Back in the Marriage Bed Read online

  Quickly she opened her eyes and focused on his downbent raven-dark head. The warm flesh of his exposed nape was a tantalising contradiction of his stance towards her and her reaction back to him, that of a man to a woman at its most sensually intense. That exposed nape was so very much that of a vulnerable boy, a child…the child they would one day have…

  Immediately Annie tensed, as though somehow something had touched an exposed raw nerve within her memory. The pain, initially so intense that it had shocked her into protective immobility, was fading now, but it still had the power to frighten her.

  ‘What is it? Not second thoughts?’ he was asking her almost brusquely as his lips relinquished possession of her nipple and he lifted his head to look in her eyes.

  In his own there was something, an expression, a darkness, that made her look away from him. Somewhere deep within her a pain, a wariness was stirring, but she quickly suppressed it. Nothing…nothing…could be allowed to spoil this special magical coming together. Nothing!

  ‘I…’ she began slowly, wanting to find the words to tell him how she was feeling, to ask him to help her smother the sharp needle of pain she could feel threatening her, to disarm it of its potential harm.

  But instead of listening to her he shook his head and said smoothly, ‘I thought you wanted us to go to bed. You do want that, don’t you, Annie?’

  Annie! He knew her name. Her heart slammed fiercely against her ribs, her whole body convulsed by the sweetly searing surge of her shock.

  ‘I…I want us to make love…’ she managed to tell him shakily, before adding breathlessly, so that he would know that her intuition, her knowingness, her acknowledgement of their shared fate matched his, ‘Upstairs…in the room…the room…’

  ‘I know which one,’ he assured her, and if her ears thought they had caught a rough, searing note of anger beneath the sensual smoothness of his low-toned voice she quickly assured herself that she had to have imagined it.

  They walked upstairs together, one step at a time, her body pressed close to his, his arm around her as she leaned helplessly into him. On the half-landing she stopped, automatically gazing through the window towards the river.

  ‘This house was built by a whaling captain,’ she told him huskily.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ he agreed tersely, his arm dropping momentarily away from her.

  ‘I…I dream about it sometimes,’ she told him, searching carefully for the right words to tell him what she had experienced. ‘About…the room…and…and about you…’

  Without saying anything else she moved back into the protection of his body, only realising that she had been holding her breath a little nervously when his arm finally rose and held her.

  They had reached the top of the stairs and were standing in the doorway to the room before he said the words that made her heart turn somersaults of joy inside her body.

  ‘I dream of you too.’

  He dreamed of her. She wasn’t alone in her belief…her recognition. Flooded with joy, she turned to him, holding his arm with her hand as she demanded, ‘You recognised me, then, the other night…in the restaurant?’

  The abrupt, almost reluctant inclination of his head he gave in assent made her ache with female protectiveness. He felt embarrassed, almost afraid to reveal his vulnerability to her. Oh, how much she loved him. How wonderful it was that they had found one another.

  ‘It’s going to be so good,’ she told him tenderly. ‘We are going to be so good…’

  Inside the room everything was just as she had dreamed. The large windows with the view of the drop down to the river and the fields and hills on the other side of it. The floor, wooden, polished, bare. The walls, bare too; the windows with their filmy ethereal curtaining. The bed…

  Annie shivered as she saw it, unable to take her gaze off it as her eyes widened and focused unblinkingly on the oh, so familiar iron bedstead. Unlike hers, this, she knew immediately, was original. Very slowly and gently she reached out and touched the frame at the foot of the bed. The metal felt warm to her touch, warm and worn slightly with age. The bed was bigger than hers, much bigger, and piled high with creamy white traditional linen bedding. As she reached down and smoothed the edge of one of the covers she could almost smell the scent of lavender being released by her touch.

  ‘This bed…’ she began, dry-mouthed.

