Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN

she had been in some ways by her father’s heart attack and shamingly she knew why. A heart attack was something that could be explained, discussed, understood. Her mother’s bulimia …

      She had wanted desperately to talk over her feelings with Caspar, to know that he not only understood but sympathised, empathised, with what she was feeling; to see if he realised how torn she now felt. How much on the one hand she longed to be able to simply walk away and escape, to turn her back on the situation here at home and start a completely new life with him in Philadelphia. A life where she would be judged only on her own merits and by people who knew nothing and never would know anything of her family background. And yet on the other how guilty she felt, how compelled to do something to protect and help the vulnerable person she now saw her mother to be.

      She felt so confused … so helpless. More than anything she needed Caspar’s understanding … she needed time. But Caspar quite obviously wasn’t prepared to give her either.

      Last night, when she had turned to him, wanting to talk … She closed her eyes again and was instantly back in her own bedroom, the faint light of the moon shining through the curtains.

      ‘Caspar,’ she whispered softly, ‘are you awake?’

      ‘What do you think?’ she heard him grunt, the bedclothes rustling as he raised an arm, pushed them aside and slipping it around her, his mouth nuzzling the soft, warm skin of her throat. ‘Mmm … I’ve missed you.’

      He was apparently too engrossed in enjoying the taste of her flesh to register her tension.

      ‘Caspar,’ she started to protest, but he ignored her, throwing one leg across her body as he slid his hand along her jaw and turned her to face him, his mouth opening hungrily over hers.

      Olivia hesitated a second before she started to respond. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to make love. It was just that right now it was more important to her that they talked. She needed to vocalise what she was feeling and Caspar was the only person she felt she could talk to.

      It felt so disloyal, hurt too much, to have to admit that the love she knew she ought to feel for her mother simply wasn’t there and that she felt guilty—guilty because all she could feel was pity and compassion. But Caspar’s hand was already moving towards her breast. His body was already aroused.

      His thumb stroked her nipple and in the darkness she tried to recapture her normal feeling of sensual delight at his touch. The first time they had made love she had wanted him so much, ached for him so much, that she had actually had a small orgasm whilst he had been kissing her breast, teasing first one and then the other erect nipple with the tip of his tongue. The gentle roughness of his teeth, the mind-blowing eruption inside her when he started to suck slowly on her nipple had been incredible sensations.

      She had been mortified with embarrassment, but Caspar had simply laughed, teasing her that if that was her reaction to his sensual stimulation of her breast, he couldn’t wait to find out how she reacted when it was a far more intimate part of her body he was orally stimulating.

      As it happened he had been right; he couldn’t wait and neither could she, but they had made up for their impetuosity later, and for the first time in her life Olivia discovered that it wasn’t only the man who derived pleasure from the warm caress of a woman’s mouth on his sex.

      She had been a little hesitant at first to pleasure him in such a way, especially when her own body felt so languid, so deliriously satisfied, and so her touch had been a little cautious and uncertain.

      Caspar hadn’t hurried her, though, or tried to force the pace of an intimacy she wasn’t ready for. Yet, if she was honest, she had rather enjoyed the sense of power their intimacy gave her, especially when she had felt him start to swell and harden as he responded to the gentle pressure of her mouth and the stroke of her tongue.

      Totally absorbed in his reaction of what she was doing, it had been several minutes before she recognised not only the fact that she was squirming rather obviously on the bed but the reason why she was doing so, the reason why her breasts suddenly started to ache again, her nipples re-engorged, her chest was flushing with sensual heat.

      When she did realise that the desire recharging her sexual batteries had nothing to do with anything that Caspar had done to arouse her and owed its being quite simply and rather shockingly to the fact that she was becoming sexually aroused by so intimately caressing him, she was so surprised that she released him and sat up abruptly.

      ‘What’s wrong?’ Caspar had asked her, sitting up himself and reaching out to take her in his arms. ‘If you don’t like it …’

      Olivia had shaken her head. ‘No. No, it’s not that,’ she had told him.

      ‘Then what?’ Caspar had pressed her when she didn’t go on.

      ‘I … I want you,’ she had confessed huskily as she looked from his aroused body to his face and then betrayingly touched her fingertips to her own mouth, her face warming as she added, ‘Doing that … being so … I didn’t think … I never knew …’

      Later Caspar had shown her that he was equally vulnerable to the sensual effect of that kind of intimacy when he laid her gently on the bed and even more gently moved apart her legs and then knelt between them, touching her, stroking her slowly, watching her eyes, holding her gaze so that he could see her reaction as he slowly lowered his head towards the soft, damp tangle of her pubic hair.

      Olivia had closed her eyes, trying to suppress the moan of pleasure she could feel building in her throat as he slid his hands beneath her thighs, lifting her, tilting her, setting her legs over his shoulders as he started to explore the tender, sweet intimacy of her, unerringly finding the place where she was most sensitive, most responsive, and caressing it until she could no longer hold back her response.

      But that had been then; this was now. Beneath the stimulation of his tongue, her nipple had started to stiffen, her body responding to him even if her mind was not.

      Beneath her fingertips she could feel the crispness of his hair, but where normally she would have buried her hands in it to keep him, to hold him even closer to her body, tonight what she really wanted to do was to push him away. How could he not know … not sense that she simply wasn’t in the mood? Was he really so blind, so oblivious to her feelings, or did he simply not care? Was it more important for him to satisfy his own needs than hers?

      The pressure of his mouth on her breast was increasing. He had moved their bodies closer together. She could feel his hardness pressing against her and for the first time in their relationship Olivia experienced a need to simply get their lovemaking over and done with as quickly as she possibly could.

      Tonight the foreplay she normally loved and enjoyed so much was merely an unwanted and resented duty. Since his need for sex was quite obviously so all-consuming, all-important, far more important to him than what she might want or need and since he was so obviously ready, why didn’t he just go ahead and get it over with?

      She moved impatiently against him and then ground her teeth as he misinterpreted her invitation and started to caress her with his hands, sliding them down over her hips, massaging her belly and then her buttocks in the way she normally enjoyed before sliding one hand between her thighs.

      Olivia tensed and finally so did Caspar.

      ‘What is it?’ he asked her. ‘What’s wrong?’

      So he’d finally noticed there was something wrong.

      ‘Nothing,’ she told him curtly, then added, ‘Look, Caspar, can we please get this over with? I’m tired and if you want sex as you obviously do …’

      Olivia knew even as she was saying it how awful her words must sound but she just couldn’t help herself. Was it her fault that Caspar was so blind, so selfish that he couldn’t tell for himself that she just wasn’t in the mood, that what she wanted was to be held and comforted, to be listened to and not simply treated as a means by which he could relieve his sexual tension?

      She could feel him watching her in the darkness and wasn’t