Starting Over

by Penny Jordan

  Perhaps it was something to do with the fact that she had just had a shower herself—she didn't know, but suddenly she felt far too hot and far, far too aware of the tempting sexy scent of Nick's skin, the potential male strength of his body, the sensuality of that just beginning to show through darkness along his jawline, that unwanted fascination possessing her as she watched the way his hand curled round the cup, imagining how it would feel against her skin, her body, how she would feel.

  'Sara...'

  Guiltily she looked up at him and then wished she hadn't as she realised how close to her he was. Her heart was thumping heavily, slow unsteady strokes.

  For some reason she had started to tremble.

  'Mmm...you smell all clean and soapy....'

  How had he managed to wrap his arms around her like that without her seeing him move? So tightly in fact, that she had no option but to cling helplessly to him, letting him meld her body to the shape of his own.

  'I had a shower,' she murmured incoherently.

  'So you said,' Nick agreed softly. 'How disappoint-ing of you. I was hoping you would wait until / could share it with you.'

  Her heart was lurching around inside her chest like a slingshot being practised by a mere novice.

  'I can't... I didn't... Oh... Mmm...' Helplessly her voice faded away as Nick started to drift dangerous little kisses all over her face, his mouth edging closer and closer to her own but in the end she was the one who lifted her hand to his jaw to hold him captive as her lips parted against his.

  What was it about a certain man ...the man... that could make a woman feel like this... make her feel that her whole world, her whole life, her whole love, was bound up in the kiss they were sharing, its intimacy so sweet, so piercing, so intense that it was as though in the kiss they were exchanging she had already given herself to him body and soul, flesh and emotions?

  Sara could feel her mouth clinging to Nick's as he started to release it. Without a word, one arm still holding her to him, he guided her out of the kitchen towards the stairs.

  They paused on the landing where he had told her it was possible to see the sea and as she looked up at him Sara felt as though she were drowning in the depths of Nick's intensely sensual heavy-lidded gaze.

  Her eyes widened as she saw the spark of fierce desire that suddenly illuminated Nick's as he looked down at her.

  'You know that this is sheer reckless madness, don't you?' he told her. His voice was so calm, so controlled, so businesslike and so totally and utterly at odds with the way he was looking at her that Sara was too confused to make any response. And then it was too late because he was kissing her. This time there was no need for her to hold his mouth to hers. This time he was the one holding her in a way that told her that he had no intention of letting her go. Not that she wanted him to. No. She wanted him to hold her like this forever, kiss her like this forever.

  They climbed the remaining few stairs still locked together, body to body, mouth to mouth.

  On the landing Nick stood still, framing her face as he lifted his mouth from hers.

  'This is the time to tell me if you want to change your mind,' he told her soberly.

  Sara's eyes widened. He would let her do that now even though she could feel and was quite shamelessly relishing knowing just how aroused he was?

  This time the liquid melting sensation softening her bones was caused by the intense sweetness of knowing that he would master his own desire for her if she asked him to. Knowing that gave her the courage to tell him huskily, 'No. I don't want to change my mind.'

  Beneath his fingers Nick could feel her face start to burn. There was a shyness, a delicacy about her that made him ache all the more for her.

  As Nick's silence deepened so did Sara's nervousness. To hide it she turned her head, forgetting for a moment that his hands were still cupping her face but made shockingly aware of their presence when her lips brushed against his skin.

  How could just the feel of a man's fingers against her mouth make her tremble from head to foot with longing for him?

  'Sara...'

  The way he was saying her name made her give a small moan, swiftly silenced as he covered her mouth with his, kissing her with hungry, deep, passionate intimacy.

  She was trembling so hard she could only lean helplessly against him as he opened the bedroom door—

  not to her 'guest' room but to his own bedroom.

  Sara had a confused impression of a huge old-fashioned bed, a fireplace stacked with logs, a desk beneath the window and a chair next to it as well as several chests.

  Rich heavy curtains hung at the window, the carpet beneath her feet was a plain creamy Hessian, the bed linen an old-fashioned creamy white, a thick, soft, dark throw tossed across the foot of the bed.

  The room gave off an almost medieval air, a mixture of the scholarly and the sensual; and something about it touched such a chord of sensitivity and pleasure inside Sara that it was almost as though somehow she had come home to a place that had always been there waiting for her.

  A lamp either side of the large bed illuminated the room cloaking it in soft shadows. In a room like this it would be possible to completely blot out the rest of the world and its realities, Sara sensed.

  When she shivered, her body reacting to everything that she was feeling, Nick offered quickly, 'If you're cold I can light the fire. I work up here sometimes.

  That's why I kept it.'

  Without waiting for her response he released her and went towards the fire, bending to strike a match and light the kindling. Whilst he crouched over the fire with his back to her Sara greedily absorbed the visual reality of him. After tonight she was never going to be the same person again, she recognised. After tonight...

  Nick was getting up and turning round.

  'If this was a film or a book I dare say now the awkward practicalities would magically disappear along with our clothes. However, since it isn't...

