Читать книгу Penny Jordan Tribute Collection - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 53

BRAD grimaced in disgust as he realised that one of the tyres on his hire car had developed a slow puncture and was now flat. Cursing under his breath, he glanced from the car window to the bleak, empty landscape and the heavy rain. It was barely six o’clock in the evening but the sky was so overcast that it was already almost dark.

There was no one else around, the desolate area that the local council had designated as a new industrial complex as yet little more than a vast sea of mud, broken here and there by sets of footings.

It had been a chance remark during his interview with their potential new customer—an official from the head office of a locally based insurance broker which was thinking of installing air-conditioning in all its offices—that had led to his trip out here to look at the new industrial site.

He hadn’t realised, until the other man had mentioned it, that the existing warehouse was built on a piece of potentially very valuable land. The town had expanded rapidly in the years after the warehouse had first been constructed—adjacent to the original owner’s home—and although Brad had been aware that virtually all the property surrounding the warehouse was residential he hadn’t appreciated the significance of this fact until the other man had brought it to his attention.

He had a client, he had told Brad, a well-known local builder, who he suspected would be very interested in acquiring the land for development if it ever came onto the market. After he had gone, a few brief enquiries by Brad had elicited the information that as prime residential building land the warehouse site was very good indeed, and, moreover, that if they were to move to a new purpose-built unit the savings they could make would more than offset the cost of such a move.

On impulse Brad had decided to drive out and look at the new industrial complex that the local council were building, but what he hadn’t bargained for was the fact that his hire car was going to get a puncture.

It was still raining very heavily but there was no help for it—he was going to have to get out and change that tyre, Brad acknowledged, removing his suit jacket and opening the car door.

Ten minutes later, his hair plastered wetly to his scalp, his back soaked to the skin through the inadequate protection of his shirt, Brad had managed to remove the spare wheel from the trunk—the boot of the car, he amended grimly—and to locate the jack.

The unmade road along which he had driven to inspect the site was rapidly changing to a thick mush of sticky mud beneath the lashing downpour. Removing the rubber-backed lining from the boot floor to use as a kneeling pad, Brad started to jack up the car.

Half an hour later, so wet that he might just as well have been standing naked under a shower, and perspiring heavily from his efforts to release the wheel-nuts, Brad gave in. What he wouldn’t give now for a can of lubricant, he thought, but the nuts, fitted by machine, were simply not going to budge.

He reached into his car for his phone and punched in the number of the car-hire firm.

It was over an hour and a half before he finally saw the headlights of the breakdown vehicle coming towards him through the heavy downpour of the continuing rain.

He had been reluctant to run the car engine for too long in case he ran out of petrol and his wet shirt, still clinging clammily and coldly to his skin, coupled with the sharp drop in temperature which had accompanied the driving rain made him shiver and sneeze as he stepped out of the car to greet the mechanic.

‘Better watch it, mate,’ the mechanic told him cheerfully as he sprayed the stubborn wheel-nuts and waited for the lubricant to take effect. ‘Sounds like you’ve got yourself a nasty chill there.’

It was another half an hour before the wheel was finally changed, the wheel-nuts proving recalcitrantly stubborn but eventually coming free.

Thanking the mechanic, Brad climbed back in the car and restarted the engine.

Claire glanced uncertainly at the kitchen clock. Where was Brad? She had assumed, obviously erroneously, that he was going to be back in time for dinner but it was after nine now and she had long since disposed of the meal she had prepared for him.

When Brad hadn’t returned when she had expected she had been tempted to phone the office, but she had reminded herself fiercely that he was simply her lodger and that was the only relationship between them—the only relationship she wanted there to be between them.

It hadn’t been easy to ignore the mocking laughter of the inner voice that had taunted her, Liar, but somehow she had made herself do so. If she’d wanted or needed any confirmation that what had happened between them this afternoon was something that Brad very definitely did not want to take any further, she had surely had it in the very fact that he had delayed his return for so long.

Don’t run away, he had told her, but perhaps, like her, he too had been caught up in the intensity of the moment, suspending normal, rational judgement and reality.

Hannah had been round earlier to leave her a book that she had promised to lend her on traditional Edwardian rose gardens; she would make herself a hot drink and go and sit down in the sitting room and look at it, Claire promised herself. She had just settled down when she saw the headlights of Brad’s car. Uncertainly she bit her lip, not sure whether to stay where she was or go and greet him.

