‘You remembered,’ she told him without thinking about what she was saying.
But Jaul hadn’t remembered. Afternoon tea had been his grandmother’s routine and it was still served all these years on because the house had never benefitted from another mistress. The faintest colour scored his high cheekbones as he was shot back in time to recall that long-ago afternoon after he had finally persuaded Chrissie to see him as a normal educated male rather than a womanising party animal. She had been wearing a blue dress then as well. The dress had had tiny little flowers all over it and she had sat there, tense and shy with her beautiful hair falling to her waist, and he had been so scared of saying or doing the wrong thing and frightening her off again. Scared of what a woman might think for the one and only time in his life! He wanted to laugh at that recollection of his younger, less cynical self but now he was looking at Chrissie again, noting the silvery hair that was shoulder length now, the fined-down line of her perfect features, and other reactions were overwhelming him.
Images that Jaul had resisted for two years were suddenly leaping out of the box he had locked them in. Colliding with the bright turquoise eyes that he knew could turn feverish with longing for him, he went rigid recalling that incredibly erotic eagerness, nostrils flaring, dark eyes shimmering gold beneath his lush black lashes.
The atmosphere had become suffocating, Chrissie registered in dismay, shifting off one restive foot to the other. She met his intense gaze and froze, her temperature running cold and then hot until melted honey pooled low in her pelvis, an almost forgotten sensation from the past. But it was too late by then for her to draw back because Jaul was unexpectedly in front of her, close enough to touch and literally just grabbing her with two strong arms to weld her into sudden highly provocative contact with his lean, powerfully hard body. Air exploded into her lungs as she snatched in a startled breath.
‘Chrissie...’ Jaul husked, lean hands sliding down her slender spine to tilt her hips into an even more intimate meeting.
And as she recognised and felt his erection below their clothes, the long, thick evidence of his need hard against her belly, an ache of near pain stirred between her own legs. Her head swam, clear thought forgotten, knees suddenly as weak as bendy twigs. He took her mouth with all the passion she had never forgotten, fiery and urgent and wildly demanding. She took fire from the kiss, which was like a flame hitting bone-dry hay, and the piercing arrow of bittersweet hunger travelled to the very core of her being. Her hands flew up to his broad shoulders and roved from the hard muscle there to the thick blue-black hair she had loved to bury her fingers in.
His tongue plunged between her parted lips and a shudder racked her in his arms, sudden wickedly strong need loosed inside her to run amok like bush fire. She wanted to rip his shirt off and run her hands down over his washboard abs. She wanted to drag him down to the rug below their feet and satisfy the hollow ache screaming at her feminine heart. It was powerful, it was seductive and she could no more have resisted that savagely strong hunger than she could have resisted his explosive passion. She wanted, she wanted...
CHAPTER FOUR
SOMEONE KNOCKED ON the door and Jaul froze, literally froze as if someone had hit an alarm bell. He pushed her back from him, dark eyes glittering tiger gold and a ferocious frown on his lean, darkly handsome face.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said flatly. ‘That was a mistake.’
Chrissie was unable to pull herself together quite so quickly and as he released her she pivoted away from him towards the windows. As she raised trembling hands to press to her suddenly clammy cheeks, she was sick with self-loathing and shock and only dimly aware that someone was speaking to Jaul in his own language at the door. Feeling shaky, she sat down on a horrendous carved wooden sofa without even a cushion to soften its hard, unyielding seat.
A mistake? How demeaning to be told that! Only a kiss, only a stupid kiss, she was reasoning with herself in a daze of shame and denial. But how could she have let that happen, particularly when she had visited him to discuss the infinitely more important reality of the twins’ very existence? It was as though something had momentarily stolen her wits, overpowering all memory and rationality in the same moment. Well, what was done was done and he had been equally guilty of inappropriate behaviour, she reminded herself in consolation. Of course, she had once been accustomed to Jaul’s distinctly carnal can’t-keep-my-hands-off-you nature, had indeed at one stage gloried in her apparent power to attract him, innocently assuming that it meant more than it did. It seemed in that line though he hadn’t changed a bit.