She watched with greedy yearning as he shrugged off his already unbuttoned shirt, then deliberately took his time with his trousers. With unconscious provocation, Laura’s fingers strayed to the top of her underwear and she casually slipped them under to caress the fair, soft curls as she continued to drink him in with her eyes.
God, the woman couldn’t possibly know what she was doing to him, Gabriel thought with another savage thrust of undiluted desire. He watched the idle movement of her hand under the flimsy cotton of her underwear and any thoughts of taking his time disappeared under the need to touch her again.
His trousers were kicked aside, quickly followed by his silk boxer shorts until he was standing in front of her feverish gaze in all his proud, masculine and very impressive nudity.
A slow, satisfied and eminently cat-like smile curved her wide mouth.
Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way around? Gabriel thought wryly. Wasn’t he supposed to be the cat in command of its very luscious prey?
‘Touching yourself, cara?’ he enquired lazily as he sank down to join her on the warm grass and he covered her hand with his own.
‘Of course I’m not!’ Laura protested. She stroked the side of his face and felt a lump gather at the back of her throat. All this would become was another memory to add to the collection, she thought sadly. She meant nothing to him and he had made that perfectly clear.
He took her hand and kissed the tip of each of her fingers with such infinite tenderness that she could almost kid herself that there was some emotion there.
There was nothing to be gained from dwelling on it, she thought, pulling him fiercely towards her and kissing him, liking it better when he yanked off her last remaining item of clothing.
‘Want to play rough, do you, little tiger?’ He laughed softly into her mouth.
‘It’s been a long time.’
‘Feel free to make as much noise as you want,’ he returned, moving directly over her so that his hardness brushed against her belly and set up a series of sweet sensations inside her. He hooked his arms under her back so that she curved up towards him and began to ravage her breasts.
Then, without any thought of teasing her further, he moved down to part her thighs with his hand and began plundering between her legs. He felt it when she curled her fingers into his hair and then she began obeying his strict instructions that she should make as much noise as she wanted.
At some point, lost in the daze of tasting her, he felt her tug his head up to tell him that he had to stop, that he was driving her crazy, and then it was his turn to be ravaged by her.
It was something he had not experienced for a very long time. The women he had dated in the past had preferred him to make all the moves and that had always suited him perfectly, unconsciously maintaining the control that had become part and parcel of his dominant personality.
Now she was taking control and he found himself enjoying every minute of it as she straddled him and, after taking her fill of every inch of his body, sank onto his engorged manhood and began moving in a way that was unbelievably erotic.
Her breasts dangled tantalisingly by his face, brushing his mouth until he caught one in his hands and began suckling on the tight bud, whilst her body continued to move over him, grinding harder until they reached that point of no return and crossed it.
Laura finally lay down on him, spent and satiated, and he stroked her hair.
‘So,’ she said seriously, rolling off him to lie on the grass at his side, ‘I guess it goes without saying that what we did was…a big mistake…’ She sat up and reached for her clothes, only to find herself pulled back down as one big hand descended on her shoulder.
‘What do you think you are doing?’ They looked at one another, both on their sides, facing each other.
‘We have to get back to the house, Gabriel. I was getting dressed. We…we shouldn’t have done what…what we just did. You know that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because sex is just going to complicate everything.’
‘Oh, is it, now?’ He idly began to stroke her breasts, enjoying the way her body was reacting to his feather touch. Forget what she was saying about sex complicating everything. She still wanted him. It was obvious in the way her nipples were hardening under his lingering finger and in the way her breathing was beginning to sound raspy.
For a while just then he had been so lost in the rapture of touching this woman, feeling her naked body, that he had almost forgotten the whole point of the exercise. This, he reminded himself, was the woman who had turned him away and it was only now, being with her again, wanting her the way he did, that Gabriel could see how affected his life had been by the rejection.
‘Yes, it is,’ Laura said, shifting to move, and he caught her wrist with his hand and, after kissing her palm, turned his eyes to hers.
‘Why? Did you not enjoy what we just did?’
‘You know I did.’
‘Mmm. I know.’ He smiled lazily and began stroking her thigh until she gave an involuntary gasp of pleasure as her body responded. He leant forward and kissed her delicately on her mouth until she lay back down so that he could lean over her and continue his exquisite exploration of her lips with his tongue.
And this time their love-making was slow and languorous. He touched every inch of her with such infinite gentleness that her body wanted to explode from sheer want. When she would have tugged him up from those most intimate caresses a woman could have, he captured her restless hand with his steady one and continued caressing her, devoting himself entirely to bringing her so close to the peak of orgasm that she was panting, only to replace his inquisitive tongue with little kisses.
By the time she lay spent by his side, the fragile spring warmth was beginning to recede and, by mutual consent, they both got dressed and began the ride back to the house.
‘I’ll help you muck them out,’ he told her, the first words they had exchanged since their shatteringly prolonged love-making.
‘Honestly, you don’t have to. I…I’m perfectly capable of handling it on my own.’
‘I realise I don’t have to, but I want to.’
