Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

put his hands possessively on her shoulders and bent his face very close, and then she could sense the tension in him. ‘I generally find,’ he sighed, in an erotic whisper, ‘the anticipation of making love unbearably exciting, but tonight it seems almost unendurable.’

      She knew she should be discouraging him from speaking to her in this rather shockingly frank way, and yet if she did that then he might not kiss her. And she badly needed him to kiss her. ‘D-does it?’

      ‘Mmm. Don’t you think?’

      Lola swallowed nervously, but, thank goodness, he did not seem to be expecting much in the way of an answer.

      Instead, he lifted his hand to trace the outline of her lips with one long finger, and when they trembled violently beneath his touch she saw him give a small smile. ‘Which does rather make a case for prolonging the wait for as long as possible. Wouldn’t you say?’

      Lola stared at him hopefully. That sounded more like it! He seemed to be implying that he would offer her some traditional and old-fashioned restraint!

      ‘I suppose so,’ she said a little breathlessly, thinking that if there was any holding back to be done then she rather hoped that he would have the strength of character required to do it. Because right at that moment she wanted nothing more than to be locked intimately in his arms—and the rest of the world could go hang!

      ‘It’s just a little unfortunate,’ he reflected huskily, ‘that my body is steadfastly refusing to listen to what my mind is saying, which leaves me with nothing to do except what I’ve been wanting to do all afternoon. To kiss you.’ He gave her a lazy smile. ‘Unless you have any objection to that, Lola?’

      She recognised that after everything she had said he was giving her the opportunity to stop him, but she didn’t need to utter a word—he must have read the answer in her eyes.

      He slowly lowered his head, and his mouth blotted out everything with a heart-stopping kiss, effectively silencing her in the most satisfactory way imaginable.

      To Lola it was exactly like being given a draught of sweet, cool water after an impossibly arid spell in the desert and she opened her lips beneath his, as though she was drinking him in.

      Maybe she was just too fussy but kisses from other men, in the past, had been best forgotten. Either she had felt as if she had some kind of slimy mollusc clamped to her lips or she’d had an intrusive tongue thrust into her mouth in a way which had made her want to gag.

      Apart from her ill-fated liaison with the pilot, of course. He had been a good kisser—but with him Lola had felt that much of it was cold-blooded technique—expertly learnt but with little true feeling.

      Whereas Geraint. . .

      Geraint kissed solely by instinct—as if her mouth was some new, uncharted territory and he was the laziest and most sensual explorer in the world, his lips caressing and inciting her to wind her arms voluptuously around his neck and to deepen the kiss herself with a new-found skill all of her own.

      She felt his body shift in response.

      ‘Lola. . .’ he said indistinctly against her mouth.

      Lola barely heard him; she was too caught up in the sensations he was bringing to burgeoning life. The blood in her veins seemed to grow thick and heavy and the urgent prickle at the tips of her breasts became acutely sensitive, so that even the bra and thin work blouse she wore seemed as uncomfortable as sackcloth.

      ‘Lola,’ Geraint said again, but more urgently this time, and Lola felt him grow hard against her and the blood rushed hotly to her cheeks as she realised that she had moved fractionally in response, to accommodate his surge of desire.

      She registered his harsh entreaty and tore her mouth away from his with an effort, staring into eyes which were almost unrecognisable—very dark, and opaque with passion. ‘Wh-what is it?’ she asked unsteadily.

      He shook his head as if in disbelief and was silent for a moment as he fought to control his breathing, before saying huskily, ‘We’d better go inside, sweetheart.’

      ‘Inside?’ she repeated stupidly.

      Did his eyes soften, or was that just wishful thinking on her part?

      ‘It’s a little too. . .public here,’ he said quietly. ‘Why don’t we find somewhere where we can be more comfortable?’

      The simple question brought Lola abruptly to her senses. She blinked as she glanced around her, realisation sinking in like a cake on which the oven door had been opened too soon.

      They were standing in the middle of the garden, for heaven’s sake!

      And today was the gardener’s day!

      ‘Oh, no!’ she cried, and ran back into the house, and was about to slam shut the front door, but Geraint was too fast for her. He was inside before she knew it and he was the one shutting the front door!

      ‘Get out!’ she yelled.

      ‘No!’

      ‘Geraint, please,’ she begged. ‘I want—’

      ‘I know what you want!’ he declared passionately. ‘And if you deny it I’ll know you’re lying because it’s there in your eyes, as clear as can be! And it’s what I want too, Lola. More than anything else in the world right now. You. You. Only you. I’ve wanted you since the first time I set eyes on you, when nothing else in that room existed except you. I want you so much I can’t think straight.’

      It was an admission not of weakness but of vulnerability—at least where Lola was concerned—and it affected her more profoundly than anything else so far.

      She could hardly believe that she—she—with her too generous curves and her hair which never looked tidy—apparently had the power to inspire the kind of passion in Geraint Howell-Williams which had given his face such a look of such unbearable tension that Lola went positively weak at the knees just looking at it.

      Nervously, she wound a strand of glossy hair round and round her finger in a way she hadn’t done for years. ‘I just don’t know what to say,’ she told him honestly.

      ‘Don’t you?’ he queried softly.

      ‘No. I don’t seem sure about anything any more.’ She stared at him in confusion, thinking, somewhat belatedly, that he could at least have phrased his desire for her more eloquently than that strained, rather clipped ‘I want you so much I can’t think straight’. ‘Geraint,’ she demanded suddenly, ‘what would normally happen now?’

      ‘Normally?’ His voice was soft, with an undertone of danger. ‘I’m not sure that I understand you.’

      ‘I mean, if it was someone else you had said that to—about wanting them—what would they do?’ she persisted stubbornly as reaction set in like a cold chill. ‘What’s the form for this type of occasion?’

      ‘The form?’ he echoed softly.

      ‘Stop repeating everything I say!’ stormed Lola.

      ‘Then why don’t you say exactly what you mean?’

      ‘You know what I mean! I want to know what your other women do! Do they start necking here, in the hall, and allow you to make love to them on the floor? Or do they slip upstairs for their much needed shower, and then you join them, and . . . and . . .?’ Her voice tailed off miserably.

      He had begun to laugh at her use of the word ‘necking’, but her bleak little voice seemed to sober him right up. ‘There are no set rules, Lola,’ he told her quietly. ‘I don’t have a textbook which I consult . every time I deal with a woman.

      ‘As for what would happen next—what would you say if I told you that I had no idea? That the situation is quite new to me? That I have never made a habit of the very public displays of desire you and I seem to have been indulging in—or at least not for more years than I care to remember?’

      She