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CHAPTER 15
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2024-10-29 19:42:56Wearily, Veronica looked at the luminous face of her watch. Half-past one in the morning. She had been awake for the last hour, stubbornly evading sleep, angrily refusing to allow her thoughts to take control, to force her to remember.
She was too hyped up for sleep, too afraid to sleep just in case she... In case she did what? Dreamed of Sasha? Veronica looked across at the desk in front of the window.
One of the small pleasures of living in the depths of the country was that one didn’t need to close the curtains at night. There was nothing she liked more than being able to see the night sky.
When her mother had first married Henry’s father and they had gone to live in his ancestral home, Veronica had been overwhelmed at first by the darkness of the huge house.
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Unable to keep either her shock or the pain his words had caused her from showing in her eyes, Veronica stared at him.‘It isn’t like that... I’m not interested in Wayne, not romantically, anyway. I don’t...’ She stopped abruptly and looked away from him. How could she tell Sasha of all men... people... that he was the only man she was interested in, the only man she would give herself to…? The only man she had real, strong feelings for when he was seeing was telling the exact opposite? Now Sasha was looking at her in that horribly cynical way, his mouth twisting in mocking contempt.‘Henry asked me to come,’ he told her as she remained silent. ‘He’s had to go away on business but he asked me to come and give yo
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He felt so good, smelled so good… Shyly, she opened her eyes and then her mouth, licking exploratively at his skin. In her ear, Veronica could feel the rapid increase in Sasha’s heartbeat. His arms tightened around her and then, suddenly, Sasha was picking her up, carrying her over to the bed, laying her on it, touching her skin, stroking her body, kissing her in all the ways she had imagined and showing her at the same time just how far short of the astonishing reality her imagination had fallen. In his hands, her breasts swelled and ached, her nipples taut, begging to be touched, kissed, sucked. Unable to stop herself, Veronica started to moan softly as his mouth tugged gently on her breast, her body arching, twisting, filled, driven by such an intensity of need that she herself was lost in i
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A noise in the garden outside her window brought Veronica back to reality. Startled, she let her unfocused gaze sweep the moonlit darkness and then sweep it again, her body stiffening as she saw Sasha turn away and disappear into the shadows. How long had he been standing there watching her? She knew from his clothes that he must’ve been working, probably checking for poachers who, she guessed, were as much a potential threat here as they had often been on her stepbrother’s estate. Shivering, she headed back to her bed. It was almost three o’clock in the morning and as she touched her face Veronica realized that it was wet with her tears.“Why the hell am I being so pathetic... Standing there with tears pouring down my face, reliving the pain of the past? And for what? I&rsquo
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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
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