The Married Mistress

‘I wish I didn’t have to! I don’t like sharing you with her, Jacey. I really don’t.’

‘And I don’t like wasting my time with her either, sweetie,’ Jason had hastily assured her. ‘But the lady is loaded! Look at this house for a start. It’s huge, and in this part of London it must be worth a fortune! She has to be worth millions. And she’s almost mine. She’s already given me a key so that I can come and go as I please. Another couple of weeks and I’ll have her eating out of my hand…’

And it was then that she had known. Known that whoever it was who had said that lightning didn’t strike twice had been absolutely right.

Because even as she had listened to Jason and his witchy girlfriend planning to play on her emotions simply to use her, she had realised that she just didn’t care. That in spite of her barely formed hopes, her dreams of starting again, Jason didn’t mean a thing to her, and his greedy, grasping plans even less.

No, the shock that had ripped through her, shattering her composure and destroying all that hard-won peace of mind, was the realisation that it had all been just a delusion. That her hopes of a new life, of a new beginning, putting behind her the pain and the betrayal of the past, were built on the shaky foundations of self-deceit. She was no more ‘over’ Damon than she was capable of flying to the moon.

And if she had any room for doubt, any hope of being wrong, that hope had been totally destroyed in the moment that she had blundered into Damon’s arms and into the feeling that she had come home.

She had fallen totally, blindly and irrevocably in love with Damon Nicolaides in the first seconds that she had ever seen him, and nothing that had happened had changed that. He had taken her heart prisoner and he still held it captive in his strong, powerful hands. All the dreaming of a future, of a new life, had been just a fantasy, one that had evaporated like mist before the sun at the first touch of reality.

The reality was that she loved Damon desperately and she always would, while he had never felt anything for her but the searing passion that had driven him to take her to his bed. And even that had been a complication he hadn’t looked for, hadn’t wanted in his campaign to use her to get what he wanted.

It was for that reason and that alone that she now wanted to weep. To try to wash away the savage pain in her heart under the rush of tears.

And of course she could do nothing of the sort for fear of betraying herself totally to the man who was responsible for that anguish in the first place.

CHAPTER THREE

WHAT the hell was he doing? Damon asked himself furiously, suddenly convinced that he had made the worst move possible since he had come into this house.

Getting hold of Sarah like this had to have been the dumbest, the craziest, the most ill-judged thing he could have done. And he was regretting it savagely.

Or was he?

His thoughts might be screaming the need for caution, but in his senses it didn’t feel like regret.

It had been bad enough when she had blundered into his grasp downstairs and he had let his arms close around her, holding her tight. He had known exactly what he was doing then. He’d been supremely conscious of Jason the rat standing there in the hallway beside them, watching every move. And those moves had been deliberately calculated for their maximum effect on the other man.

But they had had plenty of effect on him too. It had been impossible to hold this woman, to feel the satin warmth of her skin, inhale the sweet, clean scent of her body, and not react in the most primitively masculine way. Even now, his body still ached with the memory of the instant, savage hardening, the tightness that had twisted at his guts. The thought of how it had once been.

How easy it would once have been simply to fold her in his arms, lift her from the floor, carry her over to the bed. He could lower her to the mattress, come down beside her…

‘Damon?’

There was a hesitation in Sarah’s voice, a questioning note that asked, without any more words being needed, just what he thought he was doing.

What did he think he was doing?

What was he doing?

He was holding Sarah in the way that he had dreamed of, hungered for, over the past six months. He had her in his arms again and her hair was like silk under his cheek, her breath a warm whisper across his skin. When she spoke, her soft mouth came dangerously close to the strong muscle that corded his neck. If he moved—just an inch—then her lips would touch, would caress, would entice…

‘Damon—please!’

It was the note of breathless protest on the words that told him how, unthinkingly, his hold on her had tightened, driving the air from her slender body, almost crushing the delicate bones of her ribcage.

