Sleeping Partners Read online

  ‘No problem.’

  He was leaning back in his chair, his pose relaxed and indolent, and Robyn didn’t know why her heart suddenly felt as though it was breaking as she looked at him. She loved him so much. She had fought against it since she was sixteen and these last weeks had told her that without Clay in her life the world was a grey place, uninteresting and mundane. And that frightened her more and more as time went on.

  She didn’t doubt Clay wanted her and was prepared to be patient…for now. But his patience would run out soon; that comment in the garden earlier had confirmed he was getting tired of coaxing her along. Sooner or later there would be a confrontation between them and then this would all end, because she knew now, more than ever, that she could never give herself to him knowing her love wasn’t returned. She would simply not survive the aftermath of their affair after he had said goodbye, and each moment they were together before that happened would be tainted by the knowledge of what was to come.

  And she didn’t want to be one of those sad, jealous women who were for ever looking over their shoulder at every young attractive woman who came within their partner’s vision. Suspecting this nubile flirt or that, watching for the moment when something sparked between Clay and someone else, anticipating it, dreading it. Maybe she would last a month or two, even a year or two—who knew? But eventually would come the day when he would begin to retreat from her, become preoccupied…

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Clay leant forward suddenly across the table, taking her hand in his before she could draw away. ‘What were you thinking about just then?’

  ‘Nothing.’ It was quick and defensive, and Robyn was heartily thankful when Mrs Jones chose that precise moment to bustle in with the coffee pot and a plate of her delicious shortbread. A heart to heart tonight was definitely not what she needed.

  Clay looked up at his housekeeper, his voice pleasant and his expression easy when he said, ‘We’ll have a tray in the sitting room please, Mrs Jones, and then you get off to bed. Leave the clearing up till the morning.’

  As they walked through to the sitting room he said in an undertone to Robyn, his breath on her ear making her insides curl with sexual tension, ‘Mr Jones was unwell last night and she was up half the night with him.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Just in case you thought I had an ulterior motive in getting rid of her,’ he added smoothly, his warm hand on her elbow sending shivers flickering down her spine and causing her to miss her step so she fell against him, twisting her ankle in the process.

  It wasn’t a bad sprain, hardly anything at all, but once Mrs Jones had delivered the coffee tray Clay insisted on settling her on one of the sofas before kneeling down in front of her and taking off her sandal, despite Robyn’s protests that she was perfectly all right.

  ‘Does that hurt?’ he asked softly.

  He had been running his fingers over her foot, his flesh warm against her silken skin, and in her reclining position Robyn felt extremely vulnerable and ridiculously excited. His touch was delicate, sensual, and with his dark head on a level with hers and his broad muscled shoulders flexing and moving under the silk shirt she found her mouth had gone dry.

  She wet her lips surreptitiously, trying to speak normally when she said, ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ he drawled, his accent lazy on the air.

  Oh, for crying out loud, stop. She was only human wasn’t she? He must know what he was doing to her. ‘Yes.’

  His hands had slid just above her ankle, continuing their slow massage of the tight, locked muscles they encountered, but even though Robyn was aware he must realise she was as tense as a coiled spring she couldn’t relax an iota.

  She wanted to moan at what his hands were doing as they travelled further up her leg, caressing her calf, her knee, and then stroking over the soft skin on her lower thigh.

  ‘Clay, please.’ She gasped the protest that wasn’t a protest at all, as he stretched over her, both hands now sliding to her thighs as his eyes locked with hers.

  ‘You’re so beautiful, Robyn.’ His voice was husky and uneven and she felt her heated skin would catch fire if he didn’t stop. ‘I dream about you, do you know that? The smell of you, the taste of you, how it will be. I want you, I want you now.’

  Twilight had fallen while they had been eating and the open French windows allowed the faintest of breezes to gently waft the scent of roses into the room, the shadows of the dying day creating a warm intimacy that was intoxicating. Robyn was unable to move, unable to stop what she knew was going to happen next.

  He rolled in one swift movement and she found herself lying on top of him on the sofa, the thrusting arousal of his body hard and very real against the softness of her belly. He captured the gasp of shock on her half-open lips with his mouth, his hands sliding over her hips and holding her fast against him.

  His tongue flicked against her teeth before slowly and surely exploring the sweet, secret places of her mouth, and in spite of herself Robyn was kissing him back, her hands coming up to cradle his face as her lips became as hungry as his.

  She was aching and melting inside, her breasts painful with the swollen need she was feeling and she could feel herself shaking against the hard wall of his chest. Her fingers fumbled with the small buttons in the silk, and then the broad expanse of his tanned, muscled chest was exposed as the shirt swung open. The light covering of dark silky body hair was soft beneath her fingers as her hands explored his body, tentatively, wonderingly at first, and then, as more and more sensation built, she became bolder.

  His hands and mouth were fuelling and feeding the abandonment, his thighs hard against hers as he branded her with his maleness and then he stilled, his whole body tensing as she lowered her head and shyly ran her warm tongue over the taut, pea-sized nodules of his nipples.

