Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

vital than she could remember, and Triss forced herself to blot out the question of why she had not fought harder to keep him...

      He gave an arrogant smile at her wide-eyed reaction and then turned his attention to the linen dress. ‘Take it off,’ he instructed softly.

      Triss swallowed. Her co-ordination was shot to pieces, and even while her body was crying out for his possession her intellect despised this mindless yearning which Cormack had always been able to produce in her.

      She shook her head, and, even though she had cut her hair off fourteen months ago, at that moment she desperately missed the thick red tresses which would have tumbled over her face at this point. She doubted her ability to breathe right now—let alone take her dress and knickers off! ‘No!’

      ‘No?’ he questioned, curiosity quietening his deep, lilting voice. ‘Want me to do it?’

      Her hazel eyes flashed resentful green fire at him. ‘You know I do—damn you!’

      He laughed softly as he began to pull the linen dress down her arms and then dropped it carelessly to the floor.

      ‘That dress cost me a fortune!’ she felt duty-bound to inform him.

      He shrugged. ‘You wasted your money, sweetheart. A body like yours should wear as little as possible. Like now.’ His eyes narrowed and darkened with a fleeting look of perplexity as his gaze raked hungrily over her lace-clad body. ‘Dear God, Triss,’ he breathed, and she had never heard his voice sound quite so unsteady before. ‘Whatever you’ve done to yourself, I like it, sweetheart. I like it a lot.’

      What would he say, Triss wondered as she closed her eyes to conceal her secret from him, if she flippantly announced that having his baby had been the prescription for giving her the curves she had always longed for, but which, paradoxically, had probably put paid to her modelling career for ever? ’D-do you?’ she stammered.

      ‘Mmm...’

      But Triss could detect the oddest note in his voice, something she had never heard before, and her lashes flew open to find that the blue eyes were searing into her like sharp, piercing arrows, an unmistakable query in their lapis lazuli depths.

      ‘What is it, Triss?’ he questioned softly, and the tone of that question was a close approximation of the way he used to speak to her in those early days, when she had been certain that he loved her—before schedules and jealousy and scheming women had left their indelible scars on their relationship.

      ‘Tell me,’ he prompted softly.

      And even while she knew that this was her opportunity to tell him about Simon she also knew that she was not going to take it.

      For Triss was a woman as well as a mother. And for the last fourteen months she had quashed every womanly desire in her body with all the ruthlessness of a road-builder chopping down trees.

      ‘Triss?’

      ‘I need you,’ she whispered, and that was not a lie, simply an evasion. And thank God it seemed enough for him to stop probing any further, for he gave her a hard, assessing smile as he contradicted her brutally. ‘You want me, Triss—there is a difference, you know.’

      She opened her mouth to protest, but it was too late, for he was lowering his dark head to capture her parted lips with his own and she could have wept with the beauty of that kiss. She was lost in it, drowning in it, the reality surpassing even her memories of his kisses—and she had thought that she had exaggerated those.

      But no. They said that your memory could play tricks, and hers must have been about as devious as it was possible to be, because nothing, nothing could have prepared her for the great, swamping surge of feeling which that kiss produced.

      ‘C-Cormack,’ she gasped, unable to stop herself as she put her hands up to his shoulders to pull him right down on top of her. She no longer cared how hungry or how desperate she might seem to him, because right now she was being controlled by a force far stronger than the idea that perhaps a woman should not behave this way. Well, this woman did!

      ‘Triss!’ he groaned as their bodies collided—hers so soft and pliant, his so hard and unyielding. ‘For God’s sake, Triss—slow down!’

      ‘I can’t!’ It was almost a sob. ‘I can’t!’ As she began to pull the smooth, sleek leather down over his buttocks she felt his hardness grow even more potent, and he ground his hips frenziedly against her, as if he could not stop himself.

      ‘Dear God!’ she heard him exclaim, and if her hunger was out of control, then his reaction, too, was frighteningly and beautifully unfamiliar. He levered himself up onto his elbows and stared down at her, his breathing already ragged, his face dark and almost savage, his eyes unrecognisable blackened pools of lust. ‘You want it this way?’ he demanded.

      ‘Yes.’ She trembled as he lowered his mouth to kiss the curve of her jaw, and then reality hit her like a sharp blow as she remembered the repercussions of their last encounter. ‘Cormack,’ she whispered.

      ‘Mmm?’

      ‘I don’t want to get—pregnant...’ Like the night when Simon had been conceived.

      But then she had been foolish and hopeful and naive. Believing that Cormack intended to resume their relationship, and still so in love with him that she had not given contraception a second thought. With far-reaching consequences...

      He uttered something soft as he pulled a small packet out of the back pocket of his jeans and impatiently ripped it open.

      Triss found herself alternating between despair that she was allowing this to happen to her, when all it was going to do was remind her of what she was missing, and agitation in case it didn’t happen.

      ‘Want to put it on for me?’ he whispered provocatively, but Triss shook her head again.

      Apart from the fact that her hands were shaking too much to be of any use, it would be much too poignant to do something which would remind her so much of past intimacies. When every bit of him had been hers to explore as she pleased.

      Sadness and frustration combined to make her body writhe impatiently beneath his, and she heard his soft groan as he moved fractionally away from her to slide the condom on.

      But still Triss wouldn’t let up. She scraped her fingernails with soft, clawing movements over the hard, high curves of his buttocks, and he made a sound midway between a groan of despair and a low laugh of pleasure.

      ‘You know what’s going to happen if you keep on doing that, don’t you, sweetheart?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘This?’ And he moved his hand down, slipping his fingers inside her panties to find her so ready for him that it seemed to take a huge effort of will for him to speak another word.

      ‘This?’ he asked unsteadily as his fingers began to move against her.

      She bucked beneath his touch, her head falling back against the pillow. ‘Yes!’ she almost sobbed. ‘Yes!‘

      He ripped the panties apart without compunction, at the same time lowering his head to her breast, tearing at the thin, flimsy lace of her brassiere with his teeth. And, just when she thought she might die with the pleasure of it, Triss realised that with his other hand he was freeing himself, that he wasn’t even going to bother taking his trousers off...

      ‘C-Cormack?’

      But it did not sound like Cormack who answered her. ‘You wanted it this way, sweetheart,’ he said, in a voice grim and distorted with passion, and then he thrust right into her, filling her with his potency as he began to move with the rhythm which was as old as time itself.

      She had never known him so out of control before, but that excited her even more.

      It all happened so quickly that Triss barely had time to revel in his possession before the sweet waves began to wash over her, and as her body began to convulse she felt Cormack’s orgasm too—and how she