‘No…yes…no…I don’t know…’
He did know. He recalled how much she loved him playing with her breasts and he began to suckle one of the rosy circles, loving the taste of her and hungry for more, like a starving man suddenly sitting at a banquet. As he sucked and pulled her nipple into his mouth his tongue flicked and darted over the sensitised tip, sending her into wild throes of abandon.
Somehow their bodies moved in harmony with one another, until she was sitting up, with her head flung back and Nick positioned kneeling between her legs so that he could lavish all his attention on her breasts.
He licked his way down and pulled down the jogging bottoms along with her underwear in one smooth, swift movement.
With his fingers, he parted the delicate folds of her and inserted his tongue, wriggling it towards the honeyed sweetness of the little bud that throbbed and begged for satisfaction.
And Rose accordingly groaned and lifted her hips off the sofa, tensing every muscle in her body as his questing tongue flicked and teased and his mouth tasted every inch of her most private parts.
She reached down to try and push him away and reclaim some of her will-power, and felt her fingers curl in his dark hair, urging him to bring her to completion right here, right now.
But Nick needed more than that and he couldn’t wait. He was barely aware of taking off his clothes until he was standing in front of her, big and proud. Rose opened her eyes drowsily and smiled before reaching out and taking his throbbing member in her hand, where she proceeded to give it the same attention that he had given her.
Yes, she had missed this too. Missed him and missed touching him, missed the way her hands and mouth could turn this impressive, powerful man to putty.
By the time he drove into her, they were both so close to coming that it just took a few deep, urgent thrusts to send them tipping over the edge.
Rose recovered to the dull, depressing knowledge that she had made the same mistake. She had allowed her body to do what it wanted to while her brain trailed along somewhere far behind, raising its weedy objections.
The sofa felt cramped and uncomfortable. ‘I need to go and get cleaned up,’ she said, and Nick, catching onto the tone of her voice and hearing the shutters begin to slide into place, turned to her and frowned.
‘You’re not regretting what we just did, are you?’
‘We’re back to square one, Nick.’
‘We need one another.’ She was making to stand up and he yanked her back down so that she fell onto his lap where he could easily keep her prisoner. ‘You didn’t hear what I said, Rose. I missed you. I missed you from the minute we parted company at the airport and I haven’t stopped.’
‘Which is why you felt the need to replace me.’
‘I told you, I thought I needed distraction. I was wrong. I need you. I need this. And so do you. You can say whatever you want, Rose, but your sweet, sexy body tells another story.’
‘It tells a different story. I want you, and, yes, I was weak, but I want more than just sex.’
‘Then come live with me.’ Nick uttered the words, but they failed to evoke the horror he might have expected. He had never lived with a woman in his life before, but right now it didn’t seem such an outlandish proposition.
To Rose, his proposal, noble though it was, especially for a man like him, was a halfway measure driven by lust. Love would have demanded a proposal of quite a different nature. Nick wanted her, but he also wanted to keep his options open. Boredom, for him, was lurking just around the corner and he was canny enough to realise that dumping a wife was completely different from dumping a live-in lover.
And, Lord, it was tempting. Tempting to think of having this bliss, but the inevitable rider of ‘for however long it lasted’ was too much of a threat to her peace of mind.
‘No.’
‘What do you mean no?’ Nick looked at her in stunned surprise. He wasn’t even aware of her standing up and sticking on her clothes. ‘What do you mean no? Have you any idea what sort of a leap a commitment like that takes for a man like me? To have a woman share my space?’
‘And I appreciate it…’
‘But you really want marriage.’ He was incredulous. He had just offered her something beyond the reach of every other woman he had ever known and she wanted more.
‘I really do.’ Rose took a deep breath and decided that there was no point playing any more games. She sat on the side of the sofa and looked at him carefully. ‘You told me that you never wanted to carry on wanting me. Well, Nick…’ she shot him a rueful smile ‘…I never wanted to fall in love with you, but I did. That’s why I want to marry you. You tell me that we’re sexually compatible. I tell you that we’re compatible in far more ways than that. I tell you that we have what it takes. So…will you marry me?’ Rose could actually feel the hammering of her heart. If someone had asked her to do a bungee jump off the Clifton Suspension Bridge, she couldn’t have felt more terrified than she did at this very moment, but what was the use trying to keep the truth to herself any longer? Pride and dignity was all well and good, but if she walked away without telling him how she really felt it would haunt her for the rest of her life. She would always wonder what if, and ‘what if’s were too closely related to ‘if only’s for her liking.