At His Convenience Bundle

by Penny Jordan

  Rafe was watching her with that dark, brooding, enigmatic expression of his.

  ‘All you had to do was ask.’

  Tess’s laughter was genuine this time, if tinged with bitterness. ‘What a whoppa!’ she gasped. ‘You’ve never fancied me even slightly.’ Which was probably the only reason their friendship had survived past puberty! ‘See,’ she jeered, wagging her finger at him. ‘You can’t deny it!’

  He caught her finger and, holding her eyes with his own, raised it to his lips. He kissed the tip softly before he drew it slowly into his mouth. He sucked.

  All her stomach muscles, including the deep neglected ones, contracted in unison. Tess’s eyes darkened dramatically as she gave a deep, voluptuous sigh.

  ‘I keep telling you some things change.’

  Not the sexiness of his voice…that was one of life’s eternal features. ‘Not that much,’ she croaked in a dazed, resentful whisper as she snatched her damp finger away. She suspected he was making fun of her.

  ‘Then why,’ he enquired with unforgivable insight, ‘are you trembling?’

  ‘I’m not saying you’re not attractive—especially,’ she added drily, ‘when you try so hard.’ Why, she wondered a little hazily, was he trying at all?

  ‘If you think that was trying, angel…’

  ‘All right, all right,’ she responded, anxious to avoid any and all demonstrations of Rafe’s seductive powers. ‘Let’s take your stud status as read, shall we?’ she offered sweetly.

  ‘Cow!’ he countered affectionately.

  ‘When I needed someone, you were there.’ And even if she had been the type to waste her tears over spilt milk, Tess knew she would never regret it. ‘But now is different.’

  ‘Now you know what you’re doing,’ he suggested quietly.

  ‘Exactly.’ She couldn’t help but feel slightly regretful that she was in full possession of her senses.

  ‘I’m going to remind you that you said that,’ he responded cryptically. ‘The next time we make love,’ he added, not at all cryptically, in response to her puzzled expression.

  ‘You’re not suggesting we…we do this sort of thing on a…a…’

  ‘Regular basis?’ The metal bed-frame shuddered as he disposed his long, lean frame comfortably beside her. ‘I can’t think of any sensible reason not to.’

  ‘I can. I can think of several hundred!’

  ‘I said a sensible reason. We both have needs which are not being fulfilled anywhere else at the moment.’

  ‘As propositions go, that has all the old-fashioned charm of a demographic survey! I’m damned if I’m going to make myself available for you when you just happen to be in the area. It’s so demeaning.’ Tess gave a little shudder of distaste and didn’t notice he’d grown rigid with anger. ‘I think what you need is a good old-fashioned mistress!’

  Abruptly Rafe rolled over onto his side and firmly removed the sheet from her white-knuckled grasp; equally firmly he took hold of her slim thigh and tugged her down until they lay face to face. His eyes burnt with fierce determination as they swept over the slender length of her trembling body before coming to rest on her face.

  ‘What I need is you.’

  Heat flooded her belly; tiny red dots danced before her eyes.

  ‘And you need me,’ he announced with equal authority.

  ‘I know we didn’t go out looking for this to happen, but it has.’ He felt the tremor run through her body as he cupped one soft breast in his big hand. ‘I certainly wasn’t looking to forget my problems in some sort of sexual frenzy,’ he admitted hoarsely.

  Frenzy! Had he really said frenzy? Tess was having trouble focusing on his lean dark face. She had never thought of herself as the type of female capable of inspiring frenzy in anyone. It was satisfying to have it confirmed that she hadn’t been the only one to feel that way. She squirmed and said his name softly as his thumb rubbed gently over her tight, rigid nipple.

  His next words suggested that Rafe was equally puzzled by this bizarre occurrence. ‘Neither was I expecting to find myself feeling this sort of attraction for anyone so soon—if ever—least of all you!’

  Tess looked as though she had a nasty taste in her mouth. She was furious with herself for lying there passively letting him touch her how he wanted. Deep down, the idea of letting Rafe touch her how he wanted—how she wanted—was a dizzyingly exciting prospect.

