Читать книгу Sharon Kendrick Collection - Sharon Kendrick - Страница 39

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘WHAT’S happened?’ Romy uttered a silent prayer as she asked the question.

Dominic smiled. ‘We rang the hospital from the airport on my mobile. She’s stable and settled—and at the moment she’s hanging onto the baby. They are cautiously optimistic.’

‘That’s wonderful.’

‘Yes.’ He threw her a narrow-eyed look. ‘So are you. Archie liked you very much.’

‘Did he?’

‘Mmm. And he’s decided to sell me the land I want. He told me in the car. He grew quite sentimental about the fact that I had interrupted a dinner party in order to drive him and Dolly to the airport. That seemed to make his mind up. He appears to have lost some of his prejudices about southerners along the way!’

Romy smiled. ‘Geraint told me that if this particular deal fell through then there were loads of other places you could buy in the north of England.’

‘Did he? He’s right, in a way. But that land means more to me than any other.’

‘Because...?’

There was a pause. ‘Because I spent the first twelve years of my life near there, I guess. My mother brought me up there on her own, before moving down here.’

Romy tipped her blonde head to one side. ‘So you’re not a southerner at all?’ She remembered asking him this question once before, in the restaurant, and he had avoided answering with spectacular charm.

His grey eyes glimmered, as if he was recalling his evasiveness, too. ‘No, I’m not.’

‘But you sound so...’

‘I know I do.’ His reply was dry. ‘I learnt very early on that internationally successful businessmen do not have broad Geordie accents! Oxford ironed most of it out for me.’

‘But surely if Archie had known that—?’

‘Then he would have decided to sell me the land, anyway?’

‘Well—yes.’

He smiled. ‘He might have done.’

‘So why on earth didn’t you tell him?’

He smiled again. ‘Because I wanted him to be swayed by my sound business proposition, and not by sentiment.’

‘Even though he was?’ she queried. ‘Swayed by sentiment, I mean. Having fixed ideas about people who are born in the south. Why didn’t you just play him at his own game, Dominic?’

His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘Because it isn’t the modern way, is it? To be sentimental.’

‘No,’ she conceded, and a wave of dejection suddenly washed over her. She hastily changed the subject. ‘So this land that you’re buying—it has lots of potential, does it?’

‘I don’t know if that’s the ideal way to describe it.’ His laugh was tinged with cynicism. ‘Run-down factories and vast areas of wasteland—that’s all it consists of. It was a bleak, soulless place then, and it’s not very much better now—though it has one thing going for it in these overcrowded urban times. It has plenty of space.’

‘So why on earth do you want to buy it?’

His grey eyes looked almost dreamy. ‘Because I always knew I was lucky.’ He must have seen the surprise on her face for he nodded sagely. ‘Oh, yes—I count myself lucky, Romy, because at least I knew I had it in me to escape the poverty trap I was born into. Others weren’t so fortunate.’

His mouth took on a sort of grim, determined line. ‘I vowed that one day I would put something back there. Something that others, not so blessed as me, could enjoy for a while to forget their problems...’

Romy let her gaze fall to her lap, reluctant to look him in the eye. He had grown up poor and illegitimate, and yet he could say that he was blessed... Suddenly he made her feel terribly, terribly humble.

Over the years, Romy had accredited Dominic with many attributes—overt sex appeal and the ability to make lots of money being the predominant ones. But she had never realised that at heart he was such a good man. Geraint was right.

She stiffened suddenly as she became aware of the natural progression of her thoughts. Because being a good man did not exclude him from having sex without any commitment, did it?

He shot her a narrow-eyed glance, as if he had sensed her sudden discomfiture. ‘I could use a brandy.’

So could she. But...

‘I was thinking of going,’ she confessed bluntly. ‘Home.’

He did not look remotely surprised. ‘No doubt you were, Romy, but I’m not going to let you.’

‘So it’s cave-man tactics now, is it?’ she mocked.

