No wonder I’m in a state, she thought jerkily. When was the last time she had wanted physical contact with a man? But what the hell must he be thinking of her? She certainly wasn’t living up to her image of a savvy London girl who had moved in the fast lane and knew how to behave accordingly. She was acting like an adolescent suffering an extreme case of first-date nerves.
‘There’s no need…’
‘If you say that once more, I’ll throttle you. Now step aside, and go into the kitchen. I’ll make us some coffee and we can take it into the sitting room. Then we’ll…talk.’ He leaned against the frame of the door, towering over her, and she stood back to let him brush past.
‘Perhaps we should go back to your house. I need to check and make sure that Simon’s OK.’
‘He’ll be fine.’ He stuck the kettle on, fetched mugs, spooned coffee into them and resisted the temptation to turn around and drink in the figure on the chair. Having given him the green light, she was now applying the brakes as if her life depended on it, and to his amazement he wasn’t in the slightest bit annoyed. Frustrated yes, but annoyed no. And he still wanted her. Instead of dampening his enthusiasm, her hesitant retreat seemed to have fuelled him even more. He must be mellowing with age, he thought with wry bemusement.
‘Now, you go into the sitting room. You can call my mother and find out whether everything’s all right, but she would have called me if there had been a problem. I took my mobile phone with me. Still, if it puts your mind at rest…’
‘Why are you being so understanding?’ Sara asked warily. ‘And don’t tell me that you’re an understanding man by nature.’
‘Well,’ James shot her a slow, amused smile that made her stomach curl like a fist inside her, ‘I must say I’ve never known any woman who’s used aggression as part of her courtship routine.’
‘We’re not courting one another, though,’ Sara returned quickly, ‘so I’m allowed.’ Courtship? James Dalgleish? Had he ever courted a woman in his life? She very much doubted it, and then hard on the heels of that thought came another—what would it be like? What would it be like to have this big, powerful, self-confident, sexy man go weak at the knees at the thought of a woman? To find himself unable to function unless she was around? The thought of it made her blush and she hustled towards the sitting room, acutely conscious of him following closely behind her.
‘You can’t hide away forever.’ Those were his first words the minute she had sat down and he had moved across to the bay window so that he could perch against the ledge and stare down at her.
‘Because I didn’t jump into the sack with you doesn’t mean that I’m hiding away from anything!’ Sara lied, but there was no vigour in her voice. He was staring at her in the same probing way that she would have shied away from a day ago, but which now made her want to just…just let him in. She had no idea where the urge was coming from but her helplessness to fight it off frightened her.
‘Of course you are.’ James sauntered towards the sofa and sat down next to her, depressing it with his weight. It was small enough for his thigh to rest lightly against hers and all those crazy, racing pulses leapt into life as he turned to look at her, stretching out his arm along the back of the sofa so that it was resting loosely behind her shoulders. ‘Why else would you have run out here, to the back of beyond?’
‘You know why. Simon…Simon has had these recurrent chest infections for years; he needed to get out of London. This house, coming when it did, just seemed like the hand of fate.’
‘You could have moved to the country and still been within commuting distance of your job in London.’
‘Why are you pinning me against the wall with your questions?’
‘Because you said you wanted to talk and talk you will. What’s the relationship with Simon’s father?’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ She began to look away and he caught her chin in one hand and forced her to look at him instead.
‘Just about everything,’ he grated. ‘I want to sleep with you, but I have no intention of sleeping with a woman who’s still involved with her ex.’ It shocked him just how much he hated the thought of someone else having a claim to her body, to her mind.
‘And here I was, thinking that you were one of those typical, unscrupulous high-fliers,’ Sara mocked in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere. It didn’t work. He continued to look at her with such unsmiling concentration that she felt giddy and the curling feeling in her stomach began to spread to other places in her body.
‘You still haven’t answered my question.’
‘I don’t have any kind of relationship with Phillip,’ Sara said in a rush. Her cheeks were pink with colour. ‘No, I’m lying. I have got a relationship with Phillip, but it’s more along the lines of loathing.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘You could say we didn’t part on the best of terms.’
‘You mean before you came up here?’
‘I mean when he discovered I was pregnant. There. Satisfied?’
‘I’ll tell you when I’m satisfied,’ James murmured. ‘And I’m not. I take it he didn’t like the thought of becoming a daddy?’
‘What’s the point in talking about this?’ Sara squirmed.
‘The point is that you can’t live your life if you’re still attached to your past.’
‘That’s psychobabble.’
‘Is it? I bet you haven’t had a relationship with any man since Simon’s been on the scene,’ he said astutely. ‘Have all the men in your life over the past five years just been good friends, Sara?’
Pride struggled with weary helplessness and she shrugged. ‘You don’t understand. You go out to work because you want to not because you have to. I’ve worked so that I could pay off the mortgage and raise a child. I haven’t had a choice and there’s no room to clock-watch when you’re a commodity trader. It’s not a nine-to-five job and just the smallest hint of weakness would have cost me my job. I haven’t had…had time to devote to cultivating a relationship.’ She found that she was wringing her hands together and she made an effort to still them.
