November Harlequin Presents 1(162)

In that moment the sun finally disappeared below the horizon, and the last rays of light fled the room completely so that there was only the small lamp in the corner to see by. And in the darkness it was easy to hide the way she was really feeling.

In the darkness she could step forward and put herself completely into Andreas’ arms. With her face unseen, her eyes and their betraying message hidden, she could put her hand against the warm strength of his chest, whisper his name, the single word, ‘Yes,’ and lift her face to his for his kiss.

And when his mouth came down hard on hers then all thought stopped, only feeling began. And that was when nothing else mattered. Only this man for whatever time she might have with him. She would take that. And she would never let herself dream of more.





CHAPTER TWELVE




THE light of the full moon through the window made the bedroom almost as bright as day when Andreas finally gave up on any hope of sleeping and slid from the bed. Pulling on his jeans, he paused for a moment to look down at Becca’s sleeping form, her body still curved as it had been when it had been pressed up against his, her face almost buried in the pillow.

She was completely out of it, lost in a world of total exhaustion, oblivious to anything. By rights he should feel that way too. The blazing passion between them had had full rein during the night, each hungry coming together more eager than the first, each tide of mounting pleasure stronger, each soaring, burning climax more mind-blowing than the one that had gone before. Never in his life had he known such pleasures, such delight in another person’s body—in the gratification it could bring to every single one of his senses. And in the end it had been only exhaustion that had ended it. The exhaustion that had plunged Becca deep into the oblivion of sleep and left him lying awake and restless, staring at the ceiling as the moon rose high out in the bay.

At first he had had no idea why he too couldn’t find the ease he needed in sleep. His body was sated, his clamouring senses quietened—for now anyway—but it was his mind that wouldn’t let him rest.

It kept playing over and over again a snatch from the conversation that he had had with Becca days before. A set of words that were the reason for the way he was feeling, the cause of his unease.

‘How long?’ Becca had said. ‘How long would you want me to stay?’

‘For as long as it lasts. As long as it works. If we’re both getting what we want out of this, then I don’t see why it can’t last…’

‘Until we get each other out of our systems?’

The problem was, he reflected as he slipped out of the door and headed downstairs, he doubted that he would ever get Becca out of his system, no matter how hard he tried.

And God knew he had tried!

It had been a week now since she had agreed to stay, and every day it had seemed that instead of his appetite for her being blunted, it had grown until there wasn’t a moment of his day, a single second in the night, even in his sleep, when his mind wasn’t full of thoughts of her. It was worse than when he had thrown her out on the day of their wedding. At least then he had had no sight of her to remind him of how beautiful she was, no touch to bring home to him how fabulous she felt, no kiss to fill his mouth with her own essential taste. Instead, now she was always there, setting his senses on red alert, making him hungry again even in the moment of his greatest satisfaction.

If he had known that it would be like this, then just as he had told her to stay he might have hesitated, knowing that he was being a fool to himself to even consider it. He should have realised then that this would never be over, not for him; that he was only risking his peace of mind, his sanity, to take her back into his life again, knowing that one day she would walk out of it again.

She had been so determined to leave just as soon as she had the money she needed. She’d been on her feet and almost heading out the door when he had known that he could not let her go. He had wanted to have her, to hold her—and so he had damn nearly ordered her to stay.

‘To have and to hold from this day forward until death us do part…’ The lines from the wedding service haunted him as he made his way into his office, but he pushed them away, refusing to let them settle in his thoughts.

There was no till death us do part with Becca—she’d made that only too plain a year ago, when she had married him simply for his money while all the time conducting a passionate affair with Roy Stanton.

But now that Stanton was out of the picture…

Stanton was out of the picture, wasn’t he? He had to be now that he had fathered Becca’s sister’s child.

Roy Stanton. The name tasted like acid in his mouth, making him want to spit as he unlocked the bottom drawer in his desk and yanked it open.