Price of Passion (17 page)

He licked at the tracks of her tears on her face and she gave a sad, salty chuckle.

‘You feel like Koshka, only your tongue is softer.’

He gave her some more of his soft tongue, and took advantage of her distraction to unfasten her bra, letting out an exclamation as a thick crust of dry sand fell away with the cups, leaving her bare breasts coated with a fine dusting of pale grit, the minute grains of quartz sparkling in the lamp-light.

‘I need a towel, I’m all sandy,’ she said self-consciously, wrinkling her nose and trying to ineffectually brush away the grittiness.

‘Fairy dust from your fairy castle,’ he said huskily. ‘Here, let me be your towel…’ He replaced her hands on his shoulders and used the tips of his fingers to whisk delicately over and around the soft mounds, stroking his thumbs where the sand clung stubbornly to her milk-white flesh. He bent his head to blow gently at the recalcitrant grains, watching her breasts rise and tauten, the soft pink nipples puckering at the caress of the warm, moist zephyr. He pushed her to sit on the bed and picked up his shirt, kneeling in front to her to tenderly buff around the ruched peaks with the butter-soft linen, his eyes darkening as she flinched and gave a sudden gasp.

‘Oh, a button.’

He looked at the balled shirt in his hand, its pearlised buttons gleaming amongst the folds of fabric. ‘Did it catch against you?’

She nodded.

‘Like this…?’He deliberately turned the shirt and scraped a smooth, hard button against her sensitised nipple.

‘Oh…’ She shuddered, her eyes widening, her head tipping back, and he did it again, scraping the little disc back and forth across the swollen peak until it deepened from pink to mauve, then according the same delicious punishment to her other breast.

‘Oh…they…oh, don’t,’ she gasped unconvincingly as the blood thinned in her veins, rushing into her breasts and pooling between her thighs, easing her sorrowing heart of some of its coagulated heaviness. She closed her eyes and groaned, racked by a piercing yearning.

‘They’re almost clean now,’ she heard him murmur throatily. ‘I just need to…’ and suddenly the fabric was replaced by his warm breath again, and then his mouth, licking around her areolae, suckling gently but firmly at the twin peaks.

‘Would you have nursed our baby like this?’

Her eyes flew open with shock to meet his hot gaze, smouldering at her through his thick lashes, his lips still drawing tautly on her nipple, enfolding it inside his mouth in the hot curl of his tongue.

She plunged her hand into his hair and pulled his head away. ‘How can you ask that?’

He looked at her pointed breasts, cleansed of sand but glistening with the evidence of his possession. ‘I don’t want you to be afraid to talk about it. I don’t want you to think you have to pretend it never happened. You would have been a good mother, Kate, never doubt it.’

The reminder made her feel guilty all over again. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this…’

‘But it’s making you feel better, isn’t it?’

She quivered with confusion. ‘I’m not going to have sex with you,’ she said fiercely. Men always reduced everything to sex!

‘All right…we’ll just get into bed and cuddle together—you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ he suggested persuasively, reaching over to fold back a corner of the blue silk counterpane and show her the crisp white sheet. ‘You’d never let us do that before. You’d allow the requisite few minutes for a post-coital cuddle, but as soon as there was any danger of either of us drifting off to sleep you’d be up and moving about, suggesting things to do or getting dressed to leave.’

‘I thought that was what you wanted…’ she said, bewildered and intrigued by this seductively tender alien who had apparently taken over Drake’s body.

‘Well, you were wrong. I like having you close. I wanted to make love
and
be able to fall asleep to the feel of you in my arms.’ His eyes had fallen to her filmy white lace panties, and his finger began to toy with the elastic at the top of her leg.

She clamped her legs together to halt a molten gush. What if he found sand in her panties?

‘I’m not taking them off…’ she said weakly.

His finger hooked under the fabric. ‘I think you should,’ he advised. In contrast to hers his deep voice was compellingly certain. ‘They’re a bit tight, and you want to be comfy…’ And before she could blink, or accuse him of calling her fat, they were whisking through the air.

‘All right, but you have to keep your jeans on,’ she warned, her white bottom flashing as she scrabbled hastily under the covers and peeped out at him, using the sheet to cover the beginnings of a smile.

He looked disappointed but contented himself with merely unsnapping his top button to relieve the pressure behind his zip.

He climbed into the bed facing her, snuggling tantalisingly—but not crushingly—close, his hot chest just far enough away to rub her breasts with every indrawn breath, his big hands stroking her back, his heavy thigh lying over the top of hers, the centres of their bodies pressed together, the springy curls at the base of her belly catching against the rough denim bulging tightly in his crotch.

