Читать книгу Australia: In Bed with Her Groom - Emma Darcy - Страница 16

HARRY STEPPED INTO the office and closed the door quietly behind him. His demeanour was completely unruffled. To Ashley’s intense relief he wasn’t smiling. Nor was there any amusement twinkling in his brilliant blue eyes. She was so churned up, any trace of a humourous response from him might have triggered a burst of angry frustration.

She realised, after a few fraught seconds, that the tension in the room wasn’t entirely hers. His relaxed air was a cloak, another act of self-discipline. She felt the same sense of connection she had felt yesterday, stronger now with their knowledge of each other, pulsing with the need to broaden it, deepen it.

Goose flesh shivered over her skin. Her heart skipped to a faster beat. She faced him defensively across the desk, yet there was no defence in objects or space. His eyes held hers with searching intensity, with indomitable determination, and she stared back, caught in a thrall of desire that would not be repressed, despite the doubts that plundered her mind of any peace.

‘Why did you do it?’ she asked. ‘It wasn’t fair to involve William with our…with—’ She couldn’t find appropriate words.

‘He is naturally involved,’ Harry answered quietly. ‘He is not separate from you, Ashley.’

‘But you let him think…’ She gestured helplessly.

‘That I want to be your lover?’ he finished for her.

She nodded, her throat too constricted to speak.

‘I do,’ he said simply. ‘Why should I pretend other-wise?’

She struggled with his apparently open honesty. ‘Last night—’ she forced the words out ‘—you spoke of your love for Pen.’

‘She was a very meaningful part of my life. I will not deny or hide what I felt for her. But as you yourself pointed out to me, Ashley, that’s in the past. You and I occupy the present.’

It was precisely the argument she had comforted herself with last night, but she knew there were other considerations—their backgrounds, the countries they inhabited, the lives they lived…so much to separate them, even if these feelings could be trusted.

‘What of the future?’ she asked, struggling to decipher what was right, whether to seize the moment or give more weight to consequences.

‘Who can foretell the future? At this moment I want you. More than any woman I’ve wanted in years.’

She wanted him, too. More than any man she had ever met. She couldn’t deny it. Nor could she hide it from the blue eyes relentlessly boring into hers, revealing their own naked desire, compelling an unmitigated response from her. Yet how could she give it? How, when there were so many uncertainties plaguing her?

She had a responsibility to herself and to William to make the right decisions, the best decisions. How could she recklessly turn a blind eye to consequences and take what she wanted at this moment, for this moment, simply because she wanted it? She was used to weighing everything, wary of inviting any possible disaster. But if she rejected this…

Harry moved, impelled to take the decision from her, sweep aside her painful uncertainty with action. He knew he was behaving recklessly, gambling that it would all turn out right somehow, but he didn’t care. He had to do it, had to know, had to feel. He’d been gambling with death for years and come out alive, if one could call it life.

He hadn’t realised how dull everything had become until he had met this woman. She had awakened him, and he couldn’t let go of this new exhilarating vibrancy, couldn’t let her turn him away, as she might if he didn’t act. She had the strength of will to do it if she decided against him. Time was his enemy. Every second that passed was his enemy.

He quickened his pace, closing the distance between them with ruthless intent. The blood was pounding through his veins and he knew the thrill, the primitive excitement of the hunter, the warrior going into battle. The bugle call was ringing in his head and nothing was going to stop him. He would take all before him, carry her away on a journey of discovery that he desperately wanted, that she wanted.

Yes, she did. It was burning through her, too, this need to join with him, to explore the sense of being truly alive, uninhibitedly alive, wantonly alive, awareness driven to the ultimate extreme. It was in the wild turbulence widening and darkening her eyes. It was in the faint tremor of her body as she turned to face him, watching him round the desk, coming to force the admission from her, taking the responsibility for it, changing what had been to whatever would be.

The future held no meaning for him. He would deal with it as it came. Only now mattered. And now was what he chose it to be for both of them. That was how it was, and she didn’t back away from it. Nor was she passive.

