Legally His Omnibus (25 page)

‘This doesn’t say that you don’t want me, Imo,’ he told her, and her breath caught on a frantic gasp of mingled shock and pleasure as he ran his fingertip over the jutting outline of her breast, pausing deliberately to circle her nipple, erect and aroused beneath the fine fabric of her top.

Without waiting for her to answer him, he turned towards the master suite, firmly drawing her with him. Imogen didn’t try to resist. She didn’t want to resist.

The bedroom was dappled with evening sunlight; it shone through the voile curtaining, giving the peaceful cream comfort of the room a golden gleam.

As a new extension to the original house, this room did not share the air of sad shabbiness that had so struck at Imogen’s emotions when she had first walked into her childhood home. In her parents’ day this room had simply not existed, and Imogen acknowledged her sense of relief and release that this bedroom held no painful memories for her, and that she was coming to it as an adult woman.

‘This room suits you, Imo,’ Dracco was telling her quietly whilst his thumb ran lazily up and down the inside of her bare arm, the effect of his touch on her so devastatingly erotic that she found it almost impossible to focus on what he was saying.

‘Cream is your colour. Cream and gold.’ He leaned forward, his lips caressing the side of her neck, his fingers so swift and deft on the fastening of her top that she was barely aware of the fact that he had slid it off her shoulder until she felt the heat of his mouth caressing her there.

A hundred thousand fiery darts of pleasure thrilled over her skin. She heard the sound of her own low, aching moan filling the room; a counterpoint to the rapidly increasing rate of their breathing.

Dracco’s hands were sliding beneath her top, easing it off her body. A delicious shivery sensation shimmered over her skin.

‘Cream, and honey-gold,’ Imogen heard Dracco saying thickly as he freed her breasts from the confines of her bra and gently kneaded them, playing tenderly with the stiff peaks of her nipples in a way that made her writhe hotly in his embrace. She closed her eyes and bit into her bottom lip as she fought to suppress the raw moan of appreciative delight she could feel building up inside her.

‘Beautiful! You are so very beautiful, even more perfect than I knew. So perfect that I can hardly bear to look at you. Do you know what it does to me, Imo, seeing you like this?’ she could hear Dracco demanding as he looked down at her naked breasts and then back up into her eyes.

The expression she could see in the depths of those eyes both shocked and thrilled her.

Dracco wanted her. She could see it; feel it in his body; hear it in his voice.

That knowledge was all she needed to loosen the last faint threads of inhibition binding her and set herself free to be the woman she had always known she could be—with Dracco.

As his hands came to her waist, so narrow that her trousers slid down from it to lie loosely on her hips, Imogen raised herself up on her tiptoes. She still wasn’t quite brave enough to look down at Dracco’s body. Miraculously his towel was still in place, but he had not made any attempt to disguise how aroused he was.

When she reached to wrap her arms around him Dracco held her slightly away from him. He whispered thickly, ‘Let me see all of you, Imo.’

Although his words made her tremble, she didn’t try to resist as he carefully removed her trousers, unzipping them to let them fall to the floor and then lifting her out of them, holding her right there against his own body. She was pressed deep into his hard masculinity, thigh to thigh, hip to hip, groin to groin, whilst he kissed her with a slow passion that burned and smouldered potently.

Imogen ached to open her legs and wrap them tightly around him, to lure and coax him by any means she could to take the gift she was so wantonly ready to give him. Just the thought of feeling him sliding powerfully into her was enough to make her shudder again wildly, her eyes stormily dark with longing.

How could she have lived so long without this, without him? It was a question she couldn’t even begin to answer.

Mutely she let him slide her down to the floor, his hands smoothing the flesh of her back, her waist, her buttocks, cupping the soft feminine cheeks, his fingers splayed over them.

Imogen could hear the frantic high-pitched sound of her sharp protest that he should arouse her so intensely and tormentingly without satisfying her, but it was something she heard from a distance, her whole being concentrated on the increasingly urgent necessity of feeling him, having him touch her with the full intimacy of a lover.

Her nails clawed his naked back, echoing the intensity of what she was feeling. Impatiently she tugged at the soft fabric of the towel covering his body.

Against her ear she could hear him asking, ‘Imo, are you sure this is what you want? Because if it isn’t and you don’t tell me now...’

How could he even ask her such a question? Couldn’t he tell? See? Feel?

‘I want you, Dracco,’ she told him. ‘I want you now.’

It was like nothing she had ever imagined, and so much—so much more than everything she had ever dared to hope for. Tears of emotion stung her eyes at the look on Dracco’s face as he studied her naked body, his gaze absorbed, hungry, fiercely hungry, in direct contrast to the tender touch of his hands.

