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'Make love to me.' The husky ease with which she spoke the words didn't surprise her. They were right, so right, and should have been said so very much sooner. She caught the sound of his sharply indrawn breath and her soul shook with the wonder of this moment, with the simple knowledge of her love for him, with what she read in his eyes as he took the hands she held out to him, folding them inwards against the wall of his chest.
'Are you sure?' His voice was throaty, urgency contained. 'Quite sure?'
And she nodded, too full of love for him to speak, too near to tears, or laughter, because she'd been such a blind fool these last months. She lifted her face to him, and he caught his breath, drawing her closer so that their bodies touched, just; magic was born as after one long and incredibly tense moment their bodies joined, and the softness of her melted into the demanding hardness of him, hands and lips seeking, finding, consuming.
And there on the shore, with the pulse of the sea melding into the rhythm of the blood in their veins, he made love to her with subtlety, with a tender poignancy that made her want to cry.
She loved him so.
CHAPTER FIVE
'You were leaving without saying goodbye!' Cleo's voice was a husky accusation as she stood in the breakfast- room doorway, fastening the belt of her fine voile robe around her narrow waist. And Jude looked up from the breakfast-table, his smile lazy, his azure eyes incredibly sexy.
'Not so. I would have come to wake you before I left.' He put his morning paper aside. 'Shall I ring for Meg to bring your breakfast through?'
'No, thanks.' Cleo pushed a hand through her rumpled silvery hair and sat opposite, helping herself to a morsel of crisp bacon from his plate, eating it from her fingers. She didn't want anyone to intrude, not even Meg, who was one of the most unobtrusive people she knew; she wanted Jude to herself.
Never again could she affect to be cool and blase towards this husband of hers. She loved him so much.
Her only regret was that she couldn't tell him so. He had married her because it was convenient to do so, no other reason. That she had proved to be as sexually eager as he, would, to his logical masculine mind have proved a bonus. To admit her love, would embarrass him. He wouldn't want the responsibility of it.
He was looking good, very good, his dark hair, still damp from the shower he must have taken earlier, clinging to his skull, his deep tan contrasting dramatically with the stark whiteness of his shirt. Her fingers ached to touch him. Every morning when she had wakened from luxurious sleep she had reached out for him and he had woken, turning to her, nuzzling her hair and then lazily, languorously, they had made love.
Not this morning, though. It was their first back in London because he'd said, 'What the hell!' contacted Mescal Slade and informed Dawn Goodall that they were taking another week, staying on the island. And this morning she had reached for him and he hadn't been there. Just an empty space between cool sheets, and she'd panicked, remembering he'd said he'd be going to the City today.
Stumbling out of bed, she'd grabbed at her robe, struggling into it as she'd run down the stairs, not wanting him to leave before she'd had a chance to see him, simply see him.
Now, relaxed again because she was with him, she reached for his coffee-cup, cradling it in both hands, sipping while he finished his bacon and eggs, and he asked, 'What are you going to do with yourself today?'
Cleo hunched one shoulder, her mouth curving in a warm, slow smile. 'Go shopping?' she hazarded. For some reason Jude had suggested she take a further week off. She would have preferred to be behind her desk again, close to him, working with him. But he had insisted and she wasn't up to arguing with him about it, about anything, not in this mood of euphoria she wasn't. A dark eyebrow lifted and she elaborated, 'I might get a new dress.'
She felt in the mood for celebrating, and buying something exciting would serve. That her ever- deepening love for him was just cause for celebrating she couldn't explain, not yet, so she tacked on, 'We're entertaining the Blairs on Thursday, so I need to pull out all the stops!'
She expected him to comment on the planned dinner party. Sir Geoffrey Blair was chairman of Blair and Dowd Developments, a company that was climbing fast and far, and Jude had been angling for their account. Thursday night could well clinch it. But he growled, leaning over the table to take his coffee-cup from her hands, 'Do you intend to consume all my breakfast, woman?* However, the quirk of his mouth belied the black bar of his lowered brows, and he drank the remains, then refilled the cup, took a mouthful then put the steaming cup back between her hands. 'Henpecked already,' he grinned and she nodded sagely, as if she quite agreed, although she knew that henpecked was the last thing this man would ever be. But their developing relationship admitted this type of gentle teasing and she welcomed it, as she welcomed everything about him.
'Do you know how irresistible you
look in that thing?' Lazy eyes swept her, the soft movement of his mouth adding erotic emphasis to the drift of his eyes as they roamed from the spun silver disorder of her hair, her flushed cheeks, the slope of her shoulders, to the swelling roundness of her breasts.
The robe she had pulled on was meant to be worn over a matching nightdress. Worn over nothing at all, its pink transparency was little more than a blush, and Cleo's pulses quickened as the sensual curve of his mouth became more pronounced, his voice a growly inspiration as he whispered,
'Irresistible enough to take you back to bed and let Mescal Slade look after itself.'
For a silent, timeless moment their eyes held, the intimacy almost shocking, and she thought he might just do that, but then she saw the change, the assumption of briskness that told her he had moved away from her, on to a separate plane entirely, and she knew—as if she could ever have doubted it—that work would always take first place for him.
She reluctantly respected him for that, she decided, watching as he shot a glance at his watch. The most she could hope for was that in time she would become as necessary to him as he was to her.
And there was a chance of that, she knew there was. The knowledge was like a small, bright flame inside her, warming her, allowing her to see more clearly ahead. He , liked and respected her and he took pleasure in her body, and that was as good a basis as any to build on. And she would build on it, brick by patient brick, be as much to him as he would allow, hide the depth of her own emotional involvement, her total commitment, until he was ready to accept it.
He stood up, reaching for the light grey suit jacket which had been hanging over the back of his chair, shrugging into it, his movements, as ever, sheer male elegance. And Cleo got to her feet, too, longing to go to him* to slip her arms beneath the beautifully tailored jacket and feel the warmth of muscle, sinew and bone through the crisp whiteness of his shirt.
But she wouldn't do that, of course. She couldn't give herself that luxury.
Their marriage was a compartmented thing and his mind was now geared to the working day ahead; he wouldn't welcome an untimely display of her physical need of him. It might annoy him, and it would certainly reveal the depth of her emotional involvement.
He picked up his briefcase and she lifted her face to receive his goodbye kiss, an unsatisfying brush of his lips over hers, and she expected that to be that, but he stood for a moment, smiling down at her, making her heart tumble about beneath her ribs.
The character lines on either side of his mouth indented wryly as he held her eyes, and it was all Cleo could do to prevent herself from reaching up and fastening her lips over the superbly crafted lines of his mouth. But she knew she had to be circumspect if this unusual but already beautiful marriage of theirs was to work out, to live and grow. Their relationship was too new, too delicately balanced as yet, to give him one inkling of the way she really felt.
