Sinful Nights(30)

Is this what you read?' he asked her gently, offering her the close  written sheets. Sapphire only needed to read the first few words to nod  an assent.

And because of this you left me? Oh! Sapphire  … ' His voice broke and  she felt the damp warmth of his tears against her skin. I wrote them  for you,' he told her brokenly, I wrote what I daren't tell you! What I  couldn't in all honour show you  …  You're the only woman I've ever loved  and when I saw you standing on that ledge, about to go over into the  pool, I didn't know what I wanted to do most-strangle you or strangle  Alan for hurting you so much that you felt you needed to end your life  because of him.'

It wasn't him, it was you,' Sapphire told him urgently. Right now it  was almost impossible to take in the enormity of what had happened; but  that Blake was telling the truth when he said he loved her she didn't  for one moment doubt.

After Miranda told me the truth about my father's illness I knew I  couldn't stay with you-not when really you loved her, and yet I didn't  know where I was going to find the courage to leave, loving you so  much.'

I've never loved anyone but you,' Blake interrupted fiercely. I think  you were all of sixteen years' old the first time I realised how I felt  about you. Miranda lied to you.'

Because she had been jealous. Sapphire now realised, but she had been  clever as well, using her sophistication and experience to drive a wedge  between them, no doubt hoping that Blake would turn to her once  Sapphire had left him.

So many wasted years,' she said sadly raising bleak eyes to meet his.    

 



 

No  …  not wasted. You were too young for marriage at seventeen,' Blake  told her. I would always have felt guilty and uncertain wondering if I  had stolen from you the right to make your own choice of husband, but  now I know that you love me. You do love me, don't you?' he demanded  thickly, when Sapphire remained silent.

Part of her longed to tease him just a little, but the rest of her  responded eagerly to the plea in his eyes, her body curling into his as  she kissed him, lightly at first and then with growing need, breaking  away from him only to murmur huskily, So much  …  Blake if you hadn't  arrived at the quarry when you did  … ' A shudder wracked her body and she  felt him tense in response. Don't,' he commanded her rawly. Don't  even think about it, just tell me you've forgiven me for lying to you  about your father. I hated myself for doing it; for causing you pain-a  pain I could see every time you looked at your father, but I was  desperate to get you back; willing to do anything to stop you from  marrying someone else.'

And having got me back how did you intend to keep me?' Sapphire teased,  forgiveness explicit in the look she gave him as she reached out to  push the unruly hair back off his forehead.

Oh, I'd have thought of something.' The old assurance was creeping back  into his voice, but she didn't mind. Now that she had seen his  vulnerability she could accept the macho side of his personality more  easily. Such as?' she whispered, feathering light kisses along his jaw  and glorying in his responsive shudder.

Such as this  …  and this  … ' Blake's voice deepened, raw need underlying  the husky words as he caressed her body, kissing her silky skin, words  no longer necessary.

Now she really had come home, Sapphire thought contentedly abandoning  herself completely into his keeping, revelling in the fierce thrust of  pleasure seizing his body as he recognised her surrender, and she was  never ever going to leave again. Closing her eyes she murmured the words  of love she knew he longed to hear, for the first time saying them in  complete trust that she would hear them back in return.

The stock  … ' she reminded Blake weakly long, satisfying minutes later  …  You  … '

To hell with the stock,' Blake responded thickly. Right now I've got  far more important things on my mind, like making love to my wife,  unless of course she has any objections?'

A smile dimpled the corner of Sapphire's mouth. Only one,' she told him  gravely, and that is that you're wasting far too much time in talk  instead of action  … '

Retaliation was every bit as swift as she had envisaged-and every bit as  pleasurable, the words of love she had longed to hear for so long  caressing her skin in silken whispers as Blake took her back in his  arms.

