Читать книгу The British Bachelors Collection - Сара Крейвен, Kate Hardy - Страница 28
ОглавлениеDAMIAN REACHED INTO his jacket pocket and flipped open the lid of the black and gold box which had been nestling there for the past three hours.
A necklace with a teardrop pendant, a blood-red ruby, surrounded by tiny diamonds. He had chosen it himself. Well, why not? Suitable recompense for the past three and a half months, during which Violet had proved herself a superb and satisfying lover. He always gave gifts to his lovers. She might have thwarted every attempt he had made thus far on that front, rebutting his offers of a car, because who needed to become snarled up in traffic, not to mention contributing to global warming whilst having to pay the Congestion Charge the second you needed it for anything really useful? an expensive weekend in Vienna now that his mother seemed to be responding so well to her treatment programme, can’t, too much work, sorry, some really expensive kitchen equipment because he had seen what she had, no, thanks, a girl becomes accustomed to working with old, familiar pots and pans and ovens and fridges and microwaves...
But this necklace was a fait accompli. She would have no choice but to accept it.
He snapped shut the lid of the box and returned it to his jacket pocket before sliding out of his car and heading up to her house.
He had grown accustomed to the confined space in which she lived. Literally two-up, two-down. Phillipa was still doing whatever she was doing in Ibiza. He couldn’t imagine the claustrophobia of actually having to share the place with another adult human being. Personally, it would have driven him mad. He was used to the vast open-plan space of his five-bedroom house in Chelsea. When he had moved there years ago, he had hired a top architect who had re-configured the layout of the house so that the rooms, all painted stone and adorned with a mixture of established art and newer investment worthy pieces, flowed into one another.
Violet’s house was more in the nature of a honeycomb. Two weeks previously, he had offered to have the whole thing gutted and redone more along his tastes, but predictably she had looked at him as though he had taken leave of his senses and laughed. Alternatively, he had said, they could just spend more time at his place. He was now splitting his time between London and the West Country. Why not make love in luxury? But she had told him, in the sort of semi-apologetic voice that managed to impart no hint of remorse, that she didn’t like his house. Something about it being sterile and clinical. He had refrained from telling her that she was the first woman to have ever responded to opulence with a negative reaction.
He pressed the doorbell and instantly lost his train of thought at the sound of her approaching footsteps.
From inside the house, Violet felt that familiar shiver of tingling, excited anticipation. After the first month, and once he had ascertained that Eleanor was responding well, Damien had split his time. He always made sure to spend weekends in the country and often Mondays as well, but he was now in London a great deal more and Violet liked that. On all levels, what she was doing was bad for her. She knew that. She didn’t understand where this driving, urgent chemistry between them had sprung from and even less did she understand how it was capable of existing in a vacuum the way it did, but she was powerless to fight it. Having always equated sex with love, she had fast learned how easy it was for everything you took for granted to be turned inside out and upside down.
She had also fast learned how easy it was to lose track of the rules of the game you had signed up to.
When had she started living her week in anticipation of seeing him? Just when had she sacrificed all her principles, all her expectations of what a relationship should deliver on the high altar of lust and passion and sex?
She had told herself that she was throwing caution to the winds. That most of her adult years had been spent being responsible and diligent and careful so why on earth shouldn’t she take a little time out and experience something else, something that wasn’t all wrapped up with doing the right thing? She had practically decided that she owed herself that. That she was a grown woman who was more than capable of handling a sexual relationship with a man to whom she was inexplicably but powerfully attracted.
So how was it that it was now so difficult to maintain the mask of not caring one jot if he never discussed anything beyond tomorrow? If he assumed that whatever they had would fizzle out at some point? More and more she found herself thinking about Annalise, the wife that should have been but never was. He never mentioned her name. That in itself was telling because three weeks ago, on one of their rare excursions out for a meal at a swanky restaurant in Belgravia, he had bumped into a woman and had afterwards told her that he had dated her for a few months. The woman had been a flame-haired six-foot beauty, as slender as a reed and draped over a man much shorter and older. Afterwards, Damien had laughed and informed her that the man in question was a Russian billionaire, married but with his wife safely tucked away in the bowels of St Petersburg somewhere.
‘Don’t you feel a twinge of jealousy that he’s dating a woman you used to go out with?’ Violet had asked, because how could any man not? When the woman in question looked as though she had stepped straight off the front cover of a high-end fashion magazine? Damien had laughed. Why on earth would he be jealous? Women came and went. Good luck to the guy, although he had enough money to keep the lady in question amused and interested.
