telling the truth, it would be an appalling truth that he would never be able to live with, he reflected grimly before swiftly suppressing that unproductive thought. As he had been raised to do, he would do what he knew to be his duty and act with honour, regardless of what he found out.
‘Where’s the cloakroom?’ Chrissie asked thickly, dragging his attention back to her.
When he saw the sheen in her turquoise eyes and the dampness on her cheeks, he tensed and took a sudden step forward.
‘The first door at the top of the stairs but the bedroom en suites are closer,’ Jaul volunteered, winged ebony brows pleating. ‘You’re upset...you’re crying...’
Chrissie flew upright as though she were a puppet whose strings had been jerked without warning. ‘Of course I’m not crying!’ she protested huskily. ‘It’s stupid, it’s just all this stuff about the past...it’s confusing me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jaul breathed in a ragged undertone as he closed his arms round her slight, trembling figure to hold her still. ‘I knew that telling you about the accident would rake it all up again, which was why I was so reluctant—’
‘But I had to know the truth,’ Chrissie told him, lifting her chin, an action that did nothing to hide the wet lustre of her eyes.
A tiny muscle pulled taut at the corner of his unsmiling mouth, his beautiful eyes flaring brilliant gold as he scored his knuckles lightly down the side of her face in a soothing gesture. ‘I hurt you.’
Chrissie looked up at him and marvelled at how stunning he was even with his blue-black hair a little messy and his strong jawline stubbled. His black lashes were luxuriant above eyes of stormy gold. Wicked anticipation slid through her to create the kind of sudden tension that made her suck in her breath. As she connected with his burnished gaze a pulse was hammering like crazy above her collarbone. She wanted him to touch her so badly that her fingernails bit into her palms as her hands fisted. He was all lean muscle and potent strength as he eased her closer and her body thrummed, her blood racing like liquid lava through her veins. His warm, demanding mouth swooped down on hers and hot, blistering pleasure shot through her with the force of a lightning bolt.
Jaul lifted her up into his arms and carried her into the bedroom next door. As he settled her down on the bed her fingers feathered through his hair and instinctively closed into the silky black strands to hold him to her. ‘Kiss me,’ she told him, desperately needing to think of something...anything other than the reality that Jaul had almost died two years earlier. Had he died she would never have seen him again, never had the chance to hold him close and never had the joy of seeing him proudly hold his son in his arms.
JAUL KISSED MUCH as he made love, melding both passion and sleek proficiency into a devastating sensual assault.
Chrissie had been in emotional turmoil before he’d touched her and once that physical connection was made, she couldn’t break it and she wrapped her arms round his neck, needing that security. Feverish kiss built on feverish kiss, stoking the fire flaming at the heart of her only to increase the ache there.
‘If you let me have you now, I’ll never let you go.’ Jaul growled out that husky threat, staring down at her with compelling intensity. ‘I can’t fight the hunger you arouse in me.’
Chrissie gazed up at him and felt extraordinarily light-hearted for the first time since Jaul had come back into her life. He had not chosen to leave her: events had chosen for him. He had not condoned his father’s interference and if he had been guilty of misjudging her on the question of that money, she needed to remember how newly married they had been and how vulnerable such ties could be in any untried relationship. Did she now punish him for his father’s sins? Did she hold him to blame for having wanted to love and trust his only surviving parent? Although both Chrissie’s parents had hurt her and held views contrary to her own, she had still loved them. She, more than anyone, should understand how basic and strong ran the need to love and trust a parent, she reasoned painfully. With a fingertip, she traced the fullness of his sensual lower lip and gloried in the stormy gold of his gaze, rejoicing in his innate passion.
‘You don’t have to fight it any more,’ she told him softly.
‘We’re not going to rush this, habibti,’ Jaul decreed, peeling off his shirt and depriving her of her breath in the same moment.
‘Rush...’ she urged, dry-mouthed, as he stripped with no more self-consciousness than a child. But then he didn’t have a vain bone in his beautiful body, had absolutely no appreciation of the fact that he was a masculine work of art, a very aroused work of art, she recognised, her face warming as she momentarily stopped staring to kick off her shoes and run down the side zip on her dress. Jaul was all sleek, lean muscle, honed by exercise, lines indented across his six-pack, the vee at his hips rising out of the waistband of his boxers and dissected by the silky furrow of black hair that trailed down to the jutting hardness at his crotch.
‘I rushed the last time...you walked out on me afterwards,’ he reminded her wryly.
‘But not because you were anything less than...er...perfect,’ Chrissie framed in a rush of candour. ‘But because I was all mixed up and I felt even worse after you presented me with that insane pre-nuptial contract I’d signed—’
‘That’s in the past...leave it there,’ Jaul urged. ‘We’re making a new start.’
A new start. Disconcertingly, Chrissie found herself savouring that declaration. He didn’t want the divorce. He wanted them to stay married and raise the children together. There was nothing wrong with that as an aspiration, was there? How could she fault him for that? If she let go of the past, could she too move forward into a more promising future? Why shouldn’t she try? Why shouldn’t she give their marriage another chance? What did she have to lose?
‘A new start...?’ she repeated unevenly.
‘We’re together again with our children. What could be more natural?’ Jaul positively purred as he strolled towards the bed like a glossy prowling panther.
It did feel so natural to be with Jaul again, Chrissie acknowledged, studying his lean, extravagantly good-looking features while arrows of piercing heat surged through her in an intoxicating wave that left her boneless. No matter what he believed about her character, Jaul still wanted her, but then he had always wanted her and that was, at the very least, a foundation for the future.
Jaul feasted his eyes on her. ‘Come here. We only have one more problem to solve. You’re wearing far too many clothes,’ he husked, sinking down on the bed and leaning closer to lift the hem of her dress and flip it deftly up over her head.
Chrissie emerged from the folds of the garment with luminous turquoise eyes, wide and bright against her flushed complexion. He unclasped her bra and tossed it aside. ‘I want to look at you.’
Her breathing rupturing in her throat, Chrissie fought an instinctive urge to cover herself and her colour heightened as she leant back against the pillows.
Jaul curved reverent hands over the pouting swell of her breasts. ‘Pure perfection,’ he murmured thickly.
He tugged at the pale pink straining buds and then, emitting a groan of surrender, he lowered his head and hungrily enveloped them in his mouth. It felt so good to
