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‘Tell me you love me,’ he demanded thickly against her breast as he slid to his knees in front of her.
‘I love you... I love you... I... Oh, Alex, Alex,’ Beth gasped, torn between shock and fierce arousal as he pulled off her skirt and slid his hands up under her briefs to cup the rounded shape of her buttocks whilst his tongue-tip rimmed her navel. She knew what would happen next, what she wanted to happen next. Just thinking about how it had felt to have his breath, his mouth, his tongue against that part of her body made her shudder from head to foot in explosive yearning.
They made love quickly and fiercely, like two starving people attacking a banquet, their appetites too hungry to be easily sated and yet their stomachs too shrunken by deprivation for the endurance required to eat their leisurely fill.
All they could manage was a taste here, a mouthful there, a gulp of love’s rich, raw wine before they were both crying out in their need for completion. It came swiftly, hotly, rawly almost, Beth acknowledged as she lay panting and light-headed in Alex’s arms.
Later, when he carried her to bed, she protested, ‘I can’t...I’ve got to go home. It’s late—the shop...’
‘You can. I am now your home. The shop can wait...we can’t...’
This time they did their personal sensual banquet full justice, eating appreciatively of every course, true connoisseurs of what was set before them.
‘What do you suppose is in the parcel?’ Beth asked Alex drowsily just before she finally fell asleep in his arms.
‘We shall have to wait and see. Remember we can’t open them until I have mine.’
‘Mmm... Alex, have I told you how much I love you?’
‘Many times,’ Alex assured her gently, knowing just why she asked.
‘I never really loved Julian Cox, you know,’ Beth assured him. ‘It was just... I wanted to be in love with him...I wanted to believe him...’
‘Forget him. He doesn’t matter to us,’ Alex told her.
Beth gave a soft sigh of contented pleasure. She loved it that Alex felt so secure with her, that he could accept her honest admission that she had made a mistake.
‘I always knew you were plotting to make me have your aunt’s glass,’ she teased him lovingly as she reached out to trace the shape of his mouth with her fingertip.
As he nipped and nibbled at her probing finger Alex replied. ‘No, you’re wrong,’ he denied, and then he said softly, ‘What I’ve been plotting ever since I first saw you is to get you so that I can do this...’
As he rolled her over on top of him Beth protested, torn between excitement and laughter.
‘Alex, we can’t...not again...’
‘Oh, yes, we can,’ he assured her. ‘Oh, yes, we can!’
EPILOGUE
‘WELL, SHALL WE open them, then?’ Alex asked Beth provocatively.
It was Christmas Eve and they were in Alex’s apartment. They were due to spend Christmas Day with Alex’s parents and Boxing Day with her own. Tonight, though, they were spending on their own. On her ring finger was the flawlessly cut diamond Alex had just given her. They had chosen it together the previous week and now, as she reached out her hands towards him to take the mysterious parcel his aunt had left with her, it caught the light, flooding the space around them with prisms of colour.
They were going to get married in the spring, here in England, and th
en they were going to fly to Prague for a very special family celebration which would be held at the castle.
‘Another family tradition?’ Beth had teased Alex when he had first mentioned it to her.
‘Not exactly, but I know it would mean a lot to the family...’
‘And to me,’ Beth had told him seriously, her eyes full of love.
Now, as they both unwrapped their parcels, she couldn’t help reflecting how very, very lucky she was. It chilled her blood to think how easily she might not have met Alex at all.
Inside the wrapping paper was a cardboard box. Quickly she unfastened it and reached inside, and then waited. Alex was watching her, his own box still unopened.
‘We have to open them together,’ she reminded him sternly, and then, as she saw his face, she accused him, ‘You know what it is, don’t you?’
