After The Loving

‘Then you were doing a good job of acting as if you were!’ his friend accused heatedly.

Grey eyes flickered coldly. ‘Bryna?’

She swallowed hard, not enjoying being the bone of contention between the two friends. ‘I really think it would be best if I left——’

‘Then I’m coming with you,’ rasped Raff.

‘—and you stayed,’ she finished dully. ‘There’s no point in our both ruining our evening. “The night is still young,” and all that,’ she added brittlely.

Raff strode purposefully across to grasp her arm in his hand. ‘I said I’m coming with you!’

‘Maybe she doesn’t want to go with you?’ Court told him caustically.

His mouth tightened. ‘She came with me, she’ll leave with me.’

Bryna frowned up at him. Why was he doing this? Couldn’t he see this was a perfect way out for him, why drag out their parting any longer than they had to? But she could see by the inflexibility of his jaw that he was determined to leave with her.

‘Thank you, Court,’ she squeezed his arm reassuringly. ‘Raff will take me home.’

‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ Raff told the other man gratingly.

‘Make sure that you do, and that it’s nice and early. Otherwise I’ll be the one to call you,’ Court warned in a controlled voice.

The heating system in the Jaguar was blasting out hot air, and yet Bryna still felt cold. Why was Raff continuing with this? Unless he was going to tell her now that they were finished? As if she didn’t already know that!

He accompanied her up to her apartment, neither of them having spoken a word since they left Court’s home, Raff’s expression harshly forbidding each time she had dared a glance in his direction.

She turned to him once she had unlocked her door. ‘I don’t think there’s any point in your coming in——’

‘Of course I’m coming in, Bryna,’ his voice was huskily soft, as he pushed the door open for her to precede him inside and closed the door firmly behind him.

Bryna felt nervous in his company, as if this were their first date and they were only a couple of inexperienced teenagers, her hands shaking slightly as she faced him across the lounge. ‘Rosemary will be waiting for you——’

‘No one is waiting for me,’ he told her gruffly, noiselessly crossing the lounge to stand in front of her. ‘It’s you I want, Bryna.’

Her eyes were wide with disbelief. ‘No—you can’t mean——’

‘I need your fire and passion tonight, Bryna,’ he groaned as his head lowered to hers.

‘But earlier——’

‘I was angry,’ he dismissed. ‘But I’m not angry any more. Now I just want to feel your silken legs wrapped about me while I bury myself in you!’

Their lovemaking was always different, sometimes fierce, sometimes gentle, sometimes so slow it drove the two of them insane, other times fiercely out of control. And tonight she knew Raff wanted it to be the latter, for both of them to be mindlessly lost in their passion for each other. And she wasn’t sure, after what had happened earlier, that she could give him the response he seemed to need.

She swallowed hard. ‘Raff, I don’t know if I can. I don’t——’

‘Of course you can.’ He melded his body against hers, moving against her provocatively.

Yes, she could, because this would be their farewell. She couldn’t go through the pain he had made her endure earlier again, and so they would have this one last night together and then she would tell him it was over between them.

‘All right, Raff,’ her arms curved up about his neck as she relaxed against him, ‘make love to me.’

Asking Raff to make love to her was like standing in the way of a tidal wave, knowing it would knock her completely off her feet, cloud her brain until she couldn’t think or feel anything but him!

He was a man who rarely, if ever, lost control, and it took her breath away when he began to throw off their clothes as they stood together in her lounge. Usually they both had a leisurely shower, either apart or together, and then they would go to bed together. She had never known this wildness from him before.

But if he felt differently about their lovemaking tonight so did she, the child inside her, and the knowledge that this would be their last time together, making her own responses as wild as his.

He had a magnificent body, strong and lithe, with not an ounce of superfluous flesh anywhere. And as he stripped off the last of his clothing Bryna was able to see he was already fully aroused.

His hands entangled in her hair as he kissed her deeply, and she squirmed with delight as one of those hands moved to cup the fullness of one of her breasts. She had wondered at the increased sensitivity of her breasts in recent weeks, but now she knew they were making ready for her baby, and as Raff’s dark head moved down to allow him to capture one aching nipple into the moist cavern of his mouth she felt as if her child already suckled there.

But the flicking of his tongue and the sharp sting of his teeth were not the movements of a child nourishing, and her legs buckled weakly beneath her, drawing the two of them down on to the carpeted floor.

‘Don’t move,’ Raff instructed gruffly as she would have caressed him.

What followed was the most erotic and tortuous experience of her entire life. Raff kissed her from the top of her head to the soles of her feet, discovering pleasure spots that took her again and again to the edge of the sensual abyss he refused to let her enter, always drawing her back before she could attain release.

Finally she could stand no more, moving above him to take them both over the edge as she moved her body in rhythm with his, her nipples knowing the tug of his teeth as she bent above him.

The explosion inside her was greater than anything she had ever known before, and for a brief moment she felt blackness enshroud her, still feeling dizzy as Raff stood up to carry her through to her bedroom.

‘That was for us,’ he murmured as he gently laid her down between the covers. ‘Now this is for you.’

She had barely recovered from the previous onslaught when she felt him intent on arousing her a second time.

He was trying to drive her insane, she decided minutes later, her body writhing and sweat-dampened as she silently begged him to release her from the tortuous frenzy he remorselessly drove her to.

He poised above her, his expression fierce. ‘Now do you believe I want you?’ he rasped.

‘Yes,’ she almost sobbed. ‘But please, please, Raff,’ she let out a shuddering breath of need.

She had been made for him, she decided for what had to be the hundredth time, knowing even as the silken length of him thrust inside her that he would fit perfectly, that he always had.

And then she couldn’t think at all, her hips arching to meet his throbbing rhythm, groaning her own shuddering release at the exact moment she felt his warmth inside her.

As partings went, it had to be one of the most soul-shattering on record!

Raff was already in the bathroom showering and shaving when Bryna woke the next morning, falling back against the pillows with a relieved groan as she realised it was Saturday, and her flight wasn’t scheduled until later that morning.

Last night had been frightening in its intensity, Raff taking her once more before he allowed her to sleep, and her rest finally that of the almost unconscious, and this morning her body ached from the force of those fierce caresses.

Last night they had been closer than ever before, and Bryna dreaded having to tell Raff she thought it best if they didn’t see each other any more. But what real choice did she have?

He was smiling when he came out of the bathroom, freshly shaved, wearing only the black trousers to his suit, although they were a little creased from where they had been left forgotten on the lounge floor all night. His chest was bare and golden, the dark hair there sprinkled even more liberally with grey than at his temples.

He sat on the side of the bed, smoothing back her ice-gold tangle of hair. ‘I thought you were going to sleep all day,’ he teased indulgently.