When he took her in his arms, her hands lifted to his chest, not to push him away but to touch him, and even this feather-light touch was like a hammer on his heart. He could feel a tingling heat spurting through his body, and it was imbued with the zestful joy and splendour of life, igniting the lust of the flesh to experience and savour all that bound it to this earth, to this woman who made the world bearable again, who breathed sweet air into his lungs and dazzled his mind with hope, with a promise that it wasn’t over for him.

There was more.

He gathered her closer, craving her softness, her femininity, the heart and mind of her, the soul that called to his from the same pit of loneliness he had known, the pit where the ashes of dreams resided in a greyness devoid of the beautiful colours that dreams could paint.

The need to pick up the palette and splash all the bright primary hues around both of them in wild abandonment was upon him, irresistible. Let colour fall where it would. Some of it must stick to them. No more grey. Grey was emptiness, the void waiting for a new creation, and the fever to create was too compelling to forgo.

Her hands slid to his shoulders, around his neck, and her lovely face was lifted to his, the lush curve of her lower lip tremulously inviting his plunder, and in her eyes the kindled blaze of hope, the wish, the want, the need to know, the temptation of the dream of life, to share the depths and the heights and everything in between with one who could…who would.

It was a chance, and she couldn’t resist it any more than he could.

He wrapped her more tightly to him. Willingly her soft thighs leaned into the rock steadiness of his, muscles taut with the strength of irreversible need. Her belly pressed over his loins, an enticing cushion of promise for the intimacy within. Her breasts, crested with hard beads of excitement, imprinted themselves on his chest. Her mouth opened under the pressure of his, sweet cavern of sensation, of passion released on a whirlwind of need that swirled from one to the other and fused into a tornado of feeling that swept them up in its tempestuous funnel, away from all worldly things, away from yesterday and tomorrow and the pedantic necessities of getting on with day-to-day life.

Passion feeding on passion, bodies straining to appease the long hunger, hands moving to shed the unbearable barrier of clothes, a totally consuming need to bare all to the desire burning through them, to give all, to take all on the chance that it might prove right, the chance that it would add that precious lustre of true togetherness they both sought, the silver lining beaming from behind the dark clouds, the red-orange-yellow sunburst of golden warmth, the deep calm of blue-green peace.

Their physical surroundings were irrelevant. Behind the desk in Ashley’s office they sank to the floor, she pliantly inviting, urgently welcoming, offering the cradle of her womanhood with an utter abandonment of any other care, he needing their mating with an intensity that went beyond all rational thought. Yes was the beat of his mind. Now was the beat of his body. Her was the beat of his heart.

And he plunged himself into the sweet, moist tunnel that would take him to the innermost core of this woman, reaching to the door of her soul, urging it to open with every powerful thrust of himself, wanting to find there the culmination of all he had been blindly searching for since Pen had died.

It came. He felt it begin, the exquisite flowering of ultimate giving to him, the utter yielding of self to the most intimate fusion any two people could achieve, the surrender of every particle of separateness, and it was a wild and exultant intoxicant to him. He moved faster, rushing to meet her climax with his, to share the ecstatic stream of pleasure with her, the essence of life itself mingling, melding, bonding to create the most indescribably beautiful union. He spilled the liquid warmth of his seed into the convulsing heat of her womb, and the blissful perfection of it rippled through them in waves, a wondrous rhythm of togetherness fulfilled and complete.

And they looked at each other, their eyes swimming with the glory of it, their minds dazed that it could be…and was…the possibility, the promise that neither had quite believed in, the chance taken and rewarded, the awareness of its vibrant reality pulsing through them.

She lifted a hand to his cheek, stroking it as though in awe of him or what he’d done with her, and it moved him to kiss her with a surge of tenderness that melted the last of the hard casing that had been around his heart since Pen’s death.

‘Ashley,’ he whispered, and it was a prayer of thanks for being the woman she was, for reaching so far into him that the past had fallen away and he could rejoice in the present because she was here, with him, sharing this moment of revelation, of renewal.

Harry…His name was a throb of sweet exultation in her mind and heart. She couldn’t speak it. She felt too much, and his lips were grazing over hers so softly, gently, beautifully, and he was still inside her, filling her with the wonder of all he had made her feel.

