A guttural sound of contentment was the only response she heard. Growing more confident with each passing moment, she continued to work on his back. The tactile sensations made her feel a little drunk and she rapidly lost track of time. He had a fine, strong back, straight, with no excess flesh to conceal the fine muscles from her probing fingers.
It was only when the physical exertion of the task began to make itself evident in her own burning muscles that she stopped. Adam’s breathing was low and regular; any base motives he might have had had been overwhelmed by genuine exhaustion. The glow of warm tenderness that engulfed Anna took her by surprise and tears pricked the back of her eyelids. She closed her eyes and wearily began to get to her feet. She inadvertently brushed against his thigh and bit her lip, standing stockstill for a moment.
‘You’ve got cold feet.’ The sleepy accusation made her jump just as she thought she was safe.
‘Go to sleep,’ she said in a flat tone meant not to intrude into his semi-conscious state.
‘Come and warm your feet.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Adam.’ A hint of panic crept into her voice as she recognised the attractions of his invitation. She was particularly susceptible with the scent of his skin still in her nostrils and her hands still feeling his warmth. It would be easy to forget common sense in the cocoon of darkness. ‘Go to sleep.’
‘Not until you warm your feet.’ He was still sleepy, but she could hear a hint of awareness creeping into the stubborn tone.
‘You’ll wake the boys.’
‘Then don’t be stupid. Come and warm your feet.’
Alarmed by the rising volume of his voice, she made a split-second decision and slipped quickly under the light cover. She was only humouring a lunatic, she told herself soothingly. All sorts of warning lights flashed in her brain but she ignored them. She laid her icy feet against his bare calves and curled her body against his back. There wasn’t much room to do anything else. She would stay there until he slipped back to sleep and then go back to her own bed.
Adam gave a grunt of contentment. ‘That’s better,’ he breathed, his voice thick with satisfaction.
Anna stifled a shriek as the metal legs of the bed groaned under their joint weight, and her arm instinctively went around his middle. Her forearm was immediately wrapped firmly in a strong grip.
‘Good girl,’ came the approving comment.
He was asleep; she was reasonably sure of this fact. Lying very still, she waited for his grip to relax, as it was bound to, she told herself. She tried very hard not to think about where she was and what she could feel, but it was very difficult.
Adam was sleeping in boxer shorts that left very little to her riotous imagination. The firm, muscular globes of his buttocks were pressed against her legs. If she looped her left leg over his thighs she might stop herself slithering off the narrow bed. This was a risky strategy, but once she thought of it she found she couldn’t get the idea out of her head. It had nothing at all to do with the fact that she wondered what the feel of hair-roughened flank would be like against her softer flesh—certainly not.
When she finally did it it felt sensational!
‘Are you thinking of taking advantage of me while I’m unconscious?’
‘Adam! You’re asleep,’ she accused, trying to remove her leg. He hooked his arm under her knee, effectively anchoring her against him.
‘I’m tired, not dead!’
‘I was falling,’ she babbled. ‘This bed’s not built for two people.’ She caught her breath sharply. ‘What are you doing?’ she squeaked. His fingers were moving upwards along the inner curve of her imprisoned thigh. She gave a faint moan as they moved beneath the hitchedup hem of her nightdress. ‘I’ll scream if you don’t stop doing that,’ she threatened weakly.
Her head twisted as his fingers sent shivery, electrically charged quivers down to her toes. She was panting, and her head sank against his neck.
‘This is silly.’ Her lips brushed against the side of his neck as she forced the words out. She ought to lift her head but all the energy had been sapped from her limbs. A sweet, aching desperation suffused her.
‘Silly! This is sensational.’ The smooth sound of his breathing had become as irregular and as laboured as her own shallow gasps.
‘All that hard work I put in on your back will be ruined; you’re getting all stiff and tense again.’ She hoped this stern practicality would defuse this potentially disastrous situation.
