Yesterday's Bride. Alison Kelly

thinking, she crossed the moonlit family room to the bar.

      She reached for the bottle of tequila knowing alcohol cured nothing and that two previous encounters with the potent Mexican liquor had proven she and it incompatible. But desperate times called for desperate measures, and since she’d never taken sleeping pills in her life, booze was her last resort. Unscrewing the lid on the bottle, she poured what amounted to roughly a triple shot of the alcohol, then, deciding that was too desperate a measure, trickled half back into the bottle. For a moment she pondered the idea of adding ice.

      ‘Oh, great, Taylor!’ she muttered, recalling how Craig in their first year of marriage had set a precedent, which had made ice a special treat for hot summer nights like this one. ‘Ice cubes are the last thing you should be thinking about!’

      Determinedly she downed the straight tequila, shuddering when she lowered the glass and dreading the thought of how her head would ache in the morning. Yet the prospect of the blissful oblivion the alcohol would induce overrode all the other negative factors. Even an almost paralysing hangover was preferable to the achingly arousing thoughts that had been dominating her mind since lunch.

      Back upstairs, she crawled between her lilac sheets praying the effects of the alcohol would rapidly overpower both her sleeplessness and the sensual memories invading her head.

      The heat gave the air the consistency of marshmallows, sapping a person of all energy, and she half wished she was back in the air-conditioned luxury of her parents’ bayside home. So much had changed in the past six months, she more than anyone or anything and far more than she would ever have imagined. In the midst of tossing to free herself of the sheet twisting around her lower body, she started as something cool and moist brushed her cheekbone.

      Drowsy confusion continued to fog her mind as the slippery coldness edged down along her jaw and across her bottom lip. Instinctively her tongue sought to identify the cause. It tasted cold, hard wetness and warm male flesh. She quivered, a ribbon of pleasure fluttering through her.

      ‘Craig...’ Her voice emerged as a breathy query, yet her body’s sensual reaction confirmed his identity even before he spoke.

      ‘You expecting someone else to slip into your bed tonight?’

      She shook her head at the amused, raspy-voiced question, opening her eyes to the utterly male smile she adored. Yet not even the smile was enough to stop her gaze from straying down over his muscled chest, firm abdomen and slim hips. Her throat, constricting at the sight of his nude, muscular perfection, emitted a sound of feral admiration that made him grin.

      ‘Missed me, huh?’ he asked smugly.

      His lips sought her mouth, giving her no chance of verbal response, but hell yes, she’d missed him! Her arms clamped tightly around his neck; they’d been parted mere hours, yet she’d missed him with an intensity she’d thought would kill her.

      ‘I didn’t expect to see you until the end of the week,’ she said when they broke apart, dazed as much by his unexpected presence as the effects of his kiss.

      ‘I know, but I was worried about you.’

      ‘Worried? You don’t think I can last three days without you?’

      Chucking her indignantly jutted chin, he grinned. ‘It wasn’t the days that concerned me. I know how much trouble you have sleeping in summer, so I decided I’d better be here to keep you cool.’

      Stifling a smile, she raised an eyebrow. ‘Of course it was solely my best interests you had at heart.’

      ‘Yeah.’ He all but purred the word, and, taking what she now recognized to be an ice cube, he drew it around her hairline to the pulse behind her ear.

      ‘Feel good?’ he asked, his gaze intense.

      ‘It feels great, but it’s not going to work,’ she told him. ‘You’re only making me hotter...’ Her words died to a sigh as the frozen cube was trailed down her throat and across her chest.

      ‘Hot, babe?’ he whispered, manoeuvring the cool wetness into the valley of her breasts, then mopping it up with his tongue. ‘How hot?’

      Arousal flamed in her and Taylor gripped the sheets in an effort to stay centred.

      ‘Tell me how hot I make you,’ he urged. ‘Better yet—’ he paused only until her eyes lifted to his, then straddled her with slow, easy grace ‘—show me.’

      As he said the words, the cube made contact with her nipple, sending her bucking from the mattress. Desire seared her bones as furiously as his hardness branded her belly. She made a futile grab for him but in one smooth motion he snared her wrists and stretched her arms above her head.

      ‘Easy, honey, I’m not through cooling you.’

      The taste and temperature of his kiss had Taylor equating hell with the North Pole, and as passion engulfed her, she wondered if a person could drown in fire, or combust from love. Dimly she became aware of his reaching for another ice cube from the tray by the bed, but nothing in her wildest dreams had prepared her for what he did with it.

      Placing it between his teeth, he began guiding it from the base of her throat along the length of her, the combination of her overheated skin and his breath creating melting rivulets that trickled along the ridges of her ribcage as slowly as he flowed down her body. With both her blood and flesh growing more heated by the moment, each time Craig replaced one spent ice cube with a cooler, fresher one, Taylor expected to hear it sizzle as it met her skin and evaporated on contact. By the time his trail of torture reached her navel, her breathing was as ragged and erratic as the reactionary tremors that surfaced across her belly, but erupted from a far deeper core.

      Millimetre by erotically slow millimetre, he orally steered the ice lower and lower until her nerve endings were ablaze to the point where she thought she would explode into a zillion pieces without ever finding the completion she craved. Her experience with this man’s torrid sensuality meant there was no question as to why the ice didn’t feel cold against the most sensitive part of her femininity. Every pulse in her body was screaming at sound-barrier pitch for release and her hips lifted with wanton demand for its delivery.

      She was almost frantic with need for him when his dexterous mouth and hands stilled. Tossing her head, she writhed beneath him. ‘Now!’ she cried. ‘Don’t stop...now!’

      ‘Look at me, Tay....’ His words were breathless and strained, but the touch of his hand on her forehead signified their importance.

      Forcing her lashes open, she stared at up the sweat-drenched male perfection poised above her and her heart almost exploded at the depth of emotion shining from his eyes into hers.

      ‘I love you, Tay. I love you more than you’ll ever believe. And nothing will ever change that.’

      ‘Oh...Crai—’

      His mouth claimed hers in a humid, hungry kiss that she never had a chance of controlling. Then he eased away and, with a smug, satisfied smile, moved his hips intimately against her. ‘Now?’ he asked.

      ‘Yes, yes...now. Now...’

      Taylor struggled to shrug free of the hand shaking her shoulder. It wasn’t Craig’s hand...it was too small. Too fragile...

      ‘Mummy! Mummy, wake up! You’re having a bad dream!’

      Panting for breath and blinking against the glare of the bedside lamp, Taylor tried to sit up. To speak. To ignore the fact she was quaking with unsatisfied desire. To comprehend what the wide-eyed child hovering by her bed was doing in her and Craig’s tiny apartment in the middle of the night.

      ‘It’s okay, Mummy,’ the dark-haired child assured her. ‘You must have been dreaming about being on Grandpa’s farm.’ She giggled. ‘You kept yelling “Cow! Cow!”’

      Reality struck with a crippling blow, catapulting Taylor from past pleasures to present pain. It hurt her to breathe, nearly killed her to think. Acid tears burned her eyes and throat. Tears for what she’d