The Dutiful Wife. PENNY JORDAN

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      CHAPTER ONE

      HIS TOUCH SO SENSUALLY knowing and skilled, so male and powerfully demanding, sent excitement and desire spearing through her, leaping like wildfire from nerve ending to nerve ending, tightening the cord of longing he aroused in her until nothing else mattered other than his possession of her: swift and hot and now. It was always like this, his first single stroke of pleasure answering and inciting the desire for him within her that was as much a part of her as her breathing.

      She’d known this would happen when she’d slid her naked body into the warm silky water of their private pool, with only the stars and the moon above them in the tropical night sky there to witness their erotic intimacy. She swam away from him, tormenting herself by her denial perhaps even more than she was tormenting him, and her gasp of hot sweet pleasure when he caught up with her, swimming with her and then under her, to suckle fiercely on her nipples, was accompanied by a shudder of wild pleasure. His hand slid between her legs, covering her sex as he kicked out, the strong movement of his body carrying them both through the water. Hunger and need pierced her in lava-hot waves that surged through her and set her body moving to the same rhythm as the caress of his fingers. She moaned softly, reaching for him, filled with the wildness that wanting him brought her.

      They had reached the edge of the pool. Dizzy with desire, she let him lift her out and carry her to a wide poolside lounger with a mattress and towelling cover. He lay her there, her body soft and boneless, open to his gaze and his touch.

      His gaze and then his hand stroked her naked body, cupping her breast. Her heart lurched into her ribs, the muscles in her stomach tightening with the same need that had brought her nipples into such an erect ache of eager longing. His gaze registered the sensual message of her taut nipples but his hand stroked on to cup her hipbone. Automatically her legs opened, the sweet wet heat of her desire pulsing through her. He bent his head, his thick, dark, still-wet hair sending droplets of cool water falling onto her desire-heated skin. His tongue-tip circled her navel, drawing deliberately delicate patterns against her flesh, drawing from her an agonised gasp of his name.

      ‘Saul. My love. My only for ever love.’

      She was possessed, engulfed, burning up in the need he had aroused.

      He looked up at her and she gave a small helpless moan, her body arching up to his, to him, a sensual sacrifice.

      She saw his chest lift and then fall, and then he was holding her, kissing her, entering her. She cried out her pleasure to him, wrapping herself around him, moving with him, until their bodies took hold of their desire and their pleasure, carrying them swiftly to the summit of their arousal and then beyond that summit to the shared free-fall into release and satisfaction.

      She’d closed her eyes, but now she opened them to find him smiling down at her, a possessive, tender, loving male smile.

      ‘Happy anniversary, Mrs. Parenti,’ he said softly.

      Giselle smiled back at her husband, happiness filling her. She was so lucky. Their life together was perfect, the burden of guilt she had carried for so long a dragon slain by his fight to free her from it. There was no need in this moment of bliss and harmony for her to torment herself with the memory of that other truth she had withheld from him. It had no power over her now, no relevance in the wonderful life they shared—a life of fulfilling artistic ambition for her, working as she did as chief architect on Saul’s worldwide luxury hotel developments, whilst the love they shared had created a private world of happiness for the two of them that neither needed nor wanted anyone else within its magic protective circle. They themselves were all they needed. Theirs was not a marriage that would ever include children. That had been the promise and the commitment they had made to one another when they had married twelve months ago. That was the foundation on which their marriage and with it her complete trust in Saul was built.

      For both of them the causes of their determination to be childless lay in their own childhood and were understood and accepted by both of them. Just as Saul had healed so much of the pain of her childhood, with his love for her and his acceptance of her as she was, so Giselle had helped Saul to make his peace with his past—and more especially with the mother he believed had cared more for the orphans of the disasters of the world than she had for him.

      It had been a very special and poignant moment for both of them when they had opened the first of what they planned to be a worldwide structure of teaching orphanages that incorporated both a home and a school in Saul’s late mother’s name.

      Financed by Saul, designed by Giselle herself and built by Saul’s company, the orphanages were to be Saul’s gift of peace and acceptance to his late mother.

      Their lovemaking the night after the official opening had been so emotionally and physically intense that the memory of it still brought tears to Giselle’s eyes.

      Theirs had not been an easy path to happiness and commitment. Both of them had fought hard against the fierce tide of desire for one another that had pulled them from their protected comfort zone into a combat zone in which they had both fought desperately against their feelings for one another, clinging to the wreckage of the security of their old beliefs. It had been Saul who had made the first move and reached out to her, and she, fathoms deep in love with him by that stage, had given in to her longing for him. After all, she had learned by then that Saul did not want children