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‘The way we feel about one another is bound to show,’ Blake pointed out. ‘Others will see it and you know what they’re going to say, don’t you?’
‘That you’re sleeping with the hired help?’ Philippa hazarded. She gave a small shrug. ‘Other people’s words and opinions can’t hurt me any more, Blake, but if you’re concerned that that kind of gossip might affect your career…’
He shook his head. ‘No. But your family won’t like it. Your parents, your brother Robert…’
‘Tough. Their likes and dislikes are their own problem, not mine,’ Philippa told him squarely. ‘When you and I marry, become partners, I want us to become equal partners; I want to show my sons and Anya, by our example, all the good ways in which a man and a woman can relate to one another. I want Anya to grow up with the self-respect and the self-confidence that I never had. I want her not just to believe it but to accept without question that a woman has the right sometimes to be selfish about her own needs, to put herself first, and that those who genuinely love her will accept her as she is; that in a good relationship both partners make sacrifices for one another sometimes and, equally, both partners put themselves first sometimes. I want my sons to grow up with a respect and admiration for my sex… I want our children, if we should have any…’
She stopped when she saw his face…
‘What is it—don’t you want children?’ she asked him hesitantly.
‘Not want them… your children… our children…? Oh, my God, Philippa…’
As he reached for her and then withdrew she leaned forward and told him huskily, ‘As a teenager I wasted so many hours fantasising about what it would be like if you and I were lovers. I don’t want to waste any more hours fantasising, Blake. I want to know now…’
After he had finished kissing her, he warned her ruefully, ‘I’m only a man, you know… Those teenage fantasies… I’m not sure I’m going to be able to live up to them…’
The uncertainty, the vulnerability, the love in his voice made her heart and her body ache with answering emotion. How well she knew what it was like to feel that vulnerability.
She cupped his face in her hands and looked up into his eyes.
‘I am,’ she told him softly, and suddenly, gloriously, unequivocally and irrevocably, she knew she was.
* * *
‘Mmm—what time is it?’ Sleepily Blake lifted his arm from around Philippa’s waist to look at his watch. ‘I suppose I’d better make a move and get back to my own bed before the children wake up and find me here with you.’
‘Mmm,’ Philippa acknowledged, but instead of moving away from him she curled herself more securely round him, her mouth lifting in a smile he couldn’t see as he gave a soft groan and his hand cupped and stroked her breast.
It felt so right being here with him like this, so natural. Last night, after they had made love, she had told him about Joel, banishing the look she had seen in his eyes with a tiny shake of her head.
‘I th
ought I might fall in love with him, but in reality both of us were looking for someone to displace our individual pain.’ Her face had clouded a little. ‘I hope he and his wife resolve their problems.’
She had enjoyed making love with Joel, discovering her sexuality, feeling desired and wanted, but from the first moment that Blake touched her she had known she need have no fear that Joel’s ghost would ever come between them in any sexual sense.
It wasn’t a matter of degree of experience or expertise, it was much simpler than that—and much, much more complex as well.
It was the difference between knowing that Joel was not her man and that Blake was. A ‘coming home’ that both heightened her sexuality and her responsiveness to him and deepened it, so that the emotional rapport between them was as intense as the sexual one.
‘Don’t go yet,’ she whispered to Blake as she removed his hand from her breast and slowly started to lick and then suck his fingers.
It was surprising how sexually inventive and instinctively knowing you could be once you had the confidence of being certain you were wanted, desired… loved… your feelings and needs reciprocated.
‘You do understand why I can’t marry you yet, don’t you?’ she asked Blake gravely just before he pulled on his clothes to go to his own room.
‘I understand, yes,’ he agreed. ‘But that still doesn’t stop me from wishing you’d change your mind.’
‘No,’ Philippa told him firmly.
‘No,’ he agreed ruefully, ‘but you can’t blame me for trying, especially not now.’
From her bed Philippa smiled at him.
‘I love you,’ she told him.
In the bedroom next to her, Anya coughed sleepily. ‘We aren’t going to be able to keep this a secret for long, you know,’ Blake warned her.
