Heart of the Outback (11 page)

“Wouldn’t Riordan River serve just as well, Alida?”

Shock rippled through her. She searched his eyes in alarm. Intense and unwavering purpose stared back at her. “You can’t mean you want Andy with you all the time,” she cried in vehement protest. “You can’t expect so much. It’s not fair!”

“Alida…” He winced, took a deep breath, and the blue eyes bored into hers. “I meant for you to be with him, as well.”

“Oh, that would be really good!” she replied sarcastically. “Just like old times!”

He winced again. “I’m asking you to marry me.”

It was like a punch to the heart. The pain of such cynical calculation was agonising. Her stomach contracted. She felt herself begin to shake. There was a buzzing in her ears. Somehow she found the strength to push away from the tree, to walk away from him, away from the proposal that would have made her the happiest woman in the world. If it had been offered with love.

Alida’s feet seemed totally disassociated from the rest of her body. They were directed by a terrible shrieking in her mind. Even when they staggered in the soft sand, they were still driven on, impelled by her need for solitude, the need for time to lick her emotional wounds, to gather her pride and stiffen her backbone.

“Alida…”

A harsh urgent cry, echoing in her head, like the echoes of dreams that had never been fulfilled, never would be fulfilled. Birds flew away at the strident sound, all the birds with their simple lives. It was right for them to fly away, to leave behind the ugly mess of human emotions. What carefree creature would want to witness that?

Hands gripped her upper arms, held her steady.

“Let go of me, Gareth!” Was that raw sound her voice?

She felt the heat emanating from his body, the tensile strength of his hands, his reluctance to release her.

“Then don’t turn your back on me, Alida,” he rasped.

“Why not? You think that option is exclusively yours, Gareth?”

The heave of his breath fanned her ear. Alida felt a deep primitive satisfaction at having delivered that counterpunch. She savoured the passion of hatred with a feverish exultation. It flourished in the barren ground that had been her love for him.

“Get this straight, Alida!” His voice was low and grim, and throbbing with passion. “I’m through with feeling guilty about you. It’s the future we have to look at, not the past. And I am not going to carry around a load of guilt for the rest of my life! When all’s said and done, I didn’t do a damned thing you didn’t want me to do!”

He dropped his grip on her arms. “So what do you want now, Alida?” he taunted. “If it’s a fight, I’ll give you one. Because I’m not walking away this time. And you can’t, either.”

Adrenalin shot violent energy through her body. She spun around and faced him, her chin tilted at a rebellious angle, her green eyes glittering with fierce pride. “Well, you can forget marriage for a start, Gareth,” she flung at him.

“It’s the best solution,” he argued.

“For you it is. You think I can’t see the future you’ve got mapped out in your calculating mind? Marriage, divorce, with the subsequent legal claim on my son?”

“Your son. And divorce does not figure in my mind, Alida.”

She laughed at him. “How do you expect us to become one big happy family, Gareth?”

“We work at it,” he said grimly.

“Well, try working at it before you propose marriage to me,” she taunted. “I don’t want to be stepmother to a girl who hates the thought of me taking her mother’s place. Nor do I want a husband who sees me only as a sexual convenience. Why on earth should I put myself in such a position, when by staying free of you I hold the upper hand where Andy is concerned?”

“You’re not free of me, Alida.” The blue eyes glittered into hers with arrogant certainty. “Any more than I’m free of you.”

He didn’t mean the tie of having a child between them. He stood there, insultingly confident in his sexuality, which played havoc with all her senses, deliberately challenging her with the deeply primitive desire not even hatred could quench.

“I’ll listen to reasonable terms,” she snapped, her nerves wire tight under the derisive simmer in his eyes.

“This isn’t a reasonable situation. You know it. I know it,” he softly jeered. “You came with me to meet Stacey yesterday because you wanted marriage, Alida. So now we set about making it feasible.”

“No!”

“Yes!”

Alida’s heart gave a violent leap as she saw Gareth’s control disintegrate. There was no time to evade him. He reached for her, scooped her hard against the heated desire of his powerful body. Raw naked want blazed from his eyes.

