Pagan Lover (24 page)

‘Nico must have felt obligated to you,’ murmured
Tara mechanically.

‘He as less willing than you’ve assumed. He said he’d help me but that he would not entice you aboard unless he was sure that you loved me.
My
loving
you
wasn’t enough for him, he said. He’d be a traitor to you if he brought you aboard and you didn’t want to come back to me. It would, in effect, be condemning you to imprisonment, as he called it—which sounds very much like the phrasing my wife has used on more than one occasion,’ added
Leon with a hint of amusement.

‘I realise now that Nico did ask some rather pointed questions,’ she told him musingly. ‘Yes, he made sure he knew I loved you before he asked me to come on to
his
boat’

‘Well, he had to say it was his, hadn’t he?’

‘Oh,
Leon, I do love him for what he did!’

Her husband held her from him.

‘You what!’

‘You know what I mean,’ she laughed. ‘I love you too, of course.’

‘Thanks for those kind words! I shall require them to be far more romantically put later, after we have eaten a very special dinner that is being prepared for us.’

‘Nico said his crew would manage to get something together!’

‘All part of the deception. And it worked! ‘He drew her close, his hard lips crushing hers beneath them and never drawing away until she was gasping for breath.

‘When did you know you were falling in love with me?’
Tara wanted to know when she had recovered.

‘That is a question I find it impossible to answer.’ The black eyes looked into hers for a long moment and then, ‘I often wonder if it was love at first sight,’ he admitted reflectively, ‘because never in my life have I been so greatly attracted to a woman as I was to you when we met in that hospital ward. I wanted you, and I vowed to have you.’

She just shook her head in wonderment. It had never occurred to either of them that it could have been love at first sight.

‘I thought it was desire,
Leon,’ she said.

‘So did I, at the time, but....’ He shrugged and said it really made no difference because he loved her now.

‘I do remember that I was blazing mad when you mentioned pillow-friends,’ he mused. ‘I knew even then that I would never have another as long as I lived, and that was what inflamed me when you talked about them. I must have been in love with you from very early on,’ he added with a wry smile.

‘There was a time when I thought you might be falling in love with me, Leon, but afterwards I felt I was mistaken.’

‘It was a pity that neither of us spoke about our feelings. I must have known that love was dawning with you as well, because you are not the girl to give herself freely just for desire.’ He sounded contrite and she turned her face to his and her lips were soft and yielding on his mouth. ‘God, but I love you!’ he said hoarsely, bringing her slender body against the iron-hard muscles of his own. He stood up, bringing her with him, but he just held her then in a gentle tender embrace and looked down into her big blue eyes, eyes filled with love and happiness. There were a few explanations still to be made, but neither felt inclined to waste any more time on such things now. And so they just stood there, in the shaded light of the saloon, their bodies close, their thoughts on the future and the joys of loving and caring which were, after all, the most important things in marriage.