As his landlady, she ought perhaps at least to check to see if he wanted anything to eat. She was not really sure what the mode of behaviour should be between landlady and lodger—where one drew the line between a presence that was welcoming and one that was intrusive.

It was time to feed Felicity, she reminded herself, and if she didn’t appear Brad might think… might assume…

What? she asked herself grimly. That she was afraid… embarrassed… self-conscious? Well, he would be right on all those counts. She did feel all those things and more—much more, she acknowledged, her body suddenly growing hot as she had an unnervingly vivid memory of the way his mouth had felt on hers—his body, his…

Swallowing hard, she reminded herself that, no matter what she felt, she did have a responsibility as his landlady to make at least an attempt to behave in a businesslike manner towards him.

Irene would certainly have something to say to her if she learned that Claire had left him supperless. As she got up and walked towards the door Claire heard Brad walk into the hall and sneeze—once and then again.

Frowning now, she opened the door, her eyes widening in shock as she saw his coatless, damply dishevelled state.

‘Brad, what on earth…?’

‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘There was a problem with the car and I had to wait for them to get a breakdown truck out to me. I should have let you know, but I had no idea how long they were going to be.’

A problem. Her heart thumped anxiously against her chest wall. ‘Not an accident?’ she protested. ‘You—’

‘No, not an accident,’ he assured her. ‘I had a flat tyre, that’s all, but unfortunately—’ he paused for another volley of sneezes, visibly shivering as Claire looked on in appalled consternation—’I tried to change it myself and got soaked,’ he told her ruefully, his teeth suddenly chattering.

‘You’re soaked,’ Claire told him. ‘And frozen. You’d better go upstairs and have a hot shower. I’ll make you a drink and something to eat.’

Had she got any cold or flu remedy in the house? Claire wondered, listening anxiously as she heard Brad pause halfway up the stairs for another fit of obviously feverish sneezing.

He was going to be lucky if all he got away with was a bad chill, she recognised as she hurried into the kitchen to fill the kettle and look through the drawers to try to unearth the old hot-water bottle she always kept handy for cold sufferers. In these centrally heated days it probably wasn’t necessary but somehow it made one feel better, Claire acknowledged. Sally certainly insisted on having it whenever she went down with a cold.

A brief check on the high shelf where she kept her medicines revealed the patent aspirin-based remedy which Sally always swore worked for her. Expelling a small sigh of relief, Claire picked it up. She had no doubt whom Irene would blame if Brad did become ill.

He was used to a much better regulated climate than theirs, she reminded herself as she added some brandy to the mug of coffee that she had made him. He would, perhaps, be better off going straight to bed and keeping warm there rather than coming down for something to eat. She could easily take him a tray of food upstairs.

His bedroom door was ajar when she went up with the coffee but, recalling what had happened the last time she had walked into his room, she paused, knocking and calling out uncertainly.

‘Brad…?’

His husky ‘Come in’ confirmed her earlier suspicions about the state of his health.

‘I’ve brought you some coffee,’ she told him, and added, ‘And I’ve put some brandy in it, so…’

‘Wonderful,’ Brad praised her. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing the towelling robe she had seen him in before. As he reached out to take the coffee from her Claire saw to her concern that his face already looked hectically and feverishly flushed.

‘I think you might be running a temperature,’ she warned him gently.

‘I think you’re probably right,’ Brad agreed. He was beginning to feel decidedly unwell. As a boy he had been very susceptible to frighteningly severe chest infections brought on by any kind of exposure to a cold or flu virus, but fortunately over the years he seemed to have developed a better immunity to them. Until now, he acknowledged, already recognising the signs of a return of his childhood symptoms.

‘You ought to have something to eat,’ Claire told him, ‘but I don’t think you should come back downstairs; you look—’

‘I’ll be all right,’ Brad interrupted her stoically. ‘A good night’s sleep and a couple more of these…’ he told her, pointing to the brandy-laced coffee she had brought him.

‘I could make you an omelette,’ Claire offered, but he was shaking his head.

‘I don’t think I could,’ he told her ruefully. ‘My throat…’ He touched the tender area, wincing as he felt the tell-tale swelling of his glands.