It was a relief that the physical demands of tending to the horses allowed Laura time to try and get her frantic thoughts into some kind of order. Not that she wasn’t helplessly aware of Gabriel working right there alongside her. Somewhere along the line, he had removed his shirt and it seemed that wherever she looked her eyes crashed into his bare-backed torso with its hard, muscular strength and tightly packed muscle.
‘Right,’ she said weakly, after forty-five minutes of solid work conducted in silence, ‘I think we can call it a day here.’
Gabriel stood back and looked at her. Her hair was damp with perspiration and she had shoved up the sleeves of her sweatshirt. With deliberate slowness, he put back on his shirt, leaving it unbuttoned.
‘Feels like old times,’ he drawled. ‘I haven’t mucked out for years.’
‘I’m surprised you never bought any horses,’ Laura said, grasping at this little straw of conversational normality. She dragged her eyes away from him and moved towards the stable door.
‘I thought about it,’ Gabriel replied, watching her as she carefully avoided his gaze. ‘But horses need constant attention and upkeep and…’ he shrugged ‘…my working hours are too unpredictable.’ He walked behind her and closed the door behind him. He could read DISCOMFORT written all over her in huge capital letters, and perversely wanted to snatch her back to him.
He rested his hand loosely on her neck and felt her flinch. Dammit, she hadn’t been uncomfortable back there out in the open! Oh, no, she had been abandoned and uninhibited and utterly in his possession!
‘Relax,’ he told her softly.
‘Relax? How can you possibly expect me to relax?’ Laura swung round to look at him, her eyes wide with confusion.
‘Easily,’ Gabriel said smoothly. ‘We have just had mind-blowing sex. You should be feeling very relaxed.
’
‘I should be heading for the nearest river to jump in,’ Laura said bitterly. ‘We should never have made love. It was a mistake and it won’t happen again!’
‘We will discuss this inside. When we have both had a shower and something to eat.’
‘There’s nothing to discuss,’ Laura muttered, turning away, hugging herself tightly.
For the moment, Gabriel thought, he would leave her nursing her thoughts of regret and actually thinking that their love-making might really be a one-off episode.
‘And shouldn’t you be heading back to London?’ she flung at him.
‘In due course. But definitely not in this state.’ He looked down at himself, covered in bits of straw, and Laura reluctantly admitted that he had a point. Not to mention the small fact that the house belonged to him anyway, so he could have however many damned showers he wanted!
‘I’ll get you a towel,’ she said as soon as they were in the front door.
‘And get one for yourself whilst you are about it.’ He looked at her without smiling, but the intent was stamped all over his face.
‘What are you talking about?’ A frisson of excitement and alarm ripped through her.
‘As we are both in dire need of a shower, then I suggest we do it together.’ And when she opened her mouth to protest, he covered it swiftly with his own and felt her body melt. Oh, yes. Did she really think that she could run away from him now? Did she really imagine that he would allow her to do that?
‘Didn’t you hear a word…th-that I just said, Gabriel?’
‘Heard and absorbed every word, amante. Which is not to say that I agree with a single one of them.’ To emphasise his point, he slipped his hands under her jumper and placed his hands under the crease of her breasts. ‘What we did was not a mistake. We wanted one another and we still want one another, and there is no point in your pretending otherwise.’ He could feel the rapid beating of her heart under her ribcage.
‘We can’t bring the past back.’ Laura heard the unsteady tremor of her voice with dismay. She should be thrusting him away, flying up those stairs as fast as her legs could carry her, but she couldn’t move a muscle.
‘Nor can we forget it,’ he replied fiercely. ‘Why don’t you tell me that it was all a mistake…now…?’ His hands covered her breasts and he began rousing her with masterful precision, touching her nipples and setting them aflame with longing. They half walked, half stumbled, still united, until he was pressing her back against the wall, and with her in that position he moved one hand to her thigh and began rubbing her there, there where she could do nothing but respond, his fingers firm as they pushed against the crease of the denim until she was half crying out.
She surrendered. He felt it the instant her arms wrapped around him and she blindly searched for his mouth.
‘Now, what about that shower?’ he broke away to murmur and she looked at him with a dazed expression, then smiled.
His tactics, he admitted minutes later as the warm water shot jets down at them both in the shower cubicle, left a lot to be desired, but all was fair in love and war.
Strangely, though, he didn’t just want her to yield to him because she couldn’t resist the tug of what they did to one another in the sack.
‘Your hair needs washing,’ he said, swivelling her away from him and reaching for the bottle of shampoo so that he could trickle some into her wet hair and begin massaging. ‘And this is not the way to do it,’ he murmured huskily, when she gave a sensuous little whimper of pleasure and curved her back against him so that he had no choice, as a red-blooded male, but to wrap his arms around her and bury his mouth against her neck.
‘You’re right.’ She squirmed until she was facing him, slippery with soap and water, and their quick shower, as it turned out, took them a lot longer than they had anticipated.
This was what he wanted. Or so he told himself in the warmth of the kitchen, holding a glass of chilled wine in his hand and looking at her as she busied herself in the kitchen, having insisted that he sit down and let her cook.
