by immaculately cared for lawns and flowerbeds dropping away to the river which ran through the bottom of the valley.
They had had to drive across a bridge over it to get to the main gates of the hotel and then up a sweeping cream stone drive. The hotel itself was hidden from view until the very last minute, Abbie’s only sightings of it the tantalising glimpses she had caught of it as the road into the valley had spiralled down from the surrounding hills.
‘It…It’s…’ She looked at Sam as he brought the car to a halt in the discreetly concealed car park to the rear of the hotel, which had obviously at some stage been a private home.
As she glanced towards the delicate turrets Abbie remembered how he had described making love to her. Then she had thought he was simply using his imagination. Now…
‘I heard about it from one of the senior lecturers,’ she heard him telling her quietly, answering her still unspoken question. ‘He brought his wife here to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary.
‘It was originally built by a very wealthy heiress as a secret hideaway where she could meet her lover. She came from a titled family connected to royalty and was destined for an arranged marriage. Her lover came from a different social circle. They would never have been allowed to marry, but every summer, from the year she married to the year he died, she came here to spend time with him.
‘When he died she shut the house up, unable to endure it without him; she left it as a gift to his family.’
‘How awful,’ Abbie protested. ‘To love someone like that all of your life and yet never be able to be truly together, to share. But always to have to keep your love a secret…’ She shivered suddenly.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Sam asked her in concern.
‘Nothing,’ she fibbed. How could she tell him that the story he had told her had cast a cold little shadow over her own happiness, that she felt that somehow the place, beautiful though it was, was haunted by the unhappiness of a woman forced to hide her love and publicly deny it? It was as though somehow her unhappiness threatened to taint Abbie’s own joy…as though her blossoming love would be spoilt and endangered.
Her thoughts were ridiculous, she told herself fiercely, especially when Sam had gone to so much trouble to make this, their first time together, as special and memorable as possible.
‘Would I be correct in guessing that you’ve booked us a tower room?’ she quizzed him, striving to throw off her sense of sadness and unease by smiling brightly at him.
‘Now, why, I wonder, should you think that?’ he teased her back as he removed their luggage from the boot of the car and then locked it.
It wasn’t just a room he had booked for them, Abbie discovered ten minutes later, it was an entire suite with, she noticed, wide-eyed, not one but two bedrooms.
When she looked questioningly at him after the porter had left them, he explained quietly, ‘I didn’t want you to feel pressured in any way.’
‘I don’t,’ Abbie told him equally gravely, her earlier mood forgotten now as her excitement at being with him filled her and her body started to react familiarly to his proximity to her.
‘I want us to be lovers, Sam,’ she told him shakily. ‘I want it more than…I want you more than I ever imagined I could want any man. I want you so much that it hurts…here,’ she told him breathlessly, hesitantly touching her body just above the small swell of her pubic bone. ‘Here, where—’
She gave a small, half-protesting gasp as the rest of what she had been about to say was smothered by the fierce pressure of Sam’s kiss.
Abbie felt herself start to tremble and then shudder in shocked delight as her body responded to his passion. She clung to his shoulders, her eyes glazed and her face flushed with the intensity of her own equally strong desire.
Sam lifted his mouth from hers to look down into her eyes, his hand cupping her face, his touch blissfully cool against her hot skin. Her senses were preternaturally attuned to him, and she could almost hear the rapid thud of his heart as well as see the swift rise and fall of his chest. She could feel the heat coming off his body, although, unlike hers, it was not so obviously nor hectically flushed, just a tell-tale burn of colour along his cheekbones coupled with the warm, musky smell of his arousal.
Did her own skin, her own body, smell equally sexually stimulating to him? she wondered dizzily. Did he breathe in the scent her desire had created and ache to press his lips, his open mouth, to her throat, her breast, her belly…her thighs?
A small sound, half protest, half ecstasy, caught in her throat, causing Sam to stroke her face tenderly and shush her, saying softly, ‘It’s all right. It’s all right. I promise there’s nothing for you to fear. I’ll try not to go too fast…too—’
‘I’m not afraid,’ Abbie interrupted him, her body shaking as much as her voice. ‘At least not of you…’ Her eyes darkened, her mouth trembling slightly as she went on huskily, ‘I’m afraid of what I feel, Sam, of how I feel. How much…how intensely. I’m afraid of being out of my own control and losing myself in what I feel…of wanting you so much…’
‘I know, I know,’ Sam groaned, wrapping her in his arms, her head against his chest as he rocked her gently. ‘I feel the same way, and more. I’m afraid of not being able to give you the pleasure I want to give you, of not being able to hold back, of becoming so aroused that I can’t hold back…’
‘Do you wish that I wasn’t a virgin?’ Abbie asked him shakily. She felt him move as he cupped her face again and looked down at her.
‘What on earth makes you think that?’ he demanded huskily. ‘Do you know how much I love the fact that you’ve chosen me to be your first lover? Even though I’m half terrified of disappointing you. Selfishly, I like knowing that you’re not comparing me to someone else, wishing perhaps that I was someone else.’
He checked the protest she was about to make and told her warningly, ‘I’m a man, Abbie, with all that that implies—possessive, even jealous sometimes, wanting my woman to be mine exclusively. I know—I know that once you are mine I will never, ever want another man to touch you…love you. Once you are mine…
‘I’m twenty-six years old, and not inexperienced sexually, but when it comes to love…when it comes to love I’m as virginal as you, my sweet. Does that put you off me?’
Abbie’s shining eyes gave him his answer.
‘God, don’t look at me like that,’ he groaned. ‘Not now. Not yet…I’d planned a walk through the gardens—the hotel is famous for them—afternoon tea on the lawn, a lazy, relaxing evening together, dinner with champagne, and—’
Abbie tugged impatiently on his sleeve and lifted her mouth to his.
‘Kiss me, Sam,’ she begged him huskily. ‘Please, please, please kiss me.’
Ten minutes later, lying on the bed, her clothes—their clothes—strewn haphazardly all around them, Abbie watched anxiously as Sam studied her naked body. This was the first time he had seen her without all her clothes, and she had to fight an instinctive urge to wrap her arms around her breasts and roll over onto her stomach.
He was naked too, even if
