Savage Innocence

‘God, Belle,’ he groaned, his breath cool against her hot skin, and the passion in his voice stroked her flesh with sensual fingers. ‘Don’t do this to me.’

At that moment it was beyond her capacity to do anything more than stand there, feeling the heat of him at her back, and trying like mad not to lean into him. But it was too much. His teeth had fastened on the skin of her neck now, skin that was the colour of thick cream, and which he had always insisted was just as rich and smooth, tugging the soft flesh into his mouth. There’d be a mark there now, she knew it, but she would willingly have stripped all the skin from her bones if it would have pleased him. She loved him. Ah, God, she was crazy about him. He had no idea what it was costing her to leave him.

His hands slid down her arms to her hands, linking their fingers together. Then, with just the slightest pressure, he urged her slim body to mould itself to his, his legs parting so that she was instantly aware of his arousal against her bottom. She was a tall girl herself, and Jared had always said they fitted one another perfectly.

She trembled then, and, sensing her weakening state, Jared uttered a muffled oath as he turned her towards him. Cradling her face between his palms, he stroked the faint shadows that had only recently appeared beneath her eyes with his thumbs, before tilting her head to his.

‘I need you,’ he said unsteadily, and she believed him. Their relationship would never have survived as long as it had without the friendship that had flowered between them. This past year had been the happiest time of her life, and if that damned her soul for all eternity, given the chance she’d do it all again.

He bent to kiss her, their mingled breaths causing the lenses of his glasses to film over, and Isobel lifted her hand to remove them. Her lips parted under the increasing pressure of his mouth, and when his tongue plunged deeply into that moist void, she clutched his glasses as if they were the only stable thing in a wildly unstable world.

Jared’s hands moved down her back to her hips, bringing her more fully against him, the thrust of his erection nudging the junction of her thighs. His fingers shaped the rounded swell of her buttocks, finding the cleft that divided them easily through her thin leggings, and causing Isobel to arch helplessly against his insistent strength.

‘I want you,’ he told her thickly, his words barely audible as his mouth returned to hers with more urgency, and although she knew she was playing with fire, she wound her arms around his neck.

‘Not here,’ she got out jerkily, as her only concession to her departing sanity, but Jared seemed intent on proving to her that she wanted him just as much as he wanted her.

‘Why not?’ he demanded, his fingers slipping beneath the hem of her man-size tee shirt to find the softness of her bare flesh. He stroked her midriff with caressing hands, before seeking the unfettered freedom of her small breasts. ‘It’s what I want; it’s what we both want.’

‘No—’

‘Yes.’ He teased the sensitive nipples that swelled against his palms, and then peeled her tee shirt upward, exposing the rosy areolae to his possessive gaze. ‘God, Belle, you can’t stop me now!’

One hand curved along her thigh, bringing her leg up around his hips and lifting her off her feet. Realising what he intended to do, Isobel wrapped her other leg about his waist. It brought the sensitive place between her legs even closer to the taut seam of his trousers, and she was hardly aware that he’d carried her into the kitchen until he set her on the lip of the counter. Then, while she put his glasses aside and rested back on her hands, he peeled the close-fitting leggings down to her ankles.

When he spread her thighs and moved between them, she was more than ready for him, and her breathing quickened when the thickness of his erection probed her moist core.

But, just as she was giving herself over to the treacherous delight of feeling him a part of her again, he swore softly and drew back. ‘Damn, I don’t have anything with me,’ he muttered. He groaned. ‘I don’t normally go to work with a pocket full of—well, you know what I mean.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

Isobel’s words were frantic, revealing how hopelessly eager she was, and Jared stared at her with dark, tormented eyes. ‘Do you mean that?’ he asked unsteadily. ‘Is it the right time of the month or something?’

‘Or something,’ she agreed weakly, remembering another occasion when she had assured him that it was safe to take the risk. Of course it hadn’t been so, which was why…

But she didn’t want to think about that now, and, reaching down, she guided him towards her aching flesh. ‘Just do it,’ she said, and as she’d expected—as she’d known— Jared was not immune to such flagrant provocation, and he sighed with pleasure as he surged into her wet sheath.

‘God, Belle,’ he moaned, as her muscles tightened around him, and because she was no longer in control of herself, or her emotions, Isobel cupped his face in her hands and brought his open mouth to hers.

She thought she might have been content then just to know he was there, buried deep inside her, but as soon as he began to move she knew that being there wasn’t enough. She wanted more, she wanted him, she wanted all of him, and his breathing grew hoarse and laboured as the irresistible demands of the flesh drove him to take them both to a glorious climax.

They came together, and Isobel felt the exquisite heat of Jared spilling his seed inside her. There was nothing to touch it. She sighed. The blissful union of male meeting female, skin to skin, flesh to flesh. The ripples of their lovemaking left them both shuddering in the aftermath, and Isobel would have liked nothing better than to spend the rest of the afternoon here or at her apartment, with Jared, repeating their closeness again and again.

