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His eyes went to her trim waist. ‘I just don’t like the idea of you hurting yourself or our baby for the sake of entertaining me,’ he said stubbornly, his lean jaw jutting.
Now the baby had become our baby. She always felt vulnerable when he chose to remind her of his claim. He had been regularly dipping into the book on childbirth he had bought, and had pestered her with his embarrassing frankness about the minute changes in her body, becoming a self-professed authority on what was good for her and expressing a compulsive interest in her determination to have a natural birth, without the aid of drugs. Much to her unease, he had also started blatantly referring to the later chapters, on early childhood development.
Paula, having one of her good days and moving quite freely without her stick, put in her gentle support of her daughter as she broke eggs into a large copper bowl and began whipping them with a large wire whisk.
‘I really don’t think there’s any harm in it, Rafe. I have several elderly friends who’ve done the trip, and they said that though it was exhilarating they never felt in danger.’
So Rafe had allowed himself to be persuaded, but he had been very solicitous of Jennifer, insisting on being positioned behind her in the raft and double-checking all her safety equipment.
‘I never realised you were such a worry-wart,’ she had mocked softly as he tightened the buckles and straps on her life-jacket.
‘I never was before,’ he murmured, with a hint of grimness.
She touched the back of his hand. ‘It’s not such a bad thing, is it? To be worried for other people?’
He interwove his fingers with hers and lifted her hand to his mouth—a lover’s salute.
‘It can be if it gets out of control, and from evidence so far I suspect that you have the ability to make me thoroughly paranoid.’ His smile was rueful as his mouth brushed her knuckles. ‘I shudder to think what you might get up to when I’m not around.’
A shadow passed across the brightness of her day, but she banished it with a laugh as he added smokily, ‘All these harnesses and straps are giving me ideas. Perhaps I should put you on a safety leash.’
‘Is that one of your fantasies?’ she teased, and her blood simmered at the look he gave her.
‘Ask me that again tonight,’ he growled, and tucked his arm behind her back to guide her down to the flowing water’s edge.
In the event, he had thrown himself whole-heartedly into the rafting experience, his concern for Jennifer notwithstanding, and now, after he had helped reload the rafts and they had changed back into their own clothes and handed in their wetsuits and safety gear, they decided to pick up some lunch at the tiny township of Rangipo and picnic at one of the scenic roadside spots on the way back to Beech House.
They ate their sandwiches and drank their cans of orange juice undisturbed at a weathered wooden picnic table out of sight of the road, the sunlight filtering through the high canopy of mountain beech and the lower interlacing of tree ferns to dapple on the undergrowth of fivefinger and broadleaf. It was cold, but Jennifer was well padded in her red parka and green woollen sweater, worn over jeans tucked securely into the tops of her sheepskin-lined leather boots. Rafe was wearing the same clothes in which he had arrived at Beech House, and Jennifer was awed to think how much had happened since that tumultuous day. The whole focus of her life had subtly shifted, the baby that she carried still unutterably precious and yet no longer alone in being central to her happiness.
Rafe’s appetite was greater than Jennifer’s, so she let him filch from her brown paper bag and laughingly fed him pieces of her crumbling custard tart. Her laughter died as he took hold of her hand and, holding her gaze, gently sucked her fingers, one by one, clean of their sweet, sticky sediment. Her breathing slowed and her body quickened, her brown eyes growing darker as she watched his lean cheeks hollow with the tugging suction, reminding her of his sultry absorption the previous night, when he had lain beside her in bed, suckling her breasts while his hand played idly between h
er thighs.
Still holding her hand, Rafe got to his feet, glancing around, then he was tugging her deeper into the fringes of the bush with a devilish grin, towards a towering totara tree whose soaring straight trunk and massive girth proclaimed more than a century’s growth.
‘Rafe, where are we going?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘We don’t want to get lost...’
‘We’re not going far, darling, just a quick trip to paradise...’
He swung her behind the huge totara, pushing her up against the thick, stringy bark, pulling off her knitted ski hat and plunging his hands into her soft brown hair as his mouth sealed itself over hers. She moaned, welcoming the familiar wet heat of his tongue, the grate of his teeth against her lips. Her arms went around him, under the heavy black leather jacket, her fingers clutching into the thick wool of his sweater as she hugged him against her, feeling her breasts flatten against his chest.
His knees pushed between hers, levering her legs apart, and he reached down between their bodies, fumbling with the button and zip of her jeans.
‘Oh, no, we can’t—someone might come...’ she protested in delicious apprehension, but the zip parted and she heard the chink of his belt as it was hurriedly unfastened.
‘Yes—me,’ he husked into her mouth, and she giggled nervously, gasping when she felt his cool hand slide into her panties, pushing them and her jeans down below the silky V of curls at the juncture of her thighs. ‘Don’t worry, no one will see us, and if you scream you can scream into my mouth...’
‘We can’t...’ she moaned as he tugged at the back of her jeans and her bare bottom scraped against the matted fibres of bark. She arched against him, and with a grunt of satisfaction Rafe wrenched open the fly of his jeans and guided his thick shaft into the narrow gap between her constricted thighs, pushing himself up inside her until he felt her shudder and accept his full length in a slippery rush.
‘God, I needed this...I can’t ever get enough of you,’ he gritted, and quickly began a tight, grinding series of jerking thrusts that he mimicked with his tongue in her mouth, his hands sliding up under her jumper to contract rhythmically on her lace-clad breasts as he brought them both to a swift, fierce convulsion of pleasure that left them weak and panting.
He pulled up her jeans and refastened their clothing as they continued to lean against the huge tree, and Jennifer slowly became aware of her surroundings beyond the warm press of his body—the muffled swish of cars out on the road, the flutter of wings and the scrape of insects, the rustle of leaves and somewhere high up in the canopy the sweet song of a white-throated tui.
‘It’s ironic,’ he murmured, his forehead resting on hers. ‘All these years I’ve been so very, very careful not to get any woman pregnant, not to be trapped into a relationship I didn’t want. I always took on the responsibility for contraception every time I made love; I’ve always used condoms whether or not a woman said she was on the pill. And yet here I am, at thirty-three, strutting like a randy teenager at having got a girl into trouble... and finding it an incredibly erotic experience. I like not having to use any contraception with you; I like the thought of flooding more of my sperm into your fertile body; I like knowing you’re lush and ripe for me because my seed is flourishing inside you...’
The first part of his speech was so shattering that Jennifer barely registered the second.
‘I’m not in trouble,’ she said tightly, looking at him through lenses which were only now clearing of the fog of their combined breath.
