“You’ve been away a long time. What happened?”
Guiltily, Veronica spun around, dropping her Armani carrier bag as she did so. She had arrived back at the Rectory five minutes ago and had decided to go straight to her room. She had just reached the top of the stairs when Sasha emerged from his room, his curt comment coupled with her own guilt startling her.
“You’ve been shopping…” he said sharply in disbelief, answering his own question as he saw the bag she had just dropped and the contents spilled out from it onto the carpet.
“What if I have?” Veronica retorted defensively, bending down to gather up her purchases but not fast enough to match Sasha.
He bent and got there before her, scooping up the soft, expensive cloth and then, pausing, shocking her by removing it completely from the carrier
Sasha closed his eyes. The last thing he needed right now was to start thinking about… to start remembering. Forcing himself to suppress the thoughts, the memories, and the emotions which were running riot inside him, Sasha stopped to pick her up, intending to lay her down on the bed. But as he did so, a dog fox out in the woodland beyond the garden, howled to his mate. The sound carried into the bedroom on the still night air, forcing him to stand still and waking up Veronica almost immediately.“Sasha...what...?” He could hear the shocked anxiety in her voice as she stared around his moonlit bedroom.“Ronnie… Uh… You were sleepwalking,” he tried to reassure her. “I heard a noise... and I… I found you on the landing...”&n
But Sasha was ignoring her body language, her silent plea for the intimacy of his body weight lying heavily and sensuously against hers on the bed behind her. Instead, he was picking her up and gently placing her on the bed.“It’s alright, baby…” she heard him saying softly to her. “Everything’s alright… We’re going to take this nice and slow…” And he was cupping her feet in his hands, slowly massaging them so that tingles of sensation and heat shot through her veins like liquid fire. The feeling of his lips brushing her toes, so unexpected and astonishingly intimate, made her gasp in shock. When she instinctively tried to pull away, Sasha stopped her, his tongue weaving a rainbow patter of sensation against her skin as he caressed her to
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Veronica, but Sasha said that you might like a cup of coffee.” Forcing a welcoming smile to her lips, Veronica took the tray from Sasha’s housekeeper. She had been working in the library all morning, painstakingly going through the accounts and costings for the work she had already commissioned for Elsinore Hall. She knew she had to leave everything in perfect order for whoever was going to take her place. But now, even though she hadn’t eaten any breakfast and she knew that she ought to be hungry, the only hunger she had was the neverending, consuming hunger for Sasha’s love. And, as he had made more than plain to her, that was something she could never have. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Elliott,” she replied. “I will drink it in a while.” Half an hour later, Veroni
In the pretty living room, which his wife had made so much her own, Henry grinned in appreciation as their son headed eagerly towards him, swinging him up into his arms as Mollie looked on placidly. Henry looked lovingly at her. She was in the early stages of pregnancy with their second child and suffering from morning sickness. “I’ve just had a phone call from Sasha,” he told his wife. “Mmm... How is he… and Ronnie...?” “He wants to come down for a few days. Apparently, he wants to pick my brains for ideas on making the estate more self-sufficient.” “Do you think he and Ronnie will ever work things out?” Mollie asked him anxiously. Henry raised his eyebrows. “Why ask me? You’re the one who thinks that they are madly in love with one another.” “My love, I don’t think, I KNOW,” Mollie corrected him sternly. “But the pair
“It’s a beautiful spot here, isn’t it?” Mollie commented as she walked across the grass to join Sasha where he stood studying the pool in the center of the small tree-filled glade. Once, before her marriage to Henry, this glade had been the scene of disturbing desecration when it had been taken over by a band of travelers, eco-warriors, led by Wayne, an awful man, a drug dealer. That bastard had convinced a then idealistic and innocent Veronica that his sole object in traveling was to assert the rights of the homeless. It had been Veronica who had brought them to this pretty glade on her stepbrother’s land, and ultimately Veronica who had played a major part in the drama which had unfolded when she had realized just how dangerous and unsavory a character Wayne actually was.&nb
Her bags were packed, a note left for Sasha explaining that someone else was going to take over her work, her files were all in order… Well, there was nothing left for her to do other than get into her hire car and drive it to the airport. Still, Veronica couldn’t quite bring herself to go. Irresolutely, she made her way around the house, going slowly upstairs, pausing outside Sasha’s bedroom. She had the house to herself. Mrs. Elliott had left for the day. So, she started walking around just for another look and found herself in front of his room. Impulsively, she opened the door and went inside. The room was just as she remembered it from that single night she had spent here. Veronica went over to the bed, smoothing a trembling hand over the pillow which had been Sasha’s.&
She was still in bewilderment, but he was really there, holding her, kissing her, pledging his love to her… After all those years, after all the pain, after all the hurt, finally Veronica was in Sasha’s arms, basking in his love.“I’m here with you and still can’t believe it...” she added, brushing white rose petals off his arms. “It’s... it’s still so... unbelievable. It’s less than an hour since I thought that I’d be driving away from Elsinore… and you, forever. What made you come back? What…?”“You did, sweetheart,” he told her promptly, and then relented when he saw her face. “Mollie talked to me... made me think... see...”“Mollie? But she never said a word when she called me…” Veronic
“What the hell are you doing, Veronica? What kind of sick game are you playing right now? Stop it!” Sasha looked at her angrily as he removed her hands, releasing her fingers from his shirt where she had unconsciously curled them in her attempt to get him to listen to what she wanted to say, to understand that she was no longer a child, that she was now completely and totally a woman... A woman who was totally and completely in love with him and wanted to be his.“Sasha, trust me, I know what I’m doing… And this isn’t a sick game,” Veronica protested, her eyes starting to fill with anguished tears as he thrust her away. “Sasha, I want…”“Oh, I know exactly what you want, Veronica! Believe me, I know it quite well!” Sasha interrupted her savagely. “You want me to have sex with you. But right now, what I feel more like doing&hellip