‘Sit down by me,’ Gabriel commanded lazily. ‘We need to talk about how we’re going to approach the job of upgrading the land.’ Which, he reckoned, should take about ten minutes. And after that…? He intended to stick to his plans for seduction and not be distracted by the buzzing inner voices that kept holding him back. He looked at her from under his lashes as she slowly walked towards him. He noted the unconscious elegance of her gait, the way she held her body like a dancer, utterly indifferent to how other people regarded her.
‘It’s been impossible trying to do anything about it,’ Laura said apologetically. ‘Since Dad died, I seem to have spent all my time in a nightmare of trying to work out finances.’ She sighed and Gabriel made an angry noise under his breath.
‘God, didn’t the man have any idea what this would do to you? Leaving you in a situation like that?’
‘He never thought he would just…I guess he thought that he would have time to get things back on track and so I would be spared the worry.’ She looked down at the fields sprawled in front of them. From a distance, it all looked perfect. It was only when you got closer that you could see the signs of decay. It was the same for the house and the stables. ‘You don’t have to tell me that it’s a far cry from how things used to be around here seven years ago.’
‘I was not about to tell you any such thing.’ He got up, brushing himself down, only to reposition himself on the grass, lying on it with his hands folded behind his head and his long legs crossed at the ankles.
‘Shouldn’t we be heading back now?’
‘Oh, I think I’ll enjoy this sun for a bit longer. Of course, you are free to head back whenever you want.’ It was a gamble, but he didn’t want her in any way to feel that she had been manipulated. Nevertheless, his body seemed to twist into several thousand knots in the few seconds of silence during which she decided what to do. If she got up and rode back to the house, then he would be forced to stay, at least for a short while and, whilst the scenery was enchanting, its appeal would vanish like a puff of smoke if she weren’t here to enhance it.
‘Oh, I might as well wait for you,’ Laura said eventually, and he wondered whether she could hear his profound sigh of relief. He turned on his side, propping himself up on one elbow so that he could look at her.
‘Why don’t you come out of the shade of that tree and enjoy the sunshine? It is not that often we get weather like this in spring.’
‘I know,’ Laura agreed, pushing herself up and strolling over in his direction. ‘Last year it rained solidly for spring. If you think the fields are bad now, you should have seen them then. They looked like a jungle.’ She sat down, still keeping her distance, he noticed idly. ‘Old Tom McBride came and trimmed them back for next to no pay.’
Gabriel allowed his eyes to stray to the bottom half of her body, encased in faded, tight jeans and topped with laced-up old leather walking shoes. She was still sitting up with her arms stretched out behind her to support her body. His eyes lingered for a few seconds on the definition of her stomach under the sweatshirt, then moved lazily upwards to the swell of her breasts. Bra or no bra? he wondered. Difficult to tell under that thick cloth. Her head was flung back, her eyes closed as she enjoyed the sun.
‘What is your relationship with the estate agent?’ Gabriel asked.
Laura’s eyes flicked open and she turned to look at him. ‘Any estate agent in particular?’
‘The blond one who looked as though he perhaps had not started shaving yet.’
‘I don’t know any estate agents who fit that description.’
‘Little liar,’ Gabriel drawled. ‘Was he your lover? Was that how you got the job working there?’
‘I should come across there and smack you on the face for implying that,’ Laura said.
‘Well, why don’t you?’ he invited with a soft laugh that sent goose-pimples racing across her skin. ‘You can hit me as hard as you like for being such an insufferable, insulting boor…and then I can take my revenge for being hit…’
‘Oh, yes,’ Laura said on a breathless little laugh. Her heart was racing and every shred of common sense was telling her that she was playing with fire. But the way he was looking at her, his black eyes roving lazily and caressingly over her face, sent shivers of excitement through her that were shattering common sense.
