i}o one paid any attention to the fashionably dressed, elegant woman parking her car on the sunny residential London street. Why should they? The BMW might have been a more expensive, more up-market model than the others of its breed parked outside their owners' smartly painted front gates, but it fitted neatly alongside the wide variety of chunky four-wheel-drive vehicles that had become the nineties' version of the more traditional Volvo estate as the favourite vehicle for the school-and-shopping run.

The large double-fronted house close to which she had parked had recently been converted into a small hotel the kind patronised by ladies of a certain age up from the country to spend a few days shopping and catching up with old friends. It might not have the eclat or the convenience of its Knightsbridge sisters but, "My dear, one gets... feels... so comfortable there and safe...." and its prices were, of course, so much cheaper.

But it wasn't the hotel that was Claudia's destination even though she spent several minutes staring at it.

The street, her surroundings, once so familiar to her, had changed dramatically from the days when she and Garth had rented a flat in one of the shabby and rather run-down terraced houses that had lined it. Since then, they had been smartened up and gentrified out of all recognition, their gleaming paintwork and shiny, clean, linen-draped windows confusing and bewildering her.

The flat she and Garth had rented had been at number twelve on the top floor--or rather in the attic--up a flight of rickety stairs covered by a piece of dust-filled, ancient, dark red patterned carpet--or at least they assumed it had once been dark red.

They had found it at the end of a long week of scouring the city for somewhere suitable to live that they could afford, and with Garth having only hours of his leave left before he was due to return to his regiment, they had pounced in relief on the opportunity to rent a place that was within their budget.

"At least we'll have our own bathroom and kitchen," Claudia had murmured when Garth shook his head over the grimy shabbiness of the small rooms, 'and decorating it will give me something to do while you're away. "

"You'll be working," Garth had reminded her before adding protectively, 'and besides, I don't like the idea of your climbing about on ladders when I'm not here. "

They had still been very much at the honeymoon stage of their marriage then, still very protective of their love and their privacy, and Claudia had been adoringly proud of the way Garth had refused both his and her own parents' offer of financial assistance towards providing them with a better home.

"No, we must start as we mean to go on Garth had told her firmly while they were discussing the subject. All the protests she had been about to make melted beneath his kisses, just as her body did, when he added, whispering the words against her mouth, " I want to look after you myself, sweet. I want to take care of you. "

It might have been the seventies, she might have had her own newly burgeoning career, but Claudia had been brought up in a household by parents who adhered to the old-fashioned values of their own parents, and while she would have hated Garth to be domineering or bossy, to expect her to treat him as some kind of superior simply because he was a man, she made no bones about the fact that she enjoyed being pampered by him, being shown that he loved and cared about her; that he wanted to protect her and look after her. It was, after all, exactly the way her father treated her mother, and her parents had been happily married now for over twenty-five years.

They had moved into the flat one rainy weekend, good-humouredly assisted by some of Garth's friends from the regiment, who had helped carry the sturdy pieces of furniture, given to Claudia and Garth by their parents, up to then- new home.

"But, darling, why waste your money buying furniture when Daddy and I have so much," her mother had protested when Claudia tried to object.

"This table was your great-grandmother's," she'd added softly after she and Claudia had gone up into the attic to sort through the furniture that was stored there.

And even though the solid furnishings looked slightly incongruous in the rather down-at-heel surroundings of their new home, it was comforting to have things around them that came from both their families, Claudia had told Garth lovingly-Only their bed was new--at Garth's masterful insistence--and Claudia had blushed slightly when they had gone to buy it and the salesman had insisted that they try it out.

"We find that many couples these days are going for the larger king-sized bed," the salesman had told them, obviously scenting a better commission from the larger sale.

Garth had shaken his head and whispered teasingly to Claudia, "No way.

I want you just as close to me as I can get you, in bed and out of it.

I don't want there to be any space, any distance, anything or anyone between us, Claudia," he had emphasised later when they had been alone in his car. He had parked down a quiet, overgrown country track, then pulled her into his arms and kissed her passionately to reinforce the intensity of his words.

Claudia had responded to him equally passionately, if a little shyly.

She might not any longer be a virgin but she was still a little hesitant, a little unsure, even a little afraid of her own sexuality.

She had been startled by her physical hunger for him and wondered how uninhibited it was permissible for a woman to be.

After Garth and his friends had finished carrying the furniture up the four flights of stairs to their attic home, Claudia had cooked them all a huge meal of spaghetti Bolognese cooked on the Baby Belling stove that was part of the fitments of the flat and that Claudia and her mother had spent hours cleaning with hundreds of packs of Brillo pads.

