Sinful Nights(20)

Blake, I didn't arrange anything. I was as surprised as you to see him.  Oh I knew he was coming to collect his car  … ' Anger fired her eyes to  deep blue-black as she added bitterly, Why should I defend my actions  to you? There's no reason why I should be faithful to you, Blake, no  reason at all.'    

 



 

No?' His face was white with anger. Then perhaps I'd better give you  one. Why didn't you tell him you were coming back to me, Sapphire? Were  you afraid he wouldn't wait for you, is that it?'

I wanted to tell him in person, not over the telephone. Alan fully  understands the situation,' she lied, urged to utter the falsehood by  some only dimly conceived knowledge that if Blake thought she still  loved Alan, it would in some way protect her from him. This afternoon  she had come dangerously close to succumbing to the raw masculinity of  him; of succumbing to her own reluctantly admitted love for him, she  told herself. If Blake discovered how she really felt she had no  guarantee that he wouldn't somehow manipulate her vulnerable emotions  and her, using them to his own best advantage. She shivered suddenly,  wishing she had not as her shudder drew Blake's attention to her nude  body.

In the lamplight her skin glowed pearly cream, her hair curling wildly  round her shoulders, still damp from her shower, her face completely  free of makeup.

How many times has he seen you like this?' Blake grated hoarsely. How  many times have you slept with him? How long have you been lovers?'

That's none of your business,' Sapphire protested, hot colour flooding her skin. I don't ask you about your  …  your love life.'

Love life!' Blake laughed harshly. Now there's an antiquated term if  ever there was one. I don't have a love life, my dear wife, I learned  the folly of that years ago, but I do have all the usual sexual desires  …   Like me to prove it to you?'

You're disgusting.' Sapphire flung the words at him as she pulled free of his grip.

You didn't seem to think so earlier this evening,' Blake reminded her  softly, going back to the bedroom door where he turned the key in the  lock and then removed it, putting it in his jeans pocket. Just in case  you have any ideas about going to lover boy while I'm asleep,' he  explained tersely.

What was the matter with Blake? Sapphire wondered bitterly. He seemed to  have a fetish about her going to Alan. What would he say if he knew the  truth? That Alan wasn't her lover; that no man ever had been  …  She  shuddered; her skin suddenly too warm, her body weak with the knowledge  that there was only one man she wanted to make love to her. What would  Blake say if she told him  …  if she asked him  …

Shocked she pulled her thoughts back from the precipice on which they  teetered. Hadn't she learned anything at all from the past? Once before  she had begged Blake to love her.

Don't worry, you're quite safe with me,' Blake drawled, watching her. Unless of course, you choose not to be.'

Why on earth should I do that?' Animosity flared between them; tension tightening Sapphire's nerve endings.

Oh any number of reasons,' Blake told her insultingly. You've been up  here several days  …  and it can sometimes be hard denying oneself, when  one's been used to  … '

Stop it!' Sapphire demanded, goaded almost beyond endurance, her cheeks scarlet with rage. How dare you suggest that  … '

That you'd be so hungry for sex that you'd turn to me?' Blake finished  coolly for her. Why not? After all it wouldn't be the first time, would  it?'

He turned his back on her as he spoke, calmly pulling off his sweater  and unfastening his shirt, leaving Sapphire seething with temper and  pain. How could he throw that in her face? He always had been a cruel  bastard, she thought bitterly, but she had never expected anything like  this  … '

Go on.' His voice was amused rather than contrite. Why don't you throw something at me, if that's how you feel.'

Go to hell,' Sapphire told him thickly. God, I hate you, Blake  … '

Really?' He paused in the act of unfastening his belt, sitting down on  the bed, his eyebrows arching as he studied the warm curves of her body.  Then perhaps you ought to have a word with your hormones,' he  tormented blandly, they seem to be getting the wrong message.'

Sapphire had forgotten her nudity, and she froze to the spot, the image  of her own body faithfully reflected in the long pier-glass on the other  side of the room. Her skin glowed milky pale, her breasts full and  softly feminine, crowned with deeply pink nipples that betrayed all too  clearly the correctness of Blake's taunt.