‘Was she too expensive for you?’ Violet had asked, which he had found even more amusing.
‘No one’s too expensive for me. I dumped her because she wanted more than money could buy.’
Violet had thought that that had said it all. The woman in question had wanted a ring on her finger. Damien, on the other hand, had wanted casual. Which was what he wanted with her and the only woman to whom those rules had never applied was the one woman who had broken his heart.
And yet, knowing all that, she could still feel herself sliding further and further away from logic, common sense and self-control. Forewarned wasn’t forearmed.
She pulled open the door and her heart gave that weird skippy feeling, as though she were in a lift that had suddenly dropped a hundred floors at maximum speed.
It was Thursday and he had come straight from work, although his tie was missing and his jacket was slung over his shoulder.
‘Damien...’
‘Missed me?’ Deep blue, hooded eyes swept over her with masculine appreciation. No bra. Ages ago, he had told her that it was an entirely unnecessary item of clothing for a woman whose breasts were as perfect as hers. At least indoors. When he was the male caller in question...
He had been leaning indolently against the doorframe. Now he pushed himself off and entered the tiny hallway, his eyes glued to her the whole time.
His smile was slow and lazy. With an easy movement, he tossed his jacket aside, where it landed neatly on the banister, then he wrapped his arms around her, drew her to him so that he could try and extinguish some of the yearning that had been building inside him from the very second he had set foot in his car. Her mouth parted readily and he grunted with pleasure as his tongue found hers, clashing in a hungry need for more.
Violet braced her hands against his chest and stayed him for a few seconds. ‘You know I hate it when the first thing you do the very second you walk through the front door is...is...’
‘Kiss you senseless...?’ Damien raked his fingers through his hair. Frankly, he wasn’t too fond of that particular trait himself. He didn’t like what it said about his self-control when he was around her, but he chose to keep that to himself. ‘Is that why the last time I came, we didn’t even manage to make it up the stairs?’ he said instead. ‘In fact, if I recall...your jumper was off on stair two, I had your nipple in my mouth by stair four and by stair eight, roughly halfway up, I was exploring other parts of your extremely responsive body...’
Violet blushed. As always, it was one thing saying something and another actually putting it into practice.
Right now, although he had done as asked and had drawn back from her, the one thing she wanted to do was pull him right back towards her so that they could carry on where they had left off.
It was only a very small consolation that these little shows of strength helped her to maintain the façade of being as casual about what they had as he was. She knew that she had to cling to them for dear life.
‘I’m going to cook us something special.’ She led the way to the kitchen and retrieved a cold bottle of beer from the fridge, which he took, tilting his head back to drink a couple of long mouthfuls.
‘Why?’
Violet contained a little spurt of irritation. Shows of domesticity were never appreciated. He had never said so but, tellingly, his chef would often prepare food, which he would bring with him, stuff that tasted delicious and required an oven, a microwave and plates, or else takeaways were ordered when they had been physically sated. The ritual of eating was usually just an interruption, she sometimes felt, to the main event.
‘I’m trying it out as a meal for my class to learn,’ she lied and he shrugged and swallowed a couple more mouthfuls of beer before retreating to the kitchen table, where he sprawled on one chair, pulling another closer and using it as a footrest.
Violet bustled. Now that they weren’t tripping over themselves, tearing each other’s clothes off in a frantic race to make love, she wished that they were. Her body tingled at the knowledge that he was looking at her. She loved it when his eyes got dark and slumberous and full of intent.
‘Tell me how your mother’s doing,’ she said, to clear her head from the wanton desire to fling herself at him and forget about the meal she had planned.
She listened as he told her about recent trips into the village, her upbeat mood, which so contrasted with her despair when she had initially told him about the situation, recovery that was exceeding the doctor’s expectations...
Violet half listened. Her mind was drifting in and out of the uncomfortable questions she had recently started asking herself. Occasionally she said something and hoped for the best. She was a million miles away when she jumped as Damien padded up towards her and whispered into her ear, ‘Must be a complicated recipe, Violet. You’ve been staring into space for the past five minutes.’
Violet snapped back to the present and turned to him with a little frown. ‘I’ve got stuff on my mind.’
‘Anything I’d like to hear about?’
