To Love, Honour & Betray. PENNY JORDAN

was stored there.

      And even though the solid furnishings looked slightly incongruous in the rather down-at-heel surroundings of their new home, it was comforting to have things around them that came from both their families, Claudia had told Garth lovingly.

      Only their bed was new—at Garth’s masterful insistence—and Claudia had blushed slightly when they had gone to buy it and the salesman had insisted that they try it out.

      ‘We find that many couples these days are going for the larger king-sized bed,’ the salesman had told them, obviously scenting a better commission from the larger sale.

      Garth had shaken his head and whispered teasingly to Claudia, ‘No way. I want you just as close to me as I can get you, in bed and out of it. I don’t want there to be any space, any distance, anything or anyone between us, Claudia,’ he had emphasised later when they had been alone in his car. He had parked down a quiet, overgrown country track, then pulled her into his arms and kissed her passionately to reinforce the intensity of his words.

      Claudia had responded to him equally passionately, if a little shyly. She might not any longer be a virgin but she was still a little hesitant, a little unsure, even a little afraid of her own sexuality. She had been startled by her physical hunger for him and wondered how uninhibited it was permissible for a woman to be.

      After Garth and his friends had finished carrying the furniture up the four flights of stairs to their attic home, Claudia had cooked them all a huge meal of spaghetti Bolognese cooked on the Baby Belling stove that was part of the fitments of the flat and that Claudia and her mother had spent hours cleaning with hundreds of packs of Brillo pads.

      Afterwards, they had all gone to the local pub, where the short army haircuts of the men had marked them out quite clearly as what they were among the other young men there with floppy, often shoulder-length hair.

      The air in the pub had been thick with cigarette smoke and the sweet, cloying smell of hash, and Claudia had been glad when it eventually came time to leave.

      She and Garth had walked home, arms around one another, and in the shadows on the corner of the street, Garth had stopped and pulled her quickly into his arms, kissing her with fierce passion.

      ‘God, I want you, Claudia,’ he told her thickly. ‘Tonight, watching you …’ He stopped, shaking his head, not totally sure just how she would react if he told her about the almost savage spurt of lust and love he had felt earlier on in the evening, watching her as she leaned over the sink to reach something on its far side, the action drawing the fabric of her jeans tightly across the rounded peachiness of her behind.

      The temptation to walk up behind her and reach around her to caress the warm weight of her breasts while he … Perhaps it was just as well that they hadn’t been alone and that the others had still been there at the time, he reflected wryly as he studied her face in the moonlight. She was so soft and gentle, so sweetly responsive, that he couldn’t quite bring himself to demand more of her, to show her the more forceful and sensual side of his sexuality. There was something about Claudia—a combination perhaps of her own innate gentleness and her upbringing—that set her apart from her more robust peers, which was one of the reasons he had fallen in love with her in the first place, Garth freely acknowledged.