He gave a glimmer of a smile. ‘It can always be arranged, sweetheart, if that is—as I suspect—what turns you on.’

‘Stop it!’

But now he was walking towards her, until he was only a warm breath away, and Romy found herself holding her own breath, alternately dreading and longing for him to do something outrageously demonstrative.

Like throwing her down onto the carpet and making love to her properly, perhaps...?

‘You look extremely hot,’ he observed wryly. ‘Come on.’ And he took her firmly by the hand.

‘Where do you think you’re taking me?’ she heard herself squeaking.

Dominic frowned, and then sighed. ‘I’m afraid you can’t possibly play the helpless heroine now, Romy. Not when you gave me possibly one of the most erotic encounters of my life in the garden this afternoon. I’m taking you to the sitting room so that we can sit down together and have—’

‘Let me guess!’ she interjected sourly.

‘A long-overdue talk,’ he finished reprovingly.

Well, she had never heard it called that before, but she let him lead her into the sitting room anyway, and then sat on the blue velvet sofa with her legs tucked up beneath her while he busied himself with pouring them a drink. Then he came and positioned himself next to her.

Romy accepted her brandy with shaky fingers but took only a tiny sip before putting the glass down on one of the small tables. As a delaying tactic, she fussed around with the skirt of her dress and pleated some of the cinnamon-coloured satin between her fingers, then at last looked into his face with clear brown eyes. ‘So what do you want to talk about, Dominic?’

His mouth twisted into a sardonic smile. ‘Shall I give you a whole list of points up for discussion?’

‘That much, huh?’ Romy attempted to make a joke of it, but her voice stupidly began to wobble, and then she became afraid that she might commit the ultimate sin of bursting into tears.

‘What’s the matter?’ He frowned.

‘I don’t know!’ That was the trouble.

She tried turning her head away, but he wouldn’t let her, cupping her chin firmly in his strong hand, and Romy almost melted.

He felt her shudder. ‘Maybe now is not the time for talking,’ he said thickly, and moved his face towards her. ‘Maybe we should use our time more usefully—what do you say, Romy?’

She said nothing, for she felt weak and powerless and totally without fight. Her resistance to him had been vanishing ever since she had first set foot in his home, and now it had almost completely disappeared.

Her face was white, her eyes huge and dark and haunted, and Dominic’s jaw tightened. Damn! He could not possibly make love to her now. Not while she was looking at him with all the pain of a wounded deer.

‘Tell me about your marriage,’ he said suddenly.

It was as though he had woken her up from a coma. Romy blinked in astonishment that he should have asked her such a thing, and at such a time.

But, if she searched truthfully in her heart, would there ever be a time to discuss Mark without all the guilt and regret which inevitably accompanied it?

She sat up straight, moving slightly away from him, and her hand groped out for her brandy glass. ‘What do you want to know about my marriage?’ she asked, unable to keep the bleakness from her voice.

Dominic hardened his heart, refusing to let her fragile face deflect him. ‘Was it happy?’

‘No.’ She saw the bitter accusation in his eyes and flinched. ‘Not in the conventional sense, anyway.’

‘Because of your cheating?’

‘Because of Mark’s illness,’ she told him, and now it was his turn to flinch. ‘That cast an inevitable shadow over our relationship—but we made the best of what we had.’

There was a silence while he digested this. ‘And was he brave?’

Romy nodded. ‘Sometimes he could be remarkably brave—and at other times he was terribly, terribly frightened.’ She gave him a steady stare. ‘There isn’t a stereotypical way that people behave when they know they’re dying, Dominic—there are no rules or guidelines to follow. It’s erratic. Unpredictable. It’s like all human behaviour—you make most of it up as you go along.’

‘And could you bear to look him in the eye?’ he demanded fiercely. ‘After what you had done to him?’