She hesitated, torn between not wanting to rock the boat and needing to say what she was thinking.
‘No. Just to do with school.’ She cravenly shied away from doing what she knew would ruin the evening.
‘What can I do to take your mind off it...?’ Just like that, Damien felt his tension evaporate. He thought he might have been imagining the thickness of the atmosphere, her unusual silence. He turned her back to the chopping board, where she had been mixing a satay sauce, and wrapped his arms around her from behind. ‘Looks good. What is it?’ He slipped one big hand underneath her loose top and did what he had been wanting to the moment he had set foot through the front door. He caressed one full breast, settling on a nipple, which he rubbed gently but insistently with the pad of his thumb. With his other hand, he dipped a finger into the sauce, licked some off and offered the rest to her. Violet’s mouth circled round his finger and she shivered at the deliberate eroticism in the gesture.
She moved across to the kitchen sink, carrying some dishes with her, and he released her, but only briefly, before resuming his position standing right behind her.
Outside, with the days getting longer, darkness was only now beginning to set in. Her view was spectacularly unexciting. The back of the house overlooked the wall of another house; the outside space comprised of a pocket-sized back garden just big enough for Phillipa to lie down in summer and spend the day tanning without having to dismantle the washing line.
Their bodies, merging together, were reflected hazily back to them in the windows overlooking the garden and their eyes tangled in the reflection as he slowly pushed up her jumper until she could see both their bodies and the pale nudity of her breasts. She gasped and fell back slightly against him as he began massaging them, rhythmic, firm movements that pushed them up, making her large nipples bulge and distend.
‘Damien...no...someone might see us...’ Although that wasn’t really a possibility. The one thing about the house and its location was that it was surprisingly private, given the fact that it was in London, where privacy was a rarity. The small back garden was fully enclosed with a fence and a fortuitous tree in the back garden of the neighbour opposite ensured limited view.
Damien continued rubbing her breasts, filling his hands with the heavy weight of them, bouncing them slightly, as though evaluating their worth.
‘Get naked for me,’ he murmured, nipping her neck and then trailing hot kisses along it.
‘Get...what...?’
‘Don’t pretend you didn’t hear. Get naked for me. Take your clothes off. Scratch that. Maybe I’ll let you get away with just wearing an apron...’
‘I’m not dressing up for your enjoyment!’ But already the thought of his dark, intense eyes following her naked body as she moved around the kitchen was making her feel hot and bothered.
‘I’m not asking you to dress up. I’m asking you to dress down...’ He shifted her jumper up, over her breasts, and Violet responded by spinning round to face him, her bare breasts pushing against the hard wall of his chest.
She began unbuttoning his shirt. From a position of relative inexperience only months ago, she had grown in confidence. He might not have had it at his disposal to offer anything most women would have expected of a proper relationship, but he certainly had it within him to turn her into a woman who was no longer tentative when it came to responding in ways that would pleasure her.
She shoved her hands under his shirt and felt the abrasive rub of his chest, not smooth and androgynous, but aggressively masculine with its dark hair. Slowly, she pushed the shirt off his broad shoulders, running her hands expertly along the contours of his muscles until the shirt had joined her jumper on the kitchen floor.
He propped himself against the counter, caging her in, and took his time kissing her until her whole body was burning up and she could feel the damp heat pooling between her legs.
‘Those jogging bottoms do nothing at all for your superb figure... They should be banned from your wardrobe...’ He slipped his fingers underneath the stretchy waistband and tugged them down, allowing her to wriggle out of them, keeping his arms on either side of her so that her movements were restricted. When he looked down, he could see her generous breasts shifting as she moved, soft and succulent. Unable to resist, he captured one and lifted it until her nipple was pouting directly at him. Reluctantly he decided that a full-on assault would have to wait. He wanted to take his time. She had been in his head for days; frankly, from the last time he had seen her, which had been the previous week, and he wasn’t going to rush things. He had spent hours fantasising about the next time they met and he intended to see at least some of those fantasies translated into sexy reality.
‘Same goes for the underwear...’
‘But it’s beautiful lacy underwear...’ Violet protested with mock hurt. ‘Brand new! And very expensive...not the sort of underwear a hard-working teacher can afford too much of...’
‘I’ll buy you the store. Then you can save your hard-earned salary for other things...’
Violet traced the outline of his flat brown nipples, moistened her fingers with her tongue, traced them again, and relished the way he flexed in immediate, gratifying response.
