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He brought his lips down hard and powerfully against hers, crushing her in his arms so that she could feel his heart beating against her breast—the rapid thundering seeming to symbolise life itself—and Triss found that she was shaking quite violently.
Cormack lifted his head and frowned. ‘Why, you’re trembling, Triss,’ he observed, his own voice sounding slightly unsteady.
‘I know. Silly, isn’t it?’ She rested her head against his shoulder and it felt as though all the troubled times which had passed between them had never occurred. And she was aware that once she told him about Simon she would not have the opportunity to do this again.
‘Why?’ he questioned softly. ‘Why are you trembling?’
Tricky, this one. If she told the truth would she not be revealing her vulnerability where he was concerned? And if she was vulnerable he would be able to hurt her even more than he already had done.
‘Triss?’ he prompted gently.
‘Because it’s been so long,’ she admitted reluctantly, closing her eyes quickly.
‘Since?’
‘Since I’ve...been intimate with anyone.’
‘How long?’ he questioned sharply.
‘Since—that night.’ The night when their son had been conceived.
There was a long, telling silence, and when he spoke his voice sounded unaccustomedly heavy. ‘Me too.’
It should have made her burst with joy, but it had the opposite effect—for it made what she had to do even harder.
He bent his mouth to hers once more, and even as she found her lips opening beneath the persistent coaxing of his she wondered when she might gather together enough courage to tell him about Simon.
CHAPTER THREE
TRISS came up for air, though it wasn’t easy when all she wanted was for Cormack to carry on kissing her like that. In that mad, passionate way—as though he had just discovered kissing for the very first time. ‘Cormack!’ she gasped.
‘Not now!’ he growled, and lowered his head again.
And oh, the sweet power of that kiss threatened to submerge her in its tantalisingly sensual waters. Triss struggled back to reality with difficulty. ‘Cormack, please—’
‘You don’t have to beg me, Triss, sweetheart,’ he murmured, with a trace of that hateful irony. ‘The pleasure is all mine, I can assure you.’
‘But...’ Oh, it was hopeless! Hopeless! Triss found her head tipping back, giving Cormack greater access to her neck, which he was now covering with tiny, tiny butterfly kisses so exquisitely delicate that they made her shudder with frustrated longing.
‘Triss,’ he groaned, and shaped the palms of his hands voluptuously down the sides of her body, as if he were a sculptor creating and forming her out of pliant clay. ‘Beautiful, beautiful Triss. God, but you feel good. So good that I want to eat you up.’
Triss fought feelings of intense desire and intense frustration, frantically sucking in air through her mouth as Cormack cupped one of her breasts through the linen dress she wore. She had forgotten just what a master he was at this. If men could take a course on how to drive a woman out of her head with wanting then Cormack Casey would graduate with honours!
Her hips began to move distractedly, as if of their own accord. Tiny, rhythmical little circles, just designed to bring her into contact with the unmistakable evidence of Cormack’s growing passion.
This had not been what she had planned. She was supposed to feel angry with Cormack, for heaven’s sake. He had let her down in every which way.
She had brought him here today solely with the intention of informing him that he was the father of her child. She had planned to tell him not coldly, or judgmentally, just matter-of-factly. As a teacher would explain something to a class.
But nothing more than that—certainly not this. She ran her tongue over her parched lips in despair as she felt her nipple peak beneath the kneading movements of his fingertips.
She tried one last time. ‘Cormack, this is wrong...’
He stopped then, lifting his dark head to stare at her accusingly, and she found herself dazzled by the brilliance of his blue gaze. ‘No!’ He halted her with a negation that was almost savage. ‘Whatever else may have happened between us this was never wrong...never could be wrong... You know that, Triss. In your heart you cannot deny it.’
She gave up. It was too much to ask—to deny herself what she wanted more than anything else in the world. And why not now? Why not this one, last, glorious time?
Because Triss knew with a certainty which sickened her that Cormack would not make love to her ever again—not once she told him about Simon.
For he was the father of her child. And she knew Cormack well enough to know in her heart that not only would he be livid with her for having concealed that fact, but that he would find it impossible to forgive her for having kept his baby a secret from him for so long.
