The Tender Years (20 page)

‘And leave the tender years behind?’ she added when she had her breath back.

‘I was going to ask you to marry me last evening but it didn’t seem to be the right moment.’

‘You were? Oh, Luke, I remember the exact moment. Why didn’t you?’

‘I have just said, my darling, that it was not quite the right time.’ Smooth the voice and with that familiar hint of arrogance. He would never be any different, she realised, and wondered what he would be like at forty. She smiled knowingly to herself. To others he would be forbidding, austere, unapproachable. But to her . . . he would be as wonderfully tender as he was today, her dear, dear Luke, her lover.

‘There is a lot to explain,’ she said after a while.

‘It can wait.’ Bending his head, he took possession of her lips, moving his own moistly and sensuously over hers. She pressed close to his hard body, thrilling to the strength and power of his masculinity.

‘Darling,’ he whispered, his breath cool and clean on her cheek, ‘I’d arranged for us to fly back to Grand Bahama tonight. . . but . . . this suite is paid for till tomorrow morning. . . .’

‘It is?’ coquetishly.

‘Chris,’ he warned darkly, ‘you’re asking for a spanking!’

‘How long have you loved me, dearest?’ She sighed contentedly and arched her body in obedience to the pressure of his hand.

‘For years and years—a whole million of them.’ His lips sought hers and found them, and for a few passionate moments all was silence. She quivered as both hands roamed in fevered, erotic exploration, one finding the delicate globe of her breast while the other slid possessively into the loosened waistband of her slacks. ‘The suite is paid for,’ he said again and waited for her response, waited with far less patience than he had waited for her to grow up.

‘Dear Luke . . .’ She lifted adoring eyes to his. ‘If—if you want to—to . . . What I am trying to say, dear Luke is—’

‘That you have left the tender years behind,’ he filled in for her and she merely nodded her head and snuggled against his breast as she had done so many, many times before.

But this time it was rather different. . . .