‘I like the underwear,’ Damien asserted huskily as he looked down at the lacy lavender piece of nothing. ‘I just don’t like it on you at this particular moment in time...’ He pointedly tugged the lace, then, without giving her time to protest, knelt in front of her.
Looking down with a little gasp, Violet saw the dark bowed head of a supplicant. Even if he was very far from being one. It was an incredible turn-on.
He gently urged her thighs slightly apart and then peeled the underwear back, revealing the lushness of her hair.
With a shudder, she braced herself against the counter, head flung back, knowing that if she wasn’t careful she would come in seconds. As his tongue slipped into the groove of her wetly receptive sex, she could hear the faint slick sounds as he licked and explored, with his finger still holding the underwear to one side.
She clenched her fists and gritted her teeth in a mammoth effort not to come against his questing mouth.
She reached down to tug his hair and, on cue, he straightened. Her hands scrabbled helplessly at his trousers and he gave a deep throaty laugh and began to unzip them.
‘We haven’t made it to the food,’ he murmured.
‘But at least we’re not on the staircase...’ As if that said anything, as if it implied any more restraint. It didn’t. She was as desperate for him now as she always was when he came through her door.
‘No. The kitchen. Lots of scope for being inventive...although would you rather we ate the food than tried playing with it...?’ Damien laughed at her shocked expression. She had only had one other lover. He had managed to get that out of her ages ago and, from the sounds of it, that one lover had hardly been sizzling in the bedroom stakes. Every time they made love, he felt as though he was coming to her as her first and the feeling that generated was beyond satisfaction. ‘Okay,’ he drawled, ‘maybe next time. I could teach you some very inventive things that can be done with champagne and cherries...’
He removed his trousers and underwear in one smooth movement. The kitchen was warm and fragrant with the food that had already started cooking. Outside, night had finally drawn in. With the lights off, they were just two shadows touching, feeling and responding to one another.
He breathed in her uniquely feminine scent, something to do with a light floral perfume she wore. It wouldn’t have suited everyone but it damn well suited her. Even when they were apart, he could recall the smell and it always managed to get him aroused. How was that possible? He half closed his eyes and was relieved that she couldn’t witness that momentary lapse of self-control.
For a few seconds a streak of anger flared inside him. A confused, chaotic anger that resented the peculiar hold he sometimes thought she had over him. He lifted her, taking her by surprise, and sat her on the counter, shoving aside the remnants of food and cutlery still to be cleared.
‘What are you doing?’ Violet’s voice was breathless as her rear made contact with the cool surface of the kitchen counter.
‘I’m taking you.’
‘But...’
He didn’t say anything, instead holding her with one hand while he bent to retrieve the wallet from his trousers, home of at least one extremely useful condom if memory served him right. He was hard and erect, throbbing with an urgent need to sink into her body and feel it wrap itself around him like a glove.
Her hands were on his shoulders and her short pearly nails were digging into his flesh. Leaning back, her breasts were thrust out, nipples standing to attention. He paused briefly to take one into his mouth, sucking hard on it until she was whimpering and crying out and could no longer keep still. His leisurely lovemaking plan had taken a nosedive. Pushing open her legs and angling her just right so that she was ready to receive him, he entered her.
Pleasure exploded in her like a thunderbolt. She could feel every magnificent inch of him as he moved inside her, strong, forceful and with deepening intensity.
This was almost rough and yet it felt so good. She heard herself crying out and the sound seemed to be coming from someone else.
‘Talk to me!’ he demanded, curling his long fingers into her hair, tugging her into looking at him. Which she did, through half closed eyes because she was pretty much beyond focusing on anything but what he was doing to her.
‘Damien!’ He talked dirty to her but it was something she had not done in return. Some lingering element of prudishness always seemed to stand in the way.
‘Tell me how you’re feeling with me inside you!’ He emphasised the order with a powerful thrust that made her slide a little way back on the counter.
Violet shivered with heady abandon. She clutched him and told him exactly what he was demanding to know. How it felt to have him in her, filling her up, taking away her ability to think. Her breasts ached for him. She wanted his mouth on them. She just couldn’t get enough of him...
To her own ears, every word she uttered seemed to plunge her deeper and deeper into a vulnerable place. Would he pick that up? Was that finely tuned instinct of his sharp enough to pick up what wasn’t being said behind the graphic descriptions? That she literally couldn’t get enough of him, and not just on the physical, carnal plane, addictive though that was? That, for her, want was very much interlinked with need, which was dangerously close to...