Their heads nestled on thistledown softness, their noses almost touching at the sloping intersection of their luxury pillows.

‘This is nice, isn’t it?’ he said, one hand moving down to cup the globes of her bottom, adjusting her more securely against his lower body, and she felt his voice in the hard tips of her breasts where they fenced with his flat nipples.

‘Y-yes…’ she said uncertainly, feeling the familiar throb of excitement pulse in her veins.

The longer she lay there, the worse it got. She didn’t want him to want her only for sex, she realised restlessly, but their thriving sex life was a healthy expression of their intense mutual attraction, and, as such, was an indivisible part of her love.

As her temperature rose she could feel his skin absorb and radiate more heat until it began to get uncomfortably hot under the covers. And yet still he made no move to acknowledge or ease the growing tension in their bodies. In spite of his earlier seductiveness, Drake was going to refrain from any sexualised affection because she had insisted she wanted it that way. He was showing that he respected her wishes above his carnal desires, when what she really wanted was not restraint, but reckless proof of life.

Kate impatiently kicked off the smothering covers. ‘You can make love to me now.’

Drake reared up on his elbow. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked tensely.

She dug her nails into his arms impatiently. ‘Yes, I’m sure…Drake, I want you—I want you to make love to me here,
now
!’

He didn’t need a third invitation. Nor was there any long-drawn-out foreplay. He tossed off the covers and swivelled them sideways on the bed, tugging her hips to the edge of the mattress, sliding backwards until his feet struck the floor. Propping himself over her on one braced arm, he opened the fastening of his jeans and pushed himself deeply inside her, uttering a thick, guttural sound of satisfaction as she lifted her hips to guide him home. With a twisting jerk of his hips he seated himself even more tightly between her spread legs, the muscles in his thighs rippling under the denim as he braced his feet against the floor, bent his hungry mouth to her breasts, and began the deep, hard, thrusting rhythm that they both urgently needed, bringing them quickly to a mutual, violent convulsion of groaning ecstasy.

Twice more he racked and then wrenched her body with convulsive pleasure before turning off the lights and finishing with a long, slow, sensual loving that left them panting and weak with sweet exhaustion. Then he pulled the sheets firmly back around them, arranged her to his satisfaction…facing away from him with her bottom spooned by his hips…and tucked his arms around her, sealing her back to his smooth chest.

‘And now,’ he informed her with yawning satisfaction, ‘now we cuddle up and go to sleep together like all good lovers do!’

T
WO
weeks later, Kate tiptoed up the hall to stand outside the firmly shut door to Drake’s office, pressing a warning finger to her lips as she looked down at Prince, trailing at her heels, who looked to be winding up for an inquiring ‘wuff’.

She raised a hand to knock and dropped it again, chewing at her lip. The door shut meant that Drake wasn’t to be disturbed—they had arranged that all-important signal right from the start. If she came over and his door was shut, she went away again.

Except in dire emergencies. Which this wasn’t—well, not as Drake would class it, anyway…

‘I can hear you thinking!’

Muffled by the near soundproof door, Drake’s voice made her jump.

‘Woof!’ yelled Prince at the sound of his master’s voice, clearly letting her off the hook. Or so she thought.

‘You may as well come in, Kate.’

She cracked the door open and poked her head in, pushing Prince back with a firm hand.

‘I wasn’t going to knock,’ she told him. ‘I was going to wait. Have I wrecked your train of thought?’

He angled his head down and looked at her over the top of his narrow spectacles. She had been charmed to discover that he wore the neat, gold-rimmed reading glasses when he worked for prolonged periods at his desk. She had teased him that it made him look like a ‘proper writer’, but he had got her back by wearing them the next time they made love, and forcing her to admit that they made him look incredibly sexy.

‘Do you want the polite answer, or the truth?’

‘The polite answer, please,’ she said, pushing the door wider.

He threw down the gold-topped pen with which he had been correcting pages and took off his glasses.

‘You’re looking rather frazzled.’

‘I’m frizzled
and
frazzled,’ she said, fingering through her salt-laden locks. I don’t seem to have any water.’

‘Low tide classified as an emergency now, is it?’ he asked, but his brown eyes were amused as he rocked back in his chair, lazily stretching his arms before tucking his hands behind his head. ‘If you wait twelve hours I’m sure it’ll come back in again.’

‘I mean at the house. I went to have a shower and nothing happened. None of the taps are working, either. The rental agent said to phone a plumber, but apparently he doesn’t work weekends in Oyster Beach…unless you have too
much
water. He’ll come for a flood but not a drought. Would you mind if I used your guest shower?’