The vibrations from the low, wicked chuckle that rumbled in his chest travelled up her fingertips. Her fingers flexed and pressed deeper into the dusting of fine hair that was sprinkled over his chest.
‘I could show you…’ His voice trailed off suggestively.
‘I just bet you could,’ she responded tartly. It wouldn’t do at all if he guessed how her pulse had quickened. ‘Don’t you dare move, Adam Deacon!’ she gasped as she felt his body shift. ‘If you turn over…’
‘If I turn over, what?’ he persisted huskily.
‘Didn’t you know children always wake up at the wrong moment?’ If she was honest that was the only thing that was preventing her from weakly succumbing to this forbidden craving. Her empty protestations weren’t going to penetrate the sizzling passion that crackled in his deep voice; the truth just might. The privacy afforded by the screen was fragile, a fact she couldn’t let him forget.
‘Have you any idea what this is doing to me?’ he groaned, after a short silence. He exhaled deliberately through his mouth, the series of short, hard gasps obviously part of the enormous effort he was making to gain control.
‘I’ll go,’ she said swiftly. However superficial his feelings for her were there was no doubting they were powerful. She ought to be able to dismiss this as a demeaning game he was playing, but she couldn’t. The constant battle with her own feelings left her far too malleable.
‘You expect me to stay still for that?’ he asked in a low, impassioned voice that was loud enough only for her ears. ‘I want to turn around and feel your lovely slim legs wrapped around me. Your breasts are wasted pressed against my back— I want to feel them in my hands, taste them. I want to taste every inch of your lovely, lithe body. I want to hear you beg me to touch you. I want to feel you hot and silky as I enter you,’ he growled softly.
‘I’ve been imagining doing all those things since the first time you laughed at me and I’ve embroidered a good deal of detail into the blueprint by now,’ he warned her. ‘Don’t try to sneak away now or I’ll find somewhere to be alone with you.’
She believed him, though she doubted there was even an empty cupboard in the house tonight. One half of her wanted to beg him to do all the things his greedy, erotic voice had spoken of. Love was proving far stronger than her instinct to survive with her pride intact. Each syllable had echoed in her head, stretching the conflict within her to breaking point.
‘Adam!’ she breathed shakily. She wanted to add, Please, please love me! Instead she said in a small voice, ‘I’ll stay.’
‘What an anticlimax.’
He had that much right, she thought dolefully. ‘I thought you wanted me to stay.’
‘I wanted you, full stop. Now don’t squirm or our deal’s null and void.’ He grunted as she withdrew her leg and gave a regretful sigh. ‘That might be for the best.’
‘Why do you want me to stay?’
‘I want to see what you look like in the morning.’
‘I look like hell,’ she warned him, rather angry he could be flippant when she felt so wretched.
Anna didn’t expect to sleep, but exhaustion proved stronger than her expectations. Squashed into the niche left by Adam’s body, she slept deeply.
Hearing was the first sense to return, a rustling and gentle giggling. Anna snuggled deeper under the covers and closed her eyes tight against the light that penetrated the delicate skin of her closed eyelids.
‘Why is Anna in your bed, Uncle Adam?’ The shrill childish voice shattered her tenuous g
rasp on slumber.
I couldn’t have! she exclaimed silently. The prickle against her cheek was fine hair that covered a definitely masculine chest. I did— I fell asleep! Horror-filled, her eyes shot open.
‘Good morning,’ Adam said, his green eyes all innocence as she stared at him in a hunted fashion. She closed her eyes, wishing fervently that she could suddenly become invisible.
Other details, the sort you couldn’t really ignore, became distressingly apparent to her. Like the fact she was lying half on top of him, one thigh draped over his legs again, one arm hooked around his neck, her breasts crushed against his torso, her head wedged under his chin. The fact she was only covered by a thin layer of cotton and he by even less made it quite clear he was not unaffected by the intimate contact.
‘She’s awake, she’s awake!’ two voices chirruped. ‘Can we get in too?’