Violet clamped shut her mouth, allowed herself to be carried away to oblivion. She cried out mindlessly as wave upon wave of glorious, unstoppable sensation ripped through her perspiring body, and he echoed her.
When he withdrew from her, turning to deposit the used condom in the bin, she scrambled off the counter and, for a few seconds, barely remembered the train of thought that had been running through her head just before she had climaxed.
It was a luxury that wasn’t destined to last long. She went upstairs for a quick shower. She desperately needed some time to herself, time for her thought processes to be followed through to their natural conclusion, even though the conclusion might not be one she wanted to reach.
She had fallen in love with him. How had that happened? Shouldn’t there have been a natural progression of steps to get from A to B? Where was the calm, peaceful contentment she had always associated with falling in love? She had been swept along on a roller coaster ride and now she felt ambushed by an emotion that had crept in without her noticing, without her being able to take the necessary precautions. Whilst she had been racing with the devil and calling it experience, a one-off, love had been quietly settling like cement and now she felt constricted, unable to move and as fragile as a piece of spun glass.
She went downstairs to find that he had tidied the kitchen, which surely must have been a first for him, and waiting for her with a glass of wine in his hand. His trousers were back on, as was the shirt, although he hadn’t bothered to do up the buttons on the shirt which hung rakishly loose, revealing a sliver of bronzed torso.
‘Full marks for the appetiser...’ Damien sipped some of his wine and regarded her over the rim of the glass. If she had used a shower cap, it hadn’t done its job. Damp tendrils clung to her cheeks. She looked clean and rosy and unbelievably sexy, especially with the V-necked striped T-shirt she had put on, which allowed a generous view of her cleavage. It was a constant source of mystery that her appeal hadn’t diminished over the course of time. Why was that? Was it because he was fully aware that they came from opposite ends of the pole? That, for a man like him—a man who didn’t want commitment—he had found his match in a woman who probably did want commitment but not with a man like him? Could that be it?
Violet’s eyes skittered away from his beautiful, sinfully sexy face. Every compliment he paid her had to do with sex, with her body, with the physical. She could see now that that had been the start of her downfall. Those husky words of rampant appreciation, delivered with intent, had arrowed in on a part of her that had always been insecure and found their mark. Like a flower coming into bloom, she had opened up and grown in an area of her life that had been stunted and underdeveloped. He had made her feel like a woman, a powerful, beautiful, engaging woman, and she had run with the sensation. She had let him in and, without even realising it, had seen beyond their differences to all the things about him that were strangely endearing.
‘Damien...we need to...to talk...’
He continued to smile that crooked little half smile of his but his eyes were suddenly watchful. Women wanting to talk was usually synonymous with women saying things he didn’t want to hear.
‘I’m listening.’ He strolled across to one of the kitchen chairs and sat down, looking at her carefully as she shuffled to the chair opposite him, so that the width of the table was separating them.
‘It’s been a while, Damien. Your mother has responded really well to treatment and is out of the danger zone. I agreed to all of this...pretending, the charade...for my sister and then I carried on with it for myself, because I was talked into putting sexual attraction above everything else...’
‘Ah. I get it. Are we going to start on a blame game, Violet? With me cast in the role of seducer of innocent girls? If that’s the case, then I suggest you have a rethink before you get on your soapbox.’
Violet had forgotten this side to him, the side that could withdraw and grow cold. The fact that it was still there, right beneath the surface, was a timely reminder of why it was so important to begin detaching herself from this relationship, if indeed relationship was what it could be called.
‘I wasn’t going to do that.’
‘No?’ Damien drawled. He hadn’t been expecting this, not after having had mind-blowing sex, and tension lent a hard, mocking edge to his voice. ‘Because no one pointed to a bed and then held a gun to your head while you got undressed.’
‘I know that! Why are you being so...so horrible?’
‘I’m just waiting to hear what you have to say and reminding you that you were an eager and willing volunteer when it came to sex.’ She couldn’t meet his eyes. What the hell was going on? How could everything change in a matter of seconds? His confusion angered him because it was yet another niggling reminder that he was not as much in control with this woman as he would have liked to have been.
‘I’m saying that I think it would be a good idea if we...we...took a step back...’ Violet lowered her eyes and frowned into the glass of wine which had somehow found its way in front of her.