Afterwards, they had all gone to the local pub, where the short army haircuts of the men had marked them out quite clearly as what they were among the other young men there with floppy, often shoulder-length hair.

The air in the pub had been thick with cigarette smoke and the sweet, cloying smell of hash, and Claudia had been glad when it eventually came time to leave.

She and Garth had walked home, arms around one another, and in the shadows on the corner of the street. Garth had stopped and pulled her quickly into his arms, kissing her with fierce passion.

"God, I want you, Claudia," he told her thickly.

"Tonight, watching you..." He stopped, shaking his head, not totally sure just how she would react if he told her about the almost savage spurt of lust and love he had felt earlier on in the evening, watching her as she leaned over the sink to reach something on its far side, the action drawing the fabric of her jeans tightly across the rounded peachiness of her behind.

The temptation to walk up behind her and reach around her to caress thewarm weight of her breasts while he. Perhaps it was just as well thatthey hadn't been alone and that the others had still been there at thetime, he reflected wryly as he studied her face in the moonlight. Shewas so soft and gentle, so sweetly responsive, that he couldn't quitebring himself to demand more of her, to show her the more forceful andsensual side of his sexuality. There was something about Claudia--acombination perhaps of her own innate gentleness and herupbringing--that set her apart from her more robust peers, which wasone of the reasons he had fallen in love with her in the first place.

Garth freely acknowledged.

It was late, gone midnight, when they eventually let themselves into the dark and silent house. The single, low-watt bulbs that were supposed to illuminate the stairs and each landing of the flats obviously needed replacing. Dark, shadowed landings were all very well when he was with Claudia, but he didn't want her having to walk the four flights to their flat on her own when he wasn't there with her.

Garth decided, making a mental note to replace the light-bulbs in the morning and to speak to their landlord about them.

He was due back with the regiment tomorrow, and later as they lay in bed together, he could hear Claudia sigh.

"What is it?" he asked her softly, reaching for her in the darkness.

"Nothing, really. I just wish you didn't have to go back tomorrow."

"I know, but it won't be for long. I've got some real leave coming up at the end of the month," he reminded her comfortingly.

In the darkness, Claudia bit her lip. Some real leave, yes, followed by a tour of duty in Northern Ireland. She was not an army daughter for nothing.

"Dad was saying that they're talking about making cuts in any new intake and of amalgamating some of the smaller regiments," she commented.

"Mmm ... I know," Garth agreed. His new father-in-law had already warned him about the rumours he'd heard that promotions were going to be hard to come by in the future. At the end of the year. Garth's present contract would expire and he had not yet made his mind up whether or not he would sign on for another term. When he had originally decided on a career in the army, he had not been thinking about how it would affect a wife and children, but he had recently seen several of his peers' marriages break down under the pressure of the separations that an army wife inevitably suffered.

As Garth bent his head in the darkness to find her mouth with his own, Claudia knew that it wasn't just the thought of his departure tomorrow that was bothering her.

On Monday morning, she started her new job working as a probation officer for one of the London borough councils.

Technically, she was well qualified for the job but she had felt at her interview that her supervisor seemed, for same reason, antagonistic towards her. Nothing she could actually put her finger on, just one or two slightly add remarks about her background and a sense of the other woman's rather challenging attitude, although, to be fair, she had to admit that the inner-city conditions in which she would be working were going to be tough.

"The army life I've been brought up in isn't a totally protected environment," Claudia had responded as calmly as she could to Janice Long's sharp probing.

"There can be problems with drink and drugs, marital breakdowns and, of course, the trauma of men being badly injured and killed."

Then. " the other woman had responded, 'but here in this borough, we often have to deal with children who have been abused ... beaten... starved, subjected to every kind of emotional and physical as well as sexual degradation. They are so vulnerable it's easy for them to go off the rails." She had added, "How well do you think you are equipped to deal with them?"

"I'm not," Claudia had replied honestly.

"I doubt that anyone is. I can't imagine that it's ever possible to totally ignore one's feelings under such circumstances, but with time and training I hope and believe that one can put aside one's own personal response in order to help those we're there to help."

She had got the job but she suspected that she had not really convinced Janice Long that she was the right candidate for it.

"Mmm..." Garth murmured as he nibbled at her lips.

"You taste good... You taste good all over, Clo/ he added huskily as he lowered his head and started nibbling gently at the tender flesh of her throat.

Claudia's whole body quivered. She knew what that particular note in Garth's voice meant.