  His kiss was fiercer and hungrier when she raised her head and he took her lips again, and Robyn matched him in desire. He was so beautiful; every inch of him was beautiful and she would never make love with anyone if she didn’t make love with Clay, she told herself feverishly. It would be unthinkable to let another man touch her, kiss her like this.

  How long they touched and tasted each other Robyn wasn’t sure afterwards—it could have been seconds or minutes or hours, such was her intoxication—but when she felt his hands pulling at her dress, the skirt of which had ridden up high against her thighs, refusing him didn’t enter her mind.

  And then she realised he was smoothing her skirt down as he lifted her off him, his voice husky as he said, ‘Come upstairs, Robyn. I want our first time to be long and slow and pleasurable, not a quick, lusty coupling on the sofa.’

  ‘What?’ The feverish agony of need that had consumed her made her voice dazed and plaintive, and then, as he repeated, ‘We’re going to bed and I want you to stay the night,’ she gazed at him bewilderly.

  He looked back at her, the silver gaze steady and controlled despite the passion that had narrowed his eyes and had brought a dark streak of colour across his chiselled cheekbones, and suddenly, shockingly, she knew exactly what he was doing.

  He had told her that when she finally went to bed with him it would be because she had chosen to do so because she wanted him as much as he wanted her. Eyes wide open, his conditions met and accepted, no surge of emotion, sexual or otherwise, blurring the issue.

  She suddenly felt sick. And she would become his slave. Loving him as she did, she would become his slave, because if ever a relationship was one-sided this one was. He thought she had been nervous about a physical relationship because of a bad experience in the past, and that once she had grown to like him and accept all the advantages an affair with a man like himself could bring, she would be content to relax and have fun for as long as it lasted. Surface emotion, nothing too deep or uncomfortable.

  She struggled off the sofa and then stood swaying slightly, her head whirling, and when he rose swiftly to his feet and took her arms in his she didn’t shrug
him away for the simple reason that she felt she would collapse in front of him if she did. It was only moments and then the faintness had receded, and when he looked down at her, his voice a mixture of concern and surprise and something else she couldn’t fathom, he said, ‘Robyn? What is it?’ She breathed deeply before she spoke.

  ‘Let go of me, Clay.’ Her voice was small but firm.

  ‘What?’ His eyes narrowed, darkened.

  ‘I said let go of me.’ Whatever he had expected her to say, it wasn’t this, she realised grimly, as his hands dropped from her arms.

  ‘Are you ill?’ he asked carefully.

  ‘No, I’m not ill.’ He looked magnificent standing there, her heart cried out desperately; the blue silk shirt open to the waist and his thickly muscled torso and lean, strong shoulders tanned and flagrantly male. ‘I just have to leave, that’s all.’

  ‘Leave?’ He repeated the word almost uncomprehendingly, a small muscle jerking under one high cheekbone. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘I can’t stay here and spend the night with you, Clay. Not now, not at any time,’ she said very clearly, considering her insides had broken loose from their casing and her heart was jangling about in a million pieces.

  ‘The hell you can’t.’ His eyes raked over her white face, their piercing quality threatening to strip her to the bone. ‘That was you lying next to me a minute ago, Robyn. Your lips murmuring my name and asking me, begging me, to relieve your torment.’

  Had she? She seemed to remember that other woman, the one that had been alive until a few moments ago, doing what he had said. She nodded slowly. ‘I know.’

  He stared at her, his eyes running over her stiff countenance and the frantic pulse beating at the base of her slender throat. ‘So what’s changed in a minute or two?’ he asked evenly, his voice cool. ‘You’re still the same woman, I’m still the same man.’

  She stared back at him and then answered his question with one of her own. ‘You don’t like emotion, do you, Clay?’ she said quietly, her voice small but very clear. ‘Emotion smacks of letting go, of not being in control, doesn’t it?’

  ‘We’re not discussing my likes or dislikes,’ he said harshly.

  ‘All your childhood was made up of emotion: highs and lows that swept you along from one crisis to the next. One minute hoping everything would be all right between your parents and seeing your father happy for a while, then the next back to your grandparents while another catastrophe was dealt with. Then after Mitch’s death things got even worse until the final meltdown when your father died. Then along came Laura.’

  ‘Is there a point to this?’

  His hard voice made her wince inside but she didn’t reveal it to the crystal gaze watching her. ‘You must have craved peace of mind by then, a life of dignity and restraint after the war zone you’d lived in most of your life.’

  ‘You know nothing about me so cut the psychoanalysis,’ he said with a sharpness that told her she was getting to him.

  ‘But I do know quite a lot about you, Clay, don’t I?’ she said quietly, her face as pale as alabaster. She knew he wouldn’t like being reminded of the fact but she had nothing to lose now; this was goodbye whichever way she looked at it. ‘And with Laura came more furore and heartache, possibly the worst yet, or maybe losing Mitch or seeing your father die inch by inch over the years was the worst thing—I don’t know.’

  ‘You mean there’s actually something about me you think you don’t know?’ he said with acid sarcasm. ‘How refreshing!’