When he kissed her breasts, each one in turn and then each nipple, slowly laving the aching peaks, she shivered in mute ecstasy. The slow trail of his tongue-tip down over her belly had the same effect on her skin as red wine might have had on her blood—a hot, sensual rush of pleasure that took control of her senses. To call the effect he was having on her mind-blowing fell so far short of the reality of what he was doing to her that it was almost an insult. When his tongue rimmed her navel, and dipped gently into it, she moaned out loud in bewildered pleasure.

Never in a thousand lifetimes had she imagined this kind of intimacy with him, and never had it even crossed her mind that she would be the one urging him on with her hands, with the hoarse cry of her voice and with the frantic writhing of her body. Through her half-closed eyes she could still see the full, powerful maleness of him. She ached to reach out and touch him, but the sensation of him gently parting the outer covering of her sex made her forget everything but her intense need for him.

Instincts she hadn’t known she possessed were driving her, possessing her now, insisting that the mere touch of his fingers was not enough, not what her body really needed, even though their careful touch was making her shudder from head to foot.

‘Dracco,’ she whispered, pleading.

Immediately he was beside her, looking deep into her eyes as he demanded hoarsely, ‘What is it? Do you want me to stop?’

‘No, it isn’t that,’ Imogen denied immediately. Helplessly her gaze, hot and fevered with longing, jolted over his body. ‘I want you, Dracco,’ she told him fiercely. ‘You... With me. Inside me.’

For a moment the triumphant blaze in his eyes shocked her. It was as though she had said something, given him something he had hungered for for a very long time. But it was too late to try to analyse what she thought she might have seen; Dracco was gathering her up in his arms, holding her, positioning her, moving over her and then finally and oh, so blissfully into her.

The high, wild sound of her cry of longing mingled with the harshly guttural groan of Dracco’s male growl of possession. Their bodies moved together in an urgent harmony that felt so right, so natural that it seemed to Imogen she had finally found a vitally important missing piece of her life and herself.

And then there was no room for thought, no room for anything other than absorbing the feel of Dracco’s body, the hot, musky scent of his skin, the physical reality of him here with her and within her as he drove them both to that place she knew she would die if she did not reach it.

But she did reach it, reached it and exploded in a million tiny pieces of piercingly intense release to lie exhausted in Dracco’s protective arms. She was dazed with satisfaction and an awed disbelief that it was possible to experience something so spectacularly wonderful as sleep claimed her.

CHAPTER SIX

I
MOGEN
OPENED
HER
eyes and stretched luxuriously. Dracco might not still be in the bed beside her but she could still smell his scent, feel the warm place where his body had been, feel the secret, special, place within herself where he had been.

Rolling over, she looked towards the window. It was a wonderful day. How could it not be? The revelations of the previous night still clung to her, filling her emotions with the same golden glow the sun brought through the window, its brightness softened into a mellow gilding by the voile curtains.

And so it was with her own feelings; they too were softened, gilded by the wondrous power of love, the love she had rediscovered in the breathless passages of the night when Dracco had held her, touching not just her body and her senses but also the deepest and most precious part of her.

They might not have spoken of love, but they had breathed it, shared it, given and bequeathed it to one another, surely? There was no way she could be mistaken about that.

She turned her head and studied the pillow next to her own, the pillow that still bore the imprint of Dracco’s head. It was a new and sweet thing for her, this soft heaviness within her body, this small ache of satisfaction and remembered pleasure.

She had so many plans for her future, their future; so many hopes. Joy trembled uncertainly within her. She didn’t want to question what she was feeling, nor to analyse the past. She didn’t, Imogen recognised, want anything to intrude on the special memories and pleasures she and Dracco had created together.

She and Dracco together...

And perhaps, just perhaps, memories weren’t all they had created!

A fierce quickening sensation gripped her body. A child.

‘I want your father’s grandchild,’ Dracco had told her. And now her body was telling her that it wanted Dracco’s child.

Somewhere outside the warmth of the bed, beyond the sunlight of the bedroom, lay certain sharply informed realities, but Imogen was in no mood to acknowledge them. What did they matter now? she taunted in silent mental recklessness. What, after last night, could matter more than what she and Dracco had shared? What she had discovered?

The love he had denied her as a girl had been there for her last night. She was sure of it.

The muslin voile curtains moved in the breeze, throwing small shadows across the room that were as ephemeral and as easily despatched as her unwanted doubts.

She loved Dracco. She couldn’t not love him and have shared with him, as she had done yesterday, that deepest and most intimate sense of herself. And he surely could not have touched her, aroused her, savoured and satisfied her in the way that he had if he had not cared about her? Loved her in return?