  She placed her hands on his shoulders and pushed hard, but to little effect. ‘That’s where I have the advantage, Rafe,’ she puffed. ‘I’ve always known you were shallow, but I can see the discovery has come as something of a shock to you…’

  ‘You could have some great fun exploring my shallows,’ he promised with a wicked gleam in his eyes.

  Tess gave a worried groan and stopped trying to budge his muscular bulk. ‘Don’t you think this is getting a bit…heavy for a harmless flirtation?’ she worried.

  ‘It got heavy for me about the same time you started to rip off my clothes.’

  He had been pretty active on the ripping front, and Tess wasn’t about to take the entire rap. ‘You were the one ripping.’

  ‘Talking of which.’ He reached behind her and clicked free the crumpled bra which had stopped being supportive some time before. He held up the scrap of black lace before dropping it to the floor.

  ‘You’re obviously on the rebound’ she suggested, trying to sound confident and slightly amused about this. Her failure to sound anything but shakily breathless was mostly due to the fact his right arm had smoothly settled into a possessive position over her hip. His fingers moved restlessly over the soft skin of her modestly rounded behind. Her words might have had more impact if she hadn’t responded so enthusiastically to the long, languid kiss he pressed to her slightly parted lips.

  ‘Far less dangerous to rebound in your direction, Tess, than a stranger who might think…’

  ‘It meant anything,’ she finished dully, drawing the back of her hand angrily over her just-kissed lips. She couldn’t wipe away the taste of him from her mouth.

  ‘Of course it means something.’ His fingers moved in a series of graceful, gentle arabesques along the projections of her spine. Desire sharp and sweet clutched deep inside her.

  ‘It means I want you, and you want me.’

  ‘Aren’t you presuming…?’ Under her half-closed eyelids she watched with a sense of helplessness Rafe examine her aching breasts as they visibly responded to his statement. Small wonder he looked pretty smug!

  ‘Am I?’

  It was an inconvenient time to discover she couldn’t look him in the eye and lie. ‘You make it sound uncomplicated and simple…’

  Even while she was protesting, she had the feeling they both knew she was just going through the motions. Some things in life were inevitable and she’d discovered pretty late on in hers that one of them was when Rafe said he wanted her she was a lost cause! Could this be a genetic flaw? she wondered.

  ‘It’s nothing of the sort. So far all we’ve done is argue and fight…’

  ‘We always argue and fight.’

  ‘And normally I don’t give a damn.’

  She saw a thoughtful expression drift into his eyes. Stifling a cry of vexation, she bit her tongue until she tasted the tang of salt. ‘Listen, Rafe,’ she said, grabbing a pillow from above her head and pushing it between them. It hurt her sensitised breasts and it made a puny defence, but it was better than nothing. ‘I value our friendship, but it’ll never survive us…’

  ‘Being lovers? Aren’t you being just the tiniest bit perverse? One minute all we do is argue and fight, the next our friendship is worth preserving at any cost…including my sanity!’ he growled.

  Shock made her forget how imperative it was not to look directly at him. It took about two seconds of exposure to that dark, smouldering glare to almost paralyse her with desire.

  ‘You should go visit your grandfather.’ She found it hard to form the words. ‘I should…’

  ‘Sit here
all alone and brood. I think my idea is better. You know how to wound a bloke, Tess. Here I am offering you my body and my not inconsiderable expertise…’

  He might have made it sound like a joke, but Rafe was deadly serious. He knew she’d enjoyed their first frantic coupling; her reactions had been more eloquent than any lavish words of praise. Rafe found he wanted to teach—to hell with want! He needed to show her the finer subtleties, show her how good restraint could be. He’d be so damned restrained that she’d be begging him to take her, he decided, smiling with grim determination into her flushed, aroused face! He might do a bit of begging himself, just to show her there wasn’t a damned thing wrong with it.

