Chapter 66 There Was No Future

• There was no future for them with Jared King, Christabel savagely reminded herself as she lowered Alicia to her feet again. There was no point in wondering about how good he might be for a fatherless child.
“Off you go,” she urged Alicia. “I’ll come and get you when it’s time to leave.”
“It’s the shell room, Mummy.”
“I’ll show her where it is,” Jared assured her.
“Good night to both of you,” Vikki Chan said, bowing benevolently before wheeling the traymobile away, back into the house, Alicia trailing after her, asking about dragons.
There were too many dragons to fight, Christabel thought, suddenly swamped by a wave of wretched misery. Money was a curse, a terrible, terrible curse, and she was powerless to make it go away. Apart from everything else, there was always the question…had the speedboat been sabotaged?
Laurens dead, Bernhard dying of cancer despite the best medical treatment in the world…no-one to question what the money men did with the Kruger fortune once Bernhard was gone. The heir was a child who could be controlled, manipulated…disposed of if necessary?
Christabel shivered.
A warm arm encircled her shoulders. “She’s safe with Vikki.”
Safe? Not even an army of bodyguards could keep them safe! And what kind of life was that—imprisoned in a golden cage, never knowing who could be trusted when there was so much money at stake?
Tonight was one little window of freedom.
She sighed away her angst, determined not to let it intrude on her time with Jared. It was too precious to lose, even one second of it.
“So now we’re alone,” she said, lifting her hands to do what she had wanted to do ever since he’d come to open the gate for her. She slid her fingers through the black curls on his chest and smiled up at him. “I want to touch you, too.”
• TIGER EYES SMILING at him…
The thought crossed Jared’s mind, even as his skin seemed to leap with exultation at the sheer pleasure of her touch. There was more at stake here than fulfilling fantasies, he swiftly told himself. He sensed something deeply primitive working through her, an almost savage intent flowing through the fingers curling through his chest hair, her nails lightly scraping.
She had decided.
Now she was following through.
Was it with the heart of a tiger going for its kill, taking quickly, feasting quickly, walking away with a satisfied appetite?
No!
The fierce protest ripped through Jared.
This night would go his way!
One night, she’d said, but one night was never going to be enough for him. He had to make her feel it wasn’t enough for her, either.
Her palms slid sensuously up to his shoulders, moving his shirt off them. He had to seize control before she tipped him out of it, make the moves his, not hers, slow everything down. But before he could stop her, she leaned forward and ran her tongue over his nipple, then pressed her mouth around it and…he couldn’t bring himself to make any move.
His mind slid into meltdown, fired by her desire for him and exploding with the sensations she was evoking, tasting him so erotically, and her hands gliding down his arms, pushing the sleeves of his shirt ahead of them. His stomach was contracting, his heart beating like a drum, wanting her mouth to move to that side, too. His shirt was dropping off him. He caught one sleeve as it fell past his hand, not knowing why, only that it was something to catch, to hold on to.
Then her hands were stroking the sensitive flesh under his rib cage and she kissed him over his heart. He had no control over his erection. His body had a life of its own and he felt it straining upwards, wanting her touch, yet he knew it would be over then and there if she did reach down and…fingers sliding under the waistband of his shorts.
He had to stop her.
Now!
He grabbed her under her arms, hauled her up and kissed her, ravishing the mouth that had ravished his body. She came up on tiptoe, flinging her arms over his shoulders, raking his back with her nails, as passionately intense as he in her wanting, kissing him back with a wild fervour that almost took him past the point of no return again.
He carried her to the balustrade, shoved his shirt over the bare wood, sat her on it and lifted his head back to draw breath. Her eyes were glazed amber, her lips still parted. The realisation hit him she had acted instinctively, compulsively, driven by desires she hadn’t fully recognised, let alone planned on carrying out.
“Christabel…”
The soft call of her name cleared the glaze from her eyes and she looked at him with such vulnerable appeal his heart turned over. He lifted his hand to her cheek, stroking with a tender caring he hoped she felt.
“I want to love you…not take you.”
“Was I doing something wrong?” she asked anxiously.
And he knew then, knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that what she was doing with him was new to her, that her struggle all along was not only with his interest in her, but with a sexual awakening she hadn’t known how to cope with, and tonight it had become a stronger force than all the other hidden forces in her life.
What manner of man had she married for her to be so unsure of herself? He shook that enigma out of his mind. The only important thing was she’d never known this deep an arousal with any other man. It was as unique to her as it was to him and right now she needed to be reassured.
“No. Nothing wrong. Just too fast. You would have had me coming before I could make it special for you,” he gently explained.
“Oh!”
He felt her cheek warm and to nullify any embarrassment he’d stirred, he bent and ran his tongue over the inner tissue of her parted lips. Then he kissed her slowly, sensually, determined on keeping urgency at bay, wanting to show her how it could be for them, making love.
He dropped his hand to her shoulder and gradually stretched the low neckline of her dress, shifting the bodice down below one elbow so he could lift her arm out of it, effectively baring her breast. She moaned as he filled his hand with the soft, yielding fullness of her naked flesh, and to his ears it was the sound of longing.
Sensing he had done what she wanted done to her, he bent and covered the dark areola with his mouth, swirling his tongue around it, lashing the distended nipple, tugging lightly on it with his teeth, exciting himself as her breathing quickened and he gently squeezed her breast in a pumping action. She clutched at his head, urging him on, emitting sexy little cries of intense pleasure.
She wanted more, was begging for more. He dragged the rest of her bodice down, freeing her other breast, and she actually grabbed his head and moved it across, expelling a ragged sigh as he answered the raging desire, working the deep, sensual magic he knew was coursing through her, building the ache, building the need, using his hand to keep the sensations flowing through both her breasts, and when she wrapped her legs around him and arched back, he knew she was teetering on the edge of climax.
He wound his arms around her, scooped her off the balustrade and crushed her to him, loving the naked moistness between her thighs rubbing against his bare stomach as he carried her, his face buried in the deep valley between her breasts, revelling in her lush femininity.
“Jared…what…where?” She was disoriented, confused, hanging onto his head.
“Going to turn off the light above the table,” he explained.
“Oh! Was it…was it like that for you when I…when I…?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never felt like this.” She sounded dazed, disbelieving.
“Neither have I.”
It was the truth. He was seized with an all-consuming desire to give her everything she’d never known, for him to be the one she would always remember, her first real lover. And the one man she’d want to keep in her life, the one she couldn’t resist sharing herself with.
He closed the front door, blocking any sound from carrying through the house, switched off the pool of light thrown by the lantern and spread Christabel across the table.
“What are you doing?” she gasped in bewilderment.