“You want me as much as I want you,” he grated, his face working with intense emotion. One hand held her with rocklike steadiness. The other wove through her hair, controlling the tilt of her head.

“No, I don’t,” she defied him.

“Then walk away from me. For good. And then we’ll fight our fight for the rest of our lives.”

That sobered Alida’s bitter rebellion. Gareth would fight her, and fight her over Andy, for the rest of her life. Whether she liked it or not, their lives were now intertwined.

“I don’t totally detest having you holding me,” she conceded.

“That’s what I thought,” he said grimly, his head bending towards hers.

“But this is not the time or the place,” she argued wildly.

“Yes it is,” he disagreed.

His mouth took hers with passion, an invasion so fast and ravaging in its need to take and possess that Alida was lost without another blow being struck in defence. Her stunned surrender to his desperate need for her lasted only seconds. Then it was as though all the emotional inhibitions that had festered in her mind over the last few days were torn apart by a rampaging need to take what she could of him. There was no rational thought involved. It was a madness that knew only a craving that had to be answered.

Her arms coiled over his tautly muscled shoulders. Her hands clutched his head, her fingers revelling in the thick silky texture of his hair. She kissed him with the same urgent devouring hunger that had ravished her mouth.

There was no seductive finesse in what followed, no sophisticated lead-in to lovemaking, nothing at all civilised in the clawing off of clothes that were an intolerable barrier to the call of the wild that coursed through their veins. Soft flesh yielded to hard, each body demanding satisfaction from the other, touch, feel, wanting, wanting, wanting. Eyes glazed with the greed of rediscovery, the sheer barbaric majesty of naked man, the softly fashioned curves of enticing womanhood.

A deep animal growl issued from Gareth’s throat as he swung Alida off her feet and carried her to the blanket. Her breasts rubbed against the heaving wall of his chest. She could feel the ripple of his stomach muscles as his powerful legs strode the short distance. Her excitement was so intense she took temporary satisfaction in kissing the line of his clenched jaw, teasing at the control that had commanded a more habitable mating place than rocks and sand.

He knelt over her as he laid her down, and Alida felt a savage thrill at the desire-driven tension etched on his face and body. She parted her lips invitingly and his mouth crashed down on hers, drinking in all she would give him as though he was dying for it.

His eyes glittered at her as his hands stroked down her throat, master of the life force that beat there. They circled her breasts, lifting them, savouring their soft fullness, shaping them to his will, exulting in the thrusting peaks that quivered for his touch. He bent and drew on each of them with his mouth, a possessive sucking that shot such strong arrows of sensation through Alida that her body arched upwards and she cried out in mindless yearning. He displayed no inclination to assuage her need, nor any control—or knew none.

He fed on her breasts with ravaging passion, with the same intense wanting with which he had fed on her mouth, igniting a fierce pleasure-pain that was so exquisite and excruciating Alida felt he was consuming the inner essence of her, dragging it into his mouth, tasting it, savouring it, swallowing it. She wanted it to go on. She wanted it to stop. Her hands plucked at his head and clutched it in convulsive movements that knew no resolution. Her body writhed in a storm of sweet aching sensation.

He left her breasts throbbing with need. She opened her eyes. There was a look of intense satisfaction on his face, a wild pagan gloating in his eyes, a savage elation in his power over her. Alida reached out and trailed her fingernails down his chest. Blue fire leapt out at her. His whole body shuddered. She laughed with mad exultation, but the laughter choked in her throat as he lowered his body over hers in total domination, taking her hands in his, threading his fingers through hers, holding her arms out on either side of her.

Then his eyes closed. He rested his forehead on hers, and for several pulsating seconds their minds beat to the tunes of their bodies as they imprinted their man-woman messages on each other, the accelerated rhythm of their breathing, hearts pounding in anticipation, skin pressed to skin, vibrant with electric sensitivity, muscle contracting against muscle, a crescendo of need building to shrieking point.

Instinctively they moved in unison, driven by a blind mutual urgency that knew nothing else but the inner world that held them both in thrall, the burning core of yearning that had to be reached and soothed.