‘I’ve got some aspirin,’ Claire said, but Brad shook his head again. ‘I’m allergic to it,’ he told her wryly. ‘Look, I promise you, I’ll be fine.’

The concern he could see in her eyes made him realise how tempting it would be to exaggerate his symptoms. If he hadn’t been feeling so damn ill and weak there would have been a lot he could have done with that warm, womanly anxious look.

As he shivered involuntarily and started to sneeze again Claire made a soft sound of distress and urged him to get into bed.

‘I can’t,’ he told her.

‘You can’t? But…’

Since he was already sitting on the side of the bed, Claire was puzzled by his refusal, until he informed her softly, ‘In order to get into bed I’ve got to take this robe off first, and if I do that…’ He paused deliberately, and as she unwittingly focused on the bare V of warm brown flesh in front of her, with its soft, tantalising tangle of silky dark hair, she suddenly realised what he meant: that he was naked beneath his robe.

Her soft, betraying ‘Oh’ and the quick flush of colour that stained her skin made Brad ache to reach out and take hold of her, to pull her down against his body and…

Stop that, he warned himself, stifling a low groan of unexpected arousal. There were some things that even the threat of a feverish chest infection couldn’t keep down—quite literally, he realised in wry self-mockery.

‘I… I’d better go downstairs,’ Claire mumbled awkwardly. ‘I was wondering… if you’d like a hot-water bottle,’ she added, and then wondered what on earth had made her make such a patently silly offer. He was an adult, not a child, and, unlike Sally, he—

‘A hot-water bottle…’ Brad closed his eyes and gave a long, appreciative sigh. ‘I can’t think of anything I’d like more…’

Oh, yes, he could, he corrected himself as he watched Claire disappear. He could think of something he’d quite definitely like very, very much more, and that was holding Claire’s body next to his own… a real, live comforter.

Ten minutes later when Claire returned she was concerned to see how much more hectically flushed Brad was, his breathing painfully rasping and laboured. As she leaned across the bed to hand him the hot-water bottle she could feel the feverish heat coming off his body. Concerned, she asked him, ‘Would you like me to send for a doctor? Your breathing… I’m—’

‘No… I’ll be OK,’ Brad assured her. ‘It sounds worse than it is.’

‘Are you sure?’ Claire queried doubtfully. ‘You—’

‘I’m sure,’ Brad told her firmly. ‘A good night’s sleep and I’ll be fine.’

It might not strictly speaking be the truth, Brad acknowledged ruefully as he watched Claire walking away from him, waiting until she had closed the door behind her to let his body relax into the racking fit of shivers he had managed to suppress whilst she was there, but he knew these feverish bronchial attacks of old and they always seemed worse to the onlooker than they actually were.

Claire made an irritated sound of self-criticism as she got out of the bath and remembered that she hadn’t locked the back door. Reaching for her towelling robe, she pulled it on over her still damp body, acknowledging that she had better go and do so before she forgot—again.

The back door securely locked, she had almost reached her own bedroom when she heard a noise from Brad’s room. She paused, and heard him cry out. Something was wrong.

Quickly she hurried into his room. The bedside lamp was switched on, a glass of water which Brad must have fetched from the bathroom earlier next to it. Brad was lying on his side, facing away from her, muttering something hoarsely under his breath. As Claire strained to hear what it was she automatically reached across the bed towards him, saying his name with anxious urgency.

When he didn’t make any response her anxiety increased. She touched his bare shoulders lightly, wincing as she felt the heat coming off his skin, and listened to the harsh bark of his cough. This time he registered her presence, turning over to face her, saying something that she couldn’t catch and then calling out sharply, ‘No… No… It isn’t true… Dad…’

Claire shivered as she heard the pain in his voice and realised that he was talking in his sleep—a very feverish and restless sleep, if the tumbled state of the bedclothes and the low, emotional sound of his voice were anything to go by, she recognised.

Did he dream of his dead parents often, she wondered compassionately as she heard him whisper his father’s name a second time, or was this just a side effect of his fever?

As he’d turned over the duvet had slid down his body, exposing his torso, warmly tanned and firmly muscled, but it wasn’t sensual feminine appreciation of his maleness that Claire felt most strongly as she looked at him but anxious concern as she saw the sweat-soaked dampness of his body hair and the hectic heat of his skin. She watched as, despite the heat, he started to shiver convulsively, another spasm of the harsh, dry cough she had heard earlier racking his chest so painfully that her own actually seemed to ache in sympathetic response.