‘So you worked from dawn till dusk and spent your leisure time feeling guilty because you had to leave your son in the care of a stranger.’
‘She wasn’t a stranger,’ Sara said, hearing the misery in her voice with distaste. Self-pity was an indulgence which she had always viewed with contempt, except in the very early hours of the morning, when the rest of the world was asleep and she could allow her mind to drift over its past and build castles that were never going to be.
‘You could have got another job, something less demanding. Moved out of London, worked somewhere in one of the counties.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Sara muttered, tugging her face out of his controlling grip so that she didn’t have to look into those disturbing, piercing navy blue eyes.
She knew why he was doing this, sitting on this sofa, encouraging her to spill out her life history. He wanted to sleep with her and was prepared to help her over this little stumbling block simply as a means to an end. What confused her was her own temptation to yield. She had spent too long on her own, she thought feverishly, too long warding off the rest of the world. She had confided in Phillip and look where that had got her.
‘So you keep telling me. Well, then, why don’t you enlighten me?’
He watched the fractional tilt of her head and the stubborn compression of her mouth and thought that if he had any sense at all he would leave her to her zealously protected thoughts and walk right out of the kitchen door. He wasn’t interested in playing lengthy games with the opposite sex.
‘Scared, Sara?’ he murmured softly. She didn’t answer, just continued to stare unblinkingly in front of her. ‘What did that bastard do to you?’ he enquired and it was the gentleness in his voice that did it for her.
She felt the prick of tears behind her lids and was mortified when one oozed out of the corner of her eye.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, rubbing her fist against her eye and taki
ng several deep breaths. He silently handed her a crisp white handkerchief and she dabbed her eyes without looking at him and then clenched the handkerchief in her hand. ‘I bet you hate women who cry.’
He flushed darkly when she slid her eyes sideways to catch the expression of discomfort on his face.
‘Thought so.’
‘I don’t hate women who cry, per se,’ James said, wondering how he had suddenly happened to find himself on the back legs.
‘You just hate it when they cry because they want more from you than you’re prepared to give.’
‘We weren’t talking about me,’ he rasped uncomfortably and Sara impulsively reached out and stroked the side of his cheek. It was the first time she had glimpsed any loss of that phenomenal self-control and he suddenly looked like a boy, caught having to confess to something he didn’t want to.
James caught her hand in his and nipped her soft palm, looking into her face as he did so. ‘Witch,’ he murmured, ‘don’t think you can change the subject whenever you want to. I’m not through talking to you quite yet.’ He trailed his tongue lightly against the soft underside of her wrist and she gasped at the burst of pleasure that the simple touch invoked.
Phillip had been her first and only lover but his love-making had been targeted towards his own satisfaction, something she had only seen in retrospect and with the advantage of hindsight when the limitations of his personality had become stunningly obvious. She had had no points of comparison but instinctively she knew that James was not cut from the same cloth. At least not as far as the sexual game was concerned.
She was breathing quickly as he trailed a leisurely path with his mouth along her arm, finally pulling her towards him so that he could assault her mouth in a kiss that was lingering and coaxing but ultimately promised total possession. Every pore in her body was screaming out for satisfaction.
‘I…I thought you wanted…to talk.’
‘Later. Now…shall we go somewhere more comfortable?’ He paused to murmur against her mouth and Sara nodded drowsily at him.
‘Upstairs. My bedroom. It’s the first door on the left.’ She found that she could barely utter the words coherently.
Before she could put her trembling legs to the test, he had reached out and scooped her up, carrying her through the sitting room as though she weighed less than a feather, then up the stairs and along the landing until he could nudge open the door to her bedroom with his foot.
‘Please, no lights,’ Sara begged, when he made to turn on the overhead light.
‘I’ll compromise,’ he drawled by way of response, and promptly switched on the little lamp on the table by the side of the king-sized bed, so that the room was bathed in a very soft glow. ‘I want to see you, my darling. I want to see your face when I touch you and I want you to see me.’
He watched her cheeks turn pink and marvelled how a woman who had obviously held her own in the demanding, cut-throat world of trading could be rendered as shy as a kitten when it came to her own sexuality.
He had laid her on the bed and he looked at her as she stared at him with fascination, her red hair dramatic against the pale cream bed linen.
Deliberately he removed his clothes, item by item. First his shirt, then his shoes, his socks and his trousers, never letting his eyes leave her face. Her breath was coming in short little gasps. Did she know how much of a turn-on it was for him to be watched the way she was watching him now? he wondered. What was going on in her head? She didn’t want to be attracted to him, had fought against it tooth and nail, but she was. So how valuable was his conquest? One part of her was his, but he was slowly discovering that capturing that one part was not going to be enough. It helped that she wasn’t harbouring any nostalgic feelings about her ex, but he still wanted more than her physical capitulation.
He was thickly and impressively aroused when he stripped off his boxer shorts and he smiled with indolent amusement as her mouth parted at the sight of him.
