The Deserving Mistress

Her chin rose defiantly. ‘The truth, that January and March believe she’s dead—’

‘I saw the look on April’s face earlier today, May,’ Jude cut in insistently. ‘April is longing to see January and March. Wants, as she already has with you, to see the women they have become—’

‘She has no right!’ May cried agitatedly, standing up abruptly, uncaring as she hurt her arms wrenching out of Jude’s grasp.

He grimaced. ‘Obviously April believes she does. Look, May, I can’t even begin to understand what happened here over twenty years ago, but—’

‘She left us, walked out on the three of us when we were only babies; I, for one, don’t need to know any more than that,’ May assured him scathingly.

‘She walked out on your father, too, May,’ Jude said quietly.

‘And it almost killed him,’ she acknowledged harshly. ‘I know, because I watched what her desertion did to him. He never married again, you know—’

‘Neither has April,’ he pointed out softly.

She shook her head. ‘I’m not interested in what she has or hasn’t done. Don’t you see? This is all your fault, Jude,’ she turned on him accusingly. ‘None of this would have happened if you had never come here and brought her with you—’ Her words were cut off abruptly as Jude stood up to pull her forcefully against him, his mouth coming fiercely down on hers.

It was a kiss that May, after the first few seconds of struggle, returned just as fiercely as emotions quickly spiralled out of control.

Here, now, nothing else mattered but the fiery passion that blazed so strongly between them, May returning kiss for kiss, caress for caress, her hands against the naked warmth of his chest as she shed first his jacket and then his shirt.

Jude’s mouth was warm against the arched column of her neck, teeth gently biting her earlobes before his tongue moved moistly to the dark hollows that shadowed the base of her throat, discarding her jacket to pull the zip to her dress slowly down the length of her spine.

The hay was warm and soft beneath them as they lay down upon it, Jude half lying across her as his lips returned to possess hers.

May gasped her pleasure as Jude’s hand moved to cup her breast, feeling his touch through the silky material of her bra, the nipple already pert and aroused, Jude’s tongue searching the heated moisture of her mouth.

She wanted him, how she wanted him. All of him.

Her back arched instinctively as Jude’s lips moved to the naked pertness of her breasts, paying homage to each as he kissed their arousal, tongue laving the rosy tips as pleasure rippled uncontrollably through every particle of May’s being, his hand moving softly across the flat planes of her stomach to the lace panties beneath.

Her fingers convulsed fiercely in the darkness of his hair as she held him to her, wanting him never t

o stop, wanting this pleasure never to end.

Heat began in the centre of her body, deep inside her, rising quickly as it pervaded all of her body, on fire now as the hitherto unknown sensations caused her body to arch and then fall down, down, down…

‘It’s all right, May.’ Jude suddenly cradled her fiercely into the hardness of his body. ‘It’s all right,’ he soothed as the spasms continued to rack her fevered body.

Reality came back with the force of a blow as May realised exactly what had just happened between them, what she had allowed to happen.

It wasn’t ‘all right’.

How could it be, when she was so deeply in love with this man…?

Jude felt May moving emotionally and mentally away from him even as he continued to hold her physically close to him.

He hadn’t meant for this to happen, hadn’t intended—

Of course he hadn’t intended for any of this to happen, but he could already feel the way May was putting her barriers back in place, even higher now that she knew he was capable of breaching them even beyond her imagining.

But it was beyond his own imagining, too. How could he ever have known? He had never thought…

May’s response to him, his to her, was a complete revelation to him, too, completely beyond any other experience he had ever known. Even now, when he could feel her drawing away from him, he wanted her. And not just physically…

‘Let me go, Jude,’ she rasped coldly.

He drew in a ragged breath, making no move to comply. ‘May—’