But hadn’t that been her intention? To hurt him as he had hurt her? What some people might have called revenge, but what she had convinced herself was only right and fair.
‘Triss, let me make love to you,’ he coaxed. ‘What we have between us is too good to throw away. Sure, isn’t it a crime not to when we feel this way about each other?’ And all the while he spoke he was sliding those sensuous fingers over her breasts with such unerring accuracy.
Perhaps another woman with more backbone than Triss might have halted those delicious caresses... might have stopped him from inciting each exquisitely aroused nipple into honeyed life. Would a woman who had not fallen so completely under Cormack’s spell have pushed him away?
Well, Triss was certainly not pushing him away. Instead she was kissing him back. Frantically. Almost as frantically as she scrabbled to unzip his leather jacket, to reveal the muscle-packed chest which the grey cashmere sweater could not disguise.
Her hands burrowed right up beneath his sweater and she homed straight in on those tiny, flat nipples, stroking them in the teasing way he had always adored—and the familiar and intimate touch felt like coming home after a long, long journey.
‘Sweet Lord in heaven!’ He drew in a long, tortured breath. ‘Beatrice...Beatrice. My beautiful Beatrice. Don’t you know what you’re doing to me, sweetheart?’
His words came at her in a haze; he might have been speaking another languages for all the sense she made of them.
She could not speak or hear or think. All she could do was clutch onto him for support while he roughly unbuttoned her linen dress so that her aroused breasts were visible, straining madly against the champagne lace of her brassiere.
She was aware of a silence, and a stillness, and she opened her eyes in alarm, wondering why on earth he had stopped now. And she disturbed an odd kind of watchfulness on his face as he stared at her body.
‘Wh-what is it?’ she managed, from between lips which felt swollen to twice their normal size. ‘What’s the matter, Cormack?’
The rapt look of absorption had given way to one of narrow-eyed but unmistakable approval. ‘Nothing,’ he murmured. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘Then?’
‘Your breasts.’ He dipped his dark head to flick his tongue tantalisingly against the champagne lace which was stretched taut over one nipple. ‘They’ve changed.’
‘Have they?’ she questioned lazily as she allowed him to unclip the bra, so that her breasts sprang free into his waiting hands and he immediately began to caress them.
‘Mmm. They’re lusher, fuller—they look...’
Triss froze as the meaning of his words seeped into her addled brain. Any minute now and he would guess the reason for the change—that she had suckled his baby for the past five months.
But Cormack did not seem to be in the mood for any guessing games—in fact there seemed to be only one thing that he was in the mood for, and he shifted uncomfortably before taking her resolutely by the hand.
‘Where’s the bedroom?’ he demanded, in a voice laden with the heated fragility of sexual tension.
Triss wanted him so much that she could not even summon up the simple co-ordination to lift her hand and point to the far door. ‘Over th-there,’ she whispered falteringly.
Cormack had always been a man to make instant decisions, and there wasn’t a trace of doubt on his face as he led her over to the door and pushed it open with all the force of a barnstorming hero from a stage musical.
He didn’t wait, pause, look at her, question her, quiz her or try to reason with her. He simply pushed her down onto the bed and then followed as if it was his every right to do so. And he kissed her and kissed her until the need in her grew unbearable.
‘Cormack, please—’ Was that really her voice? Triss wondered. That husky, sensual pleading sound—was she making it?
‘Please what?’
‘You know what!’
‘No, I don’t,’ he growled as his teeth made provocative little mock-bites on her earlobe. ‘Not unless you tell me!’
She sensed that if she put into words what she wanted him to do to her, then she might give away how much she feared she still cared for him—despite all her vows and determination to remain immune to the manipulative rogue!
So where did that leave her?
Vulnerable, that was where.
Now he had freed the rest of the buttons of her dress so that it flapped right open, revealing the high-cut champagne lace panties which matched her bra. She brought her knees up instinctively to cover her bare belly, but from the renewed darkening of his eyes she saw that the movement had excited him even more.
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