The first time he had told her that he wanted to kiss her, taste her all over, she had been more shocked than aroused, and even now there was still a part of her that felt faintly awkward, uncertain, about the intimacy of what he was doing. Although the sensation of his mouth. She shuddered more deeply as his warm, moist tongue started to circle her nipple, then she closed her eyes and deliberately willed herself to stop thinking about tomorrow and to enjoy instead the delicious sensation of sensual pleasure and sexual excitement that was building up inside her body.

As Garth felt her body begin to relax, he started to draw her nipple deeper into his mouth, alternately teasing it with delicate flicks of his tongue then with a much deeper, hungrier, full- mouthed suckling that made Claudia tense her muscles and arch her back as her whole body responded to the rhythmic pressure of his mouth.

Garth loved Claudia's breasts. He loved all of her, of course, but her breasts were just perfect, filling the palms of his hands when he cupped them, soft and warm and satin skinned, her nipples a warm coral pink discreetly demure when she was not aroused but very erotically hard and swollen in response to his lovemaking.

Her breasts were, in fact, a reflection of Claudia herself, modest and quiescent publicly, but privately, delicious and erotic and unexpectedly very sensually responsive.

In the darkness, Claudia felt Garth's hand stroking her breasts, then moving to her waist and lower. Automatically, she moved with him, parting her legs, quivering slightly with the onset of her need to feel him within her.

His index finger circled her navel and teased a little bit farther down. In response, Claudia bit reprimandingly on his ear in a mingling of feminine urgency and warning.

Recognising this wordless signal of her need, Garth tugged passionately on her nipple, using his body weight to keep her pinned to the bed beneath him as he felt the reactive shudders of responsive pleasure galvan ising her body.

The last thing on Claudia's mind now was work. The only thoughts she wanted or needed to have were those of Garth and how he was making her feel; of how he would soon be making her feel when the full, strong, pulsating length of him was sheathed hotly inside her own body.

Behind her dosed eyelids, she was already visualising the coming together of their bodies, his proud and hard, the skin stretched tight over the passion-filled, dark-veined surge of his manhood, the glands totally and, to her mind, oddly vulnerably exposed, the skin hot and silky to her touch, thirsty for the tender moistness that lay within her own body, which she pictured as a soft, wet, life-giving protective place where he would be kept safe. Here in this secret and private garden of Eden, his body could take its fill of pleasure in perfect safety until with all the sternness of the sleeping Earth Mother once worshipped and feared by the ancient Greeks, she reminded him of his duty, his purpose, the soft muscles that had held him so tenderly now tightening around him, making him, making both of them, obey the laws of nature as they drew from him the spark of life.

It might not technically be necessary to have an orgasm in order to become pregnant, but Claudia was secretly convinced that there was something about the deep, convulsive movement that rendered her womb particularly responsive and receptive to the act of procreation, the creation of a new life.

If that was not the case, then why had Mother Nature specifically designed a woman so that she should experience this need to have her man penetrate her so deeply, completely, that she should feel as she did right now, Claudia asked herself dizzily . and why also would a man want to do so?

If the clitoris was a woman's prime source of pleasure, then why should she have this need, this urgency, this wanton, aching, screaming com n pulsion to urge Garth ever deeper inside her, to feel the hot, wet explosion of his release just as close to her womb as he could possibly get?

Very slowly. Garth released Claudia's nipple, kissing his way down over her flat belly, her skin damp and softly sheeny with sexual arousal, but she still covered her sex with her hand.

Circling her navel with his tongue. Garth placed his hand over hers, lacing his fingers down through hers as he slowly and deliberately stroked the crisp dark curls that covered her pubic mound and then slipped one finger deeper, parting the demurely closed outer lips of her sex to explore the moist sensuality they were concealing.

The sensation of her own hand pressed hard against her pubic bone while Garth's finger stroked her made Claudia moan a small, shocked protest. There had been times, rather shockingly frequent occasions, in fact, during their engagement when Garth had not been there, when she had lain alone on her bed touching herself, exploring herself, initially simply idly, wondering how she might feel to Garth. But then, as her newly aroused female senses caught fire, her touch had been more deliberate, more purposeful and urgent. She had never discussed these acts with Garth, nor had he previously indicated that he knew that they took place.

