A REASON FOR MARRIAGE

“Please, Sara, I sincerely hope that I am a gentleman, but I know I am not a saint!” A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw.

Her lips were swollen from the heat of their kisses, her eyes a dark languid gold as she looked up at him. “Goodnight, Simon,” Her voice was as sultry and inviting as the unhidden longing in those extraordinary eyes.

Simon rose quickly to his feet, so as not to give in to the temptation to throw back the bedcovers and taste those deliciously naked breasts. “I think I may be in need of more than a single glass of brandy to help me get to sleep!” He stepped away from the bed-away from Sara.

Sara gave an enigmatic smile. “You know where I am if you don’t succeed.”

Simon ran an agitated hand through the thickness of his hair. “You are not helping, Sara!”

She laughed huskily. “I don’t believe I was trying to…”

Her breasts were thrust forward and up as she stretched languidly before once again settling down beneath the covers, those brown eyes gleaming with mischief as her gaze lingered on the obvious bulge in Simon’s trousers.

“Temptress!” he murmured achingly.

“Spoilsport!” she came back challengingly.

Simon gave a rueful shake of his head. “I will take great pleasure in reminding you of that taunt in the morning.”

“Promise?”

Simon sucked in a sharp breath and stared down at her for several long seconds more before turning to walk determinedly across to the bedroom door.

He paused in the doorway to turn and look at Sara once more. “You might want to barricade this door with any of the bedroom furniture you can move!”

Her eyes shone back at him teasingly. “I’m not the one walking away…”

No, Simon was. And he had more than enough reason to regret it once he had returned to the sitting room. Not even two large glasses of brandy were enough to dispel the knowledge that an almost naked and apparently willing Sara was just a short distance away down the hallway.Upstodatee from Novel(D)ra/m/a.O(r)g

________

“You look-”

“Awful,” Simon finished dryly as he looked across the kitchen the following morning to where Sara stood framed in the doorway. “Whereas you look…” Sexy as hell, Simon acknowledged achingly as he took in her appearance in his black silk dressing gown, which reached almost down to her ankles, and with her hair an ebony tangle about her shoulders. “Rested,” he substituted wryly.

“Did you sleep in those clothes?” Sara eyed the crumpled white evening shirt and black trousers he had been wearing last night.

“I didn’t sleep at all!” Simon grimaced.

Having realized once he had taken a shower the night before that all of his clothes were still in the bedroom where Sara was-hopefully-sleeping, he’d had to put back on the same clothes he had worn to go out that evening. Only to then return and sit in one of the armchairs and stare sleeplessly out at the night sky as it changed slowly from black to gray and then orange as the sun came up and the new day began.

“Perhaps you should go to bed now…?” Sara suggested throatily.

“Coffee?” He stood up now from where he’d been sitting at the breakfast bar, moving across the room to the place he had made a much-needed pot of coffee a few minutes earlier. “Cream?”

Sara paused for only a heartbeat to look at the broad expanse of Simon’s back, turned towards her, before crossing the tiled floor on bare feet, knowing from his avoidance in answering her and his guarded expression before he turned away that any move towards intimacy this morning was going to have to originate from her.

She slid her arms about his waist from behind and leant her head lightly against his suddenly tensed back. “That was an invitation for you to come back to bed with me, Simon,”

He breathed in deeply but didn’t turn. “Are you sure?”

“Very sure…”

“If I go to bed with you now I should warn you it would not be with the intention of sleeping!”

“I’m sincerely hoping not.”

The spoon he had intended to use to stir the cream into her coffee landed on the marble worktop with a clatter as he turned quickly and gathered her up into his arms. His mouth came down forcefully on hers.

Hungry didn’t even begin to describe the fierceness of the passion that flared instantly between them as Simon’s hands became entangled in her hair as they kissed: lips devouring, tongues dueling, their breathing hot and ragged in the silence of the apartment.

Sara ceased to breathe at all when she felt Simon’s hand cup beneath the fullness of her breast, the soft pad of his thumb moving in a light caress across the hardened tip. Pleasure instantly spiraled through her and she arched into that caress, causing her to groan low in her throat as it pooled, moistening that already aching apex between her thighs.

His lips left hers to trail across her cheek, moving down the column of her throat, inciting fire wherever they touched. A low moan escaped her as Simon gently pushed aside the black silk robe to take the throbbing tip of her naked breast into the heat of his mouth.

Sara clung to the hard heat of his shoulders as she stumbled back to lean against the kitchen unit. Her knees threatened to buckle beneath her, pleasure coursing through her hotly now, as Simon cupped her other breast. She looked down at Simon’s darkness against the paleness of her skin, his dark lashes fanned across his swarthy cheeks as he drew her nipple hungrily between his parted lips. Feeling, watching, as he paid homage to her breasts, was the most erotic thing Sara had ever done.

She slipped the unbuttoned shirt from his shoulders and down his arms and he allowed the garment to slip to the marble floor. His shoulders were so wide- much wider than they looked beneath his shirt and tailored suits, and deeply muscled. Proof that Simon didn’t spend all his time behind a desk. The muscles in his back flexed with pleasure as Sara’s fingers lightly caressed down the length of his spine.

“You’re beautiful, Simon….” she purred.

He chuckled softly, the reverberations from that chuckle traveling from Sara’s nipple to the pulsing heat between her thighs before he reluctantly released her.