The Millionaire's Revenge(3)
‘Hardly!’
‘Do you want me to give you a hand here?’
‘Oh, no. There’s nothing to be done. I was just chatting to Barnabus.’
‘About me, I hope,’ Gabriel murmured softly, pulling her towards him and keeping her there, with his hands on her rear, so that she could feel exactly what she did to him.
She was the perfect combination of her parents. She had the height of her father and the blonde beauty of her mother. When she tilted her head back, as she was doing now, her waist-length hair rippled over his hands like strands of silk. White silk.
‘But of course,’ she agreed with a small laugh of delight. Who else? What have you been doing since I last saw you? Have you missed me?’
I’ve been slaving at an incompetently run engineering company. I’ve been poring over books so that I don’t completely lose track of my Economics degree. I’ve been putting aside every sweat-earned penny so that I can afford to eat when I return to university. Oh, yes, and I’ve asked your father for your hand in marriage and it was bitten off.
That little titbit, he decided, he would keep to himself. Now, he would lose himself in her and then he would propose. Her parents would simply have to accept him because they would have no choice.
‘If you’re finished with Barnabus...’ he murmured, tucking her hair behind her ear and nibbling it with his teeth until she squirmed.
‘The office...?’
Out here, if you’d prefer, although I cannot truthfully say that I would welcome dealing with the frostbite afterwards...’
The office comprised three rooms attached to the far end of the stables. One small sitting area for clients, a room in which the books were kept and a bathroom, all furnished with exquisite taste. Soon, Gabriel thought, they would no longer need to scurry and hide and make love like thieves in the night. He imagined her face as she heard him ask her to marry him and he felt a fierce quiver of possessiveness.#p#分页标题#e#
‘What’s the matter?’
He turned to see that she was staring up at him, all wide-eyed and concerned, and he smiled.
‘Do you ever dream of us making love in a proper bed?’ he asked softly, unlocking the door to the office with the key that, unimaginatively, was hidden under one of the plant pots outside. He pushed open the door and then closed it behind them, capturing her against the back of the door and kissing the nape of her neck. ‘A proper, king-sized bed complete with satin sheets and a feather duvet?’
‘A cramped single bed would do,’ Laura murmured, sighing as his tongue trailed along her neck. ‘Anywhere but here. I have nightmares about Dad bursting in when we’re in the middle of...of...’
‘Making love...?’ he finished smoothly for her and she coiled against him with a smile. His voice always did this to her, turned her legs to water. His dark, deep voice with the lingering traces of his Argentinean background, and his smoky, sexy eyes that could stroke her body even when he wasn’t touching her.
He had turned up out of the blue one wintry morning a year ago. One minute she had been bending over, grooming one of the horses, her long hair roughly braided back away from her face, and she had stood up to find him staring at her from the stable door, his hands in his pockets, his body leaning against the rough doorframe. He had heard about their stables and he had come to see whether he could earn some money helping out because he loved horses and was a natural at handling them. He had only just come up there to live. His father had been made redundant from his post as a teacher and, whilst he could cope until he located another job, there simply was no longer enough to cover his son’s university fees. Gabriel needed to work for a year and had taken a job nearby at a small company, interrupting his university career until he could accumulate sufficient money to put himself through the remainder of his course. He had explained all of this without taking his eyes off her and without moving from his indolent stance by the door. Laura had listened and had hardly heard a word he had been saying. She had been too overwhelmed by his sheer animal beauty.
‘Are you suggesting that you want to make love to me?’ Gabriel whispered in her ear now, and Laura made a low, gurgling sound as he cupped her face in his hands and began kissing her jawbone with infinite, lingering tenderness. Underneath her three layers of clothing, she could already feel her breasts aching to be touched.
It was dark in the office. Dark but warm, with the small fan heater gently purring like a soothing background noise.
What would you do if I said that I just wasn’t in the mood?’ Laura teased, curling her fingers into his dark hair and nudging his face up so that she could cover his mouth with hers. The kiss was fiercely passionate, tongue pressing against tongue with an urgency that spoke volumes about the four days during which they had not seen one another. An eternity, it seemed to her.