Anna groaned, and with a convulsive movement rolled off him onto the floor, taking the covers with her. ‘How could you?’ she breathed, glaring at him wrathfully. She realised belatedly that pulling all the covers off him had been less than a good idea. He had the best body she had ever seen, or at least the only one that could make her stare like a child in a sweet shop. It could make Greek gods weep with envy!
‘How could I not?’ he responded, catching the sheet she flung at him with a grin. ‘Kids, bathroom,’ he said to the boys, who were standing on top of her bed watching the proceedings from their grandstand position. He just inclined his head to the doorway when they showed a marked inclination to linger, and the call of nature was more urgent than their curiosity. ‘Admit it, Anna, you’d have been insulted if I’d been immune.’
‘You’re nothing but a lecherous…!’ she began in an agitated voice. The rich, warm burr in his voice and the gleam in his eyes made her seriously frightened.
‘I’m a man who woke up with his arms full of beautiful, soft, warm, sensuous female. Incidentally you look pretty passable in the morning. What do you expect me to do?’
‘Any female would have done, then?’ she interjected, her pride stung. Stupid, stupid, Anna, she told herself, biting her lip but finding the words impossible to retract.
‘Fishing?’ he suggested, sitting upright with a fluid movement that made the muscles in her stomach clench. God, but she loved to watch him…touch him too, a small, honest voice added.
‘If you need to be reassured that I find you attractive we’ve got a bad communication problem here. I thought I’d been pretty forthright on that subject last night.’
‘I’m hardly flattered that you took advantage of the situation.’
‘On the contrary, I behaved with extremely painful decorum.’ His eyes half closed as they slid over her slender figure, a half-rueful smile playing on his lips. ‘Emphasis on the painful! I enjoyed waking up to find you plastered over me, and I did peek.’ A devilish light shone in his eyes as she gave a disgusted groan. ‘I’m only a weak man. I wasn’t in any fit state to do anything about the situation last night.’
‘That’s not the way I remember it,’ she said drily. ‘Either way you seem to have recovered this morning.’
‘You noticed that?’
‘Hardly at all,’ she responded dampeningly. He seemed to be entirely too smug about this situation for her liking. She cursed the flush that mounted her cheeks as a slow, intimate smile curved his lips.
‘I can hardly let that slur on my manhood go unchallenged, sweetheart.’
‘Adam!’ she warned.
‘Come and warm your…feet, darling,’ he suggested. He was teasing her now and she knew it, but even so the tiny hiccups of excitement kept fluttering through her bloodstream, making her head feel light and giddy.
‘This isn’t funny,’ she hissed. ‘The twins saw us; what will they think?’
‘The twins aren’t out of that blissful and all too short age of innocence yet.’
‘Don’t sound so superior,’ she snapped, placing her hands on her hips and loosing her grip on the swaddled blankets. ‘The twins are likely to share that information with other people who will be less generous with their interpretation of events.’
‘Does this mean your parents are likely to ask me to make an honest woman of you?’ he enquired with interest.
‘Be serious, Adam,’ she retorted. ‘If only I hadn’t fallen asleep,’ she wailed suddenly, sitting down crosslegged and pulling the blanket over her shoulders. ‘This is so…so humiliating.’
‘I think you’re creating a tragedy out of a triviality,’ he said, unmoved by her dejected figure. ‘It’s not as if we did anything—unless you took advantage of me after all?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ She shot him a murderous look.
‘I thought I was the one without the sense of humour? Aren’t you overreacting just a tad?’
If it had been anyone else but him she would have enjoyed the absurdity of the situation, but with Adam…
‘Why did you get into bed with me anyway?’
‘You asked me to,’ she reminded him bitterly.
He struck his forehead with his hand. ‘You mean that’s all it takes?’ he said in a thunderstruck voice. ‘When I think of all the time I’ve wasted over the years—all the romantic dinners and flowers.’
‘Shut up! I haven’t received any romantic dinners or flowers.’
‘Does that mean…?’
