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He saw her indecision. Gently kissed away her fear. ‘Trust me, Sophie.’
As her head tried to comprehend the meaning and ramifications of that statement, her wanton, wayward body acted on impulse. Before she could stop it, she was nodding. Pulling his head down for another poignant, heart-rending, indulgent kiss and opening her body so his could fill it.
Which he did with aching slowness, and as he began to move and before she lost her wits all over again, his gaze locked with hers and her soul seemed to meld with his, she realised that this wasn’t just a carnal joining of their bodies. A coupling driven by loneliness and desire or the scratching of a mutual itch. Or even a moment of reckless madness.
This was more significant.
This shifted all the parameters.
This—heaven help her—was making love.
Rafe awoke with an arm full of woman and his heart full to bursting. Sophie being Sophie, she had tried to creep away in the night as he dozed, and he had tugged her back and cuddled her close until she fell asleep for a change. That she was still asleep filled him with joy. That apart from the tangled sheet gathered at her hips and his arms around her waist she was naked and bathed in daylight for the first time filled him with instant lust.
She was on her back. One arm thrown over her head. Full breasts bare and tempting. Her dark hair was a tousled riot across his pillow. Because he could not help himself, he kissed her lips and she sighed in response before she kissed him sleepily back.
‘Good morning.’
Her tremulous smile was a little shy and awkward at the new intimacy of the morning, and she pulled the sheet up to cover her nudity as best she could around the cage of his arms.
‘I have a proposition for you.’ One he had been mulling over during the night while she slept and he had re-evaluated everything he had convinced himself was true. All the set-in-stone plans he had made before this moment smashed to smithereens and gladly because he had wielded the mallet.
Her eyebrows quirked in a knowing, sultry manner before they kissed in consternation. ‘The house will be waking soon and they cannot find me here.’ Then she smiled again, her eyes darkening. ‘But you can ravish me again tonight.’
‘I wasn’t proposing another ravishing right this second, but I am always game if you are.’ Oh, how he adored how she adored the physical and how she never used that passion to play coy games.
She brushed her hand down his spine to rest in the small of his back, the heat of desire already in her lovely eyes. ‘Then what are you proposing?’
‘I am actually proposing not being averse to the prospect of proposing.’ His heart hammered against his ribs and hers at the admission, not quite believing it himself even though it felt right. ‘Someday, in the distant future, so don’t look so scared.’ Although scared was the wrong word. Dumbstruck and frozen were better adjectives to describe her reaction. The warm, womanly body beneath his was now as stiff as a board. ‘You see, the thing is...’ There was panic etched in her expression now and the hand which had rested above his buttocks had fallen away. ‘Against all my better judgement, it appears that I have fallen in love with you.’
The truth hurt to speak. Laying himself bare and vulnerable went against everything life had conditioned him to do. The undeniable emotion causing tight bands to wrap around his vocal chords and heart. Fear made his pulse stutter. Fear of the usual rejection. Fear of the speed, strength and depth of his feelings. Feelings he had never felt for Annabel. Feelings which made him light-headed. Raw. Hopeful. Exposed. Reckless enough to risk everything for a future he had never dared to want.
‘Don’t say that.’ She pushed him away and rolled to sit, pulling the sheet to follow which she clutched around her chest like a shield. ‘Please don’t say that.’ Of all the understandable resistance he had expected from her, complete abhorrence wasn’t one of them. ‘We barely know one another and we agreed this...’ She flapped her hand between them. ‘Wasn’t ever going to be like that.’ She groped for her chemise on the floor, anger making her movements jerky, and that anger cut Rafe like a knife.
‘I knew staying here with you all night would be a mistake. Just as allowing you to be in charge was a mistake. Now it has given you fanciful ideas which are not the least bit practical, let alone possible with me staying here in Whittleston with Aunt Jemima and you leaving for the middle of nowhere!’
‘Of course they are possible.’
Stay calm. Appear reasonable.Stay measured. Remain in control at all costs.
Her panic was a visceral but irrational reaction borne out of fear, grief and guilt. She didn’t want her heart broken again. That made two of them, and frankly what he was proposing scared the hell out of him too. But losing her scared him more.
‘I could stay here.’ He stroked her arm, taking some comfort that she did not recoil from his touch. ‘It occurs to me that that might not be a bad idea seeing as Archie has settled and you are right: I’ve been bemoaning this cluttered mausoleum for weeks when it is hardly this house’s fault that my predecessor filled it to the rafters with ugly furniture. I can easily throw it all away and start afresh. We could start afresh together.’ She still did not pull away although the furrow between her eyebrows was so deep it would hold a pencil without any bother. Maybe even two. ‘Between us we could turn this place into a proper home for all four of us to live in. There’s plenty of land to raise hundreds of horses, and with you by my side I could probably learn to tolerate the revolting locals so long as they abandon their placards.’
He forced a smile at the pathetic joke, hoping it wouldn’t pour oil on troubled water. ‘I know this seems like a big step. I also know that it is an unexpected bolt out of the blue when neither of us thought in a million years that this would happen. And I am not proposing I propose anytime soon, or even that I have any expectation that you would say yes...merely that you would consider it. That you would risk giving us a chance.’
She sucked in a ragged breath as a whole spectrum of troubling emotions danced across her features. Her dark eyes bleak, she finally shook her head. ‘I can’t. I won’t. I’m sorry, Rafe.’
‘Don’t you have any feelings for me?’ Because she wouldn’t have been jealous of Isobel if she didn’t harbour some. Or at least that is what he had convinced himself last night when he had decided to throw all caution to the wind. ‘Last night I swear I saw the same feelings mirrored in your eyes.’ He had seen them and felt them in her choked kisses after she had shattered in his arms. The way she had held him as if she never wanted to let him go. All different from the usual and not figments of his imagination. ‘Listen to your heart, Sophie—not your head. Please.’
She did recoil then and surged to her feet, fighting her head and torso into the chemise as if it was her only way out. ‘We are friends, Rafe. Friends.’ Her head emerged for only as long as it took her to find her discarded dress and burrow inside that like a shelter. Her lush body finally covered, she scrambled around for everything else, rolling stockings, shoes and stays into a tighter bundle each time she added one to the pile. One solitary shoe sat near his feet and he bent to pick it up, only to have it snatched out of his hand. ‘I do not understand why you would want to spoil that!’
Stay calm. Appear reasonable. Stay measured. Remain in control at all costs.
Control! What a joke!
As if he had ever been in control wherever she was concerned! She had led him on a merry dance, tied him up in ribbons and made him want things he had long given up any delusions of wanting. ‘Because I love you, that is why!’ He shot to his own feet and caught her by the elbows. ‘I want more than your passion and your body, you maddening, stubborn witch. I want more than discretion or the temporary or the convenient comfort of a willing body in my bed. I want you with me all the time.’
She responded by spinning out of his grasp and marching to the door. So fast it was a miracle he was able to stop her before she disappeared through it. And even though his head cautioned him not to beg, he couldn’t seem to stop. ‘I am not trying to replace Michael in your affections as I know that I could never replace him. I am not even suggesting we have children if that worries you.’ He hadn’t realised how much he had wanted them until that moment—but he wanted her more. ‘I just want you, Sophie.’ He kissed her nose. Her forehead. Her lips. ‘All of you.’
Her bottom lip quivered as she stared at him for an eternity, then a single tear spilled over her lashes. ‘I cannot give you any more of me than I already have, Rafe. I thought you understood that.’
