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‘You’ve even tried to bribe me, to buy me off so that no one would ever know that you and I…But you didn’t need to do that…I would never have told anyone…I suppose you thought that just because you’d…because we’d been lovers…that I’d expect…But I’m not that naive…I do know some things. And I suppose you’re down here working now because you didn’t want me to think…because you don’t want me to think…’ She started to correct herself and then stopped as Jake strode out from behind his desk, his face white and an expression in his eyes which…
Nervously Lucianna gulped and swallowed, protesting feebly as he reached her and took hold of her, ‘Jake…’
‘What do you mean, you love me?’ she heard him demanding rawly.
‘What do you mean what do I mean?’ Lucianna countered tremulously. ‘I suppose you don’t want me to say it but it’s the truth and I’m not going…I love you, Jake, and I’m sorry if you don’t want me to…’
‘You’re sorry? Oh, my God,’ he muttered piously under his breath. ‘Lucianna, I—’ He stopped and took a deep breath, his skin drawn tight across the bones of his face as he shook his head and told her abruptly, ‘Come with me…’
Docilely, Lucianna followed him as he guided her out of his study and towards the stairs, walking so fast that she had trouble keeping up with him.
Halfway up the stairs he turned round to wait for her, and as she reached him Lucianna heard him saying helplessly, ‘Oh, Luce…Luce…Luce…’ An
d then she was in his arms and he was kissing her as fiercely as though they hadn’t kissed in years, decades, centuries, as though they hadn’t kissed for a lifetime. And in between his kisses he was telling her that he loved her, that he had always loved her and that he always would love her.
Somewhere along the line Lucianna realised that she and rationality had parted company, but that no longer seemed to matter, not when she had Jake’s kisses, Jake’s hands, Jake’s body…
‘Oh, you can do it here on the stairs—you were right,’ she managed to gasp as her body responded to the shuddering thrust of Jake’s within her.
‘The stairs, the kitchen, the table, the floor…anywhere…anywhere you like, anywhere you want…’ Jake moaned sensually to her as he carried her with him to a climax that was a fierce starburst of sensation, the response of her womanhood to his manhood.
‘Don’t you ever, ever again tell me that I don’t love you,’ Jake told her thickly ten minutes later as he wrapped her in his arms and carried her back to bed and joined her there, holding her close to his heart as he whispered the words to her.
‘But I thought you didn’t…you said…’ Lucianna began, and then fell silent as he kissed her gently.
He told her softly, ‘I’ve loved you from the day I was old enough to know what love was—when you were too young to even begin to be burdened with such feelings. I’ve loved you and I’ve hated myself for it, and sometimes, I admit, I’ve come close to hating you for it as well.’
Lucianna sat up in bed, her eyes sparking indignantly. ‘You’ve loved me all that time and you’ve never said anything, never shown me…told me…? You let me think you didn’t care, you didn’t want me, even made me feel you were trying to pay me to stay out of your life by coming up with that contract to keep the bank at bay…’
As she paused to take a deep breath, Jake interrupted firmly, ‘Now hang on; let’s take one thing at a time. For a start, when I first realised how I felt about you, you were way, way too young for me to tell you, and if I had…well, legally you might have been able to enter into an adult sexual relationship with me but mentally, emotionally, and in just about every way I could think of, to persuade you to give yourself to me then, to commit yourself to me, would have been as much a crime against you as it would have been against my love.
‘I didn’t say anything, Luce, quite simply because I loved you enough not to…Now what are those for?’ he chided her gently as he saw the quick, emotional tears filling her eyes.
‘Oh, Jake, I’ve been so wrong about you; all those years, all those times when you seemed so aloof and uncaring, when I…’
She bit her lip and stopped, and Jake said rawly, ‘When you…? Go on. What were you going to say? Or can I guess? All those times when you treated me as though you loathed the very sight of me?’
‘Is that why you decided to…to help me learn how to become a woman?’ Lucianna asked him tentatively.
His reply surprised her.
‘No,’ he told her firmly. ‘No, it wasn’t…and, whilst we’re on the subject, I did not help you learn how to become a woman, you already were a woman…very much a woman…the woman I loved,’ he insisted sternly. ‘And if other men—another man—didn’t have the maturity or intelligence to appreciate that fact then I was damned if I was going to point it out for him.
‘No.’ He leaned forward, cupping her face, kissing her lingeringly on the mouth and murmuring appreciatively, his hand starting to move towards her breast, until, a little reluctantly, Lucianna reminded him that he hadn’t finished his explanation.
‘No, I haven’t, have I?’ he agreed, apparently unable to resist the temptation to drop a teasing ring of kisses around her now quivering nipple before tugging the duvet back around her and telling her, ‘And with you looking like that I doubt that I’m ever going to. All right, all right. Now, where was I? Oh, yes. The main reason I decided to pick up what my common sense told me was a challenge I shouldn’t go within a million miles of accepting was because of you—for you…
‘I hated to see the way you were hurting so badly,’ he told her tenderly, ‘and I hated as well to see how little others valued you when I knew that if they’d only take the time, look a little closer…Love—real love—has nothing to do with physical attractiveness—at least not for me. It goes deeper, much, much deeper than that. After all, a person’s physical appearance is only their outer shell and it’s the inner personality, the inner person that really counts.
‘No, I wanted to help you to discover the real power of your womanhood, of yourself, for your own sake. If the only gift I could ever allow myself to give you was the gift of your own self-confidence, your belief in yourself as a woman, the sense of self-worth that those idiotic brothers of yours should have—’
He paused and broke off, shaking his head. ‘There were so many times when you were growing up when—’
‘They didn’t mean to hurt me,’ Lucianna acknowledged ruefully. ‘I was just too sensitive…too aware, perhaps, of the way boys of a certain age talked about and reacted to certain things about a girl.’
‘You hid away your femininity because you were afraid of the consequences of it,’ Jake told her gently. ‘I could see that but—’
‘If you loved me so much then why did you leave me…reject me after…when…the night…?’
