She fumbled inexpertly with the button on his jeans, pressing kisses against Blaize’s hard, flat stomach, and heard his long-drawn shudder of passion. In the taut silence, the zip of his jeans was a ripping sound that was almost unnaturally loud. Her tremulous fingers explored his thighs, longing for the purpose and experience necessary to excite so expert a lover as Blaize.
She traced the outline of his body with tremblingly delicate fingers, searching for the places that would give him most pleasure. She knew so little of a man’s anatomy, was so hampered by her shyness …
‘You’re tormenting me,’ he whispered, arching towards her as though unable to contain the desire he felt.
Leila pressed her face against him, burying her mouth in the dark hair that shadowed his manhood, feeling the heat of his arousal searing her cheek. Blaize’s fingers bit into her shoulders, drawing her away, unable to bear her contact.
‘Don’t do this to me,’ he implored, his green eyes dark with desire. ‘Your touch is so delicate that it maddens me!’
‘1-1 don’t know what to do,’ she said, her throat constricted. ‘I’m so sorry…’
‘Sorry?’ His mouth sought the swollen curves of her breasts. ‘Sorry about what?’
‘You’re the first,’ she told him in a shaky voice, cradling his head in her arms. ‘You’re the only one, Blaize.’
His kiss was tender, adoring. ‘Are you telling me you’re a virgin?’
‘Yes…’
‘Leila…’ He paused, watching her face intently in the soft light. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that weeks ago?’
‘It’s not something I could just blurt out … are you going to mock me?’
‘My darling!’ Be laughed softly. ‘Mock you? When you hold my heart and soul in your hands? But you’ve nonplussed me, my love. I’ve never been in bed with a virgin before.’
‘Don’t you know what to do?’ she teased huskily, as though gaining courage from his tender words.
‘Then you’ d better let me find my own way…’
This time, she was bolder, surer. She taught herself about him, her fingers finding their own way to his desire, her lips following to trail slow, sensuous kisses down his loins, until Blaize’s breathing was harsh and uneven, broken with repeated whispers of her name that sounded almost like a prayer.
When he could bear it no longer, he rolled away from her, and then it was his turn to explore, to caress, to teach her the pleasure that lay in her skin, her flesh, within the miraculous design of her woman’s body.
‘I want you never to forget tonight,’ he whispered, adoring her body with his mouth and fingers. ‘I want it to last forever…’
He seemed lost with wonder at the arc of her hips under the smooth flesh, the golden down that tracked almost invisibly across her skin. She gasped as his tongue traced the lacy scallops of her briefs, a deliberately teasing torment’ that mimicked her own uncertain caresses, yet did so with a wicked expertise that was almost cruel. She wanted to beg him not to make her wait, yet the waiting was so sweet that the words died in her throat.
Blaize’s kiss slowly became shamelessly erotic, the teasing graduating into fulfilment as his mouth found the melting centre of her need, transcending any shyness that might have lingered. Leila moaned, hunger peaking unbearably in her, the tautness of her body telling him how much she needed him.
There was no fear as he moved over her to possess her, only an expectation, a sense of wonder. Where his tongue had been almost unbearably gentle, his man’s body was hard and thrusting, a possessive mastery that made her gasp briefly at the short, sharp pain that made her a woman.
And then Leila was lost in the slow, expanding dialogue between their bodies, his arms crushing her to him, the fierce heat that became pleasure, and then ecstasy.
Her whole being was caught up in the coming together of their souls, the union that grew and intensified with the majesty of a rising sun, with the detail of a drop of dew swelling at the edge of a rose-petal, growing too heavy to hold itself, bursting into a glittering new world that only contained two people, Blaize and Leila, who cried’ and whispered in one another’s arms, who could not find words enough to describe the love they had found, the love they had made …
The majesty of a rising sun.
Her room was flooded with crimson and gold as she opened her eyes, her mind still blank from the drugged sleep of satiety. Her whole body was tingling with pleasure, as though Blaize had left some chemical in her veins, some factor that continued to pleasure her, long after the event.
‘I’m so very sorry, my love.’
She rolled sleepily to face him. He was smiling as he put the breakfast-tray down beside her. ‘I know you should be left to sleep undisturbed, and six o’clock is an ungodly hour for anyone to wake, let alone someone who spent most of the night making passionate love…’
He kissed her smiling mouth, then the pink rosebuds of her naked nipples.
‘Is it really six o’clock?’ she murmured.
‘Hmm.’ His interest in her breasts was showing every danger of spreading to other areas of her body, but he stopped himself with an obvious effort. ‘I wanted us to have breakfast together,’ he explained, pouring the coffee for them both, and sitting beside her. ‘And I don’t want our night of passion getting all round the house. Not just yet, anyway.’
The black stubble that etched his face somehow made him all the more devastatingly male, and she reached up to touch his cheek, then slid her hands possessively under his dark blue dressing-gown to touch the hard, muscular body that had loved her so comprehensively last night.
