Sinful Nights: The Six-Month Marriage / Injured Innocent / Loving

She heard the vet arrive while she was making the pastry for Beef Wellington, but continued with her self-imposed task. Blake would soon discover that she was not the timid child she had once been, and she wouldn’t have been human, she told herself, if she didn’t take pleasure from imagining his surprise at the discovery.

She had half-expected Blake to bring the vet in for a cup of tea after he had inspected that mare—it was a cold day, and she was sure the older man would have welcomed a warming drink, but instead when they emerged from the barn Blake walked with him to his Range Rover. The two men stood talking for a few minutes and then the vet climbed into his vehicle and Blake turned back towards the stable, disappearing inside.

Sapphire had just put her loaves in the oven when the ‘phone rang. Wiping her floury hands on a towel she picked up the receiver, recognising Miranda’s slightly shrill voice the moment she heard it.

‘Is Blake there?’ the other woman demanded imperiously. ‘I want to speak to him—urgently.’

‘He’s in the barn at the moment,’ Sapphire responded coolly, suppressing the urge to slam the receiver down. ‘If you’d like to hold on for a moment I’ll go and get him.’

The interior of the barn, so dark after the bright sunlit afternoon was temporarily blinding. Sapphire was peripherally aware of the familiar barn sounds; the mare shuffling restlessly in her stall, the scent of hay, the rustling sound it made. As her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom she stepped forward calling Blake’s name.

‘Up here,’ he called back, making her start tensely and peer upwards into the dimness of the upper hayloft.

‘There’s a ‘phone call for you,’ Sapphire told him curtly, not wanting to think she had come looking for him on her own account. ‘Miranda.’

‘I’ll have to ring her back.’ Blake was frowning as he turned back into the interior of the loft, and although she knew she was being foolish Sapphire couldn’t quite control the sudden leap of her senses as she caught a glimpse of the tawny skin of his chest where his shirt had come unfastened. Enough, she berated herself, as she walked blindly towards the door. ‘You don’t even like the man—you loathe him, so how can you possibly … feel desire for him?’ Somehow the words insinuated themselves into her mind and wouldn’t go away, making her face up to the truth. Blake still had the power to disturb her; still held a sexual appeal for her, which although it had nothing to do with love, or indeed any genuine worthwhile emotion, did, nonetheless, hold a dangerously potent allure.

Deep in thought Sapphire recoiled with pain as she cannoned into one of the posts supporting the upper floor, the intensity of the unexpected pain almost robbing her of breath as she stumbled backwards.

She was aware of sounds behind her, of Blake’s peremptory command and then the firm strength of his arm supporting her against his body as she slowly crumpled.

‘Sapphire, are you all right?’

His voice was a roughly urgent mutter somewhere above her left ear; the heat of his body against her back drowning out her earlier pain and replacing it with a dangerous languor that reinforced every one of her earlier thoughts.

‘Sapphire?’

This time the urgency in Blake’s voice compelled her to make some response. ‘I’m fine,’ she told him shakily, ‘it was just the shock … It took my breath away.’

‘I know the feeling.’ She could feel the reverberations of his words rumbling in his chest, but the dry tone in which they were uttered made her lift her head and turn round the better to study his face.

‘Can’t you feel what having you in my arms does to me?’ he murmured rawly. ‘I’d almost forgotten it was possible to feel like this.’

Sapphire didn’t need to ask ‘to feel like what?’ Her own treacherous body was already reacting shamelessly to Blake’s proximity. You fool, she protested inwardly, he doesn’t care anymore about you than he did before; it’s just another act, another scene of the charade he insists we play. He doesn’t want you.

But Blake’s body was telling her otherwise. More experienced now than she had been at seventeen, she could clearly read the tell-tale signs; in the dim light of the barn his eyes glittered dark gold, searching her face as he cupped her jaw with one hand and turned her round to face him. There was a tension in his body that was betrayed by the fine tremor of his muscles and the harsh control he exercised over his breathing.

The knowledge that she had aroused him was infinitely exciting; dangerously intoxicating, so much so that she was drunk on it. There could be no other explanation for the suicidal desire she suddenly experienced to trace the deep vee of Blake’s open shirt with the tip of one finger, nor for giving into it.