‘What would you do?’ she taunted. ‘I know you, Gabriel, however much you’ve changed over the years. You wouldn’t dream of laying a finger on me…’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it, would I?’ He pushed himself up and moved closer to her, close enough to touch her if he wanted to but not so close that she would feel his presence as a threat. Every muscle in his body felt alive. He would take this woman and under all the reasons he had logically worked out for himself, under all his arguments about levelling scores and evening scales, he was burning with the sheer, overpowering craving to take her simply because he found her irresistible…
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘GABRIEL, n-no…’
‘But I haven’t done anything.’ His slow smile was so devastating that it made the breath catch in Laura’s throat. He’d mesmerised her. He mesmerised her then and he mesmerised her now, even though she knew that the divide between them stretched like a yawning gulf. The impassioned young boy had developed into a cynical predator and his motives were at best based on animal lust and at worst…she shivered to think.
But, God, the way his eyes were lingering on her face made her feel as though she were standing close to an open fire and on the edge of a precipice.
‘I—I’m not a complete idiot,’ Laura stuttered weakly, hugging herself.
‘I never implied that you were. What are you wearing under that baggy sweatshirt of yours?’
‘Wh-what?’
He gave a low, sexy laugh and continued to look at her. One long, hot look of burning intensity that seemed to send the heat spreading from the tips of her toes to the top of her scalp.
‘Are you wearing a bra? You never used to when you went riding. I remember you once told me that you dreamed of riding on a beach, naked, and that the closest you could ever get to that was to ride without a bra under your jumper. But then, in those days, there were always a lot more people around. Now…here we are, alone on this little hill…’
‘This is not an appropriate conversation.’ She made a desperate effort to get back to normality but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from him and her heart was pounding so hard that her ribcage felt as though it might crack at any moment. ‘We’re not the same two people now that we were then. I work for you. Have you forgotten? And you told me that you would never have a relationship with an employee.’
‘Oh, but I am not talking about having a relationship. I am talking about making love. And rules, at the end of the day, are made to be broken.’ He wasn’t about to let her imagine for a minute that any kind of relationship was in the offing. He had offered her one of those once and had been rejected. This time, he would be brutally honest and he would let her come to him in the full knowledge that what he wanted and all he wanted was her delectable body.
He trailed his finger along her spine and smiled. ‘No bra. I thought so. Some things never change.’
‘Stop it!’ Laura spun around so that she was facing him. That light touch had felt like an invasion, and, horrifyingly, an invasion she craved. ‘Is that how you live your life, Gabriel? A series of episodes with women in bed? How sad.’
‘Why is it sad?’ Her mouth was spitting insults, he thought with gratification, but her chocolate eyes were telling another story, and he continued to devastate her with his look. ‘Because you think that sex has to be accompanied by emotions? And since you never married, are you telling me that you have not slept with another man since me?’
‘Of course I have,’ Laura retorted scornfully, and his body stilled. He really hadn’t expected her to say otherwise, but for reasons he could scarcely identify the thought of her lying in the arms of another man brought a s
urge of jealous bile rising to his throat.
‘The effeminate little man at the estate agency?’
Trust Gabriel Greppi to be contemptuous of someone like Hugo, she thought with sudden anger. Just because Hugo was not built along the macho lines that he was and did not have the overpowering self-assurance that made him see the world and its female inhabitants as his own personal playground.
Oh, how he would love to think that she had spent seven years in a deep freeze, pining.
The fact that it was mostly true, something she was only now beginning to realise, made her even angrier.
‘No, not Hugo!’ she snapped, thrusting her face towards him.
‘Who, then? And if he was so meaningful, where is he now?’ It took all his strength not to give in to basic instinct and shake the answer out of her.
‘His name was James Silcox, if you must know!’ And what a mistake he had been. After four years of celibacy, she could see, in retrospect, that she had drifted into the relationship partly in a desperate attempt to alter the rut into which her love life had sunk and partly because her father had approved of him. It had been a disaster. His talent for being amusing had not concealed a clever mind, as she had optimistically imagined. He had been good-looking, witty and as empty as a shell. The relationship had lasted all of six months and then dwindled into a sporadic friendship, which was all it should ever have been in the first place. It had not escaped her notice that since her financial problems had come to light, even that had disappeared. She was no longer a desirable connection.
