by Miranda Lee
'You sure you know what you're doing, here?' Jack muttered thickly when she reached to encircle it with both her hands.
She sucked in a steadying breath, swallowed, then gave him what she hoped was a cool smile.
Her hands began to move and his eyes widened, his body flinching each time her thumb grazed over the soft velvety tip. Finally, his hips began to lift slightly from the bed, his buttocks squeezing tightly together.
'You'd better stop doing that,' he growled.
Courtney stopped, squeezing him in exactly the right spot so that he immediately subsided. Jack looked stunned whilst she tried to hide her own rattled state. She hadn't meant to let things go quite that far with just her
hands, but she'd become mesmerised by his responses to her touch, by his actually becoming longer and thicker and harder. She'd thought he was fully erect.
'Courtney, no.' Jack groaned when she bent her mouth to where her hands had been. 'For pity's sake!'
But pity was not an emotion Courtney was feeling at that moment. Her whole being was consumed by the most compelling need to possess him again. Utterly. And far more intimately. There was no cohesive thought on her part. Just the sense of herself falling into a black abyss from which there was no escape."
Her heart lurched as her lips closed over him, her head swirled and, finally, she was lost to the darkness.
His abrupt pulling her off him and up to his mouth came as a shock, much like someone suddenly shining a blinding light into your sleepy eyes.
'Time to change driver, honey,' he grated out.
Dazed and disorientated, Courtney was like a rag doll as he rolled her over onto her back, his mouth crushing down onto hers. This time it was his tongue darting deep, his hands holding her arms out wide and his body pressing her down, down, down.
Panic had her struggling to break free, her mouth twisting from his with a harsh cry of protest.
'Hush up,' he ground out. 'You can be on top another night, but right now you're going to be made love to by a real man for a change, not some bloody puppet you can pull around by the strings. My name's not Larry, honey. It's Jack. And, like I said, I don't take orders. Now, are you going to be cooperative and quiet? Or do I have to kiss you till you are?'
Her eyes were like saucers, but her mouth stayed silent.
'Good.'
He still kissed her, over and over, kissed her till she was reeling, and then...then he started kissing her all over. Her throat. Her breasts. Her stomach. Her thighs. Between her thighs.
'Oh, God,' she moaned, and spread her legs wider for him.
This was one of the things she'd feared; what she'd worried might happen to her. That she would be powerless to stop him doing whatever he liked. And here it was, happening to her.
Yet the reality wasn't anything to fear, she eventually realised. It was...bliss.
'Don't stop,' she choked out when he did.
His laughter was dark. 'Can't have you getting too addicted to that. Or coming too soon.'
She groaned. She'd been awfully close.
He kissed his way back up her body till he got to her breasts again. There, he sucked on her nipples till they were so sensitive just breathing on them made her tremble and arch her back.
By the time he reached for the condom she was quivering, and panting. She could not wait for the moment when she could feel him entering her, filling her totally. She bent her knees in readiness, breathless with anticipation.
'You like it like that?' he asked, sounding surprised. 'In the missionary position?'
She blinked, startled that he was stopping to discuss positions at this stage when she was just dying to have him inside her, any old way.
'Sometimes,' she lied, and he shrugged.
'Not many women do. But that's okay. I'm easy.' She gasped as he entered her, his thick, hard length thrusting home in one solid surge. Her legs automatically lifted to wrap themselves tight around him, as did her arms, winding around his big broad back, holding him close, pulling him even deeper into her.
The sensation was incredible. 'Oh, Jack...'
'I know,' he muttered. 'I know. I feel it too.'
Did he? she wondered dazedly. Did he really?
She'd never known anything like it. Not just the physical pleasure, but something else. A wave crashing through her, a wave of emotion so strong it took everything with it, especially all her preconceptions and misconceptions about making love with Jack.
Her heart filled with it, overflowed with it. She hugged him to her and wanted nothing but to stay that way forever, their flesh fused, their hearts beating as one.
This had to be love, she realised in her rapture, that long-scorned emotion that she scarcely believed in and told herself she would never fall victim too.
Love. Glorious, wonderful, overwhelming love.
Jack began to move, making her gasp and forcing her mind back to the physical reality of the moment, which was Jack, thrusting powerfully into her, Jack, having sex with her.
It wasn't love for him, was it?
Everything inside her contracted, with emotional pain not sexual pleasure. Yet it possibly felt the same to him, for he moaned and stopped momentarily. She stared up at him with hopeless longing, and he stared back down at her, an odd expression crossing his already strained face.
And then he did something that threw Courtney into total despair. He closed his eyes, and sighed.
He's thinking of her, she agonised. Maybe even pretending I'm her. That's what that weird look was all about. And that sigh.
Immediately, she wanted him gone from her. Away. Out of her body!
But no sooner had that angry thought swept through her than he began to move again, and she gasped, stunned at the pleasure he could still bring, even when she knew what she was to him. A cypher. A stand-in. A second-rate substitute.
Suddenly she understood her mother's bitterness towards her father. She must have fallen in love with him too. But he hadn't loved her back. That was his crime, not loving her back, whilst still being able to enjoy her body and forcing her to enjoy his.