Apart from one deep inhaled breath Blake kept absolutely still. His skin felt warm and surprisingly vulnerable, the difference in texture between his skin and the crispness of his dark chest hair deeply erotic. She had never touched him like this in the past; had never dared to initiate any intimacy between them. A pulse thudded at the base of his throat, his fingers tensing into her waist as he looked down at her.

‘Sapphire!’

Her name seemed to well up from the very depths of his soul, spilling into the silence of the barn as a tormented groan. Her shocked senses barely had time to register it before the hard fingers cupping her jaw were tilting her face up and his mouth was consuming hers, burning it with a kiss of such fierce intensity that her senses took fire from it, liquid heat running moltenly through her veins, making her melt into him with a feverish need to meld with him and become part of him.

When his tongue stroked her lips, coaxing them apart Sapphire surrendered willingly, an ache that was partly desire and partly pain flowering to life inside her. Never once had he kissed her like this before; like a man who had hungered desperately for the feel of her mouth beneath his; who burned with a totally male desire to conquer and possess.

His free hand stroked down her body, finding the soft curve of her breast his thumb finding the newly burgeoning peak and caressing it with a feverish intensity that was echoed in the taut tension of his body.

Everything in her that was feminine yielded beneath the force of such a rawly masculine need and as though his body sensed the responsiveness of hers, Blake slid his hand beneath her tee-shirt, searching for and finding the aroused swell of her breast.

Which of them made the small murmur of satisfaction Sapphire didn’t know, all she did know was that by the time Blake’s mouth left hers, to investigate the creamy curve of her throat, she was totally acquiescent; mutely encouraging the exploration of warm male lips and slightly calloused male hands.

‘Sapphire if you don’t stop me now, I’m going to end up making love to you where we stand.’

Blake groaned the words into her skin, using his superior strength to urge her against the hard arousal of his body, muttering thick words of pleasure as his hands slid down to her hips, moulding her against him, but his words had penetrated through the dizzying heat of desire welling up inside her and Sapphire pulled away. He released her almost immediately, the desire she had seen so recently in his face draining away to be replaced by sardonic comprehension.

‘You forgot who I was, is that it?’ he taunted, watching the emotions chase one another across her mobile face. ‘You forgot that I wasn’t your precious boyfriend, is that what you’re going to tell me? Well I’ll save you the trouble,’ he told her. ‘That was me you responded to Sapphire, me who set you on fire; me who you wanted to make love to.’

‘Oh yes you did,’ he insisted when she tried to speak. ‘You wanted me Sapphire, whether you’re honest to admit it or not.’

‘Whatever there once was between us is gone,’ Sapphire protested, bitterly aware that he was right; she had wanted him and with an intensity that, now that she had herself under control again, shocked her.

‘But you can’t deny that you responded to me,’ Blake pressed softly, watching her, making her feel trapped and tormented.

‘I can’t deny that I responded to your masculinity,’ Sapphire agreed in a face-saving bid … ‘I’m a woman now Blake, with all the desires and needs that that implies.’ Heavens was this really her saying this? Inwardly she was trembling, praying that he wouldn’t see through her pitiful attempt to deny the effect he had on her.

‘Meaning that you would have responded to any man in the same way?’ Blake asked her sardonically. ‘I don’t think so, Sapphire. In fact, judging by your response to me, there must be something lacking in your boyfriend’s lovemaking. You responded to me as though you were starving for …’

‘Stop it,’ Sapphire interrupted his cruel speech. ‘I won’t listen to this, Blake.’ She hurried to the barn door, wanting only to escape from him and the turbulence of her own emotions, completely forgetting the original purpose of her journey to the barn, until she got back to the kitchen and found the receiver still on the table. There was no-one at the other end and so she replaced it, busying herself in the kitchen, trying to find some balm to her disordered senses in the warm scent of baking bread that filled the room, but instead only able to remember the rough sensuality of Blake’s mouth on hers; the urgent caress of his hands on her body; the unashamed arousal of his as he kissed and caressed her, but no, she mustn’t think of these things. She must concentrate instead of remembering why she was here; how Blake had trapped her.

She was busily clearing away the remnants of pastry from the table when Blake walked in, checking on the threshold, frowning slightly as the warmly rich scent of her baking filled his nostrils. She ought to have been pleased by the startled expression on his face, but instead all she could think of was the way his mouth had felt against her own, and it took an almost physical effort to draw her gaze away from the slightly moist fullness of his lower lip.