He gave her an impatient look. ‘You know you don’t have to even ask, you can shower here whenever you like—or have a soak in the spa.’ His eyes glinted. ‘I know you like a long, leisurely bathe, so that your skin is soft when you stroke on those silky body lotions.’

He was reminding her that more than once he had applied them for her, revealing a wicked talent for erotic massage…

‘Thanks,’ she said in an effort to stay focused on her errand. ‘I’ve been down on the beach all morning and I think I’ve brought half of it back with me.’

He looked approvingly at her glowing colour. ‘Aren’t you glad I persuaded Marcus to give you an extra month’s holiday?’

‘Persuaded? Blackmailed, more like!’ she laughed.

Impossible to believe now that she had initially rejected Drake’s suggestion that she spend a few more leisurely weeks at the beach, but he had been very persuasive and hadn’t hesitated to use her area of greatest vulnerability.

‘You’ve just gone through a very emotionally draining experience; you owe it to yourself to fully recover before you plunge back into the fray,’ he had lectured. ‘Didn’t the doctor say something about your stress levels helping to send your hormones all out of whack? Marcus will work you into a nervous breakdown if you’re not careful. I know he regards you highly but that doesn’t mean you should let him persuade you that you’re completely indispensable—that’s just his way of cracking the whip and making least-work for himself. Another month isn’t too much to ask when you’ve worked for him continuously for so long, and your health is at stake. I bet you’ve hardly had a day of sick leave in your whole career. He owes you a long-service sabbatical at the very least—’

‘Well, I suppose I could phone and ask…’ she said uncertainly, tempted by the thought of a few more stolen weeks alone with her lover, and yet at the same time mistrustful of her current state of blissful irresponsibility. This was her healing time and she and Drake were consciously living it from moment to moment, taking each day as it came and carefully putting aside any reference to the future.

‘Don’t ask him,
tell
him!’ And when she baulked at that he shrugged and seemed to give up.

But when she finally borrowed Drake’s phone to make the toll-call, she found Marcus strangely affable, chuckling fatly in her ear and reassuring her that her job would be waiting for her however long she decided to stay away, that she was worth her weight in gold and that any research she wanted to do for a private client while she was away was okey-dokey with him.

‘You went behind my back!’ Kate confronted Drake as soon as she’d hung up the phone, trying hard to be angry.

‘It was for your own good. Someone had to play hard-ball on your behalf.’

‘How would you like it if I negotiated one of your contracts without telling you?’ she demanded.

‘Be my guest, sweetheart, I hate all that hoopla,’ he drawled, taking the wind out of her sails. ‘I could fire my agent and save myself twenty per cent!’

The next tussle between them was that Drake had decided it was silly for her to continue to pay her holiday rental when she was sleeping nearly every night in his bed. ‘Since you’re spending so much time over here you may as well stay for the next few weeks,’ he tossed out casually. ‘With the high season coming, I think you’ll find you won’t be able to renew your rental for another month, anyway.’

‘I think it’s better if I keep my own space. If I can’t, and there isn’t another rental somewhere nearby, I’ll just go home,’ said Kate with firm finality, her heart in her mouth as she rejected his offhand invitation. But she wasn’t going to make any more life-changing decisions based on foolish assumptions. She knew all too well how dangerous wishful thinking could be, and Drake’s offer had been only for her to stay, not to move in with him. There was a subtle, but enormous difference, particularly when the phrase was used by a man whose business was subtle shades of meaning.

‘Besides, I know how vital your privacy is to you when you’re working,’ she reminded him. ‘So, thanks for the offer, but it’s better this way for both of us.’

Fortunately, when she contacted the rental agent, he shuffled his files and came across a note about the unexpected cancellation of his next booking, so to her relief she and Koshka were able to settle in for the duration.

‘Why don’t I come and see what the problem is with your water,’ he said now, switching off his computer monitor and lunging out of his chair.

‘But your door was shut,’ she said guiltily, following him downstairs with Prince.

‘And it would have stayed shut if I hadn’t been stuck in a rut. A bit of he-man stuff on the side might kick something loose,’ he said, fetching a few tools from his garage and stuffing them into his jeans pockets.

‘Is it going badly, then?’ she said sympathetically.

He gave her a slightly defensive sidelong look. ‘No, actually, in general it’s going rather well.’

Which was more than could be said for her shower.

‘Do you know anything about plumbing?’ she asked dubiously as she watched him tinker and curse at the shower head.

He bristled as if she had challenged his manhood. ‘I helped build irrigation systems in the desert—what do you think?’

