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The fear she had experienced during the day seemed to have released her from normal convention and restraints. Husky moans breathed against the tanned column of his throat as her lips explored its warm contours only incited James to increase his subtle torture of her aching body. Her towel was tugged firmly away, her breath catching in her throat as James bent his head to stroke softly over the aroused pink tips of her breasts, with lips that teased and tormented before giving an exquisite pleasure that tied her stomach muscles in knots and sent a wild desire burning along her veins, he
r fingernails scoring the smooth flesh of his back as her body responded to his touch.
When it came to lovemaking, James was a master of the art, Tara acknowledged hazily, as he caressed the slender length of her thighs, inciting her to writhe wantonly against him, her fingers trembling as they followed the downward path of dark body hair to the belt fastened snugly above his hips. In James’s face, Tara could see the desire she knew must be in her own. As he reached for his belt, he muttered something, a tide of darkly red colour running up under his skin as he demanded hoarsely, ‘You do it for me,’ his hand guiding hers to the metal buckle.
Twenty-four hours ago she could never have imagined herself in such a situation, and the girl she had once been would have shied away from such a request. But she was not a girl any more, she was a woman, and while James had been her only lover the instinct she had been taught to subdue as a teenager now came to the fore, guiding her now. She heard James’s stifled gasp of pleasure and felt the shudder that ran through his body when her fingertips brushed the vulnerable flesh of his stomach, with a tiny thrill of pleasure, bending her head to place light kisses where her fingers had touched, glorying in his unmistakable response, although she wasn’t given long to exult in her brief ascendancy.
With a swiftness that left her breathless she was jerked against the pulsating male body, her mouth captured and subjected to the burning pressure of male lips that seemed determined to imprint their texture and desire against hers in a way that she could never forget, the hardened thrust of James’s body as he parted her thighs and slid between them driving every sensation but the need for his possession completely from her mind.
The silken brush of flesh against flesh was unbearably arousing. Her stomach clenched instinctively, her body aching for the pleasure it knew instinctively James would give. They kissed and clung, stroking feverishly, feeding the furnace of desire they were both feeling. James’s control was the greater. Feeling she could stand it no more, Tara pressed herself wantonly against him, murmuring her need against his mouth, her fingers twining in the silky darkness of his hair. They were wrenched rudely away, and icy shivers’ coursed through her body as the mantle of passion dropped from James like a borrowed cloak.
Cupping her face between his hands so that she was forced to meet the scorn in his eyes, he glanced slowly along the slender paleness of her body. By the time his gaze returned to her face, it was awash with colour.
‘Now,’ he said softly, no vestige of passion or desire left, ‘now tell me again how it was between us. Tell me the way you told the man you married. Tell me that you never really wanted me.’
CHAPTER TEN
THANK goodness, even now she was not sure how she had managed to pack it in, Tara reflected, studying the bulging boot to the car. A quick glance over her shoulder assured her that the twins were playing happily in the garden. Since the day they had run away she had to fight against a tendency to be too over-protective with them.
She had been too keyed up and anxious that morning at James’s house to talk to them, but afterwards when they were all home she had spoken to them both carefully, warning them of some of the risks they had run and reassuring them that the loss of her teapot meant nothing.
Mrs Hammond had been all sympathy. She had brought Tara breakfast in bed, telling her a brief anecdote about her own daughter. ‘And it’s always the silliest little things that lead to upsets,’ she told Tara, plainly aware of the accident to the teapot.
There had been the ordeal of thanking James for his care of the twins to endure, her eyes never moving from the third button of his shirt, her whole body tensed in shame and self-loathing as she tried to blot out memories of the previous night.
‘I suppose it’s no good my warning you that the twins will never accept Saunders as their father?’ was all James said when he had listened to her stumbling speech.
‘Who says they’re going to be asked to?’ Tara fired back, misery giving way to choking anger. ‘The twins have a father,’ she reminded him, ‘and my relationship with Chas is purely my affair.’
‘So you don’t intend to marry him?’
‘Shocked?’ The taunt slipped off her tongue. ‘How very hypocritical of you! At least Chas and I are free to enter into a relationship with one another.’
‘You’ve changed, Tara,’ came the acid response. ‘The Tara I knew would never have settled for anything second-rate—or is it simply that your ability to love completely died with your husband?’ he demanded with a harshness that shocked her.
Tara laughed mirthlessly. How close he was to the truth, but not in the way he imagined.
‘Well?’ he probed bitingly.
‘When I lost the twins’ father I lost almost everything worth having in life,’ Tara told him truthfully. ‘Now, can I go?’
* * *
‘Is it time yet?’
Simon was standing on one leg surveying the car hopefully. Both he and Mandy had been thrilled when Tara told them they were going away on holiday. Too young yet to draw comparisons between the holiday they were having and those enjoyed by their schoolmates, they had talked of nothing else for the last three weeks, and Tara had encouraged them, hoping that in their excitement they could all forget the trauma of the afternoon they had run away. Even now she could not come to terms with the pain of it—they had run away to James! She had explained to them both that Chas was her employer and friend, but nothing more, and there had been a noticeable improvement in Mandy’s manner towards him ever since. In fact the only cloud on the little girl’s horizon was the absence of her beloved ‘Uncle James’. On several occasions she had begged Tara to telephone him, worried because he had not been round to see them, and Tara had explained as gently as she could that James had his own life to live. But now they were off to Dartmoor for a fortnight, and Tara was determined that nothing was going to spoil what amounted to the first proper holiday she and the twins had ever had.
The drive down to the cottage was relatively uneventful. They stopped to eat the packed lunch Tara had prepared, just off the motorway, before resuming their journey, and it was just gone six when at last they turned on to the rutted track leading to the cottage.
It was just as Tara had visualised, one of a pair crouched beneath overhanging eaves, its grey stone walls grizzled with age and smothered in pale cream roses.
A smiling, plump woman in her thirties emerged from the adjoining cottage as Tara followed the twins out of the car.
‘Hi,’ she greeted them, ‘I’m Margaret Burton, your new temporary neighbour. Fancy a cup of tea, or would you prefer to be left alone to settle in?’
Seeing that the twins were already eyeing the large and friendly-looking mongrel dog that had followed Margaret out of her “cottage with interest, Tara accepted.
Over tea she learned that the Burtons had been coming to Dartmoor for several years.