‘And I don’t know where he is now,’ she finished truthfully.
‘What happened? Were you too forceful for the poor boy?’
‘Me? Forceful?’
‘You don’t play feminine games,’ Gabriel told her, reaching out to brush some hair away from her face. ‘And men tend to like their women to play feminine games.’
‘You mean, batting eyelashes and pretending to be helpless even when they have nerves of steel?’
‘Something like that.’ He hadn’t anticipated quite so much conversation. Women, he had always found, or at least those he had dated in the past, had always followed his lead, and lengthy conversation had never been high on his agenda. But then hadn’t he always known that this particular woman was unique? In fact, he had forgotten how much he enjoyed just talking to her. ‘Also…’ he let his eyes drift casually over her baggy sweatshirt and faded jeans ‘…they tend to be impressed by a more…feminine look.’ He knew that one would get to her and he grinned broadly when her expression reflected the expected reaction of sulky affront.
‘Oh, well, thank you very much for that, Gabriel. You’ve just put your finger on why I haven’t managed to find Mr Right. My taste in clothes hasn’t been up to par. And I suppose all these little episodes in your sad, sad love life have had exquisite dress sense?’ Was he aware of the flirtatious thread running through this conversation? she wondered frantically. Instead of fuming over his undisguised insults, she was blossoming! The teasing, lazy look in his black eyes gave his words a sexy, bantering intonation that had every nerve in her body singing.
‘They have,’ he agreed gravely.
‘And what would that exquisite dress sense be comprised of?’ she asked, stung by the comparisons she knew he must be making in his head between herself and his past conquests.
‘Oh, the usual. Tight little dresses with plunging necklines and high, high heels.’ And not one of them could light a candle next to this woman sitting right here, he thought suddenly, with her concealing clothes and lack of make-up. The thought of those heavy breasts, unfettered beneath the loose-fitting sweatshirt, turned him on in a way that no tight dresses and revealing necklines ever could. He savoured the moment when he could push up the thick cotton and feast his eyes on her bountiful body.
Laura wanted to ask him if he was so enamoured of voluptuous women in figure-hugging clothes, why then did he want to sleep with her? But she was too afraid of his answer to ask the question. God, was she so pathetic that she preferred to ignore the truth staring her in the face? Which was that he simply wanted to revisit old pastures and prove to them both that he could still have her if he wanted, no strings attached?
‘Well, in that case, why don’t you mount Barnabus and ride back to the house so that you can get away quickly and find yourself a suitably well-dressed woman?’
‘Actually,’ Gabriel drawled, his skin positively crawling with pleasure at this show of pique, ‘there’s something that is even sexier than tight-fitting clothes on a woman…’
‘And what’s that? Not that I’m interested.’
‘No clothes on a woman.’ The words dropped into the charged pool of electricity between them and he watched as the ripples began to fan out. ‘No clothes on a woman, out in the open, surrounded by fields and trees.’ The games were done and, whether she knew it or not, she wasn’t going to slip away from him. ‘The smell of warm sun on a naked body and the feel of grass under bare skin.’
A fine film of perspiration broke out over her body as her imagination took wild flight. Her head was screaming at her to run away as fast as she could, but she couldn’t move. She could just watch him close the small distance between them, and her eyes drooped as his mouth covered hers.
His hunger drove her backwards until she was lying on the grass, his body half over her as he pushed his tongue against hers and explored the warmth of her mouth with an urgency that was matched by her own. Her hands pressed against the side of his face and she arched back in sheer pleasure as he began kissing her neck and behind her ear.
‘Do you want this, querida?’ he murmured hoarsely. ‘Because if you don’t, then you had better tell me now. Before we both reach the point of no return.’