Automatically she reached out to pull the duvet back up over him, instinctively soothing him with the kind of low-voiced, gentle comfort she had always given Sally as a child. The intensity of the fever worried her and she regretted not insisting on sending for a doctor earlier.

As she tried to tuck the duvet more securely around him her fingertips accidentally touched his skin. Its heat shocked her, fuelling her anxiety. She placed her hand against his forehead. His skin felt burning hot, his hair soaked with sweat.

He was talking in his sleep again, protesting about something or someone—she couldn’t tell.

‘It’s all right, Brad,’ she told him gently. ‘Everything is all right.’

‘Claire…’

Claire froze as the eyes she had thought closed in a deep, fever-fuelled sleep abruptly opened, their gaze focusing on and then fusing hypnotically with hers.

Claire found herself becoming slightly breathless and dizzy as she tried to wrench her eyes away from the hot, mesmerising glitter of Brad’s and discovered that she could not do so.

‘Claire,’ he said again, his voice lower, huskier, the sound of her name something between a growl and a groan. Then he said huskily, ‘You’re here… I thought you were just a dream… Come closer.’

‘No, Brad, you don’t…’ Claire started to protest, but with surprising strength Brad reached for her, one hand encircling her wrist, the other wrapping around her as he sat up and half lifted and half pulled her with firm insistence onto the bed next to him.

‘I thought you were just a dream,’ he whispered throatily as his hands framed her face. ‘But you’re not. You’re actually here, and real… very, very real.’

Claire knew that she should say something, do something, but somehow she couldn’t, didn’t, her body shocked into immobility as Brad breathed the last three words against her lips before gently brushing his own against hers in a kiss that was so tenderly sweet with gentle promise that Claire felt her whole body ache with yearning for him.

This was no brutal, selfish assault on her body, fuelled by a male sexual desire that was completely without emotion or any recognition of her as a person, a woman with needs and emotions of her own.

This was the kiss of a man who knew, who understood, who even in what Claire could only suppose was some fever-induced physical desire for her was still carefully tender and mindful of her vulnerability.

Claire could feel her body start to tremble as Brad cupped her face in his hands and continued to caress her lips with his, brushing gently over them again and again until they felt softly moist, pliantly eager for a more lingering and intense caress.

Without knowing that she had done so Claire moved closer to him, her lips parting on a small breath of shocked pleasure as she heard the low sound of hungry need that Brad made deep in his throat.

She could feel the sensual stroke of his fingertips against her skin as he massaged the delicate flesh behind her ear, his mouth leaving hers briefly as he looked down into her eyes, and then returning to it to kiss her with fierce passion—once and then a second time and then a third, until, unable to bear to be without the hungry contact of his mouth on hers, Claire reached up and wrapped her arms around him, holding him tightly, making small moaning sounds of pleasure deep in her own throat, her whole body on fire, trembling with the aching need she felt for him.

Like someone in a trance, Claire watched him as he released her and gently eased the robe back off her shoulders, her skin as hot and flushed as his as she saw the look in his eyes when his gaze caressed the slender nakedness of her upper body—her slim, narrow shoulders, the creamy smoothness of her skin, the round fullness of her breasts, her nipples flushed and flauntingly erect.

No man had ever seen her naked body before. He watched her with such obviously skin-tingling, erotic thoughts and in such a way, with such an expression in his eyes, that she instinctively responded to his subtle message and to the full-blooded male approval and appreciation of his lingering appraisal of her by arching her spine slightly, her eyelids dropping to conceal her own expression as she watched him back with parted lips and the sure, delicious knowledge that he found her desirable—and, more, that as a man he was just slightly enthralled, slightly and satisfyingly in awe of her womanhood.

It was a heady, aphrodisiac, potent mixture of new emotions for a woman whose only previous feelings towards her sexuality had been a corrosive blend of shame and self-judgement.

Nothing in the way Brad watched her made her feel ashamed. Nothing in the way he looked at her, nothing in the expression in his eyes, made her feel self-conscious or ill at ease, but her mind only absorbed these facts distantly, her senses, her emotions, her concentration focused instead on the way her body was responding to the subtle signs of sexual responsiveness to her in his.

