The shock of experiencing so much intense emotional and physical sensation was too much for Lucianna to bear, and her body started to tremble, her eyes filling with hot tears.
Instinctively, Jake reached out to take her in his arms and soothe her in much the same way he had soothed her when she had been a small child, holding her close, rocking her gently, brushing away her tears.
‘What—?’ Lucianna started to ask him tearfully, but then stopped.
‘You’ve had an orgasm,’ Jake told her.
‘I know that,’ Lucianna informed him indignantly glowering at him as she saw the way he was looking at her. Didn’t he think she knew anything…?
‘Good…then you’ll be able to recognise your second one, won’t you?’ Jake challenged her softly, and before Lucianna opened her mouth to protest he covered it with his own and started to kiss her. He whispered to her thickly, ‘That was nothing…Just wait…you’ll see.’
‘I don’t want to…’ Lucianna told him truculently, and then, surprisingly, discovered that, on the contrary, she most certainly did; she wanted to very, very much indeed. And within a very short space of time she was telling Jake just how much she wanted to…just how much she wanted him, all of him, deep, deep inside her, moving in her the way he was doing right now, carrying her with him with every powerful thrust to that special magical place she had so recently discovered, that place, as she cried out to him, she so desperately needed. Only he could take her.
As she cried out his name Jake reached his own climax, and as he felt the pulse of his orgasm within her Lucianna was dizzily aware of just how pleasurable that small betraying pulse was, of how much her body enjoyed the feel of it, of him, within her. Drowsily she snuggled deeper into his arms.
Carefully Jake smoothed the duvet over Lucianna’s still sleeping body. He had already picked up her discarded clothes and carefully folded them before dressing himself and now it was time to go before Lucianna herself woke up and realised just how much he had betrayed the trust she had placed in him.
Jake was under no illusions. The intensity of her sexual response to him had been activated simply by her discovery of her own femininity and had nothing whatsoever to do wit
h any desire for him. How could it when he already knew she believed she was in love with John?
It would have been easy, in the aftermath of their shared intimacy, to use his own experience and her lack of it to convince her that her response to him meant that she cared for him—loved him—and God knew he had been tempted, sorely tempted. But how could he have lived with himself if he had done so? He couldn’t have. He couldn’t steal from her her right to own her own sexuality and her own emotions.
To him, loving her meant allowing her the freedom to be her own woman, and to make her own choices. But it would be a long time, a hell of a long time—if ever—before he could blot out of his dreams the sweet scent and feel of her, the warmth and softness of her, the sound of her ecstatic cries as she reached her orgasm, the small keening sounds of urgency and need she had made in her desire for him. A long time? He would never forget. Never. Broodingly, he gave her sleeping form one last look before finally turning to leave.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘LUCE, are you all right?’
Lucianna jumped and then flushed, gnawing anxiously on her bottom lip and avoiding meeting Janey’s kind, concerned eyes as she lied, ‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine.’
‘You haven’t forgotten that Jake is expecting you to go over there this morning, have you?’ David asked her, stressing, ‘When he rang earlier he said it was very important that he saw you.’
‘No, I haven’t forgotten,’ Lucianna said hollowly. Forgotten? How could she when…? But right now she dared not even let herself think of all the reasons why she could not possibly forget and what she could not forget, not when she knew the tell-tale signs of her own thoughts would be clearly visible in her eyes and on her flushed skin for her astute sister-in-law to see.
She had been woken from the deepest sleep she could remember having in a long time by her family’s late arrival home, and at first, still sleepy and confused, she had instinctively turned to the side of the bed where Jake had lain as he’d held her in the aftermath of…of what had happened. But of course Jake had not been there, although her knowledge of what had happened between them had, and abruptly she had come wide awake, her thoughts and emotions chasing one another in frantic unending circles as she’d tried to make sense of not merely what she had done but also what she had said, blush-making though her increasingly cringingly clear memories were. She remembered calling out to Jake to touch her, hold her, imploring him to possess her and, most shocking of all, begging him to…But, far more importantly, she’d tried to make sense of how she had felt and why.
Surely it wasn’t possible for the simple act of changing her normal sensible underwear for something much more provocative and sensual to have caused the kind of total personality change she felt she must have undergone to have acted as she had—and with Jake of all people?
Not even with John had she ever…She swallowed nauseously on the stomach-churning emotions as she heard Janey asking her again, ‘Are you sure you’re all right? You look awfully pale…’
‘I…I do feel a little bit queasy,’ Lucianna was forced to admit, adding uncomfortably, ‘I think it must have been the fish pie I ate for supper…’
Janey was really frowning now.
‘Do you? Well, in that case I’d better throw out what’s left…’
‘I think I’ll go outside and get some fresh air,’ Lucianna told her sister-in-law, guiltily aware that the reason for her malaise had nothing to do with Janey’s fish pie.
Once outside she walked towards her workshop but made no attempt to so much as even glance at the car she was supposed to be working on.
How could she have been so overwhelmed by passion…by need…by desire that she had…that she had wanted…? She swallowed nervously, recalling the panic she had first experienced last night when she’d realised that Jake wasn’t there in bed beside her and that she had actually expected and wanted him to be…and had still wanted him to be this morning.
Her thoughts and emotions were totally confused and frighteningly complex as well. She longed to have someone she could discuss them with, someone she could turn to for help and advice, someone who could help her to unravel the disturbing tangle of her emotions and to reassure her that what had happened, what she had done, did not mean…Lucianna swallowed painfully. Did not mean what?
The needs, the desire, the emotions she had experienced last night, and their intensity, were things she had always expected only to feel with and for a man with whom she was deeply and compellingly in love and who loved her back just as intensely. But the man she had ached for, hungered for, wanted with every single fibre and particle of her body hadn’t been John, the man she believed she loved, but Jake…Jake…whom she’d never, in her most remotest, wildest dreams or imaginings, had fantasies about, thought of as…
But no, that wasn’t quite true, was it? Hurriedly Lucianna opened the bonnet of the car she was supposed to be working on, desperate to avoid the mental confrontation her thoughts were dragging her towards but knowing there was no way she could avoid the collision course she was on.