  Just when his own was climbing to explosion-point, the strain faded from Tess’s face and she burst out laughing. ‘Why, you…!’

  Rafe grabbed the pillow she’d just whacked him over the head with. ‘That wasn’t just an idle boast.’ Tess found the combination of warm laughter and smouldering awareness in his eyes tremendously potent and attractive. The smile faded from her face.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve been around, but spare me the details.’

  ‘Compared to you, Tess, a newborn kitten has been around, but I’m here to change all that.’ He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and refused to let her look away.

  ‘I don’t think I want anything to change.’

  ‘What are you going to do—pretend we didn’t make love? Pretend you didn’t enjoy it? Pretend you don’t want to repeat the experience just as much as I do?’ He shook his head reprovingly from side to side. ‘Too much pretending for one woman. Break the habit of a lifetime, Tess. Live for the moment, lover…’

  ‘That’s a very dangerous philosophy.’ Attractive and extraordinarily tempting, she didn’t add.

  ‘You’re a warm and sensual woman, Tess.’

  She knew it wasn’t true, but Rafe had a very authoritative way with words. The fact his hand was expertly caressing her breast again probably helped the illusion along slightly too!

  Tess felt as if she were dissolving along with her doubts. ‘Was it very obvious, Rafe?’ she whispered, unable to restrain her curiosity any longer. His thumb moved across her nipple and she moaned.

  ‘It was obvious you were made to do this to me,’ he responded huskily. ‘God knows why I never realised it before.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘This.’ He took her hand; Tess got the drift straight away.

  ‘You feel…’

  ‘Overdressed.’

  ‘That too,’ she conceded huskily.

  ‘You could do something about that. Would you like to?’ he asked, brushing the heavy swathe of hair from her hot cheek.

  ‘I want to so much I can’t breathe.’ Her confession came in a rush and with much heavy breathing. His reply was music to her ears.

  Rafe inhaled deeply, drawing the female fragrance of her deep into his lungs. ‘You can do all the things you want to.’ He continued to kiss her face and neck, sliding his fingers deep into her hair as he angled her chin first this way and then another until there seemed hardly a centimetre of skin his lips hadn’t touched.

  All she wanted to do was love him, this person she’d known almost all her life but had never really seen until today. Had she changed…? Had he…? Tess thought it didn’t really matter. It mattered that she’d never been as sure of anything in her entire life. Not that it does me any good, she thought bleakly, when it’s the one thing I’m not allowed to do.

  ‘I’m not sure I know how.’

  Rafe stopped playing at kissing and did it properly. Rafe’s casual was way better than most people’s best; his best was very good indeed! ‘I know how, I’ll show you. All you have to do is tell me what you want.’

  ‘I couldn’t do that,’ she whispered.

  ‘You’ve never run scared of telling me what’s on your mind before.’ His thumb moved rhythmically over one tight, swollen nipple.

  Tess gave a tortured moan. ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Beautifully different, just like you.’

  It was.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  RAFE sat at the opposite end of the long table from his grandfather. The arrangement wasn’t exactly intimate. You could have comfortably seated at least twenty people between them along the gleaming mahogany surface. In the past he’d frequently seen it accommodate at least that many people. The atmosphere had been convivial on those occasions; tonight it was not.

  He toyed with the empty crystal goblet beside his plate. ‘Do you eat in here when you’re alone?’

  ‘Some of us like to maintain standards.’ Edgar Farrar looked with thinly veiled disapproval at his grandson’s casual attire. His grandfather’s disapproval had stopped bothering Rafe a long time before. ‘What would you have me do—eat on a tray in front of the television?’

  Rafe’s lips twitched. What a scandalous thought! He had noticed the old man’s colour had got progressively darker through the meal as he’d accepted the wine his grandson had refused…drinking for two? Rafe wondered how the old man’s blood pressure was behaving these days. He didn’t ask—he didn’t think his concern would be well received. He supposed the ironic thing was that he did actually feel concerned.