  Would you think it very old-fashioned of me if I told you how much I want to undress you and have you undress me? I know that modern manners dictate that we should each remove our own clothing.'

  The sound Sara made in her throat was little more than a dry rustle but Nick seemed to have no difficulty in translating what it meant. Dizzily Sara clung to him as he slowly removed her clothes, kissing every inch of revealed flesh, unbuttoning her top and sliding it off her shoulders, kissing her throat and then her col-larbone and then all the way down one arm right down to the inside of her wrist.

  Already she was breathing as though she had run a marathon, her body weak with a mixture of excitement and pleasure.

  She had thought long and painfully about the niceties of what kind of underwear one wore for such an occasion. She was quite definitely not a sexy-underwear sort of person, but she had still rebelled against the practicality of the serviceable neutral flesh-coloured bra and briefs set which she normally favoured which were designed to improve the look of her clothes rather than to highlight the curves of her body. In the end she had opted for a pretty set of lacy chain store bra and briefs which were feminine without looking as though she were trying to be something she wasn't.

  But ironically, because of Nick's attitude on their arrival, after her shower she had simply pulled on clean briefs and a clean top; her breasts were firm enough for her not to need to bother with a bra if she didn't want to, and assuming that sex was going to be off the agenda until later in the evening she had not bothered about donning the new lacy pieces.

  Now though, the way Nick was looking at her as he removed her top to reveal her completely naked breasts, made her feel as though she were the most seductive, the most desirable, the most sensually wanton woman who had ever lived.

  'You're obviously not a fan of topless sunbathing,'

  Nick murmured as he traced the pale line of her fading tan.

  'Er... I...' Sara gave a sharp gasp as Nick bent his head and very slowly but oh so thoroughly, began to caress one bare taut nipple
with his lips.

  Desire... White-hot lightning sheets of it began to hammer through her body, surge after surge of aching, twisting sanity obliterating need. Sara arched her back, her fingers digging into the flesh of Nick's shoulders.

  In the mirror over the dressing table Nick caught sight of their reflections. Sara's head thrown back, her body, naked from the waist up, bathed in the glow of the fire, her hair tumbling down her back, her whole body bowing against his arm whilst he knelt in front of her, their pose so elemental, so pagan and so very, very right that she stirred every single atavistic need and desire he had ever felt to life. Never, ever had he felt so fiercely and so strongly male, so torn between his desire to conquer and possess and his need to show tenderness and care, to be as victorious as to be protective.

  'Haven't you forgotten something?' he asked Sara gruffly as his hand covered the tender dampness of the nipple he had been caressing and he lifted his head to look at her.

  'You're supposed to be undressing me—remember?' Nick told her softly.

  Undressing him... Sara closed her eyes.

  'You were distracting me too much,' she told him, trying to be as sophisticated and relaxed as he was himself.

  'Well then, perhaps I'd better just keep still, hadn't I?' Nick offered. A little uncertainly Sara looked at him.

  'Come on,' he coaxed. 'It isn't that difficult, is it?

  All you've got to do is to unfasten a few buttons...like this... look....'

  As his hands covered hers and lifted them to his shirt, holding them whilst he deftly unfastened the buttons, Sara wondered if he had any idea just what he was doing to her, just how weak with wanting him she actually was.

  'There. That wasn't hard at all, was it?' he murmured against her mouth as he shrugged himself free of the unfastened shirt.

  'Unlike a certain part of my anatomy, ' he added in rueful self-mocking undertone. 'And if kissing your nipples was so very distracting then perhaps we'd better finish our disrobing before I show you just how much I want to distract you even more,' he teased her sensually.

  His body was everything Sara had imagined and more. Oh, so very, very much more. Touching him with wondering hesitant fingers, her eyes wide and dark with all that she was feeling, she was filled with the sharp intensity of her own longing.

  To be touched and kissed and aroused by Nick to the point where she was virtually moaning with the intensity of her desire, to imagine him inside her after he finally carried her to the bed, was an experience so far outside even her wildest and most wanton imagin-ings that she could hardly comprehend what she was actually feeling.

  'Shush...shush...just a minute longer,' Nick was soothing her as he laid her on the bed beneath him and kissed her.

  'I want you that way so much, Nick...I want you.'

  Unable to stop himself, Nick responded rawly, 'Like this do you mean?'

  The sweet hot tightness of her welcomed him, surprisingly hesitantly at first as though...

  Sara held her breath as she felt the tightness of her body softening to accept him. It had been several years.

  'You feel like a virgin,' Nick whispered hotly to her, 'All sweet tight hotness....'

  'It—it's been a long time,' Sara murmured shakily back. 'And besides...'

  As he moved deeper and more strongly inside her, her eyes gave away her shocked pleasure.

  'You... You feel...' She stopped. After all, what did she have to compare him with apart from her first and her only lover? This magic, their intimacy was uniquely theirs—his—

  'I feel what?' Nick demanded as his body reacted to the pleasure of the way they fitted together.

  But Sara was beyond being able to make any kind of lucid vocal response. Caught up in the beginnings of the first penetrative orgasm she had experienced, she could only cling to him and cry out her awe and shocked pleasure.

