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Instinctively Poppy looked towards the front of the villa, searching for some sign of his return, her heart racing. She wanted James to come back, Poppy acknowledged; she felt vulnerable without him, afraid of her own feelings and what they might mean, alienated from her past and apprehensive about her future.
It might be the baby who was responsible for her see-sawing emotions, she tried to reassure herself; it had to be... And for her physical desire...?
‘We’d better make a move if you want to eat out tonight,’ James warned Poppy.
She was still sitting outside, watching the sun set, or so she told herself. In truth, since James had returned from town, she had actually been surreptitiously watching him, frantically trying to mask her avid need to keep him within sight as she desperately tried to understand what was happening to her.
Why, why should the most mundane of normal human attributes, such as the way he walked, the sheen of his skin, the fluid ease of his movements, even the warm brown curve of his throat, suddenly evoke such intense feelings and needs within her? Why, when she had known him all her life, should she suddenly have become so suffocatingly aware of him that he had only to come within five yards of her for her heart to beat frantically fast?
And why, when she had never, ever even thought such a thing before, should the mere idea of him touching her bring the tiny hairs up all over her body whilst her skin itself tingled in a silent agony of aching demand?
She had no answer to such questions, Poppy acknowledged soberly, there was no answer...
‘I’ll go and get changed,’ she said now in response to James’s comment and went indoors.
The sun had turned her skin a soft, warm peach-gold; her tan was much lighter and more delicate than James’s. It must surely be her pregnancy that had given her flesh such a rounded feel and such a healthy glow, she thought as she caught sight of herself in the bedroom mirror.
Although the baby had barely started to show as much more than a slight swell, she was already beginning to feel more comfortable in softer clothes, and was glad now that she had let Sally persuade her into a pre-wedding shopping spree.
The fluid ice-cream-coloured dresses that Sally had chosen were not her normal style but oddly they seemed to suit her, although she had never thought of herself as being feminine enough to wear thin muslins that drifted over her body, sleeveless and scoop-necked so that they showed her tanned arms and clung subtly to the slightly fuller curves of her breasts.
‘These will be wonderfully cool,’ Sally had enthused. ‘All you’ll need to wear under them is a pair of briefs. Try this one,’ she had insisted, rummaging along the rail and producing a fine, soft mint-green cotton dress with a drop waist and inverted pleats, which buttoned down the front.
‘Oh, yes!’ Sally had exclaimed when Poppy had reluctantly put it on. ‘James will enjoy that... all those buttons. Men love buttons...’
Poppy remembered how her hands had trembled as she’d wrenched it off. She had decided not to buy it but somehow or other Sally had managed to get it included in her purchases, a fact which she had not discovered until it was too late and she had got it home.
Now, having showered, her hands trembled again as she put it on, but this time for a different reason.
‘James will enjoy that...’ Sally had said, and the sheer intensity of the surge of sensation that hit her as she closed her eyes and pictured him reaching for those small buttons, unfastening them to reveal the curves of her naked body, made Poppy shudder from head to foot and cry out against its torment.
‘Poppy...?’
As she opened her eyes, her face flushing, she realised that James must have heard her.
‘What is it? Is it the baby? Is something wrong?’
He walked towards her, his own torso bare, the cream linen trousers that he had pulled on so softly shaped that they revealed the taut hardness of his thighs as he moved.
Poppy watched him, mesmerised, her lips slightly parted as she absorbed every movement.
‘James.’
He had come close enough for her to touch him now and dizzily she did so, lifting her hand to his arm and her glance to meet his, her eyes already darkening with need and desire.
‘I want you,’ she told him unsteadily. ‘I want you, James. I...’
‘Poppy...’ he began, but she didn’t want to hear what she knew he was going to say, her body trembling as her fingers tightened on his arm.
‘No, no... I don’t want you to say anything. I just want... James, I’m so afraid,’ she told him shakily. ‘I don’t understand what’s happening to me... why I should...’
She could feel him starting to pull away from her, his body tense.
She began to tremble, afraid both of being close to him, because of her desire for him, and of being apart from him, because he was the only stable, familiar thing in a world which had suddenly become alien and out of control.
As he leaned towards her, her lips inadvertently touched his skin, igniting her desire into a fireball of wrenching need. She moaned his name and started to press desperate, hungry kisses against his chest and throat, her control swamped by the scent and taste of him, by the feel of his skin beneath her mouth, the way he swallowed as her lips feverishly caressed his throat, the way his hands tightened on her shoulders as he reached out for her—not to push her away but to draw her nearer.
The thud of his heartbeat beneath her palm suddenly accelerated and his hand curved round the back of her neck, moving her slowly, guiding the clinging moistness of her mouth over his skin whilst his fingers tightened in her hair and he said something roughly under his breath.
And then suddenly he was the one kissing her, cupping her face and holding her immobile whilst his mouth covered hers. What was it about a certain man’s kiss that was so sensually arousing, so impossible to resist? Poppy wondered dizzily as her mouth clung passionately to his, opened hotly beneath his, inviting the swift, fierce invasion of his tongue, her whole body shuddering in response to the effect that he was having on her.
Aching, she pressed herself closer to him, aware of his own arousal through the barriers of their clothes, wanting to be even closer to him, wanting...
‘James, my dress...’ As she whispered the words against his mouth, she opened her eyes and looked up into the brilliance of his. It felt as if she was looking right into the sun, she acknowledged dizzily, only even more dangerous.
She could feel the heat of her reaction to him flooding her body, filling it, making her ache for a different kind of fullness, a different fulfilment that could only come from him, from his touch, from his body. She could see him frowning as he started to look down her body at her dress, as though not understanding what she wanted.
‘Take it off,’ she whispered. ‘I want to feel you next to me, James... All of you,’ she insisted huskily.
Without knowing she had done so, she had already lifted his hand to the front of her dress, to its buttons, and now she watched, her body still, taut with aching anticipation, as he slowly reached out and started to unfasten them, his gaze never leaving hers as they slowly slid free.
When he reached the buttons that secured the dress across her breasts Poppy started to tremble. She was wearing nothing underneath.
‘What is it you want from me, Poppy?’ James asked her rawly, stopping what he was doing whilst he waited for her answer.
‘You know what I want,’ Poppy whispered back.
‘Show me,’ he demanded.
Boldly Poppy did so, taking his hand and placing it on her bare breast. The feel of his hand against her body, cupping the smooth warmth of her, his thumb-tip slowly caressing her already hard nipple, made her shiver with aching pleasure, her eyes closing as she leaned yearningly towards him, her spine arching.
‘What is it you want, Poppy?’ she heard him mutter hoarsely as his mouth caressed her throat and then started to move lower.
‘Is it this...? This...?’