What she had known with Roger was a pale thing in comparison, leaving her totally unprepared for such an explosion of exquisite sensation, the sheer billowing glory of it seizing her body, holding it in thrall to the movement of his until that moment…that moment when she was no longer herself but him, too, an entity that belonged to both of them, yet more than either of the two, like an ecstatic star burst that she imagined must have fired the dawn of creation.

It slid into her dazzled consciousness that she wasn’t protected against the act of creation that might well be taking place right now with Harry’s seed deep inside her, spilled as wildly and wantonly as she had received it. He hadn’t thought of it, and she had abandoned all thought from the moment he had first kissed her, abandoned it to the yearning for all she had missed and craved, beyond bearing the emptiness any longer.

What if a child was born of this coming together?

Strange that she didn’t care. Perhaps she would care later when the afterglow dimmed, but she doubted it. To know this at least once in a lifetime was worth any price. It was what a man and woman were made for, and Harry had made it happen for her, giving her this precious gift, a memory to treasure no matter what else happened in her life.

He rolled onto his back, carrying her with him, his arms encircling her, hands soothing away what she suddenly realised was a rough prickle on her skin from the carpet. Not once in her marriage with Roger had they ever made love on a floor. She searched for some tiny shock at such uninhibited behaviour and found none. Her office was strewn with carelessly discarded clothes, and she was in a naked, intimate embrace with a man she had known for only one day, but none of it mattered. Only the feeling mattered.

How long would it last? She snuggled her head below his chin and listened to the steady drumming of his heart, weaving music around it, a melody of happy satisfaction she didn’t want to end. Let it beat on, she thought, turning now into forever.

Harry lay in contented languor, his fingers weaving through the long, silken strands of her hair, loosed from its pins in the heat of their passion for each other. His senses were drunk with the feel of her, the taste of her, the sight of her, the scent of her. She was beautiful, her skin like satin, her softness more sensual than velvet, her warmth more comforting than any he had known.

He thought of making love to her more slowly, savouring every moment, every nuance of intimacy, but it was better to wait. It was enough to revel in what they had just shared. There was no need to take it further right now.

He should have asked about protection, but he hadn’t known beforehand what he was going to do. If she conceived…Harry couldn’t stop the smile that spread across his face. A child. His child. An heir for George and Springfield Manor. He almost laughed at the irony of it. So unplanned. Yet if it happened, he would leave no stone unturned to change Ashley’s mind about coming to England.

He would enjoy being a father. He enjoyed William, clever little devil that he was. Shock rippled through his mind. They had forgotten William. How long would he wait upstairs before coming to investigate what was going on, before the silence piqued his lively curiosity? If her young son opened the office door, Ashley would be painfully embarrassed, mortified, and she might react badly to the gamble he had taken in pushing for the knowledge they had both wanted.

He sighed, hating to end it, but it was the only sure way to protect what they had shared. He rolled her onto her side so they were facing and gently tucked her tumbled hair behind one delicate ear, giving her time to gather her thoughts as their eyes met in a silent questioning of each other.

Not a trace of regret or hint of recrimination. A brilliant silver shone through the grey of her eyes. He knew it was reflected in his.

He smiled. ‘I think we’d better move. You have some talking to do with William.’

‘Oh!’ She flushed in confusion, horrified at her forgetfulness and what might have ensued from it. She scrambled to her feet in a rush, hunting her clothes in frantic haste.

Harry rose and went to the door, leaning against it to prevent any possible entry. ‘There’s no cause for panic,’ he assured her. ‘I’m holding the fort.’

She had already put on her panties and bra, which was a shame because he would have liked to watch her dress more leisurely. She flashed him an anguished look, then all movement was arrested as she stared at his naked physique.

‘Do I pass?’ he asked, cocking a teasing eyebrow, aware that he was not lacking in any manliness.

She gave a self-conscious laugh. ‘I guess you could say you have my seal of approval.’

‘You have mine, too.’ She had a divine shape, petite but beautifully curved and her bones softly fleshed.

She flushed, her eyes glowing with pleasure. ‘I’ve never been in this kind of situation,’ she confessed.