  ‘It’s a marriage bed,’ he told her quickly, and she could almost taste the bitterness in his voice. But before she could question it, turning to him, her eyes quickening with surprise, he was reaching for her, the fierceness, the immediacy of his desire surprising her. She had expected passion, intensity, and even male possessiveness, but this fierce, heated nowness he was exhibiting, this silent, hungry concentrated way in which he was reaching for her, holding her…

  ‘Open your mouth. Kiss me properly. You know how,’ she could hear him insisting rawly as the fierce, biting intensity of his own kisses threatened to bruise the already swollen softness of her own mouth.

  But willingly she complied, wanting only the pleasure she knew she would have in pleasing him. Her breath was drawn into his mouth, mingling with his in a small sobbing moan of acquiescence as he started to imitate the hot, pulsing tide she could feel within her own body, and within his, with small, pulsating thrusts of his tongue. Somehow they were undressing, her own fingers revealing a dexterity, a knowledge she hadn’t guessed they possessed.

  There was nothing for her to fear, of course. From her dreams she already knew him as he knew her. In them there was not a curve, a corner of one another’s bodies they had not explored and enjoyed.

  Even so…A fine shudder of female nervousness and shyness ran through her. The merest delicate frisson of sensation, but she knew he could feel it, knew that it was transmitting itself to him where his fingertips touched her flesh.

  ‘You’re afraid…’

  He made it sound almost as though the thought of her fear pleased him, and Annie’s tension increased.

  ‘No,’ she denied, her body and her eyes suddenly softening as she told him lovingly, ‘How could I ever be afraid…with you?’

  It was as though somehow she had unleashed a catalyst, a power, a primitive force that was beyond the control of either of them, because suddenly he had picked her up and was carrying her to the bed, kneeling over her as he laid her down on it, his eyes hot and dark, the colour and heat of a tropical night sky, the flesh of his face drawn so tightly over his bones that she felt compelled to reach out and touch it…him…

  A primal sound, a groan, a warning growl, a low, mating purr—Annie did not know which—rasped deep in his throat as he turned his mouth to her hand, nibbling at the tender flesh on the mound of Venus beneath the base of her thumb.

  Quivers of hot cataclysmic pleasure melted through her.

  ‘Yes…Yes…Oh, yes,’ she heard herself moaning as he continued to undress her, her body arching, moving to accommodate the increasing speed of his hands as the hot ache deep within her flesh manifested itself in a series of revealing uncoordinated jerky movements when she tried to get closer and closer to him. If she closed her eyes she could feel his heat, sense his need. Deep within her mind she already knew his possession, knew the hot, silken sheathed reality of him, the taut, urgent thrust of his body within her own.

  A quiver, an ache, a wild yearning need possessed her.

  ‘I want you. I want you,’ she told him recklessly over and over again as her own eager fingers tore buttons from their buttonholes, eagerly pushing away the too intrusive fabric of his clothes where they came between them.

  In the enclosed cocoon of the bed under the gradual darkening of the evening sky beyond the window she could smell his scent, her nostrils dilating as she deliberately nuzzled closer to him, wanting to absorb more of it…of him…

  His chest, where his shirt had fallen open to reveal it, was tanned and taut with muscles, its hard male planes softened with a silky shimmering of fine body hair, so fine, so male, so him that it mad
e her fingertips quiver just to touch it, to touch him. She could feel his muscles contracting beneath his skin where she touched him, and her hands spread out in fascinated female delight to span the power of his chest in response to the mute invitation he was giving her. His nipples, dark hard nubs of flesh, puckered into hot hard points of arousal when she touched them, and on a sudden wanton impulse she touched her fingers to her own lips and then to his body, circling each nipple deliberately with her moist fingertips and watching the way his body jerked in fierce quick spasms of reaction.

  ‘Annie stop—you don’t know what you’re doing to me…’ he began, and then groaned. And although Annie heard the words, and registered the male pride and desire they carried, she was too lost in the pleasure of what she was doing to heed them.

