Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

very same,’ he agreed.

      ‘Are you very angry?’ she tried boldly.

      ‘That I was the first man for you?’

      ‘Yes,’ she answered in a small voice, hating the indifferent way he had phrased his question. He made it sound as though he was just going to be the first in a long line of many. And she didn’t want him to be!

      What she wanted, she realised, was for Geraint Howell-Williams to be her one and only lover. And the chances of that being the case were pretty remote. She looked down and pretended to scratch at her bare shoulder, afraid that he might see the misery clouding her eyes.

      ‘No, I’m not angry,’ he told her as he smoothed a lock of damp hair from her forehead. ‘What man in his right mind could feel anger at being given something so precious?’ He bent his head and kissed the tip of her nose, but Lola sensed the sadness which lay behind the gesture without really knowing what had caused it. ‘Although I am slightly exasperated that you didn’t choose to tell me until it was too late.’ He stared down at her with narrowed eyes, and frowned. ‘Why not, Lola? Why did you keep it a secret from me?’

      ‘Perhaps I wanted to prove to you once and for all that I had not been sexually involved with a man almost forty years my senior,’ she said.

      He raised his dark, elegant brows in disbelief. ‘Rather an extreme way of going about it, surely?’

      She found that she couldn’t look him in the eye. ‘I suppose so.’

      ‘And why me?’ he persisted quietly.

      Should she tell him the plain, unvarnished truth? she wondered. Oh, not that she suspected she had fallen hopelessly in love with him, but something more socially acceptable?

      Lola took a deep breath. ‘Maybe I was afraid that you would change your mind and stop if you knew that I was a virgin,’ she confessed. ‘Isn’t virtue supposed to be a big responsibility for a man?’

      He nodded. ‘Yes,’ was all he said, but the look he threw her was a thoughtful one.

      Lola summoned up the rest of her courage to ask, ‘Well? Would you have done?’

      ‘Played the honourable man, you mean, and stopped?’ He gave a small shrug of his shoulders, causing the duvet to slither down to his waist, revealing that magnificent torso, and Lola found herself gazing at him hungrily again. He saw the expression, gave a low laugh and shook his dark head very slightly. ‘Be patient, Lola,’ he scolded softly, and pulled her into his arms.

      Her heart leaped as he held her tightly, but his words were far too noncommittal for her to read anything into.

      ‘As to whether I would have stopped, I like to think that, yes, I would have done.’ He lifted her chin and gave her a steady look. ‘But if I’m being perfectly honest I suspect that nothing in the world could have prevented me from carrying on once we had started.’

      ‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ she said demurely, and ran a questing finger experimentally down over his chest until eventually it dipped into the indentation of his navel. She heard him suck in a long, shuddering breath, before he removed her hand quite firmly and held it tightly in his.

      ‘Not yet!’ he told her sternly, but his smile belied his tone, and that smile melted every last one of Lola’s inhibitions.

      She sat up in bed, elated to see his eyes darken as the rosy tips of her breasts stiffened on contact with the cooler air.

      As if he couldn’t help himself, he lifted his hand and cupped one breast possessively, capturing her gaze intently as his finger flicked provocatively over an exquisitely sensitive nipple.

      ‘I’m going to suckle you later, sweet Lola,’ he murmured, and snaked his tongue slowly over his lips as if to illustrate the promise.

      Lola gasped aloud at the expression in his eyes and the slick, moist look of his mouth and the feel of his hand intimately stroking her breast. Excitement devoured her completely as she felt the hot bubble of desire burst into rampant life. She looked deep into his eyes and commanded softly, ‘Why wait? Why not now?’

      For a split second he looked as overwhelmed as she felt, and then he dipped his head, taking the nipple into his mouth as sweetly as he had promised, his free hand roaming over her belly and beyond, until he had delved into the silken depths between her parted legs.

      Lola gasped again and fell back helplessly against the pillow as he moved to lie above her, and it came as no shock to discover that he was aroused.

      So incredibly aroused. . .

      Lola wriggled her hips impatiently, longing for the newly discovered and sweet release of sex, but longing more than anything for Geraint to possess her—because in that most basic communion Lola had felt more complete than she had ever done before.

      ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ he whispered into her ear, and entered her with such a bold, hard sweep of passion that Lola’s eyes widened with pleasure and thought became impossible, and all that was left in its place was feeling.

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      WHEN Lola awoke, Geraint had gone, and she looked around the room, feeling abandoned, until she saw that the carpet was still littered with some of his discarded clothes, which meant that he had not gone very far.

      She went pink with remembered pleasure as she saw his silk sweater, which he had obviously hurled across the room without thinking. She had rather liked the way that his customary sang-froid seemed to have deserted him when she had lain on the bed silently watching him remove his clothes.

      From the wicked glitter in his grey eyes, Lola had suspected that he intended to disrobe as slowly and seductively as possible, but in the end he had torn his clothes off with an impatience which had touched her heart as well as her body.

      Lola plumped up several pillows and settled back against them, staring out of the window into the star-studded darkness and wondering whether lovemaking just carried on getting better and better like that.

      And if that was the case, then how did people bear the pleasure? How could they lead normal lives knowing that such amazing rapture was theirs for the asking?

      She heard the distant chinking of china, and footsteps approaching, and then Geraint appeared in the doorway carrying a loaded tray, naked save for a pair of faded jeans of which he hadn’t even bothered doing up the top button.

      Lola gulped. With his tar-dark hair all ruffled from where she had been frantically running her hands through it, and the faint sheen which clung to his bare, lightly tanned skin he looked absolutely gorgeous.

      In bed he had been the complete lover—passionate, considerate, imaginative. . . a little bit wild. Lola trembled. Even funny. She loved him; she knew that—it was impossible not to love him. Was there any chance, she wondered, that Geraint could grow to love her too?

      ‘Hello,’ he said softly.

      ‘Hello.’ She smiled happily. ‘You look like a rock star in that get-up!’

      ‘And you look like a naked nymph,’ he murmured.

      ‘Do I?’ she asked him, her smile widening as he approached.

      She had plumped up his pillows too, and now she stared up at him expectantly, her face growing pink with the anticipation of having him naked in her arms again. ‘Aren’t you coming back to bed?’ she asked him, thinking how husky and provocative her voice sounded.

      ‘No. Not just now,’ he answered quickly, his body tensing—as though she had said something vaguely obscene.

      Lola frowned, feeling puzzled. She saw the faintly guarded expression which had crossed his face and wondered what had caused it. What were the rules for after-bed behaviour between two people who did not, she realised with a slowly sinking heart, even know each other terribly