enjoy, but not all the time. I’m not telling you to stop mourning for what you have lost or forgotten or given up, only to widen your new horizons and at the same time to taste the honey I can be quite sweet,’ he told her with a charming mixture of seriousness, flippancy, and sensuous seduction.
It was a cocktail Jessica could not resist. She took his hand in hers and raised it to her lips and kissed it. She could see that he felt the sexual current that passed between them as strongly as she did. And with it something profoundly loving rose between them from the depths of their souls.
Jessica felt incredibly happy as she let go of his hand to undo the silver ribbon tied round the box.
She lifted the lid and tissue paper rustled as she parted the sheets. She stopped to gaze into Luke’s eyes. They were mischievous, dark and so very sexy. She followed an impulse and placed her arms round his neck and kissed him on the lips. There was passion in that kiss, from both of them. Their lips parted and then she felt his hands move under her jumper to her naked breasts. With his thumbs Luke circled the nimbus round her already erect nipples and tweaked them, delighting in their size and how they reacted to his touch. His own urgency for her forced him to remove his hands and place them round her face.
‘I chose the dress I thought you would like,’ he said. ‘Cissie assured me you would not be disappointed.’
Jessica ran her fingers through her hair and shook it off her face, a gesture Luke had seen her do before. During the weeks since he had last seen her he had thought often about that characteristic hand and head movement. He found ittantalising, something of her very own that had not been wiped away by loss of memory.
Jessica had barely managed to control the erotic desire that Luke had aroused in her. Because of him she felt truly alive once more. Because of him sex was once more something she could look forward to. She caressed his cheek with the palm of her hand and then gave all her attention to removing the tissue paper round his gift.
The dress was black silk velvet with the slimmest shoulder straps which seemed no more than heavy silk thread. The dress was cut straight to the floor with a hint of a train. Also in the box was a transparent silk gauze jacket woven to resemble the finest of spider webs in the most extraordinary dark and mysterious colour, aubergine. The dress had appeared on the Paris catwalk and had featured in various fashion magazines. It was a thing of rare beauty and remarkable craftsmanship. Cissie’s mother had bought it in Paris for the shop as the showpiece of her Christmas collection of couture clothes. In the bottom of the box was a pair of Maude Frisson aubergine high-heeled evening shoes.
‘You’ve thought of everything. How could you have known that I coveted this dress from the moment I saw it … and the shoes. I have always been quite mad about shoes,’ she told him. With the dress over her arm, a shoe in her hand, and pure delight on her face, she kissed him several times. This time the kisses were pure enthusiasm, appreciation, a hint of affection.
Luke knew better than to kill the moment by reminding Jessica that she had remembered something from her past – she had always loved shoes.
‘My hair, my face,’ she wailed.
‘Lovely hair,’ he commented as he took several strands of it in his hands to caress. ‘Marvellous face, but you know that.’
‘But I can make it better,’ she told him, placing the dressand the shoes back in the box and leading him by the hand into the drawing room.
She offered him the wing chair nearest the fire where she had been sitting when he rang the doorbell. He shrugged out of his coat. She took it from him and with a wave at the drinks tray she said, ‘Make yourself comfortable. I will be as fast as I can. You won’t be disappointed.’
He liked her self-confidence, the teasing twinkle in her eyes, the happiness in her voice,
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