‘Yes, I could.’ A muscle worked in her cheek. ‘Because his mother had been put in a nursing home and I was all he had left,’ she answered simply. And then, because she thought that Dominic was very successfully avoiding facing up to his share of the blame, she added, ‘And because—unlike you, Dominic—I could not face running away.’

‘I did not run away!’ he gritted.

‘You never saw him once—not once—after the wedding!’ she accused him. ‘You didn’t even come to the funeral, for God’s sake!’

‘How could I?’ he grated angrily. ‘How could I face him, knowing what I had done to his wife? And how could I face you, Romy, when I knew that all I still wanted to do was to drag you off to the nearest bed and—?’

‘Th-that’s enough,’ she told him shakily.

‘Turning up at your wedding was a mistake, but one that I could not possibly avoid without a huge scene. But I knew that I could not willingly face the two of you again.’ Dominic briefly shut his eyes. ‘And then, when I discovered how sick he was...’

‘Well?’ Her voice was brittle. ‘Why didn’t you come then?’

‘I couldn’t do that either,’ he said simply. ‘How could I? By then I hadn’t been in contact with Mark for so long that it would have been impossible to justify my absence without telling him the truth. And I owed Mark nothing less than the truth,’ he finished, on a sombre note.

Oh, the irony of it all! Romy took another sip of brandy. ‘He wouldn’t have wanted you to come if your only reason for doing so was pity.’

‘I know that.’ He drained his glass and put it down, then fixed her with a dazzling grey stare. ‘So what now, Romy—what do we do next?’

She was terrified that she would read much, much more into his question than he intended, and so she neatly turned it around. ‘That depends.’

‘On?’

‘On what you want to do.’

‘I think you already know the answer to that,’ he said huskily.

‘And on what I want to do,’ she added firmly.

‘And do our wishes match, Romy?’ he queried softly.

She studied the palm of her hand for a moment before looking up. ‘You mean—do I want to go to bed with you?’

He looked slightly taken aback. ‘Well, yes...’

‘What’s the matter, Dominic?’ she quizzed provocatively. ‘Not used to your women being honest about their needs?’

He laughed, but the laugh was tinged with a raw kind of hunger which set Romy’s veins tingling. ‘Are you one of my women, then, Romy?’

It was just unfortunate that he had chosen to phrase it that way. Or perhaps not. Perhaps it was the best thing he could have said. Because making her sound like one of a vast harem had killed any romantic hopes she might have been harbouring in one fell swoop.

Had he seen the doubt and the weary resignation which had momentarily clouded her features? Was that why his mouth hardened into a bitter line as he said ‘Obviously not’? His voice had hardened, too. ‘I think you’d better tell me where you want to go from here, don’t you, Romy?’

Romy gave him a wide-eyed look. ‘Why, to bed, of course!’

Dominic looked at her with a positively shocked expression on his face, and it took him a moment or two to recover himself. ‘To bed?’ he queried, as if he had not heard her correctly.

Her heart and her body were crying out for him, but she managed to conceal her true feelings with what she judged to be just the right kind of modern approach.

‘Of course,’ she whispered softly, noticing now how his eyes were drawn hypnotically to the pert thrust of her breasts against the copper satin of her dress. ‘We can’t go on the way we have been, Dominic. I hate to be thought of as a tease—and so, I’m sure, do you. And we’ve been teasing one another for five long years now. Don’t you think it’s time we did something to put each other out of our misery?’

Dominic swallowed as he fought to retain some sort of hold on reality. ‘Is this your famous saturation therapy?’ he questioned unsteadily. ‘Is this the ultimate method for getting me out of your system?’

She didn’t answer that, just leaned across and ran a finger delicately down the side of his face, and then let it trace the full outline of his mouth. She saw his lips tremble at exactly the same moment as his eyes darkened, and felt a great rush of delight as she realised that—sexually, at least—she had as much power over him as he had over her.

And in order to control that power, in order not to give way to foolish thoughts of love, she needed to be strong.

