by Kate Walker
The kisses he needed to give her won the battle and she found her head was pulled up, lips crushed beneath his marauding mouth, his invading tongue plunging into the moist softness, setting up a sensual dance as he tasted her intimately.
His hands were urgent at her waist, lifting the torn tee-shirt and wrenching it over her head, pausing only for the time it took to remove it before he claimed her lips again. Imogen had the easier task and with Raoul’s help his shirt was soon shrugged off and tossed to one side on the floor. The white cotton bra shared the same fate, discarded without a second thought, and Imogen could only sigh out her relief and satisfaction as she felt her skin press against his, the whirl of black hair tantalising and teasing her already sensitive nipples.
‘Mon Dieu, but I want you!’ Raoul muttered roughly, pushing his hands up between them to capture and cup the curves of her breasts, teasing the sensitive nipples until she was swooning with desire, swaying against him, only supported by the hands she had flung up around his neck, fingers clenching over his shoulders, digging in to the corded muscle there.
‘Me too.’
It was all she could manage, because to say anything more would require her to separate her lips from his demanding mouth and that was more than she could stand. Stinging pulses of desire were shooting through her, all the way from her nipples down to where the hot moisture of need gathered between her thighs. She was blind, deaf and dumb to anything but Raoul and the needs he was waking in her, the pleasures she knew were waiting for her, if she could just...
‘These have to go.’
Sensing her needs, Raoul had already unzipped her jeans, tossing her down on the bed with an impatience that spoke of the hunger that was building up inside him too, threatening to break through the dam of restraint he had tried to impose on his actions.
And that was fine with Imogen. Patience and restraint were not what she wanted from him. Not here. Not now. Almost frantically she wriggled herself free of the clinging clothing, knowing a hot rush of relief and anticipation as Raoul’s demanding hands exposed her to his hungry gaze, the faint wash of cooler air an almost unbearable addition to the rush of sensations.
‘You too.’
Their hands met and clashed as both of them tried to rid him of what little was left of his clothing, and a moment later they were back down on the bed together. Imogen’s arms went up around his neck as she pulled him down to cover her, giving herself up to the delicious sensation of having his hard body over hers. His hot skin scorched her, his hair-roughened legs came between hers, nudging her limbs apart, exposing her to him. All the time his mouth was at her breasts, licking, suckling, nipping sharply, until she arched high against him, letting out a high, keening cry of delight and need.
Drifting, lost on a heated sea of sensation, she felt his fingers at her moist core, brushing aside the damp curls, stroking just where she needed him most. It was too much, though, and she caught his hands in hers, demanding more.
‘You,’ she said roughly. ‘I want you. All of you.’
His faint groan told her that he was as close to losing himself as she was, and she let her legs part even further to encourage him, inviting him in. The blunt heat of him was nudging at her; his mouth was fixed on one breast, tugging sharply on the aroused nipple as she gave herself up to his intimate invasion. Abandoning all control, she raised her hips from the bed, pushing herself against him, and felt the hard force of his possession surging into her, taking her out of herself and into a mindless, needy hunger that could only be satisfied by joining together harder and faster.
‘Ma belle...’
His voice was a rough, hoarse gasp as he pushed in, deeper, further, then drew back, again and again and again. Each time he took her higher, further, the storm of pleasure building, swirling, growing until there was nowhere else to go but over the edge and into the oblivion of ecstasy that splintered all around her.
A thudding heartbeat later, she heard Raoul’s cry as he abandoned himself to his own release and followed her into the raging darkness.
It was a long, long time before her breathing slowed, her heart stopped racing and she slowly, dazedly came back to reality and awareness of the room she was in, the man who lay beside her, long body slick with sweat and the aftershocks of reaction.
‘And you wondered why there are the rumours that I’m here to steal you away.’
His broad chest was still heaving, his words coming roughly and unevenly.
‘I think it’s a little late to try and deny that now.’
‘But I can’t have people thinking that—it would ruin everything.’ The words escaped in an unthinking rush.
‘Ruin?’
Raoul heaved himself up onto the pillow, propping it behind his back as he leaned against the bedhead.
‘That seems to be a word that’s been used a lot today. If I’m supposed to have ruined everything, at least you could have the courtesy to tell me exactly how I’ve done that.’
The way he looked down at her, the laser probe of those bronze eyes, made her shiver inside. She wanted to reach for the sheet, to pull it up to cover herself from that searching stare.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she hedged. ‘Nothing matters now—everything’s...’
‘Ruined?’ he supplied sardonically when she let the sentence trail off unfinished. It was unfinishable. There was nothing left to say. ‘Explain!’
‘Nothing to explain.’
She couldn’t meet his eyes, so instead stared down at her own fingers where they lay on the bedspread, watching them trace out the pattern of the golden flowers as if they could wipe away the design and everything that had happened in the past few days. She couldn’t explain anything, least of all how she had ended what had been supposed to be her wedding day here, in bed, with a man who was not the bridegroom. She had just made hot, passionate...
No; her mind flinched desperately away from the word ‘love’ in that sentence. She had just had hot, passionate sex with the man who was responsible for breaking up the marriage she had thought she would be consummating tonight.
