Free The Dutiful Wife by Penny Jordan Page A

been Giselle. Every bit as defensive as he was himself, and prickly with pride too. She had initially irritated him, then she had intrigued him, and finally she had fascinated him, compelled him to want to know all there was to know about her. The way they had chosen to live their life might seem odd to others, but it suited them, met their shared need for one another.
    It had been Giselle who had helped him find away back to his childhood, to deal with the demons that waited in his memory of it. The first time he had watched her interacting with some orphans they had accidentally come across whilst checking out the site of one of his hotel and spa complexes he had been angry and jealous of the attention she was giving them, seeing in her behaviour a reflection of the way his mother had treated him. But then she had told him that the babies reminded her of her own baby brother, and when she had cried in his arms for the loss of that brother, letting him see the full extent of the pain she carried with her because of that loss, his need to comfort her had overruled his other feelings.
    Through Giselle he had learned to see and believe that when they helped orphaned children in need they were also helping the small, lonely ghosts of their own childhood.
    ‘When we give to them, we give to the children we once were. When we heal their hurts we heal our own,’ Giselle had told him, and he knew that it was true. However, her questions about ultimately passing on his role as ruler to a child of his own blood, combined with the look on her face earlier in the day when she had held the orphaned girl, made him ask semi-brusquely, ‘Are you trying to tell me that you’ve changed your mind and you want a child now?’
    ‘No. I’m not. I don’t want that,’ Giselle denied immediately. ‘All I want is you, Saul.’
    ‘Good,’ he told her, his voice rough and uneven with emotion. ‘Ultimately, yes, I suppose we shall have to think about an heir. But not yet, Giselle. I’m not ready toshare you with anyone else. I saw how you looked at that little girl. When the time comes you will be a devoted mother, and no doubt I shall be ridiculously jealous of my own child, but I don’t want us to have that child yet. I don’t want anything or anyone to come between us.’
    ‘Neither do I,’ Giselle told him, closing her eyes against grateful guilty tears.
    She wasn’t aware of lifting her face up to his until he kissed her, and then kissed her again, his kiss taking from her the poison of her earlier despair and pain. In his arms she was safe and protected. Nothing could reach her or hurt her there. In Saul’s arms was her home, her place of safety. Safety from the outside world, maybe, but there was no safety from the desire they aroused in one another, and nor did she want there to be, Giselle admitted fiercely as Saul pulled her closer, his arousal obvious.
    They undressed one another slowly, in between kisses that grew longer and more intimate. Saul’s tongue was curling round her own and then stroking against it, that stroke becoming a thrust that moved within the eager sweetness of her mouth like the demand of a drum whose beat accelerated, turning the ache low down within her body into a grinding need.
    Now, as Giselle pressed her hips into Saul, gyrating her body against him, rubbing herself against him, seeking the feel of his hard readiness pressing into her as urgently as the eager juices of her desire for him melted into the heat of her aroused flesh, all she wanted was him.
    ‘Wet…’ Saul whispered unnecessarily into her mouth,when his hand stroked up the inside of her thigh and then slid beneath the lacy edge of her briefs. His fingers parted the swollen protectors of her sex, caressing the smooth slickness that lay within them.
    Her breasts felt like hard tight cups of flesh, filled with agonised nerve-endings full of sensual longing, all of which ended in the engorged sensitivity of her nipples. Her need was