She prayed for the courage to ask her next question just as he lifted her hand to his mouth, to cover the palm with tiny kisses.

‘Dominic?’

‘Mmm?’ His eyes were closed, his voice sounded dreamy.

‘Why exactly did you invite me here this weekend?’

His eyelids flew open, his expression suddenly wary.

Romy shook her head impatiently. ‘And don’t give me any of that “you were the best person for the job” rubbish. There are lots of other people who would have done as well; you know that and I know that.’

‘My answer is clearly redundant,’ came his dry response. ‘Since you’ve obviously made up your mind already. What have you decided, Romy—that I brought you here to seduce you into submission?’

‘To make me fall in love with you?’ she suggested.

His eyes narrowed. ‘That’s a fairly hefty accusation.’

‘I know.’

‘And why would I want to do something like that?’

Why indeed? When Dominic fell in love and married, it would not be to a woman who behaved in the way that she had behaved. She voiced her greatest fear. ‘Probably so that you could give me the push in the most horrible way possible and break my heart into the bargain!’ she accused wildly.

That watchful expression had crept over his face again. ‘Well, there isn’t much chance of that happening, is there, Romy? Since you haven’t fallen in love with me.’ His lashes shadowed his silver eyes. ‘Have you?’

Romy decided that a lie was acceptable if it enabled her to preserve her sanity. ‘Of course not!’ she scoffed.

‘Well, then, subject closed.’ He lay back on the sofa and frowned. ‘So I suppose that means bed is out of the question?’

‘Yes,’ she said demurely. ‘It is now. Sorry.’ She treasured his stricken look for a moment, before deciding to put him out of his misery.

She climbed across the sofa towards him, hitching her long satin dress up as she did so, and she saw the involuntary flicker of a muscle working in his cheek. She would leave long before he could kick her out, she decided—and in the meantime she would give him a night he would never forget.

‘No bed, but there’s always the sofa,’ she explained softly.

His eyes narrowed in comprehension just as her mouth swooped down on his. And he groaned and brought her hard against his chest, deepening the kiss with such mastery that Romy almost passed out with pleasure.

Dominic felt so hot for her that he could barely think. All he did know was that if Romy carried on writhing around on his lap wearing that outrageously clinging dress, then things were going to get rapidly out of control.

And he needed to be in control as never before in his life. Because up until now his whole relationship with Romy had been characterised by a complete lack of control.

Somehow he managed to free himself from the delicious honeyed softness of her mouth, and she gave an indistinct little moan of protest.

‘Wh-what are you doing?’ she questioned, quashing down the fear that he now despised her so much, he couldn’t even bring himself to make love to her.

Dominic rose to his feet, his arm around her bare back so that she came with him. ‘I’m taking you upstairs, Romy. To my bedroom. Where I can slowly peel every article of clothing from that delicious body of yours. Then I’m going to lay you down between sheets of the finest white linen and make love to you over and over again until I’ve filled you so completely that you beg me to stop.’

Romy shuddered.

‘Yes,’ he breathed. ‘I can see your body trembling in anticipation, just like mine is trembling now, with pure, sweet desire. See, sweetheart.’ And to demonstrate he held both his hands up towards her and Romy saw that yes, indeed, they were shaking like mad.

But what he didn’t realise was that she was trembling with fear, a fear which had completely swamped her desire. She absolutely dreaded seeing his bed—the scene, no doubt, of countless other seductions.

And she dreaded the inevitable comparisons. She was bound to fare badly in the good-in-bed stakes—especially when measured up against some of the experienced beauties who had cavorted all over the place with him.

He must have felt her stiffen, for he lifted her chin and looked down into her face, his stern expression giving way to something almost approaching disappointment as he read her sudden withdrawal.