She couldn’t help it. She dazedly thought that his body was as much a work of art as it was possible for any human body to be. Broad-shouldered, with his powerful chest narrowing to a slim waist and hips and legs that no one in their right mind would ever have associated with a businessman. She could discern the flex of his muscles and sinews beneath the olive-toned skin, and when her eyes alighted on his proudly erect manhood she found that she couldn’t tear them away.
He walked towards the side of the bed and extended his hands, reaching out for her to take them so that he could draw her to her feet.
The thought of her naked body was something to be savoured. He wanted to be the one who removed her clothes, so that he could see her nudity inch by inch, appreciate every tiny bit of it in slow degrees.
He unzipped the dress from the back and she arched as he kissed the slender column of her neck, then her shoulders as the dress was tugged down to her waist, exposing her breasts straining through the lacy bra.
Later. He would savour them later, feast on them, but for now he was content to span her waist with his big hands and draw her close so that he could take her mouth in a lingering kiss.
She was tall and slender, just the opposite of the small, voluptuous women he had always favoured, but there was something unbearably erotic about the sensuous length of her, the perfect flawlessness of her pale skin.
He brought his hands up to cup her breasts and she sighed with pleasure, automatically pushing them towards him, conducting her own inventory of his body with her hands. She ran them along his shoulders, then circled his tight brown nipples with her thumbs, then moved to caress the hard, flat planes of his stomach.
She was wearing too many clothes. She wanted to feel him, flesh against flesh, and as if the need was as strong in him as it was in her he dragged down her dress, which fell to her ankles, allowing her to step out of it.
‘Now, bed…’
‘What about the rest of my clothes?’ Sara asked, dipping her eyes at the naked yearning in his expression.
‘Oh, don’t worry, I shall get to that…’
There was something shamelessly wanton about lying semi-clothed on a vast bed, with a big man towering possessively over you. Sara smiled with half-closed eyes, inviting his ravishing appraisal of her, which was no less searing than the one she was affording him.
There was no yesterday and no tomorrow, only this moment, right here and now, timeless.
Sara pushed herself up against the pillows and reached behind with trembling fingers to unclasp the bra. Sensation was racing through her, betraying every line of defence she had ever adopted when it came to the opposite sex. She just knew that she wanted this man’s eyes on her and his hands on her and his body to possess hers utterly.
James moved towards the side of the bed and lowered himself alongside her, watching her quivering body and relishing the thought of tasting every last inch of it. As her bra was undone and before she could pull it off, he straddled her so that his length covered hers and he supported himself on his elbow as he slipped his free hand under the bra to cup the soft mound of her breast.
He felt her low moan as he began teasing one nipple, rolling it gently between his thumb and forefinger. He nudged up the bra and feasted on the sight of her bare breasts. Lord, but he would have to control his urge to take her immediately, right now, and release the pounding, physical ache of his desire in his loins.
He lay over her and caught his hands in her hair. Her head was flung back and another moan escaped her as he traced her lower lip with his tongue, then tasted the sweetness of her mouth in a slow, sensual kiss that had her writhing like a cat beneath him.
It had been a long time, and even when she had made love all that time ago it had never been like this. Through her hazy mind, she knew that she was being touched by a man who had complete mastery in the art of making love. His mouth was demanding and hungry yet delicately lingering and she was so absorbed with the pleasure of it that she was hardly aware that he had nudged apart her thighs, the
better for her to feel his rampant maleness pressed against her. He moved slowly over her, his hard shaft pressing against her moist cleft with an evocative rhythm that made her gasp.
‘Enjoying yourself, cara?’
‘You…you know I am.’
‘Then why don’t you tell me?’
‘Don’t stop. Please.’
Her words sent fierce adrenaline rushing through him. He slid off the bra and eased himself lower so that he could trace the tight bud of her swollen nipple with the tip of his tongue, and when she could bear it no longer she tangled her fingers into his hair and pushed him down so that he could suckle on her nipple and draw it shamelessly into his mouth.
A groan escaped her and her voice, so husky that she barely recognised it as her own, pleaded with him to take her. Her briefs were wet with her unbidden arousal, she could feel it, and when he eased them off she quivered with relief and instinctively parted her legs, inviting his entrance.
But he wasn’t ready. He shifted his attention from one breast to the other, teasing the full pink disc with his mouth while his hand trailed down to her stomach and navel, then with inexorable slowness to the slippery crease between her thighs.
Sara tensed as he probed and then rubbed the sensitive clitoris that had her releasing her breath in shaky gasps as if she was fighting for air.
She was perched on the edge of orgasm, then she was free falling, unable to resist the powerful shudders of soaring pleasure as he continued to rub her before easing his finger deep into her moistness. Her body literally shook and trembled under the assault of sensation, and when she finally stilled she could barely open her eyes to look at him.
He would be disappointed but she had been powerless to resist his stimulation. She groaned with frustration and looked at him.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sara whispered and he smiled at her.
‘What for?’ He lay next to her on his side and turned her to face him.
‘For…for…you know why…’ As if to demonstrate what she found difficult to say, she touched him and his hardness pulsed in response.
His Convenient Mistress Page 8