  ‘And so after Laura and your mother died and you were released from it all for the first time in your life, you determined that never again would you put yourself in a position where passion or sentiment or desire or love could govern you. You would always be in control, always call the tune, be it business or your personal life.’ Her eyes were huge as she stared into his face.

  He was looking at her as though he hated her, and that more than anything else told her she was forcing him to acknowledge the demons that sat on his shoulders. And he would never forgive her for this, for showing him that she understood what he considered his Achilles heel.

  ‘And so you live your life in a cold, dispassionate vacuum, unmoved and detached from the things that touch the rest of us poor mortals, and in the final analysis, when you look at it with the cold logic you’re so proud of, you have to acknowledge that Laura and your mother have won. They’ve accomplished what they set out to do: dominated your thinking and mastered your life.’

  ‘The hell they have.’

  ‘Think about it, Clay,’ she said sadly. ‘Just think about it. They’re still with you, holding you back, stifling you.’

  ‘I don’t have to think about such rubbish,’ he bit out furiously, the cool control that he prided himself on blown to the wind. ‘The same as I don’t have to think about the motive behind that little précis of my life. It’s all with one object in view, isn’t it? A ring on your finger before you consent to sleep with me. Don’t think I’m a fool, Robyn, because I am not. I’m on to your little game.’

  ‘If you believe that then there is nothing else left to say,’ she said with touching dignity, her chin jerking up and her eyes flashing as she faced him head-on. His contempt had sent a rush of adrenalin surging through her veins, and she welcomed the boost of hormone from the bottom of her heart as it enabled her to confront him without flinching. ‘And you are a fool, Clay Lincoln. A blind, pathetic fool.’

  ‘Have you quite finished?’

  She got the feeling from the ice in his eyes that if she touched him now it would be like touching liquid nitrogen, so cold was his face. ‘Yes, I’m finished,’ she said woodenly.

  She turned from him, reaching for her bag at the side of the sofa, and as she did so her mobile phone began to ring. ‘Do you mind?’ She indicated the phone, the process of retrieving it out of the bag making her realise just how badly she was trembling.

  He shook his head, his face saying all too clearly he didn’t care what she did as long as she was soon out of his sight.

  It took two attempts before her shaking fingers could negotiate the right button, but then she was speaking her name into the phone and listening to Cass’s agitated voice. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be with you as soon as I can. Stay put and let the twins sleep till I get there,’ she said urgently after a moment.

  She pressed the button to finish the call and glanced up at Clay who was staring at her. ‘I need to call a taxi,’ she said frantically. ‘It’s Cass; the baby’s coming and it’s weeks early.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  OVER the next little while Robyn saw first-hand the qualities which had made Clay into a multimillionaire in his own right, as he took charge of events with a smooth authority that was formidable.

  The journey from Windsor into central London down the M4 was accomplished in half the legal time, as Clay’s car—the Mercedes this time—flashed through the night at a speed which took Robyn’s breath away.

  Not that she had much breath left anyway. The caustic scene at the house followed by Cass’s distraught telephone call had settled like a hard, tight ball in Robyn’s chest, constricting her breathing and causing her to feel she was in the middle of a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from.

  Fifteen minutes after speaking to her sister on the phone Robyn was holding Cass in her arms, and there was no doubt the baby was on its way, early or not. Although the contractions weren’t following any particular pattern Cass’s waters had broken.

  ‘There’s no need to panic.’ Now the other two were here and she wasn’t alone with the twins, Cass had visibly relaxed, the tearful face which had greeted Clay and Robyn now calmer. ‘The twins took for ever to be born. It’s just the fact that the baby is coming so early that’s worrying me.’

  ‘Didn’t I read somewhere that second labours are often shorter though?’ Robyn asked anxiously, and no sooner had the words left her lips than a new contraction hit with enough force to make Cass p
ant like an animal as she held on to Robyn’s hand with a grip that would have done credit to a twenty-stone navvy.

  Once Clay had established Cass had contacted Guy and Guy was on his way to the airport where he’d been squeezed onto a flight leaving just before one o’clock, he popped round to pick up Guy’s brother’s wife—who would stay with the twins until Guy arrived at the hospital and Robyn could come and hold the fort with her nephews—while Robyn hastily packed her sister’s overnight case.

  ‘I was going to do all this in the next week or so,’ Cass said plaintively as she directed Robyn into drawers and wardrobe. ‘Oh, Robyn, the baby’ll be all right, won’t it?’

  ‘Of course it will,’ Robyn said stoutly. It had to be. It just had to be. ‘Just tell it to slow down a bit so Daddy can see it arrive, will you?’ she added with an attempt at lightness.

  ‘You were at Clay’s, then?’ Cass asked with elaborate offhandedness. ‘Had dinner there or something?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Now was not the time to tell Cass her little fantasy had come to a sad end, although Robyn had noticed that not once, since they had left Clay’s house, had he looked directly at her. It was as though he couldn’t bear to acknowledge her presence.

  That Cass had picked up something too was made clear in the next moment when she said, ‘You two weren’t in the middle of a row or something, were you?’ Her tone was tentative.

  ‘No.’ They hadn’t been—they’d just finished. ‘I was just going to leave actually.’ It was brisk and dismissive.