Tempestuous Affair. Кэрол Мортимер
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Her eyes flashed. ‘I hope you know me better than that,’ she said stiffly.
‘I’m beginning to think I don’t know you at all,’ he ground out.
‘I left you because it was time to leave.’ She refused to be antagonised into losing her temper. ‘We want different things from life,’ she told him wearily.
‘I want you!’
‘But you don’t love me.’
His eyes narrowed to wary amber slits. ‘You knew that from the beginning, I told you then how it would be.’
She deserved this, although she hadn’t expected Joel to be the first to tell her, ‘I told you so’. ‘Yes,’ she sighed acknowledgement of his honesty about his feeling from the first.
‘But you expected more.’ His mouth twisted contemptuously.
She flinched at the derision in his voice. She hadn’t been expecting a belated declaration of love from him, not even for him to ask her to go back to him, but neither had she wanted him to scorn her desire, her need, for affection. He had never scorned her before, and it hurt.
‘I didn’t expect it,’ she replied quietly. ‘Although I wouldn’t have repulsed it either,’ she added huskily.
‘Lindsay?’
She stood up impatiently, her hands tightly clasped together. ‘We agreed to try living together, to see how it worked out. As far as I’m concerned it didn’t. So let it be the end of it.’
Joel swung her round, his hands rough on her arms. ‘Do you love me, Lindsay?’
Tears swam in her eyes as she looked up at him, so much taller than her despite her own considerable height. ‘And if I do?’ she asked softly.
His face became a shuttered mask, his eyes bleak, his hands falling away from her as he stepped away. ‘Love was never part of our agreement.’
‘Then it’s as well I don’t love you, isn’t it?’ She looked at him with challenge in her eyes, knowing by the narrowed suspicion of his that he wasn’t sure whether to believe her or not. Pride came to her rescue as she sensed his indecision. ‘I only made a supposition, Joel,’ she dismissed lightly. ‘I don’t love you or any other man. But I do want more from a relationship than you can give me.’
His mouth was a thin angry line. ‘Such as?’ he rasped.
She shrugged, putting her hands in the hip pockets of her dress so that he shouldn’t see them shaking. ‘Like sharing, giving, maybe even a little fun.’ She met his gaze steadily. ‘You’re so intent on keeping your emotions in check that you’ve forgotten even how to have that! Do you realise that the only times we’ve been out you’ve taken me to respectable restaurants or equally respectable clubs?’
‘Would you rather I’d taken you to unrespectable ones?’ he demanded exasperatedly.
‘You’re missing my point, Joel,’ she sighed.
‘I’m not sure you even know what that is!’
She blushed at his scorn, knowing he would never understand what she was trying to tell him, his emotions so firmly controlled that he couldn’t understand her need to share laughter and tears with him. ‘Okay, so maybe those two examples weren’t very good ones,’ she admitted. ‘All I’m trying to explain is that you never shared things with me. You shut me out of everything but your bed. And although that may be enough for some women it isn’t for me!’
‘Isn’t it?’
Lindsay swallowed hard at the dangerous softness of his voice, her senses instantly alerted. And she was right to feel nervous as she was pulled back against him, his arms about her waist as his lips nuzzled against her throat.
She groaned as the usual lethargy possessed her when he took her in his arms, trembling as his hands moved up to cup her breasts over the green silky dress, her nipples flowering to his touch after the weeks without him. He knew her so well, knew that her breasts were the most sensitive part of her body, gently squeezing her nipples between thumbs and fingers with just enough pressure to cause the pleasure-pain that made her weak at the knees.
She turned eagerly into his arms, needing to feel his lips on hers, wanting so much more than he was giving.
‘You see, Lindsay?’ He looked down at her triumphantly. ‘This is all that really counts.’
She was too aroused to be alarmed by his obvious satisfaction in her instantaneous response, already able to see them together in her imagination, their legs entwined, their naked bodies pressed together as they gave each other fulfilment that went beyond even the imagination.
All her plans to remain immune to him were forgotten as he plundered her mouth with ruthless intent, his fingers nimbly releasing the buttons down the front of her dress, smoothing the material down her arms to fall unheeded about her narrow waist. He cupped her bared breasts in his hands, his thumbtips moving across the already hardened tips to cause spasms of delight to course through her body, his tongue now penetrating the warm cavern of her mouth with rhythmic eroticism.
As he bent his head to claim first one nipple into his mouth with a sucking motion, and then the other, Lindsay’s fingers became entangled in the dark unruliness of his hair, pressing him against her as his tongue flicked erotically over the hardened nipple, barely aware of him unbuttoning his own clothing until his mouth moved back to hers, the heated dampness of his chest crushed abrasively against her extremely sensitive breasts.
‘Touch me, Lindsay,’ he encouraged with a groan. ‘Touch me the way I’ve dreamt of you touching me the last four weeks I’ve been away from you!’
His eyes were golden, evidence of how deeply aroused he was, and as her hand moved down to his thigh between them she could feel the physical evidence of his desire leaping against her. It had been a long time for both of them, and she could tell Joel was fast approaching the point of no return.
A sudden fear entered her at how close they were to making love, knowing that if they did that Joel would be able to persuade her to move back in with him, once again under his terms and conditions. No matter how much pain it cost her to do so, she knew she had to stop him now, before it was too late.
Her hands came up to push at his shoulders, as ineffectual as she had known they would be against his superior strength, although his eyes glittered dangerously as he sensed her withdrawal, his mouth claiming hers in a kiss of sensual demand, willing her not to turn away from him, his mouth becoming savage on hers as he sensed he was failing to convince her.
His head was raised sharply as he tasted the salt of her tears on their lips, his expression harsh as he looked down at her grief-stricken face. ‘Why are you crying?’ he rasped. ‘You’ve never cried before!’
She could see he despised the weakness, that he preferred his life to be uncomplicated by such emotions, and she pulled her dress back up her arms over her nakedness, very much aware of the nipples still pressed against the material in obvious arousal as he rebuttoned it for her.
‘Lindsay, tell me why you were crying?’ he demanded at her continued silence.
She looked at him with tear-wet eyes. ‘It’s over between us, can’t you see that?’ she choked.
His mouth twisted with derision. ‘You responded to me just now, you know you did.’
‘I told you, it isn’t enough!’
Something flickered deep in his eyes, a mixture of contempt and pity. ‘Why is it women always demand more?’ he derided bitingly. ‘I’ve given you all my time and loyalty. There’s been no one else for me since you moved in with me six months ago, and God knows I’ve had the opportunity!’
She knew that. A man as attractive as Joel, surrounded as he was every day by beautiful and desirable women, was sure to receive plenty of invitations.