  If she were to touch him with her mouth where she had just touched him with her fingers would he…? She bent her head towards him and gasped in shock as he suddenly manacled her wrists with his own hands, pushing her down against the bed whilst he leaned over her.

  His jeans, the jeans she had unfastened, had moved lower on his hips, revealing the immaculate white flash of his underwear and with it the visibly open evidence of his desire for her.

  Annie found that her mouth had suddenly gone very dry and that her body was tensing, aching…wanting. The tremors of need shuddering through her were so intense that she knew he must see them as plainly as she could see him, see them, know them, take pleasure in them…as she was doing in all the signs there were of his arousal and response to her.

  Even in her dreams it hadn’t been like this, hadn’t had this intensity, this needing, this knowing, this immediacy, and she knew without knowing how she knew that her dreams had only been a pale shadow of what would be reality.

  ‘You want me,’ he repeated, and as she smiled at him Annie suddenly felt so powerful, so womanly, so desirous and desirable, that when he released her hands it was the most natural, the most beautiful act in the world for her to stand up, reach out and tug down his jeans, her gaze lifting to his, meshing with his as her hands slid over his thighs towards the white glimmer of fabric that kept him hidden from her.

  And then, when just for a heartbeat she hesitated, she heard him growling fiercely, ‘Do it…Do it…’

  His words were both a command and a plea, and a teasing female smile curled Annie’s mouth as she moved to obey them. But it was a smile that died away, wiped out by the rolling flood of emotions that stormed her when she finally saw him naked.

  Dreams were…just dreams. And this was…he was…reality. A small, sharp sob escaped her as mingled pain and pleasure arced through her, and without thinking what she was doing she made to wrap her arms around him, to rest her face against him, the tears of emotion that were clouding her eyes spilling over onto his skin.

  ‘No.’ The sharp rejection in his voice shocked and bewildered her as he started to thrust her away.

  But the look on his face as she looked enquiringly towards him, searching his expression for an explanation of his rejection, locked her own breath in her throat and made her heart hammer so furiously with reciprocal emotion that she couldn’t even begin to articulate what she wanted to say.

  She forgot the tight grip of his hands on her arms, forgot too the initial thrust of rejection and shock she had felt when he had first given that harsh cry of denial. In a face that was bleached of all its colour his eyes glittered with such a look of raw torment that Annie couldn’t drag her gaze away from them.

  It was, she recognised, like looking into his soul and seeing laid bare there all of man’s strongest and most self-weakening emotions. Pain, anguish, anger, longing, need. She could see them all, and as she witnessed his vulnerability Annie felt her heart melt with love and tenderness towards him.

  Why he should be exhibiting such strong and in so many ways contradictory emotions she had no idea. What she did know, though, was that he needed her comfort and her compassion, and automatically she reached out to him, wanting to give them to him, wanting to wrap him protectively in her love, to soothe and reassure him.

  Emotional tears of protective love filled her eyes as Annie stood body to body with him.

  ‘I love you,’ she told him softly. ‘I’ve always loved you and I always will.’

  Something flashed in his eyes, an emotion, a response so brief and intense that it was gone before Annie could seize on it to recognise it, but she could hear the fury in his voice as he stepped back from her, demanding savagely, ‘How can you say that?’

  He was angry…questioning her love. Why, when he must know as deeply as she did, that…?

  ‘You don’t want me?’ she questioned him shakily, her mouth starting to tremble and her face colouring. He gave a brief look at his own self-betraying body before telling her with raw sensuality, ‘Does it look like I don’t? Of course I damned well want you,’ he told her savagely. ‘And you want me too, don’t you, Annie? Oh, yes, you want me.’ He answered his own question, his voice as thick and soft as cream as he took control of the situation from her, reaching for her and drawing her into his arms, his kiss so delicate and tender, so tantalising and erotic that beneath her breath Annie gave a small moan of female longing, instinctively pressing her body as close to his as she could get it, revelling in the hot, silken naked feeling of his flesh against her own, shivering, shuddering as she responded helplessly to her own need for him.