‘You can’t expect me to believe that.’
‘Can’t expect you to believe that, because of the way you broke up my marriage plans, I am probably—no, definitely—currently spending one of my last nights ever in Blacklands?’
The full horror of the truth broke over her like a cold wave, and even the way Raoul’s black brows snapped together in a fierce frown couldn’t stop her.
‘Can’t expect you to believe that as soon as the news about the cancelled wedding gets out—which I expect it already has—there will be a line of creditors queuing up outside that door?’
A wild gesture with her arm indicated the window and the drive up to the house that lay beyond it, yet Raoul’s eyes didn’t follow it, but instead stayed, unblinking and fixed on her face.
‘And why would they do that?’
‘Because we owe them. We owe them more than we can ever pay. Even our famed stud horse isn’t ours! And as soon as they see our last chance of redemption has gone then...’
‘Al Makthabi was your last chance?’
He fired the question at her like a bullet and she winced as she felt it hit home.
‘Yes.’ Her voice was low and despondent, the slow nod of her head a sign of surrender.
‘Your father has let the stud go to rack and ruin.’
His mouth twisted on the repetition of that emotive word.
‘He’s never been able to resist a bet—and when he had the knowledge and the brain power to pick a winner that wasn’t always a bad thing. But then he started pickling what brain cells he had in whisky and any trace of expertise he had went out the window.’
It was like hearing the words inside her own thoughts being spoken aloud, but in Raoul’s deep, accented voice they sounded so much worse, so much more appalling that way.
But she hadn’t spoken those words. Raoul himself had supplied them to fill the silence. There had been no surp
rise in his voice; he’d just listed every detail. He had known without being told. He had known everything before he had even arrived here.
So was that why he had come? He’d said there was a scheme that he’d agreed on with her father—to breed horses from his precious stallion. But to do that he would have had to co-operate with Adnan who after their marriage would have been the owner of Blacklands as well as his own grandfather’s stud. And who would have owned the magnificent Blackjack.
If the marriage had taken place.
Was that what Raoul had planned? To make sure Adnan didn’t marry her and then take over Blacklands?
Shifting awkwardly on the bed, she turned so she could look into the room. The beautiful white lace dress she was supposed to have worn today still hung from the edge of the wardrobe. In the gathering dusk of the evening it looked like a long white shroud, a ghost of what might have been.
‘So Adnan was going to come to your rescue—financially?’
She’d heard that cruel note in his voice before. When he’d turned on her, accusing her of being nothing but a gold-digger, only wanting him for his money. That was why she knew what was going through his head now. He was seeing her following the same path with Adnan, marrying the other man only for what he brought to her. In a way it was true, and the only thing she could do was to nod in silent agreement.
She couldn’t see Raoul’s face but she heard the swift, roughly indrawn breath that revealed his response to her answer. Disgust? Or dark fury? Or just the fact that, deep down, he had always believed this would be the case? To one side, she could see the way his long, powerful fingers clenched over the bedcovers, his bronzed tan dark against the gold and white cotton. The way the material crumpled and bunched damagingly made her stomach clench in instinctive response.
‘What I don’t understand was what Al Makthabi got out of this.’
Adnan had come to her rescue, put forward the plan of the marriage of convenience, but she had known there had been nothing of the heart in their arrangement. He had promised his grandfather two things—a Derby winner and an heir, and she would help him provide both. The big, black stallion that was the one thing the stud had left of any value was to have been her wedding gift to her new husband, and the heir...
‘What did you offer him?’ Raoul flung the question at her, cold and sharp.
He was going to hate her answer; hate her. Flinching inside at the thought, Imogen pulled the sheets up around her.
‘A marriage.’
‘Hell, yes, I know there was to be a marriage but—did you sleep with Adnan before you were to take your vows?’
The question burned on his tongue. Of course she had been to bed with Adnan. How could any man have a relationship—an engagement—with Imogen and not want—need—to take her to bed?
He couldn’t imagine it could be any other way. But, after the heat and passion they had just shared, he could barely control the internal fury and disbelief that raged through him at the thought of her with another man.
‘None of your business.’
She was absolutely right. It was none of his business. Or, rather, it had been none of his business. It shouldn’t have mattered. But right now it mattered like hell.
‘And if you want to know what I...what Adnan was going to get out of this bargain...’
Her voice sounded weird. It was going up and down, swinging all over the place. Was she crying? Or angry? Her face was still turned away from him, her eyes fixed on the opposite side of the room. On that damned wedding dress that was hanging on the wardrobe.
The sight of that damned dress now seemed to have developed the power to stab at him, right in the heart, twisting dangerously in his already uncomfortable conscience.
He had come here to stop the wedding. He had planned to tell Al Makthabi what she was really like. That she was only after him for his money. But when he had met her husband-to-be, he had soon realised that Adnan was nobody’s sort of a fool. And that the other man knew exactly what he was getting in Imogen O’Sullivan. The neighbours, the locals who lived in the village, regarded the two families—the O’Sullivans and the Al Makthabis—as the modern day equivalent of lords of the manor. They might believe in the fairy-tale love story of the two big houses joined together, but he knew more about them than that.
