Breaking/Making Up: Something Borrowed\Vendetta (7 page)

Ashleigh fell silent, truly shocked by his manner.

‘Hell,’ he muttered. ‘This is even harder than I thought it’d be.’

Ashleigh stared at him. ‘What...what do you mean?’ she asked, totally perplexed.

He turned to lock eyes with her, his gaze penetrating and deep. ‘Do you trust me, Ashleigh?’ he rasped, his voice low and husky.

A dark, quivery sensation fluttered in her stomach.

‘Of...of course...’

‘Then don’t give my mother’s attitude a second thought. Take no notice of anything she says or does. Believe me when I say she isn’t concerned for
your
happiness.
Or
mine. That’s all you have to remember.’

‘But...but...that doesn’t make any sense.’ Which it didn’t. Nancy
adored
James. He’d always been the apple of her eye.

‘I know. That’s why I asked for your trust. Do I have it?’ he demanded to know.

‘I...’

‘Do I have it?’ he repeated in an urgent tone.

Ashleigh’s heart started to pound and she knew that, with her answer, her fate would be sealed, irrevocably. Her mind flew to what she’d told Kate earlier that day, about not believing in destiny or one’s fate being outside a person’s own control. She still believed that. Her husband, in asking her for blind trust, was really testing her love for him, as well as her faith in the person he was.

There was really only one answer she could give.

‘Yes,’ she said firmly.

‘Then just do as I ask,’ came James’s harsh answer.

Ashleigh was to remember later that night that she had deliberately chosen to place her future in this man’s hands. So she had nobody else to blame but herself.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘F
ANCY Kate catching my bouquet,’ Ashleigh laughed as James drove down the hill away from the Hargraves home. ‘You know what else? I think she and your friend, Rhys, really hit it off. They were chatting away together all evening.’

‘I wouldn’t be getting my hopes up about Kate and Rhys if I were you,’ James returned drily. ‘He’s an incorrigible chatter-upper of women.’

‘Oh?’ Ashleigh frowned, a tinge of worry in her voice.

‘And I wouldn’t worry about your Kate either. If ever there was a female who can take care of herself it’s that one!’

‘I suppose so...’

‘You don’t sound convinced.’

‘Kate’s rather vulnerable at the moment.’

‘Aren’t we all?’ he muttered. ‘Aren’t we all?’

A strained silence fell between them at this darkly cryptic remark, with James putting his foot down more solidly. The powerful car hurtled into the night, eating up the miles between Glenbrook and their destination.

Ashleigh found herself with time to ponder the not so subtle difference in James today. He was far moodier than his usual easygoing self, far more uptight. Originally she’d put it down to wedding-day jitters, plus irritation at Jake’s last-minute correspondence, not to mention his doubts over his bride’s really loving him or not.

But now that the reception was over and they were off on their honeymoon Ashleigh began to wonder if there was a far more basic reason. Perhaps he was worried about tonight, about how sex between them would turn out. Was he concerned, perhaps, that she would compare his lovemaking with Jake’s? And, more to the point...would
she
?

She honestly didn’t know. All day her sexual response to James had surprised and pleased her. But it was one thing to feel a few heart flutters, quite another to experience the sort of abandon during total intimacy that she had experienced with Jake.

Not that it would overly concern
her
if they didn’t achieve sexual perfection straight away. Ashleigh was a realist. She knew these things could take time. They had, even with Jake! But she had the awful feeling James would be cut to the quick if he didn’t satisfy her tonight, if he thought for a moment he had failed her in bed.

Thinking about his possible disappointment and unhappiness began twisting her insides into knots. Before she could stop it a quavering sigh escaped her lips.

Hard blue eyes snapped her way. ‘What’s that sigh supposed to mean?’ he asked in a definitely suspicious tone.

‘Nothing. I...’ Suddenly she sat up straight and blinked rapidly. ‘James! What...what are you doing?’ she gasped.

What he was doing was obvious! He was turning into a motel, a rather cheap-looking highway motel into which they were definitely
not
booked. They were supposed to be on their way to a five-star luxury hotel on the Gold Coast.

‘I’m afraid this won’t wait, Ashleigh,’ he ground out.