At his beck and call. One touch, and she was on fire. Click his fingers and she would melt in his arms.
So why was there still a thread of dissatisfaction gnawing away at the pit of his stomach? Had he not achieved exactly what he had wanted? If he turned his back now and walked away, he knew that she would be the one to hurt, so why the ache? He owned the house, the land, her body. He had got his revenge and now he felt sullied, somehow, by it.
‘There was no need to put yourself to all this trouble,’ he said abruptly, and she turned to face him with a frown.
‘What’s the matter? What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing is wrong. Why should anything be wrong?’ he asked irritably.
‘No reason whatsoever,’ Laura replied, covering the frying-pan with a lid and drying her hands on a towel. She reached for her wineglass on the counter and took a sip of wine, then she perched against the ledge of the counter and folded her arms. ‘You’re free to go any time you want, Gabriel,’ she said coolly. ‘Don’t imagine that because we’ve slept together that there’s any need for you to try and play the gentleman now. In case you’d conveniently forgotten, you were the one who suggested staying on for something to eat.’
‘And in case you’d conveniently forgotten, you were only too delighted at the suggestion.’ Flushed, as she had been, after their third bout of love-making! For some reason, the thought of her murmuring things she thought he wanted to hear when in the throes of passion made his teeth snap together in fury.
It was something of which Laura did not want to be reminded. Let that be a lesson to her, she thought angrily. Nothing between them was normal and it was pointless pretending that it could ever be! They were not some domesticated little couple playing at happy families. They had made love but love was the last thing that came into the act. The thought of him sitting there, squirming because he would rather be off now that he had slept with her, filled her with mortification.
‘It seemed sensible!’ she shot back. ‘Not that I have much choice, anyway! After all, this is your house. I am only acting the part of dutiful employee.’
‘And was that what you were doing earlier on?’ he rasped. ‘Acting the part of the dutiful employee?’
Laura was the first to look away. She didn’t want to see the jeering cynicism stamped in those beautiful black eyes. More importantly, she didn’t want him to see the furious, blinding panic in her own eyes.
God, she thought with dawning, incredulous horror, I’ve fallen in love with him. All over again. Maybe, she thought with clammy dismay, she had never fallen out of love with him. She had just managed to submerge it all until he came back into her life and then, well, it had just been a question of time before she’d catapulted back into his arms. She could have coped better if she had thought that she had been acting the part of the dutiful employee!
‘No,’ she whispered numbly.
She had turned away and Gabriel, his body tense, wanted desperately for her to turn back to him so that he could read what was going on in that seductive head of hers. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself and to regain some of his self-control.
‘Look,’ he said to her back, ‘there is no point in us arguing with one another.’ Why the hell wouldn’t she look at him? The thought that he might have blown it filled him with sudden, suffocating dread. ‘I just did not want you to feel that you had to slave over a kitchen stove to cook food for me when I would more than happily have taken you somewhere to eat.’
‘I had to cook for myself anyway,’ Laura muttered, which shoved his simmering anger a few notches higher. She had succumbed to lust and so, heck, why not invite him to eat with her? Not as if she were putting herself out!
‘Women, home-cooked meals and me do not mix.’ Pride slammed into place with ferocious ease. ‘It’s been my experience,’ he said dismissively, ‘that a woman who cooks food wants more than I am ever prepared to give.’
‘In
which case,’ Laura replied with equal dismissive-ness, ‘you have nothing to fear from me in that area.’
‘Because all you want is sex?’
Because it’s all I can get and that’s better than nothing. ‘Why not?’ She shrugged and began putting plates and cutlery on the table. Brave words but she couldn’t meet his eyes. She couldn’t bear to see the relief in his eyes that she wasn’t going to clutter his high-powered life with unwanted complications. ‘We’re both adults,’ she said with a tight smile. ‘Isn’t it good that we understand each other?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
GABRIEL frowned at the computer screen in front of him. He could vaguely register the detailed report staring back at him and the numbers indicating that a takeover made six months previously was beginning to show the profit he had predicted, but his eyes were glazed.
When the phone rang, he leapt at the receiver and grabbed the opportunity to shove his chair back at an angle that offered him a view through the opened door into the sitting room where Laura was busily discussing colours and paints with three men.
He had decided, he had told her, that he needed to be on hand to supervise the beginnings of work being done on the house. This wasn’t a company takeover, he had told her grandly, he was personally involved with this particular purchase, he had to be there for her to consult freely whenever she felt she needed to. When she had drily reminded him of the need to trust his workforce, namely her, he had swept aside the objection with a careless wave of his hand and words to the effect that it would be easier for him to work from the house as opposed to having her travel down every single time she needed to make a decision about something. That was the whole point of communications these days, he had explained, stilling the protest she had been about to utter. E-mail facilities, fax machines, computers allowed total mobility.
Within twenty-four hours he had moved in lock, stock and barrel, propelled by an urgent need that he himself did not fully comprehend. He just knew that he had to be around her.
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