‘Just what is it with you?’ he demanded, in a voice which rang with an odd, cold kind of exasperation. ‘Don’t you get turned on by straight sex any more, Romy? Is your appetite so jaded that you can only get your kicks in the most bizarre ways possible? In the lift? In the garden? And now you want us to make love for the first time on the sofa—as if we were two teenagers with nowhere to go!’

‘Don’t!’ she told him tightly. ‘Please don’t.’

‘But why not?’ he queried, in mock surprise. ‘I’m interested to hear what you have to say. Isn’t there a name for people who like making love in public places? Is that what turns you on, Romy—the fear of discovery? Does it enhance your pleasure to think that someone might stumble in on us just as you’re helplessly gasping out at the height of your orgasm? Does it?’

The trouble was that his words—far from appalling her—were actually turning her on to a pitch that was becoming impossible to conceal.

And Dominic noticed, too—for he gave a cynical little laugh as his eyes raked over her. He saw the blatant tightening of her nipples, outlined starkly against the rich satin of her bodice. He noticed the distracted little way she circled her hips, the way her breath came in short, shallow gasps. Her eyes looked as black as hell, and he would have bet his entire fortune that if he’d snaked one of his hands all the way up her leg to her panties she would have practically begged him to remove them.

He pushed her back onto the sofa, his eyes glittering wildly. ‘So this is how you like it, is it? Hmm? And what next? Tell me what you like best, Romy, and I’ll do it to you.’ His eyes narrowed as she made no response.

‘Let me guess,’ he continued inexorably. ‘You want it hard and you want it fast, right? You want me to rip your panties off and just thrust straight into you, don’t you, sweetheart? Because that’s how you like it! Greedy and rapacious—that’s what turns you on most. And, like all sexually greedy people, it’s instant gratification that you crave. The instant buzz. The quick fix. Like a take-away meal, you simply want sex to satisfy your hunger. Don’t you, Romy?’

How she longed to slap his horrible, arrogant face and push him away. But she couldn’t. Couldn’t. His words were driving her absolutely mad with desire.

‘I—’ Romy sucked breath desperately into her lungs, so on fire with arousal that she could not speak. Her head flopped helplessly back against the cushions of the sofa, and her eyelids fluttered to a close.

‘Oh, it’s like that, is it?’ he queried softly as he saw her wriggle her hips distractedly. ‘You really do want me badly, don’t you, Romy? I think you want me to do...this...’

Romy let out a tortured little cry as his finger alighted on the slippery surface of her bodice and almost negligently traced a line around the swollen mound of her breast.

‘Yes, you like that, don’t you?’ he mused.

His finger traced feather-light little circles, and Romy almost sobbed with frustration.

‘Yes,’ he said, in a deep, satisfied voice. ‘I know what you like best, Romy, but you’re not going to get it.’

Romy’s eyes flew open in genuine alarm. ‘I’m n-not?’ She stumbled over the words.

He smiled, but Romy thought how dark and how cruel his eyes looked. ‘No, indeed. I’m going to show you that making love can be a long, slow feast which works far more keenly on the senses than a quick wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am! And this dress,’ he mused quietly as he slipped one of the shoestring straps over her shoulder, ’is far too lovely to be ripped off.’

‘Dominic—’

‘Mmm?’

She had meant to plead with him. To tell him to put her out of her misery. To do it quickly and get it over with. Because the long, slow, erotic coupling she suspected he had in mind was far too dangerous to contemplate. For how could she contain herself and not blurt out the ridiculously soppy words of love she was longing to say to him?

‘What is it, Romy?’ he questioned.

Romy swallowed, aware that whatever she had meant to say to him it was now too late, because he was sliding the other strap of her dress down.

She shuddered in wonder as he began to peel the bodice down over the lush swell of her breasts, laying them bare to his rapidly dilating eyes.

‘Not wearing a bra, I see,’ he murmured approvingly. ‘That was very naughty of you, Romy. Did you think that it would save time?’ He dipped his head to dart his tongue out at one exquisitely hardened nipple, and Romy let out a little cry of satisfaction.

