, still locked together in an embrace as old and elemental as time, she wondered if he would ever really understand and learn to trust.
Marianne left the bedsit that evening for good, but contrary to what she expected Zeke did not drive to the apartment.
It took her a good twenty minutes to realise where they were heading for, but as they approached Hertfordshire she understood, her hand reaching out to grip Zeke’s as the lump in her throat prevented her from speaking. He was taking her to the house.
‘The apartment’s gone.’ He stopped the car at the top of the common for a moment or two, turning to her as he spoke. ‘The furniture, everything. I thought we needed a new start.’
‘When?’ She was very near breaking point with all the emotion of the last few hours and the realisation that the terrible isolation and loneliness of the last weeks and months was over.
‘I put it on the market the day after I did this,’ he said quietly, gesturing at his ankle. ‘That last misunderstanding between us… It seemed to signify how things had been there. You never liked it, did you?’
‘No,’ she said softly, her eyes glinting with unshed tears. ‘I never did.’