She threw up her hands in surrender. ‘Just asking. Er…I’ll leave you to it, then,’ she said, hurriedly backing out of the bathroom as he pinched the skin between thumb and forefinger in the wrench and swore even more viciously.

Some time later he sought her out in the lounge, where she was reading with Koshka dozing on her lap.

‘It’s no use. You’re not going to have water any time soon. Your pump has packed up.’

‘What pump?’ asked Kate, depositing the sleeping cat on the couch.

‘You’re on bore-water here. The pump sucks it out of the ground and then pumps it from a tank through to your pipes. It may be a major job to fix it. Even if the plumber gets onto it right straight away he’ll probably have to wait for parts.’

‘Oh, so what do you think I should do?’

‘There’s nothing you can do at the moment. You obviously can’t stay here without water. Unless you fancy ferrying a bucket from next door every time you want to flush your toilet,’ he added sarcastically as he watched her open her mouth to protest.

Within an hour he had her packed up and installed in the large, ground-floor bedroom at the front of his house, looking on with folded arms as she hung her clothes in the big walk-in closet.

‘This is only temporary—until the pump is fixed,’ said Kate, turning to place a stack of her folded underwear into the chest of drawers and catching the quiet look of satisfaction on his face.

‘Of course.’

She looked at him sharply and he responded with a smile of devilish smugness. ‘Well, I guess I’ll be getting back to work. You know where everything is by now. Make yourself at home…’

She knew where the smugness came from when she met the laconic plumber who after several postponements was frustratingly vague on an estimate of exactly when she could expect to have running water again, and over a week later she was still totting up the amount of the refund that she would be owed by the landlord.

And loving living with Drake.

At first she was restless and edgy and very conscious of the need not to encroach, but that feeling eased when he casually asked if she would mind doing a little research for him and she plunged eagerly into the task of combing his extensive library and using his extra laptop to pull down information from the internet on the geopolitical history of the Balkans. He was first amused by her enthusiasm, and then taken aback at the speed at which she synthesised the facts.

‘This is duck-to-water stuff for you, isn’t it?’ he murmured when he sat down to lunch to find yet another concise fact-sheet sitting by his plate. ‘This’ll save me a hell of a lot of reading. I’m sorry if I’ve turned this into a bit of a busman’s holiday for you.’

‘I’m happy to sing for my supper,’ she told him readily.

His brown eyes glowed. ‘You do that already, in much more exciting ways.’

Colour touched her cheekbones. ‘I’m glad you like my cooking,’ she said primly, deliberately reading an innocent meaning into his provocative words. ‘Perhaps I should be charging
you
—Marcus did suggest I might take on a private commission.’

‘Maybe that’s because I hinted to him that I could benefit from your expertise,’ he admitted with laughter in his eyes. ‘He practically fell over himself at the thought he might get a book out of me a second sooner. And if you want to hear me sing, sweetheart, you only have to touch me the way you did last night…’

She loved the nights even more than the days, and not just for the intimate dinners and excitement of his love-making, but for what came afterwards, when they would lie in each other’s arms in the dark, talking.

That was when he gradually expanded on the details of his life with his mother, and the jealous possessiveness that had grown like a cancer, distorting her love into the sick obsession that destroyed her life, turning him from a son into a whipping boy for the man who bred him, and then into an enemy as he had tried to fight against her long slide into drug-addiction.

It was in the still of the night that Kate’s unspoken love and serene acceptance were rewarded by the secrets of his guarded heart. He seemed to find it easier to talk in the dark and she certainly found it easier to listen.

One evening he came back from a trip to the store with a package under his arm.

‘It’s from Marcus,’ he said, sitting on a stool at the breakfast bar to slit the large envelope and extract a note and a smaller, striped airmail envelope.

Kate froze in the act of slicing vegetables for dinner. ‘I thought he didn’t know where you lived?’

‘He does now—at least he knows about the post box at the store,’ he murmured, studying the writing on the front and the back of the envelope.

‘Well, he didn’t find out about it from me,’ she said quickly.

‘No, from me.’ He glanced up and smiled ruefully at her expression. ‘Part of our trade-off for your extra month: satisfying his curiosity and making myself a little less inaccessible.’

Kate was stunned. ‘I thought all the arm-twisting was the other way around. And so you just
told
him?’ she said, her heart swelling. ‘For me?’

He shrugged as if he had dropped a damp squib rather than a bombshell. ‘It was inevitable I’d tell him soon, anyway. I’m thinking of getting off the merry-go-round and moving down here permanently. Now that I have a solid backlist and financial security for life, I can concentrate more on the writing and scale back on the tours and the high-profile personal publicity.’