‘Yes,’ Laura whispered raggedly. ‘No. Oh, I don’t know, Gabriel.’
He stopped and looked down at her until her eyes flickered open. ‘Tell me,’ he commanded roughly, running one thumb along her eyebrow, and she turned her face into his hand and kissed his palm.
‘Yes,’ she admitted unsteadily. ‘I want you, I want this.’ And she knew exactly what this was, the act of making love, nothing more, nothing less.
‘And I want to hear you say it,’ Gabriel told her huskily. ‘I want to hear you moan with delight. God, I want to feel you tremble under my arms, Laura.’ Balancing on his elbow, he began to unbutton his shirt with his other hand, his fingers trembling until the shirt was finally hanging open and Laura curved her arms beneath it, delighting in the feel of his naked torso. She had watched him and imagined, but actually feeling him was beyond imagination, as was the dizzying sensation of coming back to a place where she belonged.
She eased his shirt off his shoulders, savouring each glimpse of hard, bronzed skin, and watched as he shrugged if off.
‘Not exactly fair,’ he murmured with a wicked gleam in his eye that had her blushing like a virgin bride instead of a woman who had lain countless times in this man’s arms before.
‘What’s not fair?’ she responded with a wicked, teasing smile of her own. She reached up to lick his mouth with the tip of her tongue and smiled as a low moan escaped him.
‘My performing a striptease while you remain covered up like a Victorian damsel.’
He moved into a kneeling position, his legs straddling either side of her and watched, fascinated, as she drew the sweatshirt slowly upwards, exposing the firm paleness of her flat stomach, then those breasts, which he had been lusting after ever since he had first laid eyes on her again. A hot burst of desire exploded inside him, shocking him with its intensity. His hands itched to touch, but he restrained himself, savouring the prospect of possession. Instead, he continued looking at her, breathing unsteadily whilst she lay passively and bewitchingly beneath him.
‘Having fun?’ he smiled crookedly and she stretched languidly in response, raising her hands over her head. She wanted to faint from the intense pleasure of just having those eyes roam over her semi-nude body.
‘Are you?’ she replied. Stupid question. Whatever he felt for her, whatever dubious reasons he had for making love with her, there was no doubt in her head that he still wanted her and, Lord, how she still wanted him. Sheer physical need was now in the driver’s seat.
‘Never had so much fun in my life before.’ Their eyes met and she gave him a smile that was enchantingly, teasingly feminine.
She reached down to cup her breasts with her hands, inviting him to do more than just watch, and Gabriel sank towards her offering with a groan of submission, burying his face against her soft mounds and nuzzling them with his mouth and tongue until Laura was whimpering with pleasure.
The ragged sound that was wrenched from her lips as his mouth closed over one tautened nipple was the sound of absolute abandonment.
Gabriel dimly heard it and felt like a young adolescent on the brink of orgasm just from the touch of his fantasy woman. In the distant past, when they had stolen their love-making sessions in the office, their passion had been muted by the unspoken thought that they might, just might, be interrupted. Now, with miles of deserted fields around them, they could be as vocal as they wanted and her cries of pleasure were like music to his ears.
But he wasn’t going to rush a minute of this.
He took his time, devoting his undivided attention to her beautiful breasts and loving the feel of her writhing beneath him and begging him not to stop. As if he were even capable of stopping!
He licked her breasts and then trailed his tongue along her stomach, which tasted warm. And her smell was the smell of pure woman, without any of those lingering traces of perfume that did nothing for him.
He undid the top button of her jeans, then the zip, and gently eased them down her long legs until he could easily pull them off and toss them to one side.
‘That’s not fair,’ Laura said huskily, repeating his teasing observation of earlier on, and he grinned at her.
‘So it isn’t,’ he drawled, catching her eyes and holding them, although not for long. The need to look at that beautiful, bronzed body was far too tempting just to make do with his eyes.
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