‘What’s going to become of us?’ she asked, her troubled mouth quivering as she looked up at him.
‘Milk, no sugar, just the way you like it,’ he said, and smiled as he passed her a cup of coffee. ‘Are you concerned?’
‘Yes, Blaize.’ She took the cup, and stared down into it. ‘You know that I love you, don’t you?’ she said in a quiet voice.
‘You gave me the proof, last night. Vanessa wasn’t a virgin, Leila. None of the women 1’ve been with has ever been a virgin. You’re the first woman who has given herself to me so completely…’
‘But you’re going to marry Katherine,’ Leila said unsteadily, her eyes ‘blurring.
‘Katherine?’ He shook his head slightly. ‘How could I ever marry a woman I don’t love, Leila?’
She almost gasped aloud, and put down her coffee-cup for fear she would spill it. ‘Don’t you love her?’
‘I’ve never loved her.’ His eyes were telling her the truth. ‘She was so good with the children, and they seemed so fond of her. 1was considering it for their sake, but now I know just how wrong I’ve been. I’ve been awake a long time this morning, wondering how I could ever have contemplated marrying a woman who doesn’t know me, whom I could never tell all the secrets of my life. I’ve been wondering how I could have considered marrying Katherine, when real love was waiting for me all the time-real love in the form of a little spitfire called Leila Thomas…’
Now she did gasp, burying her face against his broad chest to stifle the tears. Blaize crushed her close, his arms so strong, so possessive.
‘It took that weekend away from you, to sort my thoughts out, Leila. We were so damned miserable, all three of us. You must have cast some kind of spell over my children, Leila, as well as over me. I’ve never seen them pine for anybody like this before. I’ve been realising how insane I was to think you would ever hurt either of them.’
Leila drew back to look up at him with adoring eyes.
‘Well, whatever you may have thought of me in the past,’ she said awkwardly, ‘I really do care about Tracey and Terry. I didn’t mean to upset Tracey on Sunday night. I can’t think what made her cry like that, and I’ve been feeling utterly wretched about it all week. If only I could have spoken to her, asked her what had happened…’
She met his eyes. ‘I was only trying to help. Maybe it’s some kind of frustrated maternal ins
tinct. When a woman without a child sees a child without a mother, you see, it sometimes goes to her head a little.’
Blaize stared at her hard for a moment. ‘I appreciate that,’ he said at last, his voice sounding rusty. ‘I was way out of line last Sunday, I know that now, but Tracey was in a real state … I once said that you’ve got something I don’t have,’ he went on. ‘Whatever that something is, it’s enabled you to get through to my daughter. You’re the only person who’s been able to do that in the past few years. Come to that, you’re the only person who’s ever been able to get through to me, full stop.’
He touched her cheek. ‘There’s something that’s been haunting me, Leila. It’s your conviction that I have so many affairs on the side. You even said that Tracey had told you it was true. I thought you were lying, then. But I don’t any more. I know now that you’re incapable of falsehood.’
‘Tracey did tell me that.’ Leila nodded, her eyes wide in her pale, oval face. ‘There’s something else, Blaize, something you don’t know. Tracey came to meet me at the airport. Alone. She drove all the way in your car.’
‘You’re dreaming. Or I am!’
‘Neither of us is dreaming, I swear it.’
His mouth was open, as though the words had stuck in his throat. ‘For pity’s sake,’ he said at last, sounding shaken. ‘You’d better tell me everything!’
She told him what had happened, giving him a full account of Tracey’s arrival at the airport, of what the girl had said to her, and of their talk in the motorway service station.
She saw the blood drain from his cheeks as she spoke, and knew that this was hitting him hard. When she’d finished, he sat in silence. The muscles along his jaw were clenched tight, and his eyes stared into space, as though he were searching for some kind of inner answer.
Leila waited in an unhappy silence, wondering whether there was going to be another storm. Whether this time she really would be on her way to London, her life shattered.
When he looked at her, his eyes were dark. ‘Something is very wrong here,’ he said at last. ‘It’s been wrong ever since Katherine Henessey came into my life, and I’m going to set it right today, for the first and last time. But, before I do, Leila, I want you to know that I’m not, and never have been, a womaniser. All those affairs Tracey told you about―they’re pure fantasy. Do you believe me?’
‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘I believe you, Blaize.’
He glanced at this watch. ‘It’s six-thirty. Let’s go and see Tracey, now.’
Was it because the day had started so early that it had seemed so long? Or was it because it had been filled with so much emotion, some of it sad, but most of it beautiful?
Or just because it was the first day of her new life, a life that had Blaize as its centre?
They walked through the garden in the twilight, arms wrapped tightly around one another. The setting sun gilded the leaves of the roses, turning the surface of the pool into molten bronze, rippling silver where the two children splashed and frolicked.