Courtney tried not to enjoy Jack's body. Tried to switch off. But it was too late. Either mat or she was too weak. Loving Jack was making her weak. Terribly weak.
Finally, she didn't even try to fight her feelings. Impossible, anyway. They were consuming her with a heat and a passion so strong that nothing short of a bomb falling on this bed was going to stop her seeing this out to its inevitable end.
Her first spasm had her sucking air sharply into her lungs. She might have screamed out, but his mouth crashed down on hers again, muffling her cries into soft moans, making her head spin even as the spasms went on and on and on. His big arms wrapped round her and he scooped her up from the bed, clutching her hard to him as he came too, shuddering and shaking. He buried his head in her hair, muttering things she couldn't quite make out.
Finally the tempest was over, and an awkward stillness descended on both of them. An awkward silence as well.
Jack's rather weary sigh spelled things out for Courtney.
Hard to keep pretending once the heat of the moment
was over and cold reality returned. Reality being a simple country girl with long dark hair, not a glamorous city-smart blonde who no doubt didn't fancy the missionary position at all, but all sorts of other exotic and erotic ways.
Courtney had used to think she knew it all when it came to seducing men. Yet what did she really know, other than being on top along with some elementary oral techniques? Hardly the stuff sex goddesses were made of.
Courtney's despair deepened. Jack is never going to fall in love with me, not after Katrina. All I can hope for is a superficial friendship, sex every night he's here, and maybe the odd one-night stand whenever I come to Sydney.
An hour ago Courtney could have coped with that quite well.
Now it would hurt her more than she could ever have envisaged. Yet, at the same time, she knew she wouldn't say no. She'd be there, at h
is beck and call, for as long as he wanted her.
That was the truth of it. Better to accept the harsh reality of a one-sided love, otherwise she might end up as bitter and twisted as her mother.
Besides, Jack was not a bad man. Just the opposite. He was a very nice man. He wasn't out to deliberately hurt her, or to callously use her. He thought she was on his wavelength, wanting nothing more from their relationship than what he'd offered right from the start.
An affair.
Now it was up to her to keep that status quo, as well as her pride. There would be no dramatic confession of love. No desperate tactics to try to get him to fall in love with her. Hell, no. She wasn't playing sweet little thing
for any man. Or femme fatale, either. She was what she was and he could take her or leave her.
Which meant he would probably do both.
It would hurt, but she'd survive. Of course she would. She'd been brought up tough.
But first, how to extricate herself from Jack's arms without his twigging to anything being wrong?
Their position was still highly intimate and extrication potentially embarrassing. Jack was sitting on his haunches in the middle of the bed with her clasped tightly against his torso, her buttocks resting on his thighs, their bodies still intimately locked together.
'Er...um...Jack...?'
'Mmm?' His head remained buried in her hair.
'I...I need to go to bed. I have to be up early.'
He groaned, and lifted his head, his blue eyes soft and dreamy. 'I don't want you to go,' he murmured. 'I want you to stay with me.'
'I can't,' she replied, trying not to show alarm. Because she wanted to, oh, so much, wanted to wallow in his arms and in his lovemaking, if not for the rest of her life, then at least for one whole night.
But Agnes was an early riser and she simply didn't dare.
'I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted,' she went on, using every ounce of her willpower to sound cool and calm. 'We can spend more time together tomorrow night.'
His smile was wry. 'Can I trust you not to change your mind again?'
Oh, God. Little did he know.
'After that magnificent performance?'
'Same time tomorrow night, then?' he suggested.
'A little earlier perhaps.' She knew she wouldn't be able to wait till midnight a second time. 'I never could resist a bargain.'
Surprisingly, he didn't laugh at her joke. Instead, he frowned. 'What about Agnes?'
'Agnes is usually in bed by ten-thirty.'
'What kept you so long tonight?'
Fear of coming back and falling in love with you. 'A foal. A gorgeous little colt.' Her face softened at the thought of it, valiantly struggling to its feet so soon after birth. 'A darling thing. But he gave the mare a bit of a hard time. I had to sit there in the straw for ages, stroking her neck and telling her it was going to be all right.'
'Which it was?'
'Oh, yes. Mother and baby doing fine.'
He gave her an odd look, as though he wanted to say something but wasn't sure if it was a good idea. 'Courtney...'
'Yes?'
'Just now, when we were making love...' His hesitation brought a tightening to her heart.
'Yes?' she asked warily. Don't you dare tell me that, her eyes informed him. I don't need to know. That would be cruel.
He sighed again. Damn, but she hated those sighs. 'Nothing. It was fantastic. That's all. You're fantastic. I just wanted you to know that.'
She smiled through her heartbreak. "Thanks, lover. But you're the one who was fantastic. I can't wait till tomorrow night.' And wasn't that the truth? 'Meanwhile, don't forget your promise to be discreet. No giveaways, please, when other people are around. No sneaky little kisses or hand-holding, or any of that mushy stuff. I mean...we don't have to do that, do we? We both know
the score here. It's not as though we're besotted lovers. We're adults, enjoying a nice little discreet fling. Isn't that right?'