Love. It was such a small word to cover such an infinity of emotion. Did she even truthfully know what it was? She had gone from loving Dracco to hating him, and then last night... Imogen took a deep breath, willing herself to think logically and realistically, but it was no use. Every time she tried to do so all she could see was Dracco’s face, all she could feel was his touch, all she could hear was the immeasurably sweet sound of his breathing.

She was twenty-two and a woman, she reminded herself fiercely, and, even though physically she might have been a virgin, she was mature enough to know that sex, however good it might be, wasn’t love.

Her heart refused to acknowledge such unworthy thoughts. What she and Dracco had shared had gone way beyond mere sex. It wasn’t just one another’s bodies they had touched; they had touched one another’s hearts, one another’s souls. Whatever had happened to them individually in their lives before last night no longer mattered. Her whole body was quivering, singing in the sweet, intoxicating aftermath of love. All she really wanted was to be with Dracco! To drink in the reality of him, breathe in the scent of him.

Imogen smiled ruefully at her own giddiness. She and Dracco needed to talk, to face one another and their shared past.

She took another deep breath. Surely in the light of what had already happened between them they were both adult enough to discuss everything? Their future and their past?

It was time to get up, for her to face the day—and Dracco.

* * *

Her foot poised on the topmost stair, Imogen paused and looked down through the banister into the hallway towards the closed door to what had once been her father’s study and was now her husband’s. Her husband, Dracco! The melting, delicious warmth just thinking such a thought gave her was a revelation. Dracco. Her husband. The father of her child...their child. A sensation not unlike the delicate touch of a skilled musician on a treasured instrument trembled across her skin.

Suddenly she couldn’t wait to see him, to be with him, to reach up and pull that dark head down toward her, to feel those male lips caressing hers.

Light-heartedly she quickened her footsteps.

The study door was closed and Imogen paused outside it, suddenly feeling slightly nervous. Her senses felt preternaturally heightened; she could almost smell and taste the dust motes dancing on the sun-warmed air. The enormity of the moment and what it might portend made her heart beat unsteadily. On the other side of that door lay not just Dracco, but also her future. Their future, and potentially the future of their child.

Instinctively she touched her stomach. It was too soon to know if yesterday...

She gave a small gasp as the study door opened. Dracco was standing within the opening watching her, frowning at her. Her own forehead automatically started to mimic the expression she could see on his, although, whilst his frown was one of impatience and distance, hers was one of questioning concern.

‘Imo.’

Even the way he said her name had a certain harshness about it, Imogen recognised as her glance slid from his face to his body. He was wearing a formidably businesslike dark suit, the jacket unfastened over a crisp white shirt, and as she watched him he shot back his cuff to look at his watch.

One did not need to be an expert at interpreting body language to recognise his impatience.

‘You look as though you’re very busy. I had hoped that we might be able to talk,’ she began.

‘Talk? What about?’

It was not a promising start, Imogen acknowledged, but she was not a teenager gazing star-struck at an idol any more. She and Dracco were equals now.

‘About us, and last night,’ she responded calmly.

Imogen was proud of the way she managed to keep her gaze steady under the pressure of the look Dracco gave her.

‘Last night?’

If anything his voice had become even more curt, carrying an edge to it that warned Imogen she was trespassing on a no-go area. But, as Imogen had discovered in the years she had been away, she possessed her own brand of strength and courage, and the issue that lay between them was not one she was going to allow to be ignored.

Moving closer to him, she reiterated softly, ‘Yes, Dracco, last night. You do remember last night, don’t you?’ As she spoke the gentle mockery in her voice gave way to a soft liquid tenderness that shone in her eyes and curled her mouth. ‘Last night, when you made love to me. You do remember that, don’t you?’ she teased.

‘What I remember is that we had sex.’

The brutality of the cold words ripped into the shining delicate warmth of Imogen’s hopes and dreams.

Now it was her turn to repeat Dracco’s words.

‘Sex.’ She could hear the stammering anxiety in her voice, the desire to be reassured, but Dracco was already turning away from her, looking irritably towards the front door, as though he couldn’t wait to escape.

‘Dracco,’ she protested, and she could hear the pain trembling through her voice. ‘It wasn’t just sex. It was...’

Helpless in the face of his remoteness, she couldn’t bring herself to say the word ‘love’, to expose it and herself to the savage pain of his contemptuous dismissal. Instead her voice trailed away on an unsteady protest that held echoes of her childhood insecurity as she told him, ‘It was more than that.’

‘It was sex, Imo,’ Dracco overrode her tersely. His head was turned away from her but she could see his profile, see the bleak downward turn of his mouth, the grimness in his expression, which warned her that he wanted the conversation brought to an end.

But there was a stubbornness in her that refused to allow her to let go, and, as though he sensed it, she heard him draw in his breath in open exasperation before he turned fully towards her. His gaze, clinical, cold, rejecting, swept her from head to toe.