  Just to be with him like this, to be free to see, smell, touch the reality of him, not just dream about him.

  Her feelings threatened to overwhelm her with such a flood of wanting that she had to close her eyes, her body suddenly so weak, powerless to resist the eroticism of her own thoughts.

  ‘Oh, yes, you want me,’ she heard him saying thickly to her with soft male satisfaction as he licked and nuzzled her skin. ‘You want me and you’re going to have me, Annie. All of me…all of me whilst I take all of you…’

  It was everything she had dreamed of and more. A hot, silken, perfect meshing of limbs and mouths and then ultimately of the very essence of their two selves.

  She had dreamed so often of this intimacy, had thought she had known all there was to know of it, and in many ways she did—in many ways she knew him so well already that her body was perfectly prepared for him, perfectly ready and eager. But in others…

  A soft moan of pleasure escaped her lips as she looked down at their entwined bodies through half-closed eyes to watch as he moved up, over her and then within her quickly, but not before a staccato of gasps of shocked ecstasy as she saw how big he was, how perfectly he filled her, saw how wonderful…how good…how meant to be they looked together. And then she was past thinking, past observing, past anything other than simply being, responding, loving.

  Adoringly Annie raised her face towards his, her lips parting for his kiss, her hands reaching out to draw him closer as he seemed to hesitate. Each thrust of his body within her own took her, drove her towards the wonderful rainbow-coloured place that was just so tantalisingly out of reach. And then suddenly it was there, and she was a part of it, transmuted by love and passion into a quicksilver explosion of heat and pleasure as he took her through the rainbow to a place beyond it, a sphere, a universe, a love-produced paradise of pleasure she had never, ever imagined existed.

  As the final echoes of her orgasm slowly faded away Annie stretched luxuriously, so dizzy with happiness that it was impossible for her to find the words to say how she felt. Instead she simply reached out and lovingly touched his face with her fingertips, her eyes huge and dark with emotion, her mouth trembling.

  ‘I love you so much,’ she told him chokily. ‘I hadn’t realised…You were just a dream to me before…before…’ she added huskily. ‘And I thought that my dreams were so wonderful, so perfect that they would be impossible to match, but now…you’ve shown me just how far short of reality my dreams really were.’ And then, her eyes filling with love-induced tears, she reached for his hand, tenderly placing it against her lips as sh
e whispered a tremulous, ‘Thank you. Thank you so much my love…my true love…my only love…’

  If it hurt a little that he didn’t return her words of love to him with his own to her, Annie reminded herself that he had just shown her how he felt, just physically revealed his emotions, his love, and that men were notoriously shy of putting their emotions into words.

  Her last thought before she fell asleep was that she was the most fortunate woman who had ever lived.

  As he looked down into Annie’s peacefully sleeping face, Dominic Carlyle wondered grimly how she could possibly sleep so peacefully, so apparently guiltlessly and innocently.

  Angrily he turned away from her and reached for his discarded clothes.

  Well, she might be sleeping happily, but there was no way he could. What on earth had possessed him? She no longer meant anything to him emotionally. How could she? His eyes closed, his mouth momentarily compressing as he had an unwanted memory of the look in her eyes just before she had finally fallen asleep, worn out by their lovemaking…just after she had made that extraordinary gesture of reaching for his hand. He swallowed fiercely. It had just been a piece of play-acting, that was all, like everything she had done. It had to have been—there was no other way he could either understand or account for her extraordinary behaviour.

  As he walked naked towards the bedroom door, his discarded clothes in one hand, he paused to turn his head and look back towards the bed and Annie’s sleeping figure. She was lying facing him, her body curled up as though it was still curled against his own. A savagely contemptuous smile twisted his mouth. Even in her sleep she had to go on pretending…Why? What had made her do it? All that idiotic stuff about fate she had come out with…all that…Quickly he stopped, reminding himself that there was only one way he was going to find out the truth and that was by asking Annie herself.