Ashleigh turned to stare with wide eyes at the man sitting beside her. How determined he sounded. How...
forceful
.

She swallowed, her mind filling with all those moments today when she’d glimpsed a James she had never seen before, a James simmering with unleashed passion. Clearly he couldn’t bear to wait any longer to make love to her. She found his impatience to have her in his arms both flattering and arousing, her pulse-rate accelerating into overdrive, an excited heat flushing her cheeks.

‘This isn’t like you, James,’ she laughed softly as he braked to an abrupt halt in front of the motel office.

His sidewards glance was sardonic. ‘I realise that, believe me. Wait here,’ he ordered brusquely, and climbed out from behind the wheel. ‘I won’t be long.’

She watched James stride purposefully into the office to book in, thinking to herself that he had a very attractive walk. Funny, she had never thought that about James before. But as he came back through the door, key in hand, her eyes were drawn to his very male and undeniably impressive body, lingering on the breadth of his shoulders before slowly working her way downwards. She didn’t have to wonder what he would look like naked. Mother nature had assured that, as an identical twin, he would have the same well-shaped, muscular, virile body as Jake.

A quivering started deep in her stomach and she knew beyond a doubt that nothing was going to go wrong between them. It was going to be right.
Very
right.
Exquisitely
right. Suddenly she was as anxious as he was to be in bed together, to have the right to touch his hard naked flesh at will, to lie back and accept his body into hers as many times as it would take to assuage her rapidly soaring desire.

She smiled at him when he climbed in behind the wheel, her smile the smile of a siren. It stopped him in his tracks, his eyes glittering blue pools as they locked with hers. ‘You shouldn’t look at me like that,’ he rasped.

‘Why not?’ she said thickly. ‘You’re my husband, aren’ t you? I love you and want you. I’m not ashamed of that.’

His groan startled her, as did his hands, reaching out to pull her towards him, his mouth covering hers with a raw moan of passion. His kiss only lasted a few seconds, but those few seconds burnt an indelible fact in Ashleigh’s brain.

This
was the man she loved and wanted. Not Jake. James.

They were both gasping when he tore his mouth away, both astonished at what had transpired between them. But somehow James did not seem as happy about it as Ashleigh was. Why that was so she couldn’t work out.

He muttered something unintelligible, then whirled away to restart the engine and drive the car round to the motel units behind the main building, parking in front of door number eight. Getting out straight away, he walked briskly around to open the passenger door and help her our.

Ashleigh was slightly disconcerted when his eyes refused to meet hers, also at the way he once again turned away from her quite sharply to insert the key in the door. Pushing it open, he waved her inside.

‘But what about our luggage?’ she asked, staying where she was.

He went to say something, but just then another car made its way around the back. Shrugging, he went over, opened the boot and brought the two suitcases inside, Ashleigh trailing behind with a frown on her face but a defiant resolve in her heart. As keen as she was for James to make love to her, she was not about to abandon her whole dream of a truly romantic wedding-night.

‘I won’t be a moment,’ she said, snatching up her suitcase and disappearing into the adjoining bathroom. As she closed the door she had a fleeing glimpse of James, standing open-mouthed and exasperated beside the bed.

She was more than a moment. She was a good fifteen minutes, having a shower, powdering and perfuming her body, taking down and brushing out her shoulder-length blonde waves, then finally slipping on the ivory satin full-length nightie.

‘Goodness,’ she murmured to herself in the
en suite
bathroom’s vanity mirror. It hadn’t looked quite
this
sexy in the lingerie shop. But then she hadn’t had her hair down that day, and neither had her breasts strained against the moulded bodice with nipples like hard round pebbles jutting suggestively through the satin.

Drawing the matching lace and satin robe up her long arms and over her slender shoulders didn’t make the underlying nightwear any less sensuous. If anything, half covering up her full-breasted figure made the revealing garment underneath even more tantalising. She was sure that, when she walked, the overlay would flap teasingly open while the satin nightie underneath would cling to her naked stomach and thighs.

