AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The white-hot pain of leaving him had been offset by one tiny, frail hope.
‘I thought you’d come after me,’ she whispered.
She heard him take a breath.
‘I thought you’d come back,’ he said. ‘So I waited. And then I was so angry with you for not staying and fighting for our marriage that I thought I’d make you wait.’ His mouth twisted. ‘Only you’d been fighting for months, and I didn’t know because I wasn’t there. I was never there when you needed me.’
Her throat clenched as she remembered something. ‘You were there last night. I thought you left, but you stayed, didn’t you?’
He nodded. ‘There was an owl screeching, so I got up to close the window. When I came back you’d rolled over, so I slept in the chair.’
She stared at him, her heart leaping against her ribs. ‘I thought I was dreaming.’
The intensity in his eyes scraped under her skin. ‘I couldn’t leave you. I couldn’t walk away. And I never stopped looking for you either.’
His hands were clenched, and his face had lost colour. Heart thumping, she gazed up at him, thinking back to the complicated series of choices and omissions that had brought them to this point.
Could she walk away?
But she knew the question that needed asking was not could she, but should she? And the answer to that hadn’t changed. Because deep down she knew that he couldn’t be who he wanted her to be, and he wasn’t what she needed.
That admission knocked the air from her lungs, and suddenly she was desperate to stop thinking and feeling. Eyes stinging, she pressed her finger against his mouth, quietening him.
‘We both made mistakes.’
But she wasn’t going to make yet another one by thinking that this quivering, mind-melting, incessant pull between them was something more than it was. More than it had already failed to be. More than it was capable of being.
They had reached the end, and there was no point reading anything into the fact that they were here, together, naked in this stall. What was happening in this little bubble was not real life. It was understandable, excusable. Human. A reaction to the hostility of what was happening outside. Two people trapped in a storm, hunkering down together, bodies surrendering to their lingering sexual longing for one another...
So make it about what it was, she told herself. Make it about sex. And passion. And heat. And need.
Pulse leaping, she placed her hand against the hard muscles of his stomach and glanced up at the roof. ‘How long will the storm last?’
He followed her gaze. ‘It’s difficult to say. I could go and take a look outside in a bit.’
‘There’s no rush.’ Her fingers walked down the vertical line of fine dark hair arrowing across his stomach. ‘We have shelter and water.’
Something flickered in his dark eyes. ‘And you think that’s enough?’
There was a second’s silence and then his hand moved to her hip, and she felt a rush of hunger flare inside her.
‘It could be a long night.’
Her gaze roamed over his beautiful naked body. ‘I think we can probably think of a way to pass the time,’ she said softly.
Leaning forward, she wrapped her fingers around the smooth length of his erection. She heard him swallow, and then his head dipped, and he was clasping her face and kissing her. She told herself that was what she wanted. She wanted to be kissed. In kissing, she could forget everything—the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful.
He pulled her closer and she felt him press against her belly, hard where she was soft and yielding.
Tomorrow she would leave. But first there was this. One last night together in the eye of the storm. She arched into him, her body melting, seeking blindly for the oblivion of his mouth, her heart beating with hunger and relief as, angling his head, he took what she was offering.
Turning his body away from the shower head, Omar closed his eyes and jabbed his fingers through his hair to remove the last traces of shampoo.
It was the morning after the night before.
The storm had lasted until dawn, the raging wind alternating with short pockets of calm. Thankfully, the first rays of sun had woken them early, so that by the time his panicky staff had opened the barn doors he and Delphi had been fully dressed.
Unlike last night.