Something about the way his chest rose and fell with increased urgency made her muscles tighten with delicious awareness.

Something about the hot, fiercely controlled smoulder in the way he looked at her mouth and then her breasts and tried not to flooded her body with feminine arousal and pride.

And, most especially, something about the way he moved the lower half of his body beneath the bedclothes, protectively and oh, so betrayingly trying discreetly to bundle the thickness of the duvet cover over the betraying, strong jut of flesh that it couldn’t quite disguise made her smile a soft smile of secret pleasure and power to herself.

She deliberately leaned forward to kiss delicately first one and then the other corner of his mouth before teasingly circling the whole outline of his lips with her tongue-tip, her weight supported on the splayed hand she had oh, so accidentally placed provocatively between his open thighs.

Claire had never behaved with such sensual aggression before—had never dreamed that she could, never mind that she would actually want to and, even more mind-stretching, take actual pleasure in doing so.

The reason why she had come into Brad’s bedroom was forgotten; the slow, hungry way he had kissed her had seen to that. It wasn’t just her mouth that he had sensitised and aroused with his shatteringly erotic kisses, it was her mind, her emotions, her senses and her whole body.

She felt as though she was wrapped in a soft, sensual cloud of physical and emotional pleasure—a sensation both so elusive and so intense that it couldn’t be examined or analysed, simply accepted and enjoyed.

The slow groan that built up in Brad’s throat as she teased his mouth made her shiver with delicious pleasure, her eyes narrowing to soft, cat-like slits that made his darken to a fiery furnace of strong male desire as she focused on them.

His hand lifted to her throat, slowly stroking it, his thumb on the pulse, flooding her body with heat as her breathing deepened and quickened in response to his reaction to her.

Claire could feel her breasts swelling and tightening, and somewhere on the edge of her awareness she was conscious of a small sense of outraged shock from her real self that this new, sensual and very wanton part of her should take such obvious self-confident feminine delight in his reaction.

Her body tautened and arched with provocative sensuality, silently calling to Brad to absorb visually the effect that he was having on her and to respond to it by reaching out to stroke and caress the warm, taut flesh so tantalisingly within his reach and yet at the same time denied to him as Claire copied his own, earlier caress, cupping his face in both her hands, gently holding him slightly away from her body as she started to kiss him.

There was a wonderful sense of control and power in knowing how much he wanted her and yet knowing at the same time that he wouldn’t break the gentle restriction that she had placed on him. A sense, too, of wanting to push him that little bit further, of wanting to test just how much he did want her, of wanting to prove to herself that his desire for her was just as fiercely intense as hers for him.

She heard the sound of frustrated protest that he made deep in his throat, a thrill of sensual excitement running down her spine as he suddenly turned the tables on her, taking control of the kiss from her, the swift thrust of his tongue between her open lips making her shudder in heated arousal, her body softening, swaying closer to his as though the flushed, hard tips of her breasts ached for the intimate contact of his body.

She wanted, Claire recognised dizzily, to press herself tightly against him, to rub her body against his as sinuously and sexily as a small cat; she wanted to feel the hard heat of his flesh against her own, the erotic rasp of his body hair against the nerve-shattering sensitivity of her desire-flooded breasts; she wanted…

She gave a small, shocked gasp of surprise as Brad suddenly bit her bottom lip erotically, his hands sliding down her arms to manacle her wrists as he lifted her arms gently above her head.

A thrill of pure, hot, womb-tightening sensation ran through her body in a powerful current as she sensed what he was going to do. The heat that flooded her lower body was at once fiercely and control-shatteringly new and yet somehow so familiar that she knew that it… that he was something her body and her emotions had secretly yearned for all her adult life.

She felt no sense of being constrained or afraid, no sense of discomfort or threat at the way he was holding her, only a hot, aching surge of sensual knowledge, an awareness of the deliberateness with which he moved. A tight, aching sensation of intense need made her eyes start to close in shivering appreciation of the way his mouth slowly caressed the sensitive flesh of her throat before moving downwards.

It seemed like an aeon before his mouth reached its first destination, before she was able to expel her pent-up breathing—a sharp, high cry of physical release as she felt him slowly and gently lapping the hard, swollen flesh of her nipple.