‘Sex, that’s all,’ he repeated. ‘No more and no less.’

All the fiery passion that was so much a part of her nature rose up inside Imogen.

What she had felt with him, for him, last night was too important to be swept aside. She believed in her feelings and her instincts, even if Dracco didn’t, and she was prepared to fight and fight hard if she had to to have them recognised.

‘I’m twenty-two years old, Dracco; I’ve been independent for the last four years. You might remember me as a naïve teenager, but the woman you held in your arms last night, the woman you made love with—’

‘Was a naïve virgin,’ Dracco cut across her impassioned speech. He was watching her with almost clinical detachment to see how she reacted, how she recovered from the cutting edge of his blow. ’It’s true that I do remember you as a child, Imogen. A very immature and romantic young teenager, who idealised the physical relationship between men and women, and who could only allow it into her life wrapped in the pretty packaging of “love”. You claim to be mature. But a mature woman would never have clung to her virginity the way you have to yours.’

The cruelty of his clinical dissection of her took Imogen’s breath away. It was as though he was determined to strip every last bit of emotion from what they had shared and turn it into something cold and meaningless.

‘Psychologically for you,’ he continued ruthlessly, ‘the mere fact that you have had sex with me—and enjoyed it—means that you have to convince yourself that the physical arousal and desire you felt had to be the product of “love”. Loving someone, Imo, means knowing them, accepting them, valuing them as they are. You and I do not...’

Imogen was not prepared to listen to any more. Boldly she stepped up to him; so close to him in fact that she was virtually touching him. As she put her hand on his arm she felt his muscles lock against her touch.

‘Imo, I’ve got an appointment I have to keep, and I’m already dangerously close to being late for it.’

Willing him to allow her through the barriers he had thrown up against her, Imogen leaned into him, whispering, ‘Dracco, please... Last night must have meant something to you. I—’

‘It meant a great deal.’ Imogen felt tears begin to sting her eyes. But her relief was short-lived.

Instead of reassuring her as she longed for him to do, Dracco told her crisply, ‘It meant that, if we are lucky, nine months from now we shall have a child—I shall have a son or daughter who carries your father’s blood, which is, after all, what this is about.’

He couldn’t have made it any plainer to her that she meant nothing to him, Imogen recognised, as he sidestepped her.

Her vision blurred as she stared towards the stairs she had come down less than half an hour ago, her hopes so high, her belief so sure!

Dracco had reached the front door.

Somehow she managed to make herself turn towards him. ‘And if...if we aren’t lucky?’ she challenged him desperately.

There was a small pause before he told her quietly, ‘Then in that case we shall just have to try again until we are.’

As he opened the door and walked through it Imogen felt a shudder tear through her body as though it and she were being ripped apart. How could she endure that? The cold lovelessness of the act of sex with a man who did not love her but whom she...

She didn’t cry. She couldn’t! The pain was like a wound inflicted so deep within her body that it destroyed internally without any outward evidence of the injury.

* * *

Dracco got down the drive and as far as the main road without giving in to his emotions, but once there he recognised that, feeling as he did right now, he was a danger to himself and to others.

Cursing sharply beneath his breath, he pulled off the road and stopped his car.

He had lied to Imo about the urgency of his appointment. He was on his way to see David Bryant to sign the new will he had had the other man draw up.

‘You want to make Imogen and any child she might conceive the main beneficiaries of your estate?’ David had commented when Dracco informed him of his wishes. ‘We’re talking about a very large inheritance, Dracco. You say you want Imogen to have full control of it?’ He had paused uncertainly. ‘It is customary where such a large amount is concerned to appoint trustees or set up a trust fund.’

‘There is no one I trust more than Imogen,’ Dracco had responded firmly.

Imogen would never know just what last night had done to him, the sheer unbearable immensity of the guilt and remorse it had brought him—and the pleasure! So much pleasure that it was impossible to quantify it. How could he measure something that had been so longed and hungered for? How could he estimate the breadth and depth of how he had felt when after a virtually sleepless night he had leaned over in the first minutes of the new day to look down into her sleeping face?

Even in her sleep she had been smiling, her lips curved in soft, sensuous warmth. The tears of release and fulfilment she had cried in his arms had gone, but their salty trail had lain gently crystallised on her skin. Beneath the bedclothes she’d been naked, and the temptation to run his hand possessively down her body from the top of her head right the way to her toes, just for the luxurious pleasure of knowing she was there, had almost overwhelmed him.

He knew he had given her pleasure—would have known it even if she had not cried it out to him in a voice of shocked, delighted wonder—simply from the way her body had responded to him, fitted itself around him, accepted and embraced his touch upon it and within it.