* * * * *





Injured Innocent



PENNY JORDAN





CHAPTER ONE


SHE WAS IN a very dark, very smoky, very crowded room, crammed with  unfamiliar faces, most of them contorted into frighteningly threatening  grimaces. Panic surged through her in waves. She wanted to turn and run  and yet for some reason her feet remained locked to the floor. Alien  sounds and scents filled the air; she was overwhelmed by the despairing  conviction that she could never, ever escape from the place of torment  her inner consciousness told her her surroundings were, and then  miraculously a door opened; light flooded the room and a man stood there  his arms open wide to encourage her to run to him, his face in the  shadows, but she knew without seeing his features who he was, and his  name was torn from her lips on a glad cry as she ran for the haven of  his arms.

Daddy  … ' She cried his name again, her relief suddenly, horrifyingly  turning to terror as he stepped into the light and she saw that he was  not her father at all but someone else-a stranger-dark and forbidding,  unknown to her and yet somehow recognised by her inner senses  …   recognised and feared. She screamed, and screamed again, and it was the  sound of her own pain and fear that eventually jolted her out of the  fantasy world of her nightmare and back to reality.

The nightmare. Lissa shuddered deeply, touching her damp skin with  trembling fingers. It was years since she had been tormented by it-well  three years at least, she amended mentally  …  since she had made the  break from home and come to live in London. Sighing faintly she glanced  at her watch. Six-thirty  …  There was no point in trying to get back to  sleep now. She would have to get up in another hour anyway.

She padded through the bedroom of her small flat and into the kitchen  busying herself making a mug of coffee. The fragrant scent of the beans  soothed her sensitive nerve endings, the warmth of the drink stealing  into her chilled fingers as they closed round the mug. It was still only  January and the central heating hadn't come on yet. She shivered  violently in her nightdress and pattered back to her room, sliding under  the duvet; snuggling its comforting warmth all around her. Amanda would  have laughed and said something silly, like the best way to keep warm  in bed was to share it with a man. When Amanda said things like that  everyone laughed. Her sister had a way of saying the most outrageously  suggestive things with an innocence that robbed them of their sting.  Even after three years of marriage and two children Amanda still looked  like a little girl, with her mop of blonde curls and her large blue  eyes. Or at least she had done. Deep shudders of mingled guilt and pain  racked her as she sat huddled beneath the bedclothes. Dear God even now  she could hardly believe it was true; that that midnight call three days  ago had actually happened  …  That her sister, her brother-in-law and  both sets of parents had been killed outright when a freak thunderstorm  had struck the light aircraft her brother-in-law had been piloting.    

 



 

She had not seen much of her sister since her marriage-nor of her  parents. There had been duty visits of course, but there had always been  an air of uncomfortable restraint about them. She knew her parents had  never forgotten, nor really forgiven her for what she had done. It was  useless for her aching heart to protest that she was innocent. They  would never have believed her. Tears formed in her eyes and fell  unheeded rolling down her cheeks. Was she crying for her sister, or for  herself Lissa asked herself cynically. She and Amanda had never been  particularly close. There were four years between them, Amanda being the  elder, and to Lissa as a child it had often seemed that whilst some  Fairy Godmother must have looked down into her sister's cradle and given  her the gift of a happy life; hers had been blighted by the  machinations of some mischievous spirit who had ensured that she was  destined always to be in trouble.

It had taken her years of exhaustive self analysis to understand that  she was not to blame; that those things which she saw in herself as  hopeless inadequacies because they did not mirror her sister's virtues,  were not necessarily that. It was stupid to have the nightmare now,  after so long had passed  …  Why had she had it? Why? Did she really need  to ask herself that question, Lissa mocked herself. Of course not. She  knew exactly why she had dreamed so horrifically of that party, of that  long ago night, of Joel Hargreaves, her sister's brother-in-law, and  now, with her, co-guardian of the two little girls who had been orphaned  in the plane crash that had robbed Lissa herself of parents and sister  …   just as it had robbed Joel of brother and parents.