Long-Distance Marriage

‘Tremble ecstatically in his arms?’ he put in with sardonic humour, but then he saw her mouth begin to tremble and he was by her side in an instant, enfolding her in the strong, warm circle of his arms as she began to shake with emotion.

‘Sweetheart, sweetheart,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t get upset. Please. I shouldn’t have done it. You’re right I’m a brute. A selfish, arrogant and unthinking brute. But I love you.’

‘No, you’re not!’ she raged. ‘And I love you too! I just don’t understand why you...why you...’

He sat down on the bed and gently drew her down beside him. ‘I don’t understand myself,’ he told her softly. ‘You bring out something in me that no woman has ever done before and sometimes I’m not sure that I like it very much.’

He sighed as she stared at him with confused eyes. ‘All damned week long I’ve been aching for you. I didn’t want to be away from you. I’d planned my homecoming to the last detail, how it would be.’

‘But you came home early,’ she protested. ‘And didn’t tell me.’

‘I wanted to surprise you.’

‘But I rang the airline, and they confirmed that you were still booked on the later flight.’

‘I didn’t use the ticket.’

‘But then, how—?’

‘I bought myself a plane,’ he said, and then gave a little shrug as though he realised how unbelievable his statement must sound. Like a little boy saying that he’d bought a toy car.

Alessandra stared at him in disbelief. ‘You’ve done what?’

‘It’s a small Lear jet,’ he added, though he might have been speaking in Chinese for all that Alessandra understood. ‘So it’s just as capable of crossing the Atlantic as it is of taking me up to Manchester.’

Her dark eyes were still like saucers. ‘Cameron—why?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because people don’t just go around buying planes.’

‘Some do. I do. We do,’ he corrected. ‘We can afford it.’

‘But—’

He shook his dark head firmly. ‘No buts. It matters to me that I don’t see very much of you. My factory is in Manchester. Your job is in London. You won’t change—’

‘Don’t make it sound as though it’s something as insignificant as me forgetting to put the milk bottles out!’ she objected with a slight frown. ‘Why should I change? My job happens to be very important to me!’

‘Yes, Alessandra, I know. You’ve made that abundantly clear to me.’

‘But of course you, as the man, expect me, as the woman, to just up sticks and move to Manchester, just like that?’

‘It’s not exactly the back of beyond, you know. And we do have advertising agencies up north.’

She shook her head. ‘But none where I’d be given the same kind of variety and responsibility that I have at Holloway’s. Andrew has hinted that the joint managing directorship might be mine next year. I’ve worked hard for my promotion, Cameron.’ She turned wide dark eyes up at him in appeal. ‘Please don’t ask me to throw it all away,’ she finished quietly, not sure of what she would say if he insisted.

‘I’m not.’

‘Because this is the woman you fell in love with,’ she told him, stabbing her finger emphatically against her breastbone, the dark fire from her eyes challenging him to dare to deny it. ‘Me! The career woman. Not someone who would cave in just because of love—’

‘Just?’ He fixed her with a questioning look.

‘I want that promotion,’ she said stubbornly, but her stubbornness was born out of fear. Fear that if she changed too much, that if she allowed Cameron to simply slot her into his life as easily as a peg into a hole, he would no longer love her.

‘And you shall have your promotion if Andrew chooses to give it to you—because I shan’t try to stop you. My only stipulation is that he stops calling you “honey”!’ And he gave her the careless smile which had first so captivated her. ‘Darling, don’t let’s fight. That’s the main reason why I bought the plane. It’s supposed to make our lives easier. This way I won’t have the bother and the wait and the inconvenience of scheduled flights—can come and go as the fancy takes me.’

‘And always expect me to be waiting for you like the good little wife?’ she queried, knowing that she was spoiling his news but some insecure demon inside her spurring her on.

‘That isn’t what I said,’ he replied evenly.

‘But that’s the truth of it, isn’t it?’ she responded. ‘If it isn’t, then what else prompted that ugly little scene when I walked in tonight? Just because I was late coming in, before you were even expected?’

‘Like I said, I’d planned my homecoming to the last detail.’

“The wine?’

‘The wine,’ he agreed. ‘Low lights. There was to be some soft music. Corny—’

‘But effective,’ she interrupted drily. ‘With the scene all set for...’

‘Seduction,’ he supplied, an unholy glint in his eyes. ‘Mmm.’

‘But there was no seduction, was there, Cameron?’ she asked him quietly. Because, now that her senses had calmed down, it appalled her to remember how she’d reacted to him. ‘Just some rather basic sex...’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Please don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it,’ he put in with brutal softness, ‘when I watched you shuddering and felt you climax beneath me...’

Alessandra met his questioning blue gaze full-on. ‘Oh, yes—I enjoyed it. And, yes, I climaxed. I always do—if that’s the only criterion by which you gauge satisfaction.’ She made to turn away but he put one hand on her shoulder, very gently, and sighed.

‘It isn’t. And, believe me, I certainly hadn’t intended to act like that.’

‘Then why did you?’ she asked in a small voice.

‘Because...’ He shook his head as he put his free hand on her other shoulder and moved her closer to him. ‘Because you do something to me, Alessandra. Don’t you know that? You make me respond in a certain way; or, rather, I can never predict or control how I’m going to respond to you. You perplex me. You excite me. You make me crazy. When I heard Andrew’s message on the answering machine—’

She decided that the time had come to get rid of all this nonsense once and for all. ‘But he’s always called me “honey”—since I first met him.’

‘And I don’t like it. Strictly as a chauvinistic, jealous and possessive husband.’

‘Is that what you are?’ she teased softly, and he smiled.

‘Sometimes, yes. With you, yes.’ She saw a brief but distinct tightening of his mouth. ‘I just don’t like Andrew’s familiarity. Okay?’

‘I don’t happen to like it very much myself,’ admitted Alessandra. ‘I guess I just put up with it.’

‘Then don’t put up with it! Tell him you don’t like it!’ His face darkened. ‘Try asserting yourself with him as you seem to do so successfully with me!’

She felt weary. They seemed to be going round and round in circles. She nodded. ‘Okay, I’ll tell him.’ She put a tentative hand up to smooth a lock of dark hair off his forehead. ‘But you must know by now that Andrew means nothing to me, Cameron.’

‘No?’ He let his hands fall from her shoulders and drew his dark brows together as his eyes briefly flew to the discarded black garment which lay in a silky heap on the carpet. ‘He just buys you sexy dresses and speaks to you like a girlfriend instead of a colleague ?’

‘You’re surely not jealous of Andrew?’ she asked incredulously. ‘Not you?’

‘Why not? When you walked in here tonight—with your hair all wild and your cheeks all rosy—’

‘It’s a cold night,’ she pointed out.

‘Wearing that sexy bit of nonsense which he’d bought for you—’

‘I was the one who chose it, remember?’

‘To wear for him? On an evening out with him? How would you define that, then, Alessandra? Subliminal attraction?’

‘Oh, don’t be so absurd!’ In the past she had sometimes despaired of Cameron’s coolness, his unflappability, but now that he actually was displaying the kind of passionate temper she’d always secretly longed for she found she didn’t like it one bit!

‘I’m telling you how I felt,’ he said, ‘You wanted to know.’

‘Go on,’ she said in a small voice, thinking that maybe it had been a good thing that they’d never delved too deeply into their feelings before. She felt as though they’d opened up Pandora’s box and were regretting it by the second!

‘Yes, it was irrational,’ he continued. ‘But I told you—something about you makes me act without reason, without thought. I started to imagine Andrew making love to you—’

‘That’s absolutely ridiculous!’ she scoffed.

‘Is it? Are you telling me that he wouldn’t like to?’

‘I wouldn’t like to, Cameron—that’s the difference!’

‘And I found myself,’ he went on, as though she hadn’t spoken, ‘wanting to tear the clothes from your body—’

‘Which you did—’

‘And to take you right there and then.’

‘Which you also did!’

‘And for which I’ve apologised—for the sentiment, at least, if not for the act itself. And isn’t it about time that you stopped being hypocritical and admitted that it was exciting and that it turned you on? Or are you denying that, Alessandra?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not denying it. It’s just that... that...’ Her voice tailed off.

‘That what?’ he prompted softly.

‘It just wasn’t very—loving, that’s all,’ she sighed, looking up into the intense eyes which were now a soft, smoky grey.

‘Sometimes sex isn’t loving,’ he told her gently. ‘And sometimes it isn’t meant to be. If you like, I can show you just how loving it can be.’ And he began to massage the small of her back rhythmically.

She wanted to wriggle with pleasure, to relax into it, to make the slow walk down whichever sensual path he planned to take her. But two capitulations in one evening would be too big a dent in her pride.

‘I have work in the morning,’ she said stubbornly.

“So do I.’

‘And I need a shower,’ she reminded him pointedly.

‘So do I,’ he murmured with a smile as he drew her to her feet. He slowly untied her robe, slipped his hands inside and cupped her naked, peaking breasts.

‘Cameron...’ she objected on a shuddering gasp as he bent his dark head to take one aching tip into his mouth.

‘What?’ he murmured softly, his breath warm against her skin. ‘What is it, my darling?’

She couldn’t remember. ‘Oh, Cameron...

CHAPTER THREE

CAMERON spent most of the night making up for the week he had been away. He made love to Alessandra over and over again. Almost as though...as though he was asserting his sexual mastery over her. As though he was trying to imprint himself on her mind, to prove to her that he was the only man for her.

He doesn’t have to prove anything, was Alessandra’s last, drowsy thought before she fell into a dreamless sleep.

She stretched like a cat as she awoke to the most pleasurable feeling imaginable. She was half-asleep and warm, and delectable sensations began to fizzle over her skin. Cameron’s hands were on her breasts, circling each one in turn, inciting the tips into pointy little peaks which ached like crazy.

‘Oh,’ she sighed disappointedly as he moved his hand away, then almost purred with pleasure as he trickled it slowly and enticingly down over her flat stomach until he’d found where she ached for him most.

‘Mmm,’ he said with pleasure, and slowly began to kiss her.

‘Mmm,’ she echoed as her fingers trailed down to capture his rock-hard arousal, only then to move her hand away reluctantly as she remembered the time.

‘Don’t stop,’ he urged huskily.

He was speaking to the converted. ‘But it’s late,’ she murmured on a half-hearted protest

‘Do you want to get up?’

‘No.’

‘Well, we won’t, then,’ he whispered, and she gave a gasp of pleasure as he entered her.

The alarm rang and rang.

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