Just thinking about how James would look at her in this rig-out had Ashleigh’s heart slamming madly against her ribs. But she
wanted
to send him wild with need and desire, wanted him to think of nothing but fusing his body with hers, of thrusting his hardness deep inside her already moistening flesh, of giving himself up to the pleasure she could give him.

She didn’t want him to think of Jake.

He was pacing up and down across the room when she emerged, having removed nothing but his jacket and tie. He ground to a halt at the sound of the door opening, his head snapping round to glare at her. But the second his eyes raked over her provocatively clad figure his expression changed, from a black frustration to a smoulderingly stirring desire.

Hot blue eyes started on her face and hair then travelled slowly downwards, Ashleigh’s skin breaking out in goosebumps when she saw his eyes narrow on her already aching breasts.

Quite abruptly his eyes snapped back up, shocking her with the anguish in their depths.

‘You don’t understand, Ashleigh,’ he growled, shaking his head. ‘The reason I stopped here... It...’

She began undulating towards him, and any further words died in his throat. As she approached she lifted trembling hands to peel the outer robe back from her swollen breasts, letting it slip off her shoulders and flutter to the floor behind her. She kept moving, breathless but confident in her femininity, knowing that with each sinuous movement of her limbs she was ensnaring him in her web of seduction, inflaming his male need to a level that would brook no more hesitation, only action.

She drew right up to him, her lips softly parted, her head tipping back slightly as she wound her arms up around his neck. ‘I don’t want any explanations,’ she husked, her mouth so close to his that she could feel his breath on her lips. ‘I just want
you
. Right here and right now...’

Her fingers splayed up into his thick black hair as she leant into him, her breasts pressing flat against the hard wall of his chest.

Once again James surprised her, standing where he was without attempting to touch her back, frozen within a dangerously explosive tension. She could feel it in the corded muscles straining in his neck, in the way his breathing was silent and still. ‘You think you know what you’re doing, Ashleigh,’ he muttered low in his throat. ‘But you don’t.’

A dark shudder raced through him. ‘Hell...I wish I had the strength to deny myself this. But I haven’t. It’s asking too damned much!’

And, with that, his arms swept up and around her, imprisoning her against him and bending her spine back till her hair spilt free from her neck and her mouth was an open, gasping cavern. His head bent to cover that cavern with hot, ravenous lips, to fill its dark, moist depths with his tongue, to stunningly imprint upon its owner that her mouth was there primarily for his possession, to be used as he willed, to be taken and abandoned only as he ordained.

Or so it seemed. For when she struggled against such an unexpected and confusing display of male mastery—her arms retreating from his neck to push vainly at the solid wall of his chest, her head trying to twist from side to side—one of his hands slid up into her hair, grasping the back of her head and holding it firmly captive. But soon she herself was caught up in her own pleasure, giving in to his physical domination with a throaty moan of surrender.

She shuddered when he finally left her mouth to trail rapid kisses down her throat, dazedly aware she should be appalled by his semi-violence, but conceding she wasn’t at all. Instead she thrilled to the savage mouth that nipped and sucked at her flesh, working its way inexorably towards her breasts and their pointed, expectant peaks.

‘James,’ she groaned when she felt his hot breath hover over one of her aching nipples.

His head jerked up and she stared at him with glazed eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’ she husked in bewilderment.

She could hardly think, her whole being in a world of its own, where it was responding instinctively, without thought, without reason.

‘Nothing,’ he growled.

‘Then touch me,’ she begged. ‘Here...’ And she brushed a shaking hand over the throbbing tip.

‘Oh, God,’ he moaned aloud, and bent his mouth to do her bidding, suckling the tender flesh right through the nightie, drawing the whole aureole into his mouth and rubbing the satin-covered nub over and over with his tongue.

Never had she felt such electric pleasure, such tempestuous excitement. Heat swept through her, making her blood race, her limbs grow heavy with desire. She closed her eyes and let the rapture spread, her lips parting, her arms falling limply to her side.

One of his broad hands had settled in the small of her back, the other on the flat of her stomach, moving in a sensual circular motion as his mouth continued to tantalise first one breast, then the other, both bare now, the nightie having somehow been pushed off her shoulders to crumple at her waist, held up perhaps by the hand caressing her stomach.