  ‘Yeah, the dreaded telly, it’s really killed the art of conversation, hasn’t it?’ Rafe drawled, his sarcasm pronounced. They’d sat through four courses and not exchanged more than half a dozen words before the coffee stage.

  I’d have been better off staying at the cottage with Tess, he thought, not for the first time. Actually he would have stayed if she hadn’t forcibly expelled him, insisting she wanted to cope with Chloe without any distractions.

  ‘Heard from Dad lately?’

  His father had been living in luxurious exile with his wife in the South of France since he’d been caught with his fingers in the till. Actually, the embezzlement had been a little more sophisticated than that—Guy Farrar might be greedy and impatient, but he was also clever. Not as clever as his father, though, it turned out.

  When he’d discovered the crime Edgar had used his own money to cover the theft and set about limiting the damage. He’d succeeded. Inevitably there had been rumours but the family honour had survived the incident intact, which Rafe pondered cynically, was all that mattered! This done, Edgar had told his son he was no longer welcome in the country. Guy had known that Edgar had the power to make life very uncomfortable if he hadn’t obeyed the edict.

  Rafe didn’t regret his parent’s departure, but he did feel a twinge of remorse as the older man’s ruddy colour intensified.

  Despite all the odds, he felt an affection for the bigoted, intolerant old despot which he had never felt for his own father or, for that matter, his brother. His mother had been tearfully delighted to see him when he’d sought her out just after his eighteenth birthday, but you couldn’t turn back the clock. Rafe didn’t resent this. He knew she had a new family to consider, and he was genuinely happy she’d found someone to make her happy. No, he and Edgar were stuck with each other.

  It was probably cruel to bait his grandfather, but then, he reflected wryly, the old man always had been a lifelong advocate of blood sports!

  ‘I hear from your father. He worries I’ve disinherited him.’ Edgar’s heavy-hooded lids lifted and he gave a thin-lipped smile.

  ‘And have you?’ Rafe wondered casually.

  ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ Edgar accused.

  ‘If you think I give a damn one way or the other about your money and this estate, you couldn’t be more wrong,’ Rafe told him without heat.

  Edgar Farrar’s face betrayed the frustration he felt knowing the boy only spoke the truth.

  The shrill buzz of his mobile interrupted Rafe’s thoughts, which had already wandered in the direction of Walnut Cottage.

  Under his grandfather’s austere gaze he fished the phone from his pocket.

  ‘Tess.’ He could see her so clearly she could have been standing here in front of him
. His nostrils twitched; he could almost smell the soft scent of her body. Taking into account the fact his imagination had failed to supply clothes, it was probably just as well—for his grandfather’s continued mental well-being—that the image remained a product of his fertile, not to mention erotic imagination.

  Rafe was shocked by the degree of pleasure he felt at hearing her voice. He was even more shocked by the way his body reacted lustfully. The pleasure rapidly faded as he registered the anxiety in her voice.

  ‘Blood group…?’ His brows drew together in a perplexed troubled line as he supplied the information she requested.

  ‘You know I have. As rare as hen’s teeth, so they tell me.’ He recited parrot-like the constituents of his rare blood group. His expression darkened as he listened to the babbled explanation. ‘The infirmary—I’ll be there.’ He glanced at the metallic watch on his wrist. ‘Twenty…no, make that fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Did you know…?’ he rapped, surging to his feet. Struggling to contain his anger, he towered over the older man looking forbidding.

  ‘Know what?’ Edgar Farrar wasn’t used to being looked at as if he were a particularly nasty bug; he didn’t like it.

  For once Rafe could find no redeeming humour in the old man’s sneering attitude; the joke of being the object of his grandfather’s distaste had abruptly vanished.

  ‘Know that your precious Alec had fathered a bastard of one of the local maidens.’ One of the only things he’d ever had in common with his deceased elder brother was an extremely rare blood group. It seemed his brother had passed that same blood group on to his son Ben, who was now awaiting surgery in the local city hospital. Tess must be beside herself…He wanted to be there with her; he didn’t want to waste time here with the old man.