Mistress of Deception

He shook his head, his expression grim. Ebony carefully extracted her hand from where he'd started squeezing her fingers tightly through emotion. It brought his eyes up with a worried jerk, but she merely smiled at him and wiggled her fingers. "They were going to sleep.'

Alan was moved by her sweetly loving smile. God, but he'd been a stupid bastard to believe all the rotten things he'd believed about her. But that was what he was trying to explain now. Would she listen? Would she understand? Would she forgive him? What if she didn't? What if. . . ?

No, no, he couldn't think like that. She would understand, his Ebony. She would understand and forgive, because she really truly loved him. He gulped down one last lump of anguish and went on.

'I tried to hate you,' he confessed. 'I wallowed in every scrap of scandal and gossip I heard about you. I filed them away in my tormented mind, exaggerated them, hugged them to my ever increasing need to justify the feelings I hadn't been able to conquer. She's wicked, I told myself. A corruptress. A seductress. A pagan goddess. It's not my fault I want her as I do. All men want her. And she wants all men. I could have her if I really wanted her. But how could I possibly want someone so cheap and disgustingly easy? Oh, the lies I kept clinging to in order to stop myself from doing what I was dying to do.'

Ebony's eyes were wide upon him, appalled yet fascinated.

'Perhaps if I'd gone to bed with another woman. But I didn't want another woman! You were all I wanted all those years, yet all I did was make you miserable. My Ebony, my love, and I was vile to you.' He shook his head, his shoulders sagging. 'God...'

'Alan, stop,' she said gently, reaching to take his hand in hers this time. 'Let it go.'

'Let what go?'

'The guilt. We've found each other now. I love you and you love me and it's futile to torment ourselves with the past. I've done crazy things too. Look at the way I tortured you with my innuendoes about other men. No matter how sorry I am for that now I can't take it back. We were both wrong. We must forgive ourselves, as well as each other.

We must go on and resolve to be happy together. We deserve it.'

Her smile was like a physical blow to Alan, because it meant so much. She forgave him. She understood him. She still loved him.

And then she did something so bold and brave and beautiful that he almost cried. She swept aside that towel, held her arms out, and simply said,

'Darling...'

The next half-hour would live in Alan's mind forever as an example of the most perfect love-making. Yet there was no wild passion, no torrid mating, no Kama Sutra position or exceptionally erotic foreplay. It was as though they were making love for the first time and it was enough to just hold her and stroke her softly, his fingers trembling slightly as they traced the glorious shape of her body, revelling in the knowledge that she would always be his and his alone.

The splendour of her love kept washing through him in waves of bittersweet emotion, and eventually he had to bury his face in her breast to hide his eyes lest she think him a fool. But she would have none of that, cupping his face and lifting it to hers so that she could kiss his damp cheeks and his suddenly tremulous mouth.

'I adore, you,' she whispered, and kissed him again. 'Now give me that baby, my darling. But give it to me slowly...'

He laughed, feeling heady with desire as he eased his aching flesh into her hot velvet depths. God, but she felt incredible. She was incredible.

I'll make it up to her, he thought as he set up a steady but powerful rhythm. I'll give her anything she wants, anything at all. Nothing will be too much trouble.

Her gasps brought him back to the present and as he saw her eyes shut and her lips part on a soft moan of ecstasy he thought he would never hear anything so satisfying as the sounds of her pleasure. But then his own pleasure took control of his mind and he was drowning in their love, drowning in her, simply drowning...

Afterwards, he held her close, and promised her the world.

'If you like,' he murmured, 'I'll even buy us a new house to start our married life in. I know Mother can be a bit interfering and …”

'Oh, but we couldn't do that!' Ebony burst out, pushing away from the warmth of his broad chest to stare up at him, her face aghast. 'She'd be devastated! And so would poor Bob and Bill. Why, you're their world, Alan, don't you know that?'