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And anyway, she wasn’t a thing, she seethed; she was a person with her own feelings and thoughts and plans. Plans which she had not permitted to include Raphael Jordan. Rafe was the stuff of heady fantasy, not of practical reality. It should be enough for her to know that she would soon have his son or daughter to lavish with all her love and adoring attention—which would surely be wasted on the baby’s father!
In spite of her worst anxieties, dinner was miraculously easy. Jennifer had difficulty believing that it was simply out of respect for Ron Carter’s clerical collar, but for whatever reason Rafe subdued his wicked streak of rebellious mischief and was almost as angelic as his namesake as he conversed with the vicar and his wife on the subject of preserving ethnic cultures without once mentioning the tribes of the Amazon.
When Ron and Margaret mentioned that they lived in Wellington, Jennifer learned that Rafe had turned twenty-one there, on his way to a working holiday at the Coronet Peak ski fields near Queenstown in the South Island. The skis on his roof rack had obviously not been there just for show, she thought, as he spoke of his hopes that parts of the Whakapapa or Turoa ski fields could be groomed of ash so that he could try out Ruapehu’s famous slopes.
Not even when the mention of the mountain prompted Ron to say heartily, ‘I understand we missed some thrillingly spectacular goings-on here last night!’ did Rafe pick up the gauntlet with one of his fiendish double entendres, and it was left to Jennifer to embarrass herself with a nervous burst of giggles.
Dave and Celia arrived back while they all were still having tea and coffee by the fire, and they chatted for a while before the guests began drifting off to their rooms.
Rafe scraped dishes and stacked the dishwasher alongside Jennifer, and Paula leaned on her stick to tell him he was shaping up to be an ideal son-in-law.
‘I must get you some brains,’ she declared, startling him with one of her frequent non sequiturs.
‘Uh, what have I done wrong?’ He looked down at his stacking to discover his mistake.
‘No, I mean to eat,’ Paula laughed. ‘Jenny told me you like that kind of thing.’
‘I guess my preferences are changing, then,’ he murmured, wiping the smirk off Jennifer’s face as he continued, ‘Because since I arrived I’ve developed a taste for something plump and juicy that I can really sink my teeth into...’
The innuendo went entirely over Paula’s head. ‘I’ll do you a nice aged fillet steak for tomorrow night, then.’ She beamed.
Plump! Jennifer slammed the dishwasher shut and jabbed the button.
Plump! she smouldered as she and Rafe partnered against her mother and Dot in a game of cards in front of the fire, losing because they kept trumping each other instead of their opponents, then watched a late news report on the television covering the eruption and its aftermath.
Plump! she brooded as she lingered to put the guard in front of the fire and the cover over Fergus’s cage before she switched off the downstairs lights and followed Rafe upstairs.
But she was thinking of Rafe’s teeth as she ventured reluctantly into her bedroom. His strong, even white teeth, which nibbled and raked and aroused and...oh, hell! yes, all right, she had to admit it...made her feel all plump and juicy inside...
But she had told him that tonight would be different, and for the sake of her sanity as well as her pride she had to stick to her decision. She already knew that Rafe was seriously addictive. One glorious infusion of unbridled delight was all she dared permit herself—two would be getting dangerously close to a habit. Tonight any attempt to taunt or seduce her into forgetting her principles would fall sadly flat!
She had half expected Rafe to have stripped for battle while he was waiting for her, but he was standing beside the bed still fully dressed, although his white shirt was untucked from his jeans and half unbuttoned, and his open cuffs flicked back on his strong wrists.
Jennifer opened her mouth to remind him they would not be sharing a bed, but then he shifted aside and she saw what was on the floor behind him.
She stared at it, a blood-rush of humiliation roaring in her ears. The bedclothes, which had miraculously reappeared in the glory box some time during the morning, were as deftly arranged as they had been the previous night.
‘I’ll sleep on the floor; you take the bed
.’
She stared at his face, as cool as the flatly uninflected about his magnificent body to dislike, she thought dizzily, and nodded.
‘You don’t mind the scar?’ He pointed to an infinitesimal flaw low on the dark golden belly, just above the dense thicket of his groin, his fingers brushing across the bold thrust of his erection as if by accident. But Jennifer knew it wasn’t any accident. He had deliberately drawn her gaze to his manhood. He wanted her to look at the swollen shaft, to see how much he wanted her, and to realise that soon she would feel that satiny thickness pushing up into her body again.
‘You’re the first woman I’ve ever made love to without using a condom,’ he said huskily, frankly enjoying the jolt that went through her at his admission, and the sight of her nipples visibly hardening under the thin material of her blouse. ‘That’s why I came so fast that first time—it felt so incredibly good to be naked inside you.’
Jennifer could feel her breasts readying themselves for his touch, and a hot moistening between her thighs. In her mind’s eye they were already making love, and it was with a shock she felt her hand fisting in her tartan skirt and realised that she was still fully dressed.
She looked up at his face, her eyes glazed, and he tilted his head, saying silkily, ‘Does it make you feel powerful and in control, to be wearing clothes while I’m naked?’
No, but it was sinfully erotic.
Before she could answer he had picked her up by the waist and lifted her high against his chest.
‘Wrap your legs around my waist,’ he ordered gruffly and as she clung to his shoulders and obeyed he carried her across the room to her desk.
Wrapping one arm across her back, he swept the clutter beside the computer to the floor and sat her down on the rounded edge, pushing her thighs apart as he stepped between them, his hands sliding up under her flared skirt, a ripple of hesitation hitting him as he found that she was wearing suspenders and stockings rather than panty-hose. Then his hands were moving up to roughly snatch off her panties, and when she squeaked a protest he covered her mouth with his and stroked her with his tongue.
