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Instinctively Poppy looked towards the front of the villa, searching for so She wanted Jaed; she felt vulnerable without hiht mean, alienated from her past and apprehensive about her future

Itemotions, she tried to reassure herself; it had to be And for her physical desire?

‘We’d better ht,’ James warned Poppy

She was still sitting outside, watching the sun set, or so she told herself In truth, since James had returned fro hi to ht as she desperately tried to understand as happening to her

Why, why should the most mundane of normal human attributes, such as the way he walked, the sheen of his skin, the fluid ease of his movements, even the warm brown curve of his throat, suddenly evoke such intense feelings and needs within her? Why, when she had known hily aware of him that he had only to come within five yards of her for her heart to beat frantically fast?

And hen she had never, ever even thought such a thing before, should thethe tiny hairs up all over her body whilst her skin itself tingled in a silent agony of aching demand?

She had no answer to such questions, Poppy acknowledged soberly, there was no answer

‘I’ll go and get changed,’ she said now in response to James’s comment and went indoors

The sun had turned her skin a soft, warhter and nancy that had given her flesh such a rounded feel and such a healthy glow, she thought as she caught sight of herself in the bedroom mirror

Although the baby had barely started to show asto feel lad now that she had let Sally persuade her into a pre-wedding shopping spree

The fluid ice-cream-coloured dresses that Sally had chosen were not her norh she had never thought of herself as being feh to wear thin muslins that drifted over her body, sleeveless and scoop-necked so that they showed her tanned arhtly fuller curves of her breasts

‘These will be wonderfully cool,’ Sally had enthused ‘All you’ll need to wear under theing along the rail and producing a fine, soft reen cotton dress with a drop waist and inverted pleats, which buttoned down the front

‘Oh, yes!’ Sally had exclaimed when Poppy had reluctantly put it on ‘James will enjoy that all those buttons Men love buttons’

Poppy remembered how her hands had trembled as she’d wrenched it off She had decided not to buy it but soet it included in her purchases, a fact which she had not discovered until it was too late and she had got it home

Now, having showered, her hands treain as she put it on, but this time for a different reason

‘James will enjoy that’ Sally had said, and the sheer intensity of the surge of sensation that hit her as she closed her eyes and pictured hi them to reveal the curves of her naked body, ainst its torment

‘Poppy?’

As she opened her eyes, her face flushing, she realised that James must have heard her

‘What is it? Is it the baby? Is so?’

He walked towards her, his own torso bare, the cream linen trousers that he had pulled on so softly shaped that they revealed the taut hardness of his thighs as he moved

Poppy watched hihtly parted as she absorbed every movement

‘James’