‘A step back...’
‘Your mother is more than stable enough to deal with our relationship hitting the rocks. She’s back to doing stuff with Dominic, can go out in her garden now and again... I feel that the time has come for us to get back to our normal lives...’
‘And between us making love in the kitchen and you going to have a shower...you’ve reached this decision when...? Exactly...?’
‘I don’t have to give you any explanations of when or why I’ve reached my decision, Damien. It’s over. I’m not like you. I can’t carry on sleeping with you, knowing that it’s something that’s not going anywhere.’
‘Where do you want it to go?’ Damien asked, as quick as a flash.
‘I don’t want it to go anywhere!’
‘And what if I tell you that I don’t want what we have to end yet? Doubtless my mother is strong enough to recover from a crash and burn relationship, even if she’s unduly fond of you, but it’s long ceased to be about my mother, as you well know.’ Suddenly restless, he vaulted to his feet, glass in one hand, and began to pace the tiny kitchen. He’d never been dumped by a woman. Pride alone should have had him gathering his jacket and heading for the door. Hadn’t he made it his mission to avoid the hassle of the demanding woman? And what was she demanding anyway? She had always made it quite clear that they were poles apart, that he was not the blueprint of the kind of man she would ever consider settling down with.
So...was it money? Underneath all the protestations of not being materialistic, had she become used to the opulence that surrounded him wherever he went? Had she glimpsed a vision of how life could be if she could get access to his? He stifled a sudden feeling of intense disappointment. He was a realist and this was the explanation that made the most sense.
His brain locked into gear. He still wanted her and, whether she admitted it or not, she was still hot for him. So maybe she didn’t feel as though she had a stake in their relationship. She made a big song and dance of not wanting to accept anything from him but, in so doing, did she feel that she was utterly disposable? That, despite his offers to buy her no less than he would have bought for any of his lovers, he found her in any way less attractive? If only... Just thinking about the way her breasts spilled heavily out of her bra was enough to engage his mind for a few seconds on a completely different path. If he had felt, in any way, that the sex was beginning to wane, he might have shrugged and taken his leave but he was an expert when it came to gauging responses. He couldn’t remember a time when the woman had been the flagging partner and it wasn’t the case now. Nor was he about to give up a sex life that was second to none.
‘There’s something I want you to see.’
Violet was taken aback by a remark that seemed to come from nowhere. ‘What is it?’
‘Wait here.’ In the heat of the moment, he had forgotten the costly item of jewellery nestling in its classy black and gold box. His fait accompli present. Whoever said that the Great One didn’t work in mysterious ways?
She was still sitting in the same position in the kitchen when he returned and extended his hand. ‘For you,’ he informed her solemnly. ‘I hear what you’re saying and this is just a small measure of what you mean to me...’
Violet took the box but already she could feel her skin beginning to get clammy. What he meant to her. How many times had she told him that she didn’t want anything from him? She lifted the lid of the box and stared down at an item of jewellery that she knew would have been spectacularly expensive. What she meant to him would never be love, it certainly wasn’t durability. She was his willing plaything and her worth could be counted in banknotes. She fought down the stupid urge to cry over a piece of jewellery that would have had any other woman shrieking in delight.
‘I don’t want it.’ She stuck it back in the box, snapped shut the lid and handed it to him.
‘What do you mean? I know you’ve made a big deal about not accepting anything from me, but you want to know what this...what we have...means to me...take it in the spirit with which it was given.’ He obviously wasn’t about to relieve her of the necklace.
‘I think it’s time we called this a day, Damien.’ It hurt just saying that but say it she knew she had to. In that single gesture he had made her feel sordid and cheap.
‘Where the hell is this coming from?’
‘I can’t be bought for a few weeks or months of sex until you get tired of me and send me on my way with...with what...? Something even bigger and more expensive? A really huge pat on the back, it was nice knowing you goodbye gift?’
Damien wondered how long she had been contemplating the outcome of their relationship and working herself up to wanting more. Was she holding him to ransom or did she genuinely want out and if she did genuinely want out, how was it that she was still on fire for him? No, that made no sense.
But if she wanted more, if she wanted a passport to a lifestyle she could never have attained in a million years, then was it so inconceivable that he give it to her...?
‘I don’t want to buy you,’ he murmured. ‘I want to marry you...’
