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

you haven’t changed completely,’ Blake drawled. ‘You still run away from situations you find unpalatable. Well, this is one occasion my dear wife, when you can’t run. Unless, of course, you want me to pursue you, and carry you back to this bed?’

      ‘Why should you want to do that?’ Sapphire tried to sound sophisticated and amused but instead her voice was a breathy, hesitant whisper, Blake’s smile telling her that she had not succeeded.

      ‘Do I really have to tell you?’ He leaned towards her, the fingers of his free hand curling round the strap of her nightdress and slowly sliding it down her arm. The bedcovers had slipped down to her waist during their earlier struggle, and Sapphire watched like a rabbit transfixed by the hunter as Blake leisurely revealed the creamy slope of her breast.

      ‘You’ve changed,’ he murmured, studying her until the colour ran up under her pale skin. ‘You’re fuller here,’ his thumb skimmed the outline of her breast, resting so briefly against her nipple that she couldn’t be sure whether the caress was deliberate or accidental, ‘and narrower here.’

      His fingers touched her waist, and she shivered convulsively, her throat dry and tight with the aching need she could feel burning up inside her. She wanted to slide her fingers into the crisp darkness of his hair, to hold his head against her breast, and caress the male contours of his body. Shame and fear mingled into a stomach-tensing cramp as she tried to fight against her feelings.

      ‘Do you like this?’ Blake slid the nightdress free of her breast cupping it with his palm and stroking his tongue along the valley between it and its twin, his thumb making erotic patterns around its rosy peak.

      ‘No.’ Her denial was a choked, strangled lie.

      ‘I think you mean yes.’ Blake was so lazily self-assured that Sapphire started to tremble. ‘Well, Sapphire,’ he pressed, ‘did you mean yes?’ All the time he spoke to her he was teasing, nibbling little kisses closer and closer to her nipple. Heat coursed through her veins. Part of her wanted to flee; to get as far away from him as she could, and the other part wanted to be so close to him that not even the fragile thinness of her nightdress was between them. She ached for the feel of Blake’s mouth against her breast; his hands on her body, but as though to punish her for her fib, his kisses stopped tantalisingly short of their goal, and with memories of past rejections to the forefront of her mind Sapphire could not, would not guide his mouth to the place she most wanted it to be.

      ‘Well, then, perhaps you prefer this?’

      She was eased out of her nightdress before she had time to object, the embarrassment of Blake’s thorough scrutiny of her nude body outweighing all other considerations as she struggled to tug the bedclothes up over her, and Blake effortlessly restrained her. A mocking smile curved his mouth, but it was the showers of gold lightening glittering in his eyes that made Sapphire tense on a sudden spiral of excitement.

      His fingertips stroking her hip and then following the line of her body downwards sparked off a showerburst of heady pleasure that she fought to conceal, swallowing the small gasp of delight that threatened to betray how she felt. She badly wanted to touch Blake as freely as he was touching her, to taste the warm maleness of his skin and feel his body come alive beneath her hands.

      ‘You have the loveliest skin.’ Blake was still touching her, drawing spiralling patterns against her thigh which transmitted an intensity of heat totally at odds with the lightness of his touch. His voice had a velvet, mesmeric quality that lulled her tense muscles into languorous relaxation. She wanted to purr almost, like a small satisfied cat, Sapphire realised on a stunned wave of surprise; she wanted to stretch and arch beneath those teasing fingers; to prolong the tormenting love play and instigate some of her own.

      ‘Sapphire?’

      The sound of her name made her turn her head to look at Blake, her eyes unknowingly a deep, dense purple blue.

      ‘Open your mouth,’ Blake commanded softly, ‘I want to kiss you.’

      It was heaven and hell, the zenith of pleasure and the nadir of despair. It was life and death; light and dark, and she was no more capable of resisting him than she was of denying that she loved him.