But a chilling sense of reality returned when Jared bestowed one last lingering kiss at the corner of her mouth, and then drew away from her. While he fastened his trousers, she shuffled awkwardly off the edge of the counter, and bent to haul her leggings, and the bikini briefs he’d pulled down with them, up her legs.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked huskily, watching her, and she was warmed by the look in his eyes which told her he had been as reluctant to break their embrace as she was.

But that didn’t alter the situation, and, making the excuse of needing to use the bathroom, she slipped into the cloakroom next door.

A glance at her reflection didn’t help either. No one looking at her flushed face and swollen lips could be in any doubt as to what had been going on, and she wished she’d brought her make-up with her. Her hair, lustrous chestnut hair, which she usually wore short these days in an effort to quell its urge to curl, was a tousled mass about her creamy features. She looked—wanton, she thought unhappily. Which was not the image she’d wanted to convey.

She stayed in the cloakroom as long as she dared, and when she emerged she found Jared waiting for her in the kitchen. His hips were propped against the counter, where he had just made such passionate love with her, his arms folded across his broad chest, his glasses back in place.

The suitcase containing the letters she had been examining earlier—and which she had almost forgotten in the heat of their mating—was lying on the counter at his back, and he tipped his head towards it in obvious enquiry.

‘Whose is this?’

Recognising the tension in his casual query, Isobel wondered if he thought it was hers. A hysterical sob rose in her throat at the unknowing irony of that suspicion, but she managed to fight it back, and, sliding her long fingers into the sides of her hair, she lifted her shoulders in a dismissing gesture.

‘It was my mother’s.’

Jared’s dark brows drew together. ‘Your mother’s?’ he echoed. ‘I thought you’d got rid of all your mother’s stuff.’

‘I thought so, too.’ Isobel took a deep breath. ‘That was before I looked in the loft.’

‘The loft? Here?’ Jared glanced towards the ceiling. His eyes darkened. ‘You haven’t been crawling around in the loft on your own?’

Isobel gave him a retiring look. ‘Someone has to do it,’ she said drily.

‘Not on your own,’ retorted Jared, evidently disliking the proposition. He flicked back his cuff and looked at the plain gold watch on his wrist. ‘Dammit, I’ve got to go. I’ve got a meeting with Howard and Ross Cameron at half-past one.’

‘And it wouldn’t do to keep your father-in-law waiting, would it?’

Isobel couldn’t resist the mocking comment, and she saw the look of real pain that crossed his face. ‘No, it wouldn’t,’ he conceded flatly. ‘Particularly as he can probably smell you on me,’ he said, straightening away from the bench, and Isobel felt instantly ashamed.

‘Um—you could take a quick shower,’ she offered, gesturing towards the stairs. ‘I think there’s an old towel still up there—’

‘Did I say I cared?’ Jared demanded, coming to slide caressing hands over her shoulders. He angled his head to rest his forehead against hers. ‘Dammit, Belle, I don’t want to go.’

She didn’t want him to go either, but even thinking such a thought was breaking every promise she’d made to herself, and she knew she had to stop wishing for miracles. They didn’t happen, and somehow she had to get over it—get over him—and move on.

Move on…

God, how cold that sounded. Isobel felt the prick of unshed tears burning behind her eyes and she knew she had to make him go before he started suspecting that something was seriously wrong.

‘I’ll see you tonight, right?’ he murmured, kissing her again, but Isobel shook her head.

‘Not tonight,’ she said, through dry lips. ‘I—I’ve got too much to do. I’ve got to finish here, and then I’ve got some marking—’

‘You’re not going into that loft again,’ said Jared harshly. He tipped her face up to his. ‘Promise me you won’t go up there unless someone else—preferably me—is with you.’

Isobel expelled an unsteady breath. ‘I—all right,’ she agreed, deciding that, whatever else was left up there, Marion’s husband would have to move it. She forced a smile. ‘You’d better go.’

‘Okay.’ Jared released her without further protest and started towards the door. ‘I’ll ring you,’ he said, pausing at the end of the hall, and then, with an irrepressible grin, he let himself out of the door.

She cried after he’d gone. She told herself her hormones were responsible, that ever since she’d found out what was wrong with her she’d been in a state of emotional turmoil, but she knew she was just fooling herself. She wasn’t crying because she was pregnant. She was crying because he’d never know.

Then, as she went to the sink to bathe her eyes with cool water, her gaze alighted on the suitcase again. And suddenly she knew what she was going to do. She’d planned on leaving Newcastle, but until now she’d had no clear idea of where she was going to go. The little money she’d saved and her share from the sale of the house would support her until she found a regular job, and she considered herself lucky to have an occupation that was not confined to any one area. Oddly enough, she’d thought of moving south and west, and now she knew her destination. She was going to Cornwall, to a town not too far distant from Polgarron, wherever that was. And she was going to do her best to find out what kind of man her father was—or had been…