‘Bread?’ he quizzed her, obviously surprised.

‘Alan liked me to bake it for him,’ Sapphire responded, knowing that she was deliberately invoking Alan’s name as though it were a charm which had the ability to destroy Blake’s powerful pull on her senses. Blake’s face hardened immediately, as he strode across the kitchen and picked up the ‘phone. Watching him punch in a series of numbers, so quickly that he must know them by heart, Sapphire was pierced by a feeling of desolation so acute that it terrified her. She mustn’t become emotionally involved with Blake again. She had travelled that road once and knew all too well where it led; she wasn’t going to travel it again.

Her desolation turned to sick pain as she heard him say Miranda’s name. The other woman must have said something because Blake laughed, a deeply sensual sound that stirred up the tiny hairs on the back of Sapphire’s nape, making her spine tingle.

‘No, she must have forgotten to give me the message,’ Sapphire heard him say, his eyes hard, his gaze unwavering splintering her with pain as she turned to face him. ‘Umm … well how about dinner tonight? Yes I’ll pick you up.’

Sapphire turned away, Blake was taking Miranda out to dinner? She glanced at the ‘fridge where the pastry and fillet steak she had prepared for their evening meal lay, and her mouth compressed in a bitter line. Hadn’t she already learned her lesson?

By the time Blake had replaced the receiver she had decided what she would do. Let Blake take his … mistress out to dinner if he wished, but she wasn’t going to sit at home, moping, waiting for him. She would go over to Flaws and spend the evening with Mary and her father.

It wasn’t until she heard the door close behind Blake that she realised that she had been holding her breath. Her lungs ached with the strain she was imposing on them, her body so tense that her muscles were almost locked.

Why on earth had she allowed Blake to kiss and touch her as he had? And why had she responded to him so … so ardently. She didn’t love him any longer; but she still desired him; part of her still felt the old attraction; that must be the explanation. Like an amputee suffering pain from a limb that no longer existed she was still experiencing the pangs of her youthful love for Blake even though that love had long ago died.

SAPPHIRE WAS IN HER ROOM when Blake went out; she had gone there, deliberately avoiding him, and only emerged once she had heard his car engine die away.

Despite the fact that the heating was on the house felt slightly chilly—a sure sign that the threat of bad weather hadn’t gone. In the living room a basket of logs stood on the hearth of the open fire, and Sapphire glanced longingly at them, acknowledging that it was pointless lighting a fire just for herself, especially when she didn’t intend staying in. Why, when she knew where Blake had gone; when she knew how he had manipulated her, did her imagination insist on filling her mind with pictures of Blake as she had always wanted him to be rather than as he was; of herself at his side; their children upstairs asleep while they sat side by side by the warm glow of the fire; happy and content. Suppressing a sigh Sapphire walked into the kitchen, still redolent with the fragrance of her newly baked bread. On the table one of her loaves stood on the breadboard surrounded by crumbs. Blake had obviously cut himself a slice, and probably given himself indigestion she thought wryly, touching the still warm loaf.

Knowing that if she remained alone any longer in the house she would only brood, Sapphire picked up her jacket and headed for the Land Rover. Spending the evening with her father would stop her thinking about the past; about useless might-have-beens, she decided firmly, as she swung herself up into the utilitarian vehicle. She was just about to start the motor when a sound from the barn stopped her. Tensing she listened, wondering if she was imagining things, and then she heard it again; the shrill, unmistakable whinny of a horse in pain.

Blake’s mare! But he had told her that the vet had said she probably wouldn’t start to foal for at least twenty-four hours. Frowning Sapphire glanced towards the barn door, her conscience prodding her to get out of the Land Rover and go and investigate. She wasn’t a stranger to animal birth; and as she hurried into the barn, snapping on the light, her experienced eye quickly took in the mare’s distressed state and knew that the vet had been wrong. By the looks of her the mare was already in labour.

Despite her long years in London old habits reasserted themselves. Soothing the mare as best she could, Sapphire left her to race back to the house. To her relief the vet’s wife answered the ‘phone almost immediately. Quickly Sapphire explained the position.