Unable to stop herself, Claire heard herself moan with pleasure, her whole body shuddering as Brad dropped her arms and gathered her close, her frantic response to him destroying his own self-control as his mouth, which had initially almost teased her with too gentle kisses, now suckled on her breasts with a fierce sensuality that made her move urgently with rhythmic longing against him, her body possessed of instincts and responses that she had never, ever imagined it might know or exhibit.

Brad’s mouth moved with fierce urgency over her midriff and then her belly; his hands held her and stroked her and finally lowered her onto the bed, where not even the sight of him pushing away her robe as he knelt over her and slowly, with sensual deliberateness, slid his hands caressingly up over her parted thighs had the effect of making her feel self-conscious or apprehensive.

She could feel the faint tremor in his hands as he touched and held her, seeing the aching male hunger in his eyes as he lifted his head and looked deeply into her own before looking back at the soft, shadowed, exposed triangle of silky hair that not so much concealed her sex, Claire recognised as her heart started to race with feverish longing, but rather emphasised its feminine sensuality and allure.

She could see the way Brad’s eyes darkened with open desire as he placed one hand over her, his fingertips stroking the silky hair, parting the softly fleshed lips which were already signalling their longing for his touch.

But as he knelt over her Claire’s attention was suddenly caught by something. ‘No, wait,’ she demanded huskily.

‘What is it?’ he asked her. ‘I won’t hurt you, Claire. I won’t do anything you don’t want. I won’t…’

Quickly she shook her head. ‘No,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘It isn’t…’ Her fingers touched his wrist, marvelling at the strength of bone and sinew that his flesh covered. ‘I want to see you…’ she whispered huskily. ‘I want to look… to watch…’

For a moment she thought that he didn’t understand what she meant, but then, as his eyes met hers, she saw that he did, and her breath caught on a small, fierce stab of pleasure as she saw, too, how much her whispered plea had aroused him.

Silently she watched as he pushed aside the duvet, aware not only of the tautly male eroticism of his body but of the way he was trembling slightly as well, of the way he paused, hesitated almost nervously, as he watched her watching him.

That he should exhibit such nervousness filled her with female tenderness. Gently she reached out and touched him, running her fingertips from his breastbone right down to where the fine line of body hair became a silky male tangle, openly, thickly sexual, that cushioned the power and promise of what lay over it.

This was her first self-chosen intimate contact with male arousal, but somehow to Claire, as she slowly looked at Brad and absorbed the physical reality of him, it was as though a part of her had known him and known this for always.

Even before her fingertips ran slowly and exploratively along the length of his taut arousal she knew exactly how his whole body would stiffen and shudder beneath her touch… how he would moan softly beneath his breath and close his eyes, arching his spine as he submitted to her exploration, only the fierce rigidity with which the flesh she was touching swelled just that little bit more against her touch betraying how much it craved the pleasure of her caress.

A man’s body was at once both so sexually powerful and dangerous and so vulnerable, Claire marvelled, watching Brad’s jaw clench as he tried to control his reaction to her. If just this, her lightest touch, had the power to affect him so intensely, how would he react if she were to bend her head and press her lips to his tautly sensitive skin—to kiss and caress it, to slide…?

She gave a tiny gasp of shock when she heard Brad saying something savagely fierce under his breath as he removed her hand and then lowered his head over her body, kissing her stomach and then her thighs with a frenetic urgency, touching her, stroking and caressing her, first with his fingers and then with his mouth until she was turning and twisting beneath the unbearable pleasure of what he was doing to her, alternately shuddering with the seismic convulsions that engulfed her and pleading with him to stop, crying out to him that she couldn’t endure such sensual ecstasy.

Only Brad wouldn’t stop, and it wasn’t until he was finally buried deep inside her, his body moving with rhythmic urgency within hers, his voice thick and guttural with praise and pleasure as he finally succumbed to his own desire, that she recognised that physical ecstasy and female fulfilment could be even more intense a second time than it had been the first.

Half an hour later, still feeling blissfully euphoric from the intensity of their lovemaking and emotionally dizzy from the unexpectedness of what had happened, Claire struggled to fight off the waves of sleep washing over her, murmuring a soft sound of appreciation as Brad drew her closer to his body and kept her there, unable, it seemed, to relinquish her, his lips feathering gently against her hair as Claire drifted off to sleep.