‘I do hope you bothered to put some panties on,’ he whispered as his hand roved experimentally over her satin-covered thigh. He rucked up the material with a practised hand until he was able to slide his fingers to the top of her thigh. And when he allowed them to brush against the lace and satin Romy almost wept with delight.

‘Oh, you are wearing some,’ he observed. ‘That’s good. Would you like me to take them off now, or shall we wait? Or shall we leave them on, perhaps? Just push that little scrap of fabric aside and let me drive deep into you. What do you say to that, Romy?’

She was powerless to speak; he could have done anything he wanted to right then, her body thrilling to every new touch and caress.

Dominic was slightly surprised by her passive capitulation, even as he revelled in watching her respond to his mouth and his hands, and very soon his...

He swallowed down his excitement. He had expected ...what? That once Romy had accepted that he meant to make love to her all night long then maybe she would demonstrate every erotic little variation on the act she must have learned over the years?

And yet this strangely innocent reaction—so at odds with her previous behaviour—was oddly thrilling. He had her entirely in the palm of his hand. And never had a woman made him feel at once so powerful and yet so vulnerable.

He found the zip to her gown and slid it down, pleased when he could finally peel the garment from her body and let it slither to the carpet.

She lay there wearing nothing but her panties, her stockings and suspenders and her high-heeled bronze shoes, and Dominic had to fight very hard with himself not to take her as quickly and as brutally as he had just vowed not to.

Sucking in a deep, hot breath of air, he managed to compose himself enough to rip the black bow-tie from his neck and drop it on top of her dress.

Romy’s eyelids fluttered slightly.

She was watching him; he knew that. And normally, given how much she wanted him, he would have taken great pleasure in demonstrating his control by taking as long as possible to remove his clothes.

But suddenly his control had flown, and he was not sure that he was able to tease her by stripping, even if he wanted to.

Because Dominic was suddenly overwhelmed by the most primitive sensation he had ever experienced, which went way beyond reason or even desire.

He wanted to possess her. To penetrate her. To impale and impregnate her... Dominic swallowed back his desire with an effort, and two mother-of-pearl buttons skittered over the floor as he pulled his dress shirt off with an impatient yank.

Romy saw some kind of struggle taking place on his devilishly handsome features. She didn’t understand it, but it touched some deep, hidden core in her. And she was unable to resist doing what she had wanted to do for so long now. She wound her arms sinuously around his neck and kissed him.

The kiss was like a lightning bolt shooting through his veins, and Dominic almost exploded with need. As unco-ordinated as a young boy on his first sexual exploration, he felt his fingers had never disobeyed him quite so much.

And then Romy began to help him, wiggling her toes so that she could help kick his shoes off. Still in her scanty bits of underwear, she bent to peel a black silk sock off each foot while Dominic struggled to pull his zip down over his ever-growing hardness—terrified that he might emasculate himself into the bargain.

When he was finally naked, Romy began to have second thoughts about the sofa. He seemed so wonderful—so excited and enchanted by her—that her fears over comparisons seemed strangely redundant.

He removed her panties more roughly than he had intended, and then moved to lie over her, but he must have sensed her uncertainty, for he paused and looked deep into her eyes and said, ‘What is it?’

‘If you want to go upstairs, I don’t mind.’

Dominic thought how ironic it was that when she spoke in that sweet, little-girl way she sounded almost virginal. He shook his head regretfully. ‘Afterwards,’ he promised. ‘If I try to take you up there now, we’re going to end up doing it on the stairs. And I can’t wait any longer, Romy, sweetheart—’

She heard the break in his voice as he began to thrust into her, all raw, virile, masculine power, and then the glaze of passion which had darkened his face in anticipation became one of horrified disbelief.

‘Dear God, Romy!’ he exclaimed in a strangled voice as the barrier he had only ever read about before made itself felt to him. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’