AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He had started to withdraw from her but her body had no intention of giving up on the pleasure that his had promised it; her body had no conscience, no awareness, no knowledge, after all, of Chris as its lover; her body only knew the pleasure that James had given it and as it tightened and clung to his and she heard herself uttering a surprisingly fierce and strong, ‘No,’ Poppy’s eyes registered her own confusion and disbelief.
It was Chris she loved, Chris she wanted, she protested inwardly to her wayward flesh, but it didn’t want to listen to her; it knew no Chris, it only knew that it wanted...must have what it had been promised, and as James started again to withdraw from her Poppy found that somehow, without knowing how, she was actually moving against him, reaching out to hold onto him, imploring him with words which she would once have denied that she could ever bring herself to say to any man, no matter how much she loved him—much less this man.
‘No, please don’t... I want you... I want you... Oh, please... I want you so much...’
The words became a husky, rhythmic accompaniment to the increasingly urgent movements of her body as it tried frantically to draw him deeper within itself, tried and, unbelievably, it seemed, succeeded, Poppy realised in dizzy, trembling relief. She was too caught up in the intensity of her body’s drive towards its sensual goal to be able to concentrate on anything other than the pleasure of that deepening sense of fullness within her; she was so caught up in it that nothing, nothing could be allowed to bring an end to that sensation of heady, addictive pleasure.
She wanted him, needed him, ached for him too much to care about what he was actually saying as his body began to move within hers again.
‘No, you don’t, Poppy; you want my brother. But I’m the one you’ve got. I’m the one who’s touched you, caressed you, aroused you, shown you... taught you what it is to feel real physical desire, instead of dreaming some idealised dream; and I’m the one—’
When he heard her cry out he stopped speaking abruptly, his hand tangling in her hair so that he could look into her eyes before she could defend herself from him and close them.
The pain, so sharp that it had been responsible for her high-pitched, shocked cry, had gone as quickly as it had come, but the ache which had preceded it had not, nor the need and the slight trembling of her body. And the quickened pace of her breathing had nothing to do with any fear or desire for him to stop.
He was doing it deliberately, Poppy guessed. Having deliberately aroused her, he now wanted to humiliate and punish her by stopping and...
Angry tears filled her eyes as she glared back at him. ‘You can’t do this to me,’ she protested frantically. ‘You can’t leave me now, without... You can’t...’
She didn’t see his expression before, without warning, his lids dropped, his lashes veiling it from her.
He wasn’t looking at her face any more, Poppy recognised, but he was looking at her body, at her breasts in point of fact, and as he looked he lifted one hand and cupped one of them, stroking the taut nipple whilst he asked her softly, ‘I can’t what, Poppy?’
She couldn’t answer him; the way he was touching her had galvanised her whole body into a shuddering shock of hot, fluid reaction.
‘James... James...’ she heard herself pleading achingly.
‘Say it... Say it... Say my name,’ she heard him telling her softly. ‘Tell me again how much you want me, Poppy; tell me again what it is you want, Poppy...who it is you want. My God, if you knew...’
Poppy knew that she should stop him, tell him that she hated him, loathed him, detested him, but she also knew that she wouldn’t, couldn’t; she was blind, deaf and dumb to everything but the urgency he had generated within her. If he stopped making love to her now, without... before... she thought that she would die.
‘I want you... I want you...’ she whispered obediently, her breath catching in her throat as she responded to the deep rhythm that he was slowly imposing on her—felt it, clung to it, ached for it and finally, as she heard herself cry out his name, abandoned herself totally to it, letting him drive her beyond the safe, known edge of her universe and out into the void that lay beyond it, carried along by wave after wave of pleasure and the hot pulsing of his own lelease within her.
Her body was still trembling with the aftershock of it many minutes later when she fell into an exhausted sleep.
James watched her for several seconds, his mouth bitter, before turning his back on her and putting as much distance between them as he could.
CHAPTER FOUR
POPPY woke up reluctantly, an ingrained sense of self-preservation warning her that it was safer to cling to the protective blanket of sleep, that she wouldn’t like what she was going to have to face when she opened her eyes and remembered what had happened.
She didn’t. The shock of the appalling flashbacks that poured over her in an icy deluge of self-knowledge made her sit bolt upright in bed and exclaim out aloud, ‘No! I couldn’t have... I didn’t...’
But she knew, all too well, that she had. The space in the bed next to her where James must have slept was now, thankfully, empty.
Where was he? He must have gone down to the conference hall, she decided.
‘And you’d just better get yourself up and dressed and ready to face him when he comes back,’ she warned herself grimly.
Face him! The mere thought of doing so was enough to make her stomach churn wildly and her body burn with shamed heat.
Quickly she scrambled out of bed; her body ached slightly in a way that was new and unfamiliar, the self-conscious heat scorching her skin becoming searingly intense as all too vivid and detailed unwanted memories of the way she had behaved, the things she had said the previous night returned.
As she stood in the shower she could see where James’s passion was already beginning to bruise her skin—the passion she had urged him, begged him to show her.
‘No. I
didn’t... I couldn’t have...’ Poppy moaned, but she knew that she had, and, worse, she knew that he must know it too.
‘I thought he was Chris,’ she whispered helplessly in defence of her body’s physical treachery, its undeniable and inescapable, illogical and unbearable sexual response to him.
By the time she was showered and dressed it was almost eight o’clock. She ought to go downstairs and have some breakfast, Poppy acknowledged, but the last thing she felt like doing was eating. No, not the last thing, she admitted mercilessly; that was having to see James, having to look at him and know what had happened between them, having to...
She tensed as she heard the bedroom door open and saw James walk in.
Despite her determination not to do so, she could feel herself starting to flush, her eyes looking everywhere but at him.
‘I... I was just on my way down to breakfast,’ she told him untruthfully, hurrying towards the door.
‘Not yet. There’s something I want to say to you—’
‘No!’ The speed and vehemence with which she blurted out her panicky denial betrayed her all too clearly, Poppy knew, as James reached out and took hold of her wrist, swinging her round so that he was standing between her and the door.
‘Let me go,’ she demanded fiercely. ‘I want you—’
‘So you told me—last night,’ James interrupted her, watching her mercilessly as the colour came and went in her face and her body stiffened as though he had struck her.
‘No,’ she whispered in denial. ‘That ... that wasn’t you. I...’
Her whole body trembled as she fought for something to say, some reasonable and logical explanation of what she had done, what she had said, what she had felt. But, finally acknowledging that there was none, she reached desperately and dangerously for the only thing she had left, picking it up and hurling it at him with all the force of her pent-up, tangled emotions.