Alida wound her legs around Gareth’s hips as he reared back to take the final plunge. She opened dark swimming eyes, wanting to see what he felt as he drove himself deep inside her. Yet she didn’t see. All her senses were blurred by the flood of feeling that surged through her as he filled the dark loneliness of her life with the vibrant throb of his.

She moved to the beat of his need, floating beyond self, beyond time and place and circumstances, flowing with his rhythm, her entire being focused on the drumming pleasure of possession that said she belonged to him, had to belong to him, did belong to him, would always belong to him, indivisible forever and ever because that was the only way it could be.

She unwound her legs from him and placed her feet on the ground beside Gareth’s knees so she could lever her hips upwards, make her own rhythm against his stroking. It filled some need. This is so wanton, she thought, and I’m totally decadent, but I don’t care. I’m doing what I want to do because I’m me, and only he has ever made me feel like this.

The voluptuous roll of her hips excited him into a faster, wilder stroking. Low moaning noises came from his throat. I’ll make him mine, mine forever, Alida promised herself, and felt her body suffuse with sweet contentment, again and again as Gareth plunged towards his ultimate climax. She felt the surge of his body, the wild rough gasping of his breath as he lowered himself to fully cover her. Then his arms wound around her and he rolled onto his side, pulling Alida with him so that they lay entwined in close intimacy.

For Alida it was sweet heaven, lying with Gareth like this. She hadn’t meant to let him take her but she had, and she didn’t regret it. Could this overwhelming desire sustain a marriage? Would Gareth always want her? Or was it the five years of celibacy that made his desire for her so acute?

Her mind whirled with uncertainties. But lining up strongly against the doubts was one pulsing certainty. I don’t want to be alone again. I want him with me. I want all I can have of him.

But that was entirely selfish, Alida chided herself, even as the need and want throbbed through her whole being. The situation wasn’t that simple. Whatever she did with Gareth affected other lives besides her own. She could not ignore realities that made a happy life with Gareth Morgan utterly impossible. She was not that much of a fool.

He wasn’t hers. He never had been. Except perhaps in the heat of passion, when driving need obliterated every other consideration. Yet Alida could not bring herself to break the sense of togetherness she felt with him, however false and fleeting it was. All those harsh realities could wait, she argued to herself. If nothing else, she would have now with him, however stupid and selfish and wanton that might be. Now might be all she would ever have.

The birds came back, twittering onto the branches of the trees. They understood mating and nesting, Alida thought.

She placed the palm of her hand against Gareth’s heart, wishing she knew what he was thinking, yet loath to break the silence between them. Her mind kept shying away from admitting anything except the reality of being together like this.

His heartbeat was slowly steadying to a normal pace. Her slight movement seemed to stir him. His hand trailed down the curve of her back, a sensual fingertip caress that made her shiver with pleasure. He softly stroked her skin, savouring its texture and the womanly shape of her body.

Very gently he lowered her onto the blanket and raised himself on one elbow, looking down at her, his face relaxed, his eyes shimmering with languorous satisfaction. He bent his head and sipped at her lips, teasing little tastes that prolonged the lingering aftermath of delicious sensitivity. His hand grazed over her stomach, her thighs, working slowly inwards to take a tender possession of her womanhood.

She looked into his eyes, saw that he wanted her again, and surrendered to his desire. Less urgently this time, more languorous, intensely sensual, perhaps even sweeter than before because they watched each other, and the pleasure of seeing each other’s pleasure gave a satisfaction that heightened all their senses.

“Tell me…” Gareth’s voice was furred with all he was feeling. “The man you wanted to marry… was it like this with him, Alida?”

“It’s only ever been like this with you, Gareth,” she answered without hesitation.

Whether it had been ego or curiosity that had prompted his question, Alida didn’t know or care. She didn’t have to be told that what they were so intimately sharing was special to him. The wonder of it was in his eyes, and Alida felt a deep thrill of satisfaction that Kate had not given him what she could. Not, at least, in a sexual sense. He wouldn’t look like this, want like this, if it was like anything else he had ever known.