Now, instinctively, she realised that he did, an awareness that was confirmed when he whispered rawly against her stomach, "I want you to think of me like this when I'm not here, Clo. I want you to remember how good it feels. It does feel good, doesn't it. "

Unable to stop herself from shuddering as his fingertip gently rotated the small, throbbing, almost too sensitive nub of her clitoris, Claudia could only moan a choked response. Automatically, her legs were opening, her hips moving in a hungry, grinding motion as she locked the fingers of her free hand in Garth's hair and tugged protestingly, at the same time trying to free her other hand.

Amazingly, Garth let it go, his own hands reaching for her hips.

Claudia expelled her breath in a relief-cracked groan, eagerly anticipating the slow thrust of him within her achingly responsive and ready body, but instead of penetrating her. Garth lowered his head and manoeuvred her so that her body opened easily and eagerly for him as he ran the tip of his tongue from her clitoris right down the length of her most private region and then back up again, firmly repeating the caress over and over again until the whole of her sex felt swollen and wet, tingling, aching, with the heat of a sexual urgency so intense that had she been able, Claudia knew that she would have taken the initiative herself.

Even so, it shocked her when Garth seemed to read her mind, taking hold of her and rolling down onto the bed on his back while he lifted her over his body, over it and down onto it, down onto him.

Tou want me. take me," he whispered rawly to her.

"Show me how hungry you are for me, Clo. -show me how much you want me. Yes, that's it," he told her thickly as she moved on top of him, lifting her hips, then lifting herself as she slowly and uncertainly at first started to ride him.

The look on his face told her all she needed to know, giving her the courage and encouragement to take control of her own sexuality and of him. She heard him groan as she deliberately compressed her muscles and held him still.

Hungrily, he reached for her breasts. Claudia leaned forward, moving oh so slowly and deliberately up and down the thick, hot moistness of his shaft, slowly at first then faster while Garth groaned and kneaded her breast and then reached down between her legs to tug on her now erotically engorged clitoris.

The combined sensation of Garth touching her while his penis filled her was almost too much for Claudia to bear. She was aware of a sensation of hurtling towards a barrier and knew that once through it she would have absolutely no control. Everything was rushing over her too fast for her to stop and she heard herself cry out Garth's name.

Then she screamed as her body exploded in a climax so intense that she was still shuddering with the aftershock of it minutes later when she lay wrapped in Garth's arms, the tears of release lying damply on his chest.

"That's how I want you to remember me... ms... when I'm not here," Garth whispered roughly to her as he kissed her damp eyelids and then her mouth.

"That's how I'm going to make love to you the night we conceive our child."

They had already talked about the family they planned to have, not for a while yet, but neither of them wanted to wait too long. Claudia wanted four children, two boys and two girls, but Garth had demurred that maybe they should stop at two.

"Four will be expensive to educate, especially if I stay on in the army," he had warned her.

That was another subject they had discussed at great length. Claudia was well aware of what it meant to be an army wife, and the last thing she would ever do would be to want to come between Garth and a career he loved, but Garth himself, as she knew, was now having second thoughts about his own commitment to the army.

"I wish you weren't going back tomorrow," Claudia repeated drowsily to him as she started to slide towards sleep.

Garth groaned.

"So do I. Oh, God, Clo, but that was good.-.yoy were good...."

Slowly and lovingly, he ran his hands over her orgasm-relaxed body. He didn't consider himself to be a man who was in any way oversexed and he hoped he wasn't a selfish lover, but he was, he acknowledged, quite highly sexed and Claudia aroused him as no other woman had ever done or would ever do. If they woke up early enough in the morning, he would be able to make love to her again before he had to leave. As he eased her body down against his own, he wondered how she would react if he asked her to forgo wearing any underwear the next time he came home. Just Clo. -show me how much you want me. Yes, that's it," he told her thickly as she moved on top of him, lifting her hips, then lifting herself as she slowly and uncertainly at first started to ride him.

The look on his face told her all she needed to know, giving her the courage and encouragement to take control of her own sexuality and of him. She heard him groan as she deliberately compressed her muscles and held him still.

Hungrily, he reached for her breasts. Claudia leaned forward, moving oh so slowly and deliberately up and down the thick, hot moistness of his shaft, slowly at first then faster while Garth groaned and kneaded her breast and then reached down between her legs to tug on her now erotically engorged clitoris.

The combined sensation of Garth touching her while his penis filled her was almost too much for Claudia to bear. She was aware of a sensation of hurtling towards a barrier and knew that once through it she would have absolutely no control. Everything was rushing over her too fast for her to stop and she heard herself cry out Garth's name.

Then she screamed as her body exploded in a climax so intense that she was still shuddering with the aftershock of it minutes later when she lay wrapped in Garth's arms, the tears of release lying damply on his chest.