‘I can still hardly believe it,’ Blaize said, shaking his head. ‘That a woman like Katherine could play on the feelings of a defenceless child like that, a child she claimed to love…’
‘It wasn’t Tracey she loved,’ Leila said gently. ‘It was you. And love makes people do terrible things, Blaize.More terrible than hate, sometimes.’
‘Love?’ He looked at her, the tiger’s eyes now gentle and adoring. ‘No, Leila. Love is what you have in your heart. Katherine has never known love, and I doubt whether she ever will.’
It had come as a horrible shock to learn, from a sobbing Tracey, just how Katherine Henessey had been manipulating her emotions over the past months. Having gained Tracey’s trust and affection, she had proceeded to use her influence to try and exert pressure over Blaize, guessing that Blaize,would only ever consider marriage with a woman who really cared about his children. With Tracey on her side, Katherine had thought she could not fail in her quest of becoming the second Mrs Oliver.
But the influence she had exerted had grown more ruthless, less sincere, as her goal drew closer. It had been her insecurity that had made her convince Tracey that every woman who came near her father was somehow either having an affair with him, or in imminent danger of having an affair with him.
‘I’ll never forgive her for that,’ Blaize said harshly.
‘Thank heaven Terry was too young to have been caught up in her wiles. But to tell a fifteen-year-old girl that her father can’t keep his hands off other women … she deserves to be shot for that.’
Katherine might have preferred being shot, Leila thought with a wince, remembering Blaize’s face as he’d driven off to see Katherine earlier today. Blaize had been a very angry man. He hadn’t told her what he’d said to Katherine when he’d returned two hours later, but she knew that it would have been worse than the clean impact of a bullet.
He had told her; however, that Katherine had broken down and confessed everything. How she had tried to enlist Tracey’s help against any woman who appeared to pose a threat, or become a rival, for Blaize’s attention.
How it had been through her urging that Tracey had been driven to the dangerous and foolish lengths of driving to the airport to meet Leila.
That had puzzled Leila, until Blaize had shown her the letter that Carol Clarewell had sent Blaize, extolling the virtues of a young secretary called Leila Thomas, whom she was sending out to Spain for a six-week spell…
‘She does make me sound rather a paragon of virtues,’ Leila said awkwardly, flushing as she read the eulogy Carol had written. ‘You would think I was some kind of superwoman.’
‘You would think right,’ Blaize had nodded. ‘Reading that letter now, it’s easy to see how it could have disturbed Katherine to the point of mounting an anti-Leila campaign before you’d even arrived.’
Tracey had confirmed it all. Through her tears, she’d explained how Katherine had worked her up until her own longing for a stable marriage for her father had driven her into the madness and hostility of risking her life on that long, long drive to the airport.
And it had, of course, been Katherine who had upset her so badly on Sunday night. When she’d learned that Leila had been trying to help the girl, she had launched a fierce attack on Tracey, accusing her of disloyalty to herself, and doing her best to nullify all of Leila’s advice.
Tracey, torn between her loyalties, had been driven to near-hysterics.
Blaize had explained to Tracey, very gently, that all Katherine’s lies had been false, that he hadn’t been having affairs with any of the women in their lives, and the radiant happiness in Tracey’s eyes had been all the evidence he’d needed that she accepted he was telling the truth.
And the tears of pain had turned into joy as Leila had embraced her, and spoken to her in a gentle voice.
‘Katherine won’t ever bother you again, Tracey. I want to tell you something. Your father has asked me to be his wife, and I’ve said yes. I know you already have a mother, so I won’t say that I want to take her place. But I do want to be your friend, yours and Terry’s, for all my life. You make me very happy, and I want to do the same for you.’
There had been no doubt about the children’s approval, no more than there had been about her own joy. Her happiness was seamless, flawless, a golden light that filled her, just as this sunset was filling the universe around them now.
‘Children are resilient,’ she said to Blaize, listening to the happy shrieks of Terry and Tracey as they played together in the pool. ‘Do they look as though they’ve taken any serious harm, either of them?’
‘No,’ Blaize admitted with a smile. ‘I’ve never seen them so happy.’
‘Tracey will have forgotten about Katherine in a week,’ Leila assured him. ‘So will we. And we’ll never give either of them anything but happiness and security, as long as we live, Blaize. I swear it.’
‘I know they adore you,’ Blaize said, drawing her close. ‘That much
is obvious from the way they’ve behaved today. But how do you think they will take to having new brothers and sisters in a couple of years?’
‘You and I both have known what loneliness is,’ she said softly, looking into his eyes. ‘It’s a lesson that has taught us how to surround ourselves with happiness. I think that all our children will be happy and healthy and wise, Blaize. And maybe, in time, we can share some of our own happiness with all the members of our families-even the .ones who are outside its limits now…’
‘You’ve helped me to crystallise a lot of things.’ Blaize nodded. ‘For a long time, I’ve been thinking of freeing myself from some of the burdens of my work. Now I’m going to do it, Leila. When we get back to England, I’m going to rearrange a lot of things. I want time, lots of time, oceans of time to love you in.’
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