Somewhere on the outer periphery of her mind was the fact that this time she had quite definitely burned her boats behind her; there was no way now that Jonas would ever believe she did not love him. Having come to that realisation, it seemed futile to even think of trying to resist him; it would have been impossible anyway.
She felt his fingers thread through her hair, holding her head so that she couldn’t avoid the drowning ravishment of his kiss.
Shamingly, when at last he released her mouth, her lips clung protestingly to his. His tongue touched them lightly and then he was releasing her and pushing her firmly back into her seat.
Standing up, he studied her for several seconds while she cursed the hot betraying colour scorching her skin, dreading whatever he might be about to say.
It was every bit as bad as she had anticipated.
‘You do love me, don’t you?’ he said at last.
What was the point of denying it? ‘Yes. Probably almost right from the first time we met, but I didn’t want to admit it. I was frightened, you see… Frightened of loving someone again and losing them the way I lost Rick.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘You must find all this quite amusing.’
Heavens, how on earth was she going to endure this? Even her voice was betraying her, shaking over the words.
‘Must I?’ His hands cupped her face, tilting it so that she was obliged to look at him. ‘Do I look as though I’m amused?’
She looked at him, and trembled at what she saw in his eyes, unable to believe the hungry, aching way he was looking at her. Then he groaned and said her name huskily, half laughing. ‘Dear God, Sara, what you’ve put me through!’
She was in his arms, and he was kissing her with all the passion and need she had dreamed of, pushing her blouse out of the way so that his mouth could caress her throat and shoulder. She shivered and gasped in pleasure as his hand found her breast.
‘Do I feel as though I’m amused?’ he demanded, pulling her hard against him so that she could feel his arousal. ‘I love you, you crazy, blind idiot; I think I fell in love with you the moment I saw you! And all you could do was keep on telling me about Rick.’
He kissed her again, and she moved wantonly against him, enjoying his smothered indrawn breath.
‘Enough,’ he told her thickly, releasing her and pushing her gently away. ‘Explanations first, lovemaking later.’
‘Mmm. I think I’d rather have the lovemaking first,’ Sara protested happily, but she let him settle her comfortably beside him on the settee and put her head contentedly on his shoulder.
‘I can’t tell you what it did to me when you ran out of the bedroom like that. I tried to warn you about the carpet, but it was too late…’ She looked up at him, catching the anguish in his voice.
‘I should never have said what I did to you, but I was half out of my mind with rage and jealousy. First you tell me you don’t love me and never will, then when I make love to you you tell me you were pretending I was another man. You’ll never know how much that hurt me. After the way you’d responded to me in my arms, I was convinced you must feel something for me. I suspected all that talk about only loving Rick and just wanting me for sex was a protective wall you were hiding behind, but when you told me you’d pretended I was Rick, I knew it didn’t matter a bit whether I thought you loved me or not, if you wouldn’t let yourself believe it. That’s why it came as such a kick in the teeth when you calmly announced that you loved me. All I could think was that you’d decided to go on playing your little game of pretending I was Rick. You couldn’t ever have him, so I was the next best thing…’
‘It wasn’t like that at all,’ protested Sara softly. ‘Although I can follow your reasoning.’
‘It was such an abrupt about-face. Right up until our marriage you kept on saying you loved Rick, and then suddenly…’
‘Not quite as suddenly as all that,’ admitted Sara huskily. ‘I knew I loved you the night we made love…’ She saw him looking at her and added softly, ‘Before we made love, in actual fact, but it was such a shock; I was so terrified you would find out how I felt…and so nearly demented by my own fear of loving anyone, that I lied to you and told you I’d pretended you were Rick. You see, even though you’d said to me that you were beginning to fall in love with me, I didn’t want you to love me. I was frightened of loving or being loved because I felt it would only lead to pain.’
‘We’ve both made mistakes. I tried to rush you into loving me before you were really ready. I was scared to death of losing you even then.’ Jonas looked sombrely at her.
‘When I realised you and Rick had never been lovers, it gave me the kind of primitive pleasure I’d always taught myself to despise. That’s why I overreacted so much when you told me you’d pretended I was Rick. I’d been congratulating myself because I thought you’d cared enough about me to take me as your first lover, when in reality you weren’t making love with me at all—or at least that’s what I thought.’
‘Even before you made love to me I knew you aroused me in a way that Rick never had,’ Sara said. ‘And knowing that only increased my fear. I didn’t want to feel like that about you, because…’
‘Because you were frightened of losing me as you lost Rick,’ Jonas finished softly for her. ‘Life doesn’t come with any guarantees, Sara, but whatever the future might hold, at least we have this now.’
‘Yes.’ She shivered suddenly, wondering what would have happened if she had gone through with the abortion and gone to London. When she voiced her thoughts, Jonas looked at her gravely.
‘It wouldn’t have altered my feelings for you,’ he told her softly. ‘Somehow I’d have found you, persuaded you that you couldn’t live without me, although I must admit I felt the gods had finally decided to smile on me the day I found you in Dorchester. I’m sorry about the baby,’ he added soberly, ‘I should have been more careful, but somehow at the time… It hadn’t occurred to me then that you and Rick had never been lovers.’
‘We were rather reckless,’ Sara agreed, ‘but I’m not sorry to be having your child, Jonas.’ She shivered with pleasure at the way he looked at her.
‘You’ve no idea how I felt when I saw you fall. It flashed through my mind that you might lose the baby because of my cruelty, and I knew that you wanted it. I lashed out at you in a fury because you’d hurt me. I told myself you couldn’t possibly mean it when you said you loved me. I thought you were lying to me. It was only later when I’d had time to calm down, when I’d spent hours sitting at your bedside and praying that you were going to be all right, that I realised that you just might possibly have meant it. You can imagine how that made me feel,’ he added wryly.