PENNY JORDAN - Passionate Nights - The Mistress Assignment / Mistress of Convenience / Mistress to Her Husband

She could hear Brough breathing, feel the heat of each breath he drew against her skin, sensing even the tension that coiled like fine wire through his body, feeling just what was burning through him as she gave herself up to the dark blaze of passion she could see in his eyes.

Her body swayed towards him, seeking his strength and offering in return the promise of her own pliant responsiveness, the instinctive age-old body language of woman to man, yielding and promising, whilst at the same time demanding that he show that he had the strength, the manhood, to take up the challenge she was offering and to protect her weakness.

‘Brough.’ She whispered his name, her eyes heavy-lidded, mysterious, luminous with passion as she turned her face up to his, an enchantress, powerful and strong. Irresistible.

And yet she still placed her hands flat against his chest, as though to deny the promise in her eyes and the desire running through her body, heavy and hot as molten gold.

She could feel his arms wrapping around her, enfolding her, as he drew her close, so close that her hand could feel the wild, fierce, heady drumming of his heartbeat, fast and furious as a cheetah during the chase. Boldly Kelly kept her eyes open. His were hot, dark, deep, glittering with male arousal.

Once again she looked at his mouth, a wild thrill of elation gripping her body. Now she was the hunter, her body tight, coiled, waiting … hungry.

Their mouths met, hers wanton, responsive, and yet at the same time soft and waiting. Brough was kissing her, sliding his hands up over her back, caressing her over and over again, his body hard and powerful against hers. Her own body felt molten and plain, reminding her of glass before it was shaped and blown, liquid running free, waiting to be formed and shaped, a wild natural element that could be coaxed but never forced.

Brough’s hands were on her shoulders, gripping them hard as his tongue searched her lips for an opening. Eagerly she gave it to him, her own nails digging into the long muscles of his back.

She was experiencing a wildness within herself, a sensuality she had never encountered before, and it both exhilarated and terrified her. Beneath her clothes her breasts ached and peaked. No need for Brough to even lightly caress them to arouse her need for him, but when he did—!

Was that really her making that low, hungry, almost semi-tortured sound deep down in her throat? Was that Brough growling in fierce exultation beneath his own breath as his thumb-pad returned demandingly to caress and probe the taut peak of her nipple?

She wanted him. Wanted him … wanted him so badly. Wanted to feel his body, his skin, next to hers, his touch, his love …

Kelly made an urgent keening noise deep in her throat, her body arching against Brough’s in a sexual mixture of longing and pleasure.

Somehow all the barriers there had been between them, all her doubts and fears, her refusal to believe that it was possible for her to feel like this, for her to love like this, so immediately, so intensely, so unexpectedly were banished, vaporised by the sheer force of her feelings.

Now, here in his arms, she was all feeling, yearning, loving woman, her natural female instincts overturning the conditioning of modern society and its demands. As boldly as some long-ago ancestor might have done, she was recognising and claiming for her own her man and her right to love him.

‘Brough.’ She whispered his name throatily, a husky purr of aroused pleasure, heavy with sensuous promise shot through with love.

‘You feel so good. I want you so much …’ Was that her saying that, or was it Brough? Was she the one reaching for him or was he the initiator of their increasingly passionate caresses? The shadowy confines of the hallway, normally surely the last place she would have ever thought of as romantic, now seemed as private and protected as the most secret of sanctuaries. And it was a dizzying, tantalising thought to know that not so very far beyond its closed door lay her bedroom—her bed.

Her whole body shuddered as it wantonly followed where her thoughts were leading, where she already ached for Brough to lead her. A feeling of the most incandescent joy filled her; a sense of throwing off the past and turning to welcome the future and their love made her feel as though suddenly something unacknowledged deep within her had sprung to life, as though the person she had been before the wonderful, miraculous discovery that she loved Brough had been someone who was only half alive, someone who had been deprived of the true pleasures and meaning of life.

‘I don’t want you to go …’

As she murmured the words against Brough’s mouth she could feel him start to tense; his mouth left her throat, which he had been kissing and nibbling, sending a cascade of tiny erotic shivers all the way from the top of her head to her toes.

‘I don’t want to either,’ he whispered back as his thumb caressed her throat and then her jaw, slowly moving towards her mouth. ‘But I must. I’m expecting a call from Hong Kong—I had some business dealings there, which I’ve sold out of, but there are still some legal ends I need to tie up. And tomorrow I have to go to London to see my accountants. But when I come back …’

As he turned away he paused and then turned back, taking hold of her hand and urging her gently towards him.

‘Thank you …’ he told her softly.

‘For what?’ she managed to ask him in a shaky voice.

‘For today … and this … and you …’ he told her throatily as he bent to place a soft kiss on her half-parted lips.

For her … For a moment Kelly felt close to tears. There was so much more about her that he still didn’t know. So much that she still had to tell him—especially … But now, when he was on the point of leaving, wasn’t the time to start explaining about Julian and Beth.

‘I know you’re only being like this because you’re worried about how much I’m going to charge you for the teaset,’ she told him teasingly and a little chokily.

‘Aha … so you’ve seen through my dastardly plot, then,’ Brough responded in the same vein.

Suddenly anxious, she clung to him and whispered, ‘Oh, Brough, it’s all so new, so unexpected. I don’t …’

‘It’s perfect … you’re perfect,’ Brough assured her as he tightened his arms around her and cradled her head against his shoulder. ‘ We are going to be perfect … together … Right now, there’s nothing I want more than to stay here with you.’

He looked betrayingly towards the inner doorway to the flat and, guessing what he was thinking, Kelly quickly reassured him. ‘I know and I understand. You’ve got your responsibilities, and anyway, perhaps … Everything’s happened so quickly, so …’

‘I’ll call you the moment I get back from London,’ Brough promised her huskily.

‘There’s so much I haven’t told you,’ Kelly protested as he started to release her.

‘Such as?’ Brough grinned. ‘I’ve already discovered for myself all that I need to know, and what I have discovered, what I do know … I love …’

‘Oh, Brough …’

It was impossible not to throw herself back into his arms and share another passionate kiss with him, and then he was gone, leaving her to touch her fingertips to a mouth that still tingled from the passion of his kiss and to acknowledge with a small, cold shiver that he was wrong, that there were things that he still had to learn.

Would it change what he thought, what he felt, when he learned of her deceit, or would he understand and accept that her deliberate pursuit of Julian had been prompted by loyalty to Beth?

‘SO YOU do understand, Dee, don’t you?’ Kelly asked the older woman anxiously as they sat opposite one another in Kelly’s flat.