A REASON FOR MARRIAGE

“Simon, please…!” Sara groaned in breathless protest, even as she felt her own nipples ache beneath her blouse. Just from listening to Simon describe having her make love to him? Oh, God…!

His eyes were dark now, burning with the same desire that coursed through Sara. “But I have not yet finished telling you how beautiful you are.” He gave a self-derisive shake of his head. “First let me say that you do not need to lose even one pound in weight. You are perfection just as you are,” he added firmly, his voice once again clipped and precise, but this time with forceful decisiveness rather than anger.

She gave a rueful shake of her head.” I-”

“Sara, there are very few men who actually prefer women with no breasts or hips,” he continued determinedly. “That is a myth which has been perpetrated by dress designers and by women themselves, I believe,” The darkness of his gaze swept over her appreciatively. “The fullness of your breasts is exactly the right size to fit perfectly into the palms of my hands.”

“That’s only because you have large hands.”

“And all of me is in proportion,” Simon assured her as he reached across the table to clasp one of Sara’s smaller hands in his. “Sara, who told you that you are not sexy and beautiful? What ungrateful, stupid man could ever have told you such lies?”

Sara couldn’t breathe. Simon’s sensually descriptive words had aroused her to the point where she had briefly dropped the safeguards that had got her through the past years-the years of her relationship with Bruce, suffering his numerous affairs, and the past years avoiding any relationship that even looked as if it might touch her emotionally.

But Simon was a man who had refused from the first to take no for an answer. A man who was now demanding answers to questions that were too painful for Sara to answer.

She pulled her hands free of his before getting abruptly to her feet. “Has it occurred to you that maybe it was a woman?” she challenged scornfully, deliberately. “That maybe the reason I’m not interested in a relationship with you is because I’m not into men?”

Simon sat back on the stool. “No.”

Sara blinked. “Just…no?”

“Just no, Just Sara,” he drawled dryly.

She eyed him scathingly. “Is that male arrogance talking?”

“Or the knowledge that seconds ago you were as aroused as I am?”

Her gaze slid down from his, across the rapid and shallow rise and fall of his chest, the flatness of his stomach, down to- Sara’s breath caught in her throat as she saw the thick hard length of Simon’s arousal clearly outlined against the press of his jeans. He hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said that everything about him was in proportion.

“You are so beautiful you make my chest ache, and so desirable you obviously make another part of me ache.”

“Please, Simon-did your years of living in England teach you nothing about our reserve?” she cut in to prevent him making what she was sure was going to be another embarrassing-arousing!-statement.

“Oh, yes.” He walked slowly towards her. “But fortunately I am far less reserved in my appreciation of a woman.”

He was standing so close to her now-just a heartbeat away-that Sara could feel the heat of his body, smell that lemon soap and sandalwood aftershave. That heat and the male smell that was uniquely Simon was now curling about her, invading her senses until she could no longer think straight.

If she had been thinking straight then she would never have allowed this situation to get so completely out of hand. So charged with sexual awareness she could almost reach out and touch it…..

Simon drew his breath in sharply at the first touch of Sara’s hands against his chest. Her palms seemed to burn through the thin material of his shirt to sear the flesh beneath. His first instinct was to reach out and pull her into his arms before lowering his mouth to claim hers.

His first instinct.

His second instinct warned him against moving at all as he allowed Sara’s hands to tentatively seek out and touch the hard contours of his chest and the muscled width of his shoulders, sensing that the slightest movement on his part would result in her once again erecting those barriers around her emotions and needs. Barriers some other bastard had instilled in her, which Simon now realized had resulted in Sara hiding her vulnerability behind a mask of spiky cynicism.Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive © material.

It quickly became an agony of self-control for him to withstand the caress of her fingers and palms against and over him. His teeth were gritted, his jaw clamped shut, and his hands were clenched tightly at his sides as he resisted the impulse to reach out and take her into his arms. It was an impulse that became even more painful still as her fingertips ran lightly over the front of his denims, against his thickened length.

Sara’s caresses grew bolder as she felt the pulsing response beneath her fingertips, and she knew a deep and compelling need to release that aroused hardness from the confines of Simon’s jeans and- She snatched her hand away before moving back abruptly.

“I think this has gone quite far enough!” Her voice came out husky and breathless rather than conveying the firm resolve she had hoped it would.

Simon groaned low in his throat, wanting, needing so much more, but instead he allowed himself to be guided by those instincts that warned against pushing Sara too far too fast. “Will you come to a party with me on Saturday evening?”

Startled, she raised her lids. “What…?”

Simon gave a pained smile in acknowledgement of the fact that his obvious arousal made this the last thing Sara had expected him to say. But he knew that the invitation he wanted to make-for her to stay on here now, so that the two of them could cook dinner together-would be met with a blunt refusal. As would his plans for what happened after dinner…

“I have been invited to a party on Saturday evening, and I would very much like it if you would agree to be the guest included on my invitation.”

Sara blinked. “You’re asking me out on a date?”