by Penny Jordan
‘What happened last night wasn’t... It didn’t...
I didn’t... I thought you were Chris... I was dreaming about him and when... You must have known that I thought you were him,’ she cried out defensively. ‘You must have known that I would never... That...’
She stopped abruptly as she saw the dangerous warning expression on James’s face, her stomach dropping sickeningly as she realised how angry he was.
‘Go on,’ he invited her softly. ‘You were saying that you thought I was Chris, that you were dreaming about Chris, but you weren’t asleep when we made love, were you, Poppy? You knew very well who it was, who was holding you... touching you, pleasuring you,’ he told her tauntingly, ‘even if you do claim now that you wanted it to be my brother...’
‘I... I believed that you were your brother,’ Poppy lied doggedly, driven into a corner by his refusal to allow her the secure defence she so desperately needed. ‘I wanted—’
‘You wanted me,’ James told her bluntly. ‘Even if you do prefer to lie to yourself now. You can deceive yourself all you like, Poppy, but you won’t deceive me... I was the one who—’
‘I was pretending that you were Chris,’ Poppy told him frantically, unable to listen to any more. ‘I—’
She stopped abruptly as she saw the ominous white line of fury deepen around James’s mouth, her stomach knotting into tight cords of anxious dread.
‘I see... You pretended I was Chris... You ρretended I was my brother, did you, my cheating little virgin...?’ His eyes dropped to her mouth and then lower, caressing the whole of her body in a hatefully knowing way that made her skin burn as though all the flames of hell were consuming it.
Her body trembled as he drawled, ‘But then, of course, you aren’t a virgin any longer, are you, Poppy?’ And he took her by surprise by roughly jerking her towards him, holding her by her upper arms, his body so close to her own that she could feel its angry heat, and she was shaken, driven into a state of shockingly unexpected, aching weakness.
Fighting to deny what her body was frantically trying to tell her, desperate to ignore the tormenting clamour of the need it refused to understand that it couldn’t be allowed even to feel, never mind acknowledge or openly demonstrate, she was barely aware of the furious tension in James’s voice and eyes as he told her savagely, ‘And I can tell you this much—no matter how much you might want to deny it now, it was me you wanted last night, Poppy, me you begged to hold you and touch you... to take you and fill you with my body, to—’
‘No...’ Poppy protested shrilly. ‘No, that’s not true... I thought you were someone else... It was Chris I wanted, not you...’ she told him piteously.
‘That wasn’t what you were saying last night,’ James reminded her brutally. “‘I want you... I want you...”’ he mimicked her breathlessly, making her cringe as he caught so devastatingly the note of aching hunger and need she clearly recognised as being her own.
‘You knew I thought you were Chris,’ she told him. ‘You must have done. You know how much I love him. You should have stopped... Why didn’t you?’
‘Why? Because I’m a man,’ he told her callously. ‘And when a woman makes herself available sexually to a man, comes on to him, urges him, pleads with him and begs him the way you were doing with me last night...’
He paused and looked at her, then told her grimly, ‘If you’re looking for an apology, Poppy, or even a defence, I’m afraid you’re not going to get one. I gave you what you asked for. What happened between us last night happened because—’
‘Because I believed you were your brother,’ Poppy interrupted him passionately.
‘No,’ James corrected her mercilessly. ‘You may have wanted me to be Chris... needed me to be him... but you certainly knew that I wasn’t. You knew—’
‘Stop it, stop it...’ Poppy demanded. ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more. I just want to forget that the whole thing happened,’ she told him sickly.
‘And you think I don’t?’ James challenged her brutally. ‘You think I like knowing that you used me as a substitute for my brother, that you vented on me all your pent-up, virginal frustration at not being able to have him?’
The way he was speaking to her shocked Poppy into white-faced silence. James might, in the past, have been unkind to her, might have been angry with her, but he had never, ever been so sexually explicit with her, nor so...so...
‘What, nothing to say for yourself?’ he demanded bitingly.
‘I... It wasn’t like that,’ Poppy protested, ashenfaced. ‘You’re making it sound as though...as though I was the one... as though it was me who...’
‘Well, wasn’t it?’ James asked her. ‘You say you want to forget the whole thing happened. Well, let’s just hope that we’ll both be allowed to do just that...’
The note of warning in his voice made Poppy raise her head and look at him directly for the first time since he had entered the room.
His eyes were as cold as the Arctic Ocean and just as cruelly destructive.
‘What... what do you mean?’ she asked him nervously.
‘Use your head, Poppy,’ James advised her grimly. ‘Last night, at your insistence, we made... had sex, and surely even you aren’t naive enough to have forgotten that there could be... consequences of our... intimacy?’
‘Consequences...’ Poppy faltered in a stricken voice as she realised what he meant. ‘No,’