‘Sighnomi—I’m sorry…’ he murmured, but he still couldn’t let her go.

For a second he eased his hold on her, then almost immediately tightened it again, so fiercely that her head came up sharply, wide, startled green eyes looking up into his in an expression of shock.

‘No, I’m not sorry,’ he muttered, the words rough and thick. ‘Do you know how long I’ve wanted this? Dreamed of it?’

The nights had been the worst. The nights when once he had lain awake, the pulsing throb of sexual satisfaction slowly, gradually ebbing from his satiated senses. He had never been able to sleep, because even when he had just experienced the wild, primal explosion of the fiercest climaxes he had ever known he had still been unable to surrender to the weary satisfaction that engulfed his body.

Instead he had always had to lie there; to prop his head up slightly on the pillow so that he could watch her drift into sleep. And even just watching her had been a sensual act in itself.

His gaze had drifted from the high, smooth forehead, down over her softly closed eyelids, where the long, thick lashes lay like feathered crescents on the pale skin of her cheeks. He had traced the warm, sensual curve of her mouth, the sweet line of her jaw and chin, the length of her throat. And when his eyes had moved to the rich curves of her body, to the swell of her breasts and hips, still stained with the afterglow of their passion, then his body had hardened all over again, threatening to throw off the satiated sense of fulfilment in a second and start to clamour all over again for something more. For the renewal of the pleasure his senses had known; to climb once again to the peak of ecstasy that he had experienced during the night. He always ended up wanting her again with even more hunger than he had felt the very first time.

Theos! He felt that way now. His body was on fire; he had never felt so viciously hard, so brutally hungry. If she moved against him, it was blissful agony, making him grit his teeth hard against the groan of tortured response.

‘Damon—you’re hurting me.’

‘Huh?’

Jolted from the fever of his memories, he looked down at her through passion-glazed eyes, struggling to focus. Her face was turned up towards his and her eyes were huge and emerald-brilliant against her pale skin.

‘Sighnomi…’ he began, then broke off violently. His hands clenched on her arms again, giving her a small, reproving shake.

‘Maybe I want to hurt you—I want you to know how I feel. To understand what it’s been like…’

‘I do…I do…’

Kristos! Had he put those tears into her eyes? Had he made them spill out from under her lids until they soaked the fine skin of her cheeks? They didn’t run down her face, but simply lay, like a soft sheen, glistening in the afternoon sunlight, a silent but eloquent reproach.

‘Sarah!’

Her name escaped his lips like a sigh in the same moment that his proud, dark head bent, his mouth coming down, making her jump like a startled deer.

It was his gentleness that was shocking. It was so totally unexpected and so much at odds with the hard, heated pressure of the fiercely aroused body that was crushed so tightly against hers.

But his lips were soft and gentle, tenderly kissing away the tear stains from her face, pressing her eyelids shut and brushing the lingering salt drops from her lashes. And it seemed to Sarah that with them went her fury and distress, the need to fight seeping from her like air from a pricked balloon.

‘Oh, Damon…’

Her breath caught in her throat, escaping on a small, choking cry, a sound of surrender. She subsided softly against him, feeling the need of his support, deeply grateful for his strength holding her when she couldn’t stand alone.

Overwhelmed by all that she had just realised, she buried her face in his shirt, not knowing whether she needed to hide or simply to get much closer to him, burrowing into security like some small, vulnerable creature. She felt his mouth drift over her tumbled auburn hair, the warmth of his breath on the delicate curl of her outer ear. The clean, faintly musky scent of his skin tormented her with the memories it evoked, the heat of his body surrounding her like a protective cloak.

And with the memories came the awakening of need, the savage burn of hunger.

‘Damon…’

Even in her own ears, the sound of his name had changed totally. It was no longer the soft, submissive surrender, but a sharpened sound of longing, of demand. And as she spoke she drew in her breath on a sobbing gasp, turning her face to him once more.

‘Damon, please—kiss me. Kiss me properly.’