He’d told himself that if he’d seen one trace of love in Imogen’s face, one hint of that fairy-tale being true, then he would have turned and walked away. But he’d been all sorts of a fool to imagine he might see such a thing. He’d read the signs in her face, the look that said this wasn’t a wedding of love, with a bride so happy it shone out of her eyes. And what he had seen in Adnan’s face had not been love either.
But even before that had really sunk in, he’d known that whatever happened he couldn’t turn and walk away. Couldn’t leave Imogen behind and go back to the disturbing emptiness of the past few years when nothing and no woman had satisfied him.
After tonight he knew why. After tonight he knew that no one could ever make him feel as this woman did. No other woman could make him burn and hunger, the heat of need sizzling up every nerve and leaving him just a husk of a man.
‘He got to make his grandfather happy.’
‘Quoi?’
He had to drag his thoughts back from the burning paths they’d followed, forcing his mind to focus on what she’d said.
She’d shifted on the bed now, turning back towards him. Although she still held the sheet tucked tight around her, it did nothing at all to hide the sexy enticement of her body. If anything, it made matters worse, with the fine cotton stretched tight over the curves of her breasts. He could clearly see the darker pink of her nipples, the lift of the peaked tips pressed against their covering, and at her hips the fall of the delicate fabric was not enough to hide the shadow of dark hair at the juncture of her thighs. Even just to think of the way he had been buried in her body at exactly that point, with the warmth and moisture of her welcome enclosing him, had his penis stiffening in such a rush that he had to grab the sheets himself and pull them up over the heated evidence of the way he was incapable of controlling himself where she was concerned.
‘No need to be embarrassed.’ Imogen had seen his reaction and her soft voice, her faint smile, had even more of a damning effect on him.
‘Je n’ais pas honte,’ he growled, glaring a fierce rejection of her words straight into her face.
He wasn’t in the least bit embarrassed by the force of his reaction. It was what had brought them into this bed tonight after all. And it was a response that she shared totally. He’d felt her reaction to his touch, known the way her body melted under his, her spine arching up to press her softness against his chest, his thighs, his pelvis. He’d heard her soft cries of delight and the way they’d morphed into moans of hungry demand as their bodies moved faster and faster, coming together in one mind-blowing, overwhelming rush of release that had had them both collapsing back exhausted on the pillows, their breath coming in great heaving gasps.
He knew what he wanted from this woman and she knew what she wanted from him. But that was not enough.
Hell, no! He was not going down that path again. Not until he had some things sorted out. He had no doubt about his physical reaction to Imogen—and hers to him—but he’d been that way before and had burned with regret as a result.
‘Hell!’
It escaped him at the realisation that the hungry passion he’d felt for Imogen had had him in bed with her—inside her—without a pause for thought or even the idea of protection. He had brought condoms with him, damn it; he should have used them.
He’d made this mistake once before, in the out-of-control early days of their relationship. One mistake when desire had overwhelmed him in the warm darkness of the night, on the cliffs above Porto, when he’d had no protection with him, no thought of being able to hold back. Every other time he’d been scrupulous about using contraception but stupidly, irresponsibly, he’d made that one mistake. And
one mistake had been all it had taken...
The thought that he might have impregnated Imogen with another child of his when she hadn’t even cared enough to keep the first one sent black waves of horror crashing through his mind. How had he let the overpowering lust he felt for this woman scramble what little was left of his rational brain cells? He had been thinking only with his.
He hadn’t been thinking at all!
The realisation pushed him out of bed as if he had been stung. His clothing was still scattered about the floor, evidence if he needed it of how uncontrolled his thoughts had been as they’d made their way up here, tumbled onto that bed...
‘What is it?’
Imogen had swivelled round, the sheets twisting even tighter about her. Her face had lost the flush that orgasm had left on her cheeks but there was still that wide-eyed, unfocused look she had turned on him, revealing that, like him, she still hadn’t fully collected her thoughts.
‘I asked, did you sleep with Adnan?’
He was dragging on his trousers as he spoke.
‘You asked me that,’ Imogen acknowledged, her thoughts reeling, remembering the way he had declared he was not ashamed of his growing erection. Not concerned to show that he wanted her again even after so short a time. And she had seen no reason for shame either. In fact, the truth was she had found it a thrill to know that the burning connection between them was still there. That, like the way it had been on those passionate nights in Corsica, he had not been satisfied easily, or quickly, but wanted her again straight afterwards.
So how had they got from there to this in what seemed the blink of an eye?
‘And I said it was none of your business.’
‘It is my business, seeing as we’ve just come together—without protection.’
Oh, hell.
She felt as if the whole room had suddenly started to close in on her, growing darker with every breath she sucked in. Raoul’s face was shaded and hidden, the brilliant bronze eyes just glittering cold pools above the slash of high carved cheekbones, his mouth nothing but a thin, hard line. What had happened to those softly sensual lips, the hotly demanding mouth that had taken hers so passionately, forcing her own lips open, tongue plunging into her mouth, tasting her, taking her?