I'm going to have a shower,' Blake told her, standing up and shedding  his jeans. Frantically Sapphire dragged her gaze away from the muscled  contours of his body, not sure who she hated the most; Blake for  tormenting her as he was doing, or herself for being so vulnerable to  that torment.    

 



 

You can always join me if you want to cool down.' The mocking taunt  followed him across the room as he closed the bathroom door behind him.  Once he was gone Sapphire struggled into her nightdress. The fine pearl  grey silk seemed to emphasise her curves rather than conceal them, the  deeply decolleté, lace-trimmed neckline outlining the curves of her  breasts in explicit detail. One thing she was sure of. When Blake came  back from the bathroom he would find her deeply and safely asleep. As  she lay down and pulled the covers over her, keeping as close to the  edge of the bed as possible she wondered bitterly if he had come to her  room deliberately to torment her, or if he genuinely did believe if he  wasn't there to prevent her she might have gone to Alan.

Letting him think that she and Alan were lovers was her only means of  protection, she acknowledged, closing her eyes, her body tense. Once  Blake found out they weren't, it wouldn't take him long to discover that  she still loved him and then she would be completely at his mercy.

Nothing had changed, she thought bitterly, forcing herself to breathe  evenly, and then a small inner voice corrected her, one thing had  changed apparently. Blake, for some reason, now seemed to find her  physically desirable. Or was his desire for her simply a frustrated  sexual longing for Miranda who presumably now shared her favours between  Blake and her husband? Nausea, deep and wrenching, tore into her as  Sapphire pictured them together. No, please God not that, she whispered  squeezing her eyes closed as though she could blot out the pictures. She  had been through all this once before and suffered all the torments of  the damned picturing Blake with Miranda, imagining their bodies entwined  in the act of love; sharing its heated ecstasy and its languorous  aftermath-pleasures which had been denied to her, and she wasn't going  to endure them again. She couldn't.

She heard Blake come back into the room and tensed as he snapped off the  lamp, and pulled back the covers. The sarcastic comments she had  expected about the way she was huddled on the edge of the bed never  came, and to her chagrin within minutes of getting into bed, Blake  appeared to be fast asleep!

As she struggled up through dense layers of sleep the first thing  Sapphire realised was that at some time during the night she must have  turned instinctively towards Blake, because now, instead of lying with  her back to him, curled up on the edge of the bed she was actually  curved against his body, her head pillowed on his shoulder.

Luckily Blake was still asleep and therefore unable to witness her  weakness. As she started to move away from him, the second thing  Sapphire realised was that he was sleeping nude. Perhaps she ought to  have expected it; but during the brief days of their marriage he had  always worn pyjamas, the jackets of which he had invariably tugged off  at some time during the night, she remembered. Lost in her thoughts;  seduced into inert languor by the warmth of his body, she was reluctant  to move, even while acknowledging that she should; surely there could be  no real harm in indulging herself in these few brief seconds of  pleasure. But her conscience prodded her, and unwillingly she started to  move away.

Going somewhere?' Blake's voice, still husky with sleep, rasped  tantalisingly against her sensitive skin, making her shiver with a  reaction somewhere between delight and dread.

It's light,' Sapphire told him unnecessarily, trying to edge away from  him without drawing his attention to what she was doing, and failing  abysmally as he rolled on to his side, pinning her against him with one  arm.

He was so close now that she could feel the intimacy of his body heat;  the warm, muskily male scent of his skin clouding her reasoning  processes, so that it no longer seemed quite so imperative for her to  move. Much more pleasant to give in to the allure of remaining where she  was.

I thought you'd want to be out, checking on the stock.' Conscience made  her make the feeble concession to saying what she felt she should, but  Blake brushed her protest aside.

The men will be doing that, because I did the last round last  night-we're very democratic up here,' he drawled teasingly. I must say  it was quite a surprise to wake up and find you in my arms. I seem to  remember that last night you couldn't get far enough away from me.'