The Millionaire's Revenge(45)

‘I’m surprised you never bought any horses,’ Laura said, grasping at this little straw of conversational normality. She dragged her eyes away from him and moved towards the stable door.

‘I thought about it,’ Gabriel replied, watching her as she carefully avoided his gaze. ‘But horses need constant at­tention and upkeep and...’ he shrugged ‘...my working hours are too unpredictable.’ He walked behind her and closed the door behind him. He could read DISCOMFORT written all over her in huge capital letters, and perversely wanted to snatch her back to him.

He rested his hand loosely on her neck and felt her flinch. Dammit, she hadn’t been uncomfortable back there out in the open! Oh, no, she had been abandoned and un­inhibited and utterly in his possession!

‘Relax,’ he told her softly.

‘Relax? How can you possibly expect me to relax?’ Laura swung round to look at him, her eyes wide with confusion.

‘Easily,’ Gabriel said smoothly. ‘We have just had mind-blowing sex. You should be feeling very relaxed.’

‘I should be heading for the nearest river to jump in,’ Laura said bitterly. ‘We should never have made love. It was a mistake and it won’t happen again!’

‘We will discuss this inside. When we have both had a shower and something to eat.’

‘There’s nothing to discuss,’ Laura muttered, turning away, hugging herself tightly.

For the moment, Gabriel thought, he would leave her nursing her thoughts of regret and actually thinking that their love-making might really be a one-off episode.

‘And shouldn’t you be heading back to London?’ she flung at him.

‘In due course. But definitely not in this state.’ He looked down at himself, covered in bits of straw, and Laura reluctantly admitted that he had a point. Not to men­tion the small fact that the house belonged to him anyway, so he could have however many damned showers he wanted!

‘I’ll get you a towel,’ she said as soon as they were in the front door.

‘And get one for yourself whilst you are about it.’ He looked at her without smiling, but the intent was stamped all over his face.

‘What are you talking about?’ A frisson of excitement and alarm ripped through her.

‘As we are both in dire need of a shower, then I suggest we do it together.’ And when she opened her mouth to protest, he covered it swiftly with his own and felt her body melt. Oh, yes. Did she really think that she could run away from him now? Did she really imagine that he would allow her to do that?

‘Didn’t you hear a word ...th-that I just said, Gabriel?’

‘Heard and absorbed every word, amante. Which is not to say that I agree with a single one of them.’ To em­phasise his point, he slipped his hands under her jumper and placed his hands under the crease of her breasts. ‘What we did was not a mistake. We wanted one another and we still want one another, and there is no point in your pre­tending otherwise.’ He could feel the rapid beating of her heart under her ribcage.

‘We can’t bring the past back.’ Laura heard the unsteady tremor of her voice with dismay. She should be thrusting him away, flying up those stairs as fast as her legs could carry her, but she couldn’t move a muscle.#p#分页标题#e#

‘Nor can we forget it,’ he replied fiercely. ‘Why don’t you tell me that it was all a mistake ...now...?’ His hands covered her breasts and he began rousing her with mas­terful precision, touching her nipples and setting them aflame with longing. They half walked, half stumbled, still united, until he was pressing her back against the wall, and with her in that position he moved one hand to her thigh and began rubbing her there, there where she could do nothing but respond, his fingers firm as they pushed against the crease of the denim until she was half crying out.

She surrendered. He felt it the instant her arms wrapped around him and she blindly searched for his mouth.

‘Now, what about that shower?’ he broke away to mur­mur and she looked at him with a dazed expression, then smiled.

His tactics, he admitted minutes later as the warm water shot jets down at them both in the shower cubicle, left a lot to be desired, but all was fair in love and war.

Strangely, though, he didn’t just want her to yield to him because she couldn’t resist the tug of what they did to one another in the sack.

‘Your hair needs washing,’ he said, swivelling her away from him and reaching for the bottle of shampoo so that he could trickle some into her wet hair and begin massag­ing. ‘And this is not the way to do it,’ he murmured hus­kily, when she gave a sensuous little whimper of pleasure and curved her back against him so that he had no choice, as a red-blooded male, but to wrap his arms around her and bury his mouth against her neck.