She would feel a lot safer if she could extinguish that gleam in his eyes. ‘I got into bed with you because you were about to wake the twins, and I felt sorry for you. You were very tired,’ she finished weakly.
‘Oh, that makes it much clearer; I was a charity case.’
‘You won’t find the whole thing so funny if Jessica finds out about it.’
A speculative gleam entered his eyes and he rolled with sinuous grace back down onto the canvas bed. ‘Do you think that’s likely?’ He placed his hands under his head and stared reflectively at the ceiling.
He didn’t sound the least little bit bothered. In fact he sounded as if he relished the prospect! The inconsistencies of this man’s behaviour were baffling.
‘What is it with you two? Is your sex life together so boring that you need extra conquests?’
‘Are you planning to be my conquest?’ His attention switched back to her.
With a smile of sweet malice she placed her foot on the end of the camp bed. She deliberately placed her full weight on the fragile structure. The action had the desired effect of sending him slithering onto the floor in an inelegant heap. Silence would be the most dignified form of exit, she decided, making it to the door before he had an opportunity to retaliate.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SIMON arrived whilst everyone was sitting around the big farmhouse table eating breakfast. He looked taken aback to see the guests.
‘Sorry to interrupt, but I need to talk to Anna.’ Simon sounded like a man in the grip of strong emotions.
‘Sit down and have some food,’ her father suggested. ‘She’s hardly eaten anything yet,’ he observed critically.
Anna had been hoping her lack of appetite would go unnoticed. She was sure the twins were going to innocently introduce what could be a very embarrassing subject at any moment, and her nerves were stretched taut. Kate had already looked at her very curiously when she’d returned to the bedroom earlier and she didn’t want to fuel the speculation she’d seen in that young woman’s eyes.
‘Actually it’s quite urgent, and I’d like to see Anna alone.’
‘I’ve finished,’ Anna said quickly. The faces around the table responded to this unusually forceful outburst with varying degrees of surprise and interest. ‘Let’s take a walk around the garden,’ she suggested, pushing her chair away.
‘Great!’ Simon shot her a grateful look.
‘Excuse me, everyone.’ She couldn’t stop her eyes from travelling towards Adam.
He sat between the twins, who each sat on top of cushions to boost them up to table level. He had lost his tailored, professional look
today and was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans. The black was made for his blond hair and tanned skin, and the denim hugged his lean hips and muscular thighs in a manner that made her throat grow dry and her cheeks grow pink.
He wasn’t looking at her, but as if sensing the eyes on him he raised his head slightly and stared directly into her face. The look was so cold and hostile that Anna flinched from the austere regard before turning to leave. How dared he condemn her? she thought furiously. For it had been condemnation she’d read in his eyes and the faint sneer of his lips.
She tried to dismiss Adam from her thoughts as she led Simon to the walled herb garden that was her mother’s pride and joy. He was emanating enough tension to make it quite obvious he was a friend in need and he deserved her full attention.
‘Well?’ she said, finally breaking the silence.
‘I’ve been thinking about what you said—about my marriage. You were right,’ he said in a rush.
‘If only everybody had your perception,’ she teased lightly, but it was easy to see Simon was not in the mood to appreciate humour, dry or otherwise. ‘Can I help?’ She ignored the voice that told her not to get involved.
‘I was hoping you’d say that.’ Simon caught her hands in his own.
‘That sounds ominous,’ she murmured. The distant sound of the twins’ laughter was suddenly cut off and when she glanced in the direction of the sound there was nothing to be seen.
‘The thing is, Anna, it’s little Emily’s birthday at the end of the week and I thought I’d surprise her—them both.’
‘Sounds like a good start,’ she said, not quite seeing how her co-operation was necessary for this scheme.
‘Mum’s gone to Scotland to stay with Aunt May; it’s her annual holiday. She’s brought in someone to look after the shop and post office. I’m the live-in tenant for the duration, for security purposes—the insurance insists.’
‘You want me to house-sit?’ she said with some relief. ‘Is that all?’
Wild and Willing! Page 13