  'THE DOCTOR HAS warned me not to get my hopes up too high, but at least she's come out of the coma,'

  Molly told Caspar, smiling tenderly at him as he took her arm to prevent her from being jostled by the busy crowd in the coffee shop.

  'I'm sorry...about...about last night,' she apologised softly.

  Caspar closed his eyes. He was the one who ought to be apologising. What the hell had happened? One moment he had been wanting her so badly that he ached from head to foot with his desire for her...the next...

  Molly paused and looked down, fiddling with the button on her coat.

  'Caspar, I don't want to sound pushy or to presume too much, but we really ought to talk about...about your marriage. You are still married,' she reminded him gently, 'and to get involved with a married man—

  even one as kind and special as you—just isn't something I want to do....'

  'Kind!' Caspar grimaced.

  'Very kind,' Molly confirmed with a smile, touching him briefly on the arm before saying in a low voice,

  'Not many men would have your patience and understanding about...about Ginna. And even if I didn't know from personal experience just how bad the average man can be about handling sickness, just listening to my clients would be enough to warn me. Oh, I'm not saying that men don't care about their families. Of course they do, but for a lot of them the reality of a serious illness is so daunting that they either back off from it and their family or simply refuse to acknowledge that it exists.

  'Very often their reaction springs from a fear of losing the person they love, of their illness becoming more important to them than their man. Sometimes it springs from feeling that they should have been able to protect the person they love and to keep them safe—that is a very deep-rooted male instinct. It sounds illogical I know, but...' She gave a small shrug whilst Caspar simply bowed his head in silence.

  Out of nowhere he had a sharp acid memory of Olivia at the time she had first discovered her mother's eating disorder, her face contorted with pain and shock as she accused him of not understanding. He could still remember how angry with her he had been, terrified that her mother's claims on her might mean that he might still lose her to the family she had already told him meant nothing to her. He had been too proud then to acknowledge either his jealousy or his insecurity.

  Just as more recently he had been too proud to acknowledge that he was jealous of the fact that she put not just their children but her work, too, before him.

  'You are doing this to punish me. Not because you want to go to your brother's wedding,' she had screamed at him when he had announced that he was going to Philadelphia with or without her. 'You know I can't take time off now....'

  'I'm doing it because my brother is getting married,'

  he had lashed bitingly back.

  'Come back,' Molly commanded gently.

  Guiltily Caspar focused on her.

  UNSEEINGLY, Nick stared across the empty hillside. A sharp wind knifed icily against the exposed tautness of his jaw but he barely registered it.

  It was just light, the mists of the previous day having given way to a clear sky and a sharp lemon sun, but he was barely aware of either the sun or the cold.

  He had left Sara sleeping in the bed they had shared last night...his bed.... She had, at one point, murmured to him that she would return to the guest room but he had refused to let her go, insisting that she stay where she was—in his bed...his arms. He stiffened, closing his eyes as a shudder of prescient emotion sliced through him. What had happened between them last night had gone way beyond the merely sexual. So now what the hell was he going to do? There was no place in his life for the kind of commitment, the kind of complications that what he was feeling for Sara would bring. No, there was no place in his present life for her and no way he could live without her. But somehow he was going to have to.

  After all, she had made it plain to him that the last thing she wanted was a permanent relationship with him.

  'You're a Crighton,' she had whispered to him last night after the first time they had made love and she had then wept tears of anguish and emotion. He had held he
r and she had told him what was wrong.

  'Whose judgement do you trust more?' Nick had demanded angrily. 'Your stepgrandmother's a—a woman who, by all accounts has the reasoning power of a spoiled two-year-old—or yourself...?'

  He had known, of course, that he had said the wrong thing even before he had seen the anger burning in her eyes.

  'What makes you think I see the Crightons any differently from the way Tania does?' she had demanded.

  'Do you really need me to answer that?' he had replied rashly. 'And don't bother telling me that what you and I have just experienced...just shared is something you've had with a dozen men before me,' he had told her, adding succinctly, 'I've never experienced anything like it before....'

  'And because of that you just assume that / haven't, either?' Sara had thrown angrily at him.

  But in the end she had admitted not just that it had been outside her previous experience but also that her previous experience was limited to just one callow rite-of-passage relationship in her late teens.

  'This was supposed to get this ridiculous thing between us totally and completely out of our systems,'

  she had reminded him and then she had looked at him and he had looked back at her and then... If they were mutually affronted and angered by the way they wanted one another, then they were also mutually unable to stop themselves from giving in to those desires.

  But for him it went much further than mere physical desire, Nick acknowledged. And for Sara...?

  Bleakly he looked back towards the cottage.

  WHITE-FACED with anguish and misery, Sara pulled on her clothes with hands that shook betrayingly.

  It was no use trying to deceive herself any longer.

  There was no way what she had experienced last night and into the early hours of the morning could in any way be described as mere sex. And no way, either, that she could ever allow anyone other than herself to know just what her true feelings for Nick were—and how much she loved him.

  He had made it plain to her that he relished his single life; that the kind of commitment she was now craving was not part of his plans—with any woman.