He laughed. ‘Neither have I. No style at all. Sponta-neous combustion.’

She giggled, a delightfully girlish sound, shy, nervous, yet rippling with elation. ‘I don’t think either of us gets top marks for control. Which makes us even.’

‘I like being even. I could take a lot of it.’

She didn’t demur. Harry felt a zing of elation. She was not going to back off. She wanted more, as he did.

She looked thoughtful as she continued dressing. She finished buttoning and zipping and started gathering up her hair, twisting it into a knot on top of her head. The action lifted her lovely breasts, reminding Harry of how they had felt against him. Desire shot through his loins again, and it took considerable willpower to reduce the surge of blood so that its effect wouldn’t be blatantly evident.

She finished pinning her hair in place and gave a helpless shrug as her eyes sought his in eloquent appeal. ‘I don’t know what to tell William. I don’t know where I am myself.’

‘As long as I stay here we’ll be lovers, Ashley.’

‘But you still intend to go back to England,’ she said flatly.

‘Yes. My place is there,’ he answered unequivocally. ‘It’s up to you to choose whether you’ll come with me or not.’

‘As your lover?’ she asked.

He paused to consider, weighing his answer carefully. ‘Let’s see what develops between us, Ashley. One thing I can say for certain. I don’t intend to be William’s uncle, so please don’t use that term in explaining where we are.’

‘So you aim to continue here as the butler,’ she said dryly.

He hesitated. Was this the moment for truth? If he confessed to who and what he really was, would she turn away from him in disgust at his deception? Perhaps feel hurtfully fooled, even over succumbing to the desire that had swept them both into intimacy?

He didn’t want to risk bringing any element of change into that. He wanted to know how much more could be built on it, whether it would grow into the magical partnership of souls he craved. He needed more time with her, just as they were.

‘I want to be everything to you. I want your every need and desire to be answered by me. If it pleases you to let the established order go on, then so be it.’ He gave her a whimsical smile. ‘Being a butler doesn’t preclude me from being your lover until such time as you decide what you want.’

She slowly nodded. ‘We’ll need to be discreet. Especially in front of William.’

‘That probably would be best,’ he conceded reluctantly. ‘There’s no good in raising his expectations if you know you’ll never meet them, Ashley.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes. You,’ he said seriously. ‘I won’t be an uncle for William. I could be a father.’

She looked stunned. ‘You’re thinking of marriage?’

Why was she so surprised? Didn’t she know how special, how rare it was to have what they had just shared together? Maybe not with her limited experience.

‘Perhaps we could both think about it,’ he said gently. ‘I don’t even know if you’re receptive to another marriage after Roger. There’s much to explore and resolve between us.’

She said nothing. Her eyes were slightly glazed, her thoughts turned inward.

Harry decided to spell out the situation as he knew it would be for him. ‘Remember your question…what of the future?’

It snapped her attention to him.

‘As I see it, there are two futures for us,’ he went on. ‘What’s between us will either end in a beautiful memory…or marriage.’

She shuddered.

Harry didn’t know what it meant. He waited, watching her closely as she came to a decision, hoping he hadn’t pushed too far. But it was the plain truth. It would be one or the other.

He would never move in with a woman he couldn’t commit himself to. Such an arrangement offended his sense of honour. Nor would he move in with a woman who couldn’t or wouldn’t commit herself to him. It smacked of second-rate convenience. He had a need for all there could be in a fully committed partnership.

To his intense relief Ashley’s mouth slowly curved into a smile, although there was an ironic tilt to it. ‘Well, as my butler, perhaps you could bring me a nightcap after William is asleep tonight.’

Pleasure bubbled into a wide grin. ‘How fortunate I bought a dozen bottles of champagne this morning!’

‘Always so provident, Harry,’ she said, her eyes twinkling warmly as she crossed the office to where he stood sentinel at the door for her. She reached up and kissed him, drawing quickly away to discourage a full embrace. ‘Thank you. Until tonight, then.’

She left him with that promise, and Harry was content. Eventually he would winkle out all of Ashley’s thoughts and feelings. He had another chance tonight. It was enough.