Deny it, she willed wildly as she looked up at him. Tell me it isn't so. Tell me you're madly besotted with me, that you can't keep your hands off me, that you want me by your side till we die!
The feverish desperation of her thoughts disgusted her, and she looked away. Love had turned her into a fool. A stupid, romantic, female fool.
Oh, Mum. I know what you suffered now.
But she hated the thought of becoming bitter like her mother. Somehow, she had to stop that happening.
'I really must go now, Jack,' Courtney said truthfully enough, calmer eyes swinging back up to his.
The most seductive passion glittered in his eyes.
'And I really don't want you to go.'
'That's very flattering, but I really think that—'
His mouth obliterated the rest of her words.
Courtney was to be appalled later to realise it took him all of five seconds' flat to change her mind.
COURTNEY rolled over, blinked blearily, and finally focused on her bedside clock.
'Good grief!' she exclaimed, and leapt from the bed. 'Ten-thirty!'
Seven minutes later she was showered, dressed and hurrying downstairs, her hands scooping her hair up into a ponytail on the way. She burst into the kitchen, startled to find Agnes, Jack and Sarah sitting at the kitchen table, sipping cups of tea.
The trio glanced up at her as she rushed through the door, both Jack and Sarah saying good morning and smiling whilst Agnes rose to move over to the stove. Sarah was especially effusive in her greeting, which was not like her at all.
A widow, Sarah Pearson had come to work at Crosswinds twenty years before, shortly after her gamblerholic husband had shot himself, leaving her with three teenage daughters to raise on her own. At the time of his suicide, Reg Pearson had been working at Crosswinds as a general handyman, and the stud had been a much smaller concern. Hilary had taken pity on the destitute Sarah and had created a job for her as secretary and office manager, even though Sarah hadn't been able to type back then.
Now fifty-seven, Sarah was still not the greatest typist in the world. Neither was she a great manlover. Her bright smile, plus the colour in her plump cheeks this morning, made it apparent Jack had already been working his effortless charm on her.
The silly stab of jealousy this thought evoked made Courtney resolve to avoid Jack during daylight hours, confining her weakness for him to those private moments behind closed doors. She would not be able to function properly as the boss of Crosswinds if she kept thinking about him and the ease with which he had seduced her to his will last night.
She hadn't returned to her own bed till after three. No wonder she'd slept like the dead.
But what of the man himself? He had to be some kind of machine to do what he'd done and pop back up this morning looking perkier than a buck-rabbit in springtime.
There he sat, sipping tea and smiling up at her over the rim of his cup, looked totally refreshed and relaxed. Yet it was clear he'd been up for some time, if the empty breakfast plates beside him were any guide. He was wearing the stone-washed jeans he'd worn the previous day, but with a different top, a blue Sloppy Joe which made his eyes look bluer than the bluest outback sky.
'Someone should have woken me up,' she said to no one in particular as she set about making herself a mug of instant coffee.
'Jack thought you deserved a sleep in,' Sarah said.
Courtney finished making the black sugarless coffee before slowly turning, a cool smile hiding her pounding heart.
'Really?' Her eyes met his directly.
His eyebrows lifted ever so slightly in what she saw as a wickedly knowing gesture, and suddenly she was back in his bed, boneless after another mind-blowing orgasm, begging him to stop, then begging him not to.
Truly, she'd never known such orgasms existed. What she'd been experiencing all these years paled by comparison.
Being in love with your lover certainly made a difference. As did the skill of that lover. Jack was everything Courtney had dreamt, yet f
eared he'd be. Demanding, yet giving. Dominating, yet not selfish. A sensualist of the first order, infinitely tender and gently coercing. It had been so easy to close her eyes and pretend that he loved her. No man could have been more loving in his lovemaking. That was the most seductive part of all.
But he didn't love her. She really couldn't afford to forget that, or Lord knew what other stupidities she might fall victim to. Being his love slave every night of his stay was going to be bad enough.
'You had a very long weekend,' he said, his eyes never leaving hers. "The trip down to Sydney on Friday, the races on Saturday, driving back on Sunday. Then a late night last night on top of that. You had to have been exhausted.'
Courtney decided she wasn't going to indulge in word games or double entendres. Jack might like that kind of thing, but she didn't.
'Yes, I was very tired,' she said. 'You're right. But now it's Monday morning and time to get back to business. Have you had the opportunity yet to ask Sarah about all those things you wanted to know?' Presumably, by now, Sarah had been informed of the lie of the land.
'We've only just touched the surface, haven't we, Sarah?'
'Oh, yes. Barely. It's going to take most of the day, if Jack wants a detailed history of every horse you own. At last count, Crosswinds had over sixty brood mares. And then there's the three stallions, the yearlings and all those horses Hilary leased out for racing.'
'No worries,' Courtney said. 'I'm going to be busy all day myself, doing the rounds with Ned. It's busy, busy, busy at this time of year, isn't it, Agnes?'.
Agnes glanced around from where she was cooking Courtney her usual breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast. 'It certainly is. And, speaking of Ned, he was here looking for you a little while ago. I said you'd go see him as soon as you'd had breakfast. He said to tell you he'd be at the breeding barn.'
