Marriage Make-Up. PENNY JORDAN
want you. I want you inside me…very deep inside me. Now, now…now. I want you there now…always and for ever. I want—’
Abbie gasped as the rhythmic chant of her desire was suddenly cut off by the pressure of Sam’s mouth against her own, his tongue flicking in and out of her lips as his hands held her, guided her, gentled the frantic movements of her body as she arched her back to meet and welcome the carefully protective invasion of his body.
It was just as she had wanted it to be, slow and sweet. A long, languorous pleasure, with her body drunk and dazed with sensual delight, her senses awash, flooded with the feel and heat of him so that even the tightness of his fit within her was somehow an extra small physical pleasure as she urged him deeper and deeper within her, finding from somewhere the knowledge to wrap herself around him and hold him, to move with him.
She climaxed before him, crying out in shocked pleasure and then later crying in earnest in his arms as the full emotional impact of what had happened overwhelmed her.
They spent almost the entire weekend making love, both in their room and, as he had whispered to her in the car on the way there, in the moonlight on a grassy bank beside the river.
By the end of the weekend they both knew there was no going back, that their love for one another was more powerful than anything they had ever experienced before. Too powerful for them to ignore or control.
‘I didn’t want it to be like this,’ Sam told her. ‘You’re so young…too young…’
‘We could just be lovers, and—’ Abbie began, but he interrupted her immediately.
‘No…’ he said harshly, and then, more softly, ‘That isn’t what I want; you know that, Abbie. This isn’t just about sex. It’s about…It’s about finding the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. It’s about loving you so intensely that I want to keep you here with me and never let you out of my sight. Falling in love with each other like this might not be what we planned, but…’
‘Take me back to bed,’ she whispered coaxingly, her voice shivering with desire. ‘We’ve still got time before we have to leave…’
They were married three months later, in spite of her parents’ pleas to her to wait and Lloyd’s dogmatic assertion that she was a fool to tie herself down so young.
Lloyd and Sam did not like one another. Lloyd felt that Sam was rushing her into marriage and Sam, rather to Abbie’s secret feminine delight and amusement, was intensely jealous of Lloyd, seemed unable to believe that there had never been anything other than the mildest boy-and-girl affection between them.
‘You say that now, but he loves you and you must have felt something for him, otherwise you wouldn’t have gone out with him for so long.’
‘We’re friends, that’s all,’ Abbie told him lovingly. But she could see that he wasn’t entirely convinced.
Four months after they had first met they were married, and two months after that Abbie discovered that she was pregnant.
A few months of happiness—a happiness so intense that she had foolishly believed that nothing could ever damage or destroy it. But she had been wrong, and the pain she had suffered because of that misjudgement had been far, far more intense than the pleasure that had gone before it.
It had left her scarred and damaged, unable to take the risk of ever trusting another man, and hating her ex-husband with a hatred that still burned just as strongly in her today as it had done on that day all those years ago, when he had stared at her across the kitchen of the pretty house he had bought them close to the university and told her harshly, ‘You’re pregnant? But you can’t be. It’s impossible.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘IMPOSSIBLE…wh-what do you mean?’ Abbie had stammered, her face white with shock and disbelief. She had been so thrilled when the doctor had confirmed what she had secretly already suspected to be true—that she had conceived Sam’s child.
They hadn’t talked about having a family as yet, but of course she had believed that ultimately they would have children.
If her timing was right, she would at least just about be able to get through her finals before the baby’s birth. She had chuckled out loud as she’d left the doctor’s surgery, her face bright with love and joy as she’d hugged the pleasure of her news to herself.
She couldn’t wait to tell Sam. He would be a wonderful father. She could see him now, his large hands cradling their child.
She hoped it would be a boy…at least this first one. They could turn the small fourth bedroom into a nursery. All right, so maybe she wouldn’t take up the career she had originally planned, but Sam earned more than enough to support both of them. All of them, she’d amended, and at least she would have her degree.
Whilst the baby—the babies—were young, she wanted to be at home with them, but later, even though by then she would be positively ancient, close on thirty, she could, if she wanted, embark on a career—just so long as it wasn’t something that conflicted with her family life, her husband, their children. They would always come first.
She’d been so happy she could have burst. She’d wanted to go to Sam right then and tell him their wonderful news, but he would have been right in the middle of a lecture, and besides…she’d wanted to have him to herself when…
Pregnant…a baby…Sam’s baby. She was the luckiest, luckiest girl in the whole wide world.
Suddenly she’d felt ravenously hungry. Sardines…sardines on toast; that was what she wanted—yes, and then an enormous sticky bar of chocolate fudge.
She would, of course, have to start eating very carefully. She had the baby to think of now, she’d warned herself sternly, but for now…for today she could afford to be a little self-indulgent…just as she probably had been when this baby had been conceived. She’d given a small chuckle. When the doctor had asked her if she had any idea when conception had taken place she had furrowed her forehead and frowned.
‘When did you last have sex?’ he had asked her patiently.
‘This morning,’ she had answered promptly, and had then flushed a brilliant shade of pink as she’d realised what he was getting at.
‘Er…I’m not sure. It could have been…I missed my first period three weeks ago…’
She had been taking the pill, but she had been so busy that for two consecutive nights she had forgotten to take it. This baby was obviously meant to be…just like the way she and Sam had met—just like their love. Oh, God, she’d been so happy…so very, very happy…
‘I mean that it’s impossible for you to be pregnant—at least not with my child,’ Sam told her now, harshly.
Abbie looked at him in mute disbelief. Where her face had originally been flushed with excitement and happiness it was now bone-white. Sam’s, on the other hand, bore the tell-tale signs of male anger in the dark colour staining his cheekbones and the clenched tightness of his jaw.
‘What do you mean, not with your child? Is this some kind of joke?’ Abbie whispered in confusion.
She didn’t know what Sam meant; she couldn’t understand what he was saying. How could her baby, their baby, not be his? Of course it was his—theirs. What on earth was he trying to do to her? If this was his idea of some kind of teasing game…
Anxiously she searched his face, but there was no sign of any good humour or amusement in it. Just the opposite.
‘A joke? My God, I wish it was,’ Sam told her harshly. ‘You cannot be carrying my child, Abbie, because I cannot give you a child. I’ve had a vasectomy.’
‘You’ve what? You can’t have done. Not without telling me. Not without…’
‘I had it done several years ago,