She tossed her head in an unconsciously challenging gesture of contempt. ‘Forget it!’ she said, flouncing over to the door. ‘The Carters’ room is empty tonight, I can sleep downstairs in their bed.’
Braced for an explosion of thwarted anger she was disconcerted when he remained relaxed against the pillows, a look of boredom on his face.
She soon found out why when the door refused to open to her touch. She rattled the handle in frustration, realised what was wrong and whirled around.
‘What have you done with the key?’
He unfolded his arms and spread them wide, boredom replaced by a smug smile. ‘I’ll give you a clue. It’s somewhere in this bed. Why don’t you feel around and I’ll let you know when you’re getting warm?’
She was very warm now, and getting hotter by the moment. If only she could melt through the door at her back. ‘You’re the most hateful person I’ve ever met!’ she dredged from the depths of her helplessness.
His smile vanished. ‘If that’s the way you feel, maybe I’m right to worry about how carefully you’re looking after your pregnancy. Have you changed your mind about having my hateful baby? Are you hoping your body might reject it?’
Jennifer was stricken to the core. ‘That’s a vicious thing to say,’ she choked, welcoming the pain of her shoulderblades digging into the door as a distraction from the searing pain in her heart. ‘I’d never hurt my baby! And I’d never blame an innocent child for the acts of its parents, either. Children don’t have any choice about who their parents are going to be—’
‘And parenthood often isn’t a matter of conscious choice either, but it was for you,’ he pointed out ruthlessly. ‘On the day you agreed to be inseminated with my sperm you made a choice. You accepted Raphael Jordan as the father of your child. You accepted me!
‘Now, are you going to come over here and get into bed or do I have to come over there and fetch you?’
He sat up and began to peel down the duvet, revealing more and more naked flesh.
Jennifer squeezed her eyes tight shut against the threatening sight, throwing up her hands to ward off her invisible panic. ‘No, wait. Look, can’t we just...?’
She heard the rustle of sheets, his bare feet hitting the floor, his quiet padding across the room towards her. And then nothing. Silence.
She swallowed, her nostrils quivering at the scent of danger. He was close, standing directly in front of her; she could feel his proximity with every nerve in her body. Her imagination went into overdrive. If she moved her hands even a fraction of an inch she would touch his hot, smooth, satiny skin...
‘You can look now.’
The sardonic humour in his voice warned her to ignore him.
She licked her dry lips and was ashamed of the slight whimper that slipped out. ‘Please...’
He took her resistant left hand and placed it on his hip. Her eyes flew open and she looked down in blessed relief. He was wearing a pair of black silk pyjama trousers, loosely tied by a drawstring. They had settled low on his lean hips, dipping on his hard belly at the point where the arrow of hair below his navel began to spread into a dark blond thicket. But at least he was respectably covered.
She snatched her gaze back to his face. It was all hard angles and brooding shadows, his lower lip pushed out in a sombre, sexy pout.
‘Disappointed?’ he smouldered, and massaged her hand in slow circles on the fabric, shaping her palm over the jutting hardness of his hip-bone.
There was another electric silence, and he picked up her right hand and put it on his right hip. Then he removed her spectacles, folded them, and tucked them snugly into the breast pocket of her robe.
‘Wh-why did you do that?’ she said light-headedly, as he withdrew his fingers from the pocket, his knuckles scraping briefly against her towelling-padded breast.
‘You won’t need your glasses in bed. Everything you see there is going to be in close-up,’ he murmured, his forehead briefly resting against hers as he looked down for the belt of her robe. ‘You won’t need this, either.’
‘Don’t...’ she uttered weakly, stopping him, her toes curling against the bare floorboards.
‘You won’t be comfortable all bundled up like this.’ He tugged gently at the trailing bow.
She tipped up her face to protest and, shockingly, her mouth met his. His lips were firm and resilient, his tongue limber as it slipped moistly past the guard of her teeth and stroked her silky interior. Shock turned to violent craving and she moaned, her mouth opening to receive him. His head tilted, his mouth slanting to deepen the kiss, deepen the penetration of his tongue into her willing depths. He broke off and bit at her lips, licking and sucking at the juicy pink flesh, his hands twisting in the loops of her belt, dragging her closer into the hot, wet embrace of mouths.
His whiskers rasped on her delicate skin, the small pain intensifying the oral pleasure as she savaged him in return, and he groaned, plunging himself even more recklessly into her inviting moistness, the ragged sound of his desire vibrating seductively in her arching throat. His tongue flickered over hers in a dance of erotic compulsion, rubbing at her, teasing her with addictive skill, saturating her overloaded senses with his unique taste.
Her body tightened, her breasts swelling against the rough towelling as he seduced her tongue into his mouth so that he could suckle her in a slow, hard rhythm that matched the sensual undulation of his hips.
Only when she felt his hands move at her waist, fumbling again with the now impossibly knotted belt, did Jennifer drag herself back from the brink of terrifying surrender.
‘No, oh, no, we can’t...’ She tore her mouth from his, the words breaking clumsily from swollen lips, her tortured lungs struggling for the breath he had stolen.