to be filled and only he could fill it. He was holding her closer, closer. Their feet moved in perfect unison; he was anticipating her every move, or maybe she was anticipating his. Who knew?
Her husband.
‘Andreas,’ she whispered and she heard him groan softly into her hair.
‘My love?’
‘Enough already with the seduction scene,’ she whispered unsteadily.
‘You don’t like it?’
‘I said I’ve had it with the set-up,’ she whispered back and her hands came up and gripped his head and tugged his face down so his mouth met hers. ‘I can’t wait. Damn the risks. Oh, Andreas, I know this is crazy, but I want you so much.’
‘I wanted you to want me,’ he said, and she could practically see his smile.
She gave a little gasp and pulled away. He was laughing. Laughing! With those dark, dark eyes that glowed with desire.
‘And do you want me to want you?’ he asked, and suddenly the laughter was gone. The look in his eyes was deadly serious. ‘Holly, I’ve said I’ll take no unwilling bride. I want you more than life itself but you come to me willingly or not at all. Do you want me as much as I want you?’
And there was only one answer she could give. There was only one answer in the world. Sensible or not.
It wasn’t sensible. It was dumb, dumb, dumb but she didn’t care.
‘I do,’ she said simply, and then gasped as he swept her up into his arms again. And then there was no room for anything. There was no room for any words at all.
The night was warm and starlit. His bedroom was open to the night, the shutters pushed far back so it seemed that his vast bed was on a platform overlooking the moonlit sea. He carried her there triumphantly, tenderly, and she lay back in his arms and smiled up at him and thought, this is where I should be. This is my husband. This is my heart, my home.
My Andreas.
There was no going back now. He was setting her down by the bed and she could barely stand. Her body was on fire and if he’d put her away she would have fought her way back to him. He was hers. Her body was aching for him, throbbing its want. She gazed up at him and saw her hot, desperate need reflected in the eyes of the man she loved.
Andreas.
‘Holly,’ he whispered, his voice husky with passion. ‘My wife.’
And then…How was she suddenly without clothes? How was she so soon lying on silken sheets with nothing between herself and the man she loved but sheer, raw desire?
Had he undressed her? He must have, while she was concentrating on ridding him of unwanted garments. But she hardly saw his clothes. All she thought of was his body. All she wanted was him. Years ago she’d known and gloried in this man’s body and tonight it felt as if she was coming home.
‘You’re beautiful,’ she whispered, awed, as they sank onto the bed together, and he laughed, a soft, throaty chuckle as he laid her on the silken sheets, following her down and gathering her naked body into his arms.
‘You…To say that to me, my heart…’
And then he was kissing her, not just on the lips but everywhere, toes to forehead and back down again, slowly, tenderly, while she writhed and moaned with pleasure. She was alive under his hands, under his touch. Her body felt as if it were waking after a long, long sleep, every nerve-end aware, alight, afire.
She was touching him too, running her hands through his hair, feeling his nakedness, glorying in the hard arrant maleness of his body. She was alive as she hadn’t been alive for long, barren years, awaking after a too-long sleep to this all-consuming blaze. Her body was melting into him with a fierce heat she’d forgotten she was capable of feeling. The touch of him…He was hers. Hers, she thought fiercely.
For years she’d thought it was a fairy tale. She’d thought her memories of the way Andreas had made her feel were a figment of a girl’s romantic yearning; her first love with a prince, a time out of frame, the full fairy story.
There’d been the odd guy she could have started something with. Neighbours. Stock and station agents. Other teachers. But she’d looked at them and internally she’d lined them up against Andreas and thought, who was she kidding? She’d had the romantic fairy tale and to go back to the real world seemed impossible.
So she’d hung onto a fairy tale, knowing it was just that, imagination and nostalgia.
Only it wasn’t. For the way Andreas made her feel…
He was everything she remembered and more. Demanding, aristocratic, overwhelming in his sheer masculinity. But still tender at core, wanting her to share his exultation-no, demanding that she share his exultation. He gloried in her body, tasting her, touching her, exploring every inch of her with wonder and languorous pleasure and wanton delight-but he expected the same of her. That she know him as he wished to know her. That she give pleasure as he intended to give pleasure. That she take this coupling slowly, savouring every last moment of its wonder.
And she did. She did. The feel of his body in her arms was close to overwhelming.
And when finally, blissfully the moment came when he was entering her…taking her, demanding she follow where he led…she felt herself cry out with sheer joy. They merged, and the night exploded in a mist of white-hot desire. And then they lay, sated but still linked, still loving, until the heat built again and raw need took over from the blissful afterglow of consummation.
For this was no one-coupling night. It was as if their bodies were demanding that they make up, in part, for all these years they’d missed. This night was too precious for sleep. She’d dreamed of this man for ever and sleep was for the barren years, for another time, something to be put away as irrelevant.
All that mattered now was Andreas.
He’d changed, she thought wonderingly during this long, languorous night. His was no longer a boy’s body, but a man’s, hard and muscular. Royal or not, this wasn’t the indulged body of a playboy prince. He’d loved working on the farm, she remembered, savouring the hard physical requirements of axing tree stumps, of hauling out rotten fence posts, of heaving bales of hay for hungry cattle. Somewhere in the last years he must have found an alternative to farm work, for his body was all muscle, hard and sinewy and fabulous.
Fabulous. The word whispered over and over in her mind as she lay with him through the night, her fingers exploring, her tongue discovering, her legs holding him possessively in between couplings. Skin against skin on the silken sheets of Andreas’s vast princely bed, still they weren’t close enough.
But they could be. Over and over, each time striving to be closer, closer. The night wasn’t long enough. By rights they should be exhausted but there was no way this night could end with them asleep.
‘You’re so much more beautiful than I remembered,’ he whispered, awed, at some time during the night and she thought, so are you, so are you. ‘My beautiful Holly. My magical outback princess.’
Like young lovers they clung, holding to each other in the dark, exploring, exulting, wanting more, more, until dawn finally came, a tangerine flush appearing softly over the horizon, and a kind of peace that was deeper than she’d ever felt before fell over the pair of them. They lay naked and entwined and she felt seventeen again, beloved, with the world at her feet, her prince in love with her, her man in her arms and nothing could go wrong with her world ever again.
‘Can I take you for a swim, my love?’ Andreas whispered into the dawn, and she thought she must be dreaming.
‘I believe you can take me wherever you want,’ she managed.
He smiled, then swung himself up and over her, so he was smiling down at her.
