AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Do I get invited in for a nightcap?’
Her eyes flew to his face. Had he guessed how reluctant she was for the evening to end? As she met the look he turned on her face she knew that he had.
There was something subtly exciting about knowing that beneath the surface conventionality of the trite remark ran a deep and dangerously powerful current of desire, something exhilarating and faintly wicked in playing this game, to respond casually to his teasing comment and invite him in, as though almost bored by his suggestion.
The house was in darkness and as he followed her into the hall while she fumbled for the light switch she was intensely aware of him standing behind her. Her fingers reached for the switch, her mind tormenting her with vivid mental images of Saul reaching out towards her, turning her, enfolding her in his arms.
‘Having trouble?’
The calm casualness of his question was shatteringly down to earth. As his hand reached unnerringly for the switch, by-passing hers to do so, she wondered if she was suffering from some sort of self-delusion. There was nothing remotely lover-like in his voice now, or in the way he was looking at her.
At least there hadn’t been. She tried to swallow as she saw the look in his eyes and found that she couldn’t.
‘Lucy…’
Her name was a tormented cry of wanting breathed against her lips, his mouth smothering any verbal response she might have made. One of them was shaking violently—or was it both of them?—the hot urgency of their kiss overwhelmingly intimate. It got harder and harder for her to breathe, but to tear her mouth from Saul’s was to die. Her body leaned on the strength of his, warmed and supported by it, frustrated by the barrier of their clothes. His mouth released hers, his tongue tip touching her full lips.
‘Coming inside with you was an idiotic idea,’ Saul whispered against her mouth. ‘I should have known what would happen.’
His words made her go cold with rejection.
‘You were the one who…’
‘I know… I know…’ The softness of his voice soothed her defensive protest. ‘I want you like hell, Lucy,’ he told her rawly, ‘And I know damn well that when I leave here I’ll spend the rest of the night lying awake wishing you were with me, but we’ve got to take it slowly before we become completely blinded by physical desire. I want to know you as a person as well as a woman. Does that make any sense to you?’
It made beautiful sense, humbling and disconcerting her, making her throat close up on a wave of emotional vulnerability.
‘I want more from you than sex,’ he added huskily, ‘Much, much more.’
He leaned forward, his mouth gently brushing first her eyes and then her mouth, and then he released her. Her eyes opened reluctantly.
‘Now, how about that nightcap, and while we’re drinking it we can reminisce about old times, and then, when I have drunk the cup of coffee you’re going to make me, I shall get up and say good night and go home to my lonely bed!’
And that’s the way it was. And later on, sleepless and too wound up emotionally and physically to care, Lucy was torn between the happiness of knowing that Saul wanted more for them than a relationship based only on sex, and an aching disappointment that his self-control was so resolute—far more resolute than her own, she acknowledged, feeling the heat beat up through her body once more as she re-lived his good-night kiss.
There had been a moment then when she had sensed that it would take very little to push him over the edge, to incite him to abandon caution.
His hand had touched her breast, unerringly finding its taut peak, and she had sighed her pleasure against his mouth, feeling in the fierce clench of his muscles and the slow, reluctant way he drew away from her, how difficult it was for him.
If she had refused to let him go they would have been lovers by now, but Saul was right; their relationship, their feelings and trust of one another were too new for them to plunge into the heady waters of passion together yet. Tonight they would be alone again.
She fell asleep on that thought, clutching it to her while her features curved into an expression of anticipatory bliss.
∗ ∗ ∗
Following her discussions with her editor, Lucy had decided to make use of her unexpected day of freedom from looking after the children working on her second novel.
After a skimpy breakfast of coffee and toast, all she could manage in her present highly emotional state, she collected her notebooks and portable typewriter and made her way to the main house.
Mrs Isaacs greeted her cheerfully as she went in the back way. ‘Mr Saul told me to expect you,’ she announced. ‘Said you would be working in the library, but that I was to make sure I dragged you away for some lunch. He’s had to go out himself, but he said to tell you he’d be back at twelve.’