When she came awake abruptly later in the night, at first she had no idea where she was, but the physical sensation of Brad’s hot body next to hers and the sound of his voice as he cried out something unintelligible in his sleep froze her into shocked awareness as she realised what she had done.

Her body shaking with reaction, she started to ease herself free of Brad’s still constraining arm.

At some stage Brad must have switched off the lamp because the room was now almost in darkness. However, there was still enough light for Claire to be able to see that the fever which had originally brought her into Brad’s room, anxious for his health, had disappeared. Still trembling, she eased herself out of his bed, her eyes widening as she caught sight of her discarded robe lying on the floor.

As she shrugged herself into it, her hands were trembling so much that she couldn’t fasten the tie-belt.

Hot shame scorched her skin as she remembered how eagerly, how unbelievably provocatively she had silently encouraged Brad to remove it… As her mind relayed flickering, unwanted images of what had happened to her she shrank inwardly from what they were revealing to her. She didn’t recognise the image of herself they were giving her, the message about herself that they were giving her. She didn’t want to recognise them.

In her anxiety to get out of Brad’s room she almost stumbled, holding her breath as he moved in his sleep, his forehead furrowing as he reached out an arm across the bed as though searching for her. For her… or merely for a woman… any woman…?

Had he known it was her when… when he had behaved in that incredibly sensual way, or had he simply been in the grip of some fevered state of semi-consciousness? Claire fervently prayed that it was the latter as she hurried back to her own bedroom.

But then, as she climbed into her cold bed, she stiffened. Brad had called her by her name… He had opened his eyes and looked at her, recognised her. He had whispered to her, made it clear that he wanted her.

How on earth was she ever going to be able to face him again? she wondered miserably. For a man to make love to a woman without being committed to her, without loving her, was still, in the eyes of a too cynical world, socially acceptable. For a woman to do the same thing…

But she had not done the same thing, had she? She…

Claire sat up in bed, hugging her arms around her knees, forcing herself to confront the truth.

She was not permitted the merciful excuse of being able to blame her behaviour on male hormones or a deep fever, and she knew that underneath the sheer sensuality of what she had done, the fierce intensity of a physical desire so strong that it had caught her off guard like an unexpectedly strong current in a previously placid stretch of calm water, she was emotionally drawn to Brad—emotionally responsive to him.

Emotionally drawn… A bitter sound of smothered hysterical laughter rasped at the back of her throat.

Be honest with yourself, she jeered inwardly; you’re in love with him. You, a woman of your age, are making a fool of yourself with emotions more suited to a girl in her teens.

A woman of her age maybe, but she did not have the experience, the knowledge of herself as a sexual being, that other women of her age enjoyed, Claire admitted painfully. In that regard she was as naïve and unknowing as a girl in the throes of her first adolescent love affair. And her age made those feelings more painful, more hard to bear, not less.

‘Admit it,’ she whispered as she bent her aching head to her raised knees; ‘you were attracted to him right from the start but you pretended not to know it, and tonight when he touched you…’ She swallowed painfully.

She hadn’t tried very hard to resist, to stop him, had she? On the contrary…

Why was it so hard for her to face the truth about her feelings for Brad?

Did she really need to ask herself that question?

Claire’s mouth curled into a small, bitter expression of pain. No, of course she didn’t. It was hard because she knew already the pain that loving Brad was going to cause her.

To love a man who didn’t love you back when you were seventeen was bad enough, but at seventeen life still had the power to heal the hurts it inflicted. There would inevitably be another man, another love. But at thirty-four it was for ever, for life—a once-and-for-all love.

As Claire closed her eyes, willing the tears she could feel gathering at the back of her eyes not to fall, she reflected on how very little she actually seemed to have known about herself. All those years of believing that it would be impossible for her ever to share true physical intimacy with a man, all those years of believing that the trauma of her youth and the inhibitions, the doubts about her own sexuality… about herself…

Tonight had shown her just how wrong she had been. In Brad’s arms, beneath Brad’s touch, her body had flowered into the full bloom of its sensuality… of its sexuality.

What was going to happen when he woke up and remembered…? As Claire fought to suppress the pain that she could feel seeping relentlessly through her body she reflected that Irene was not going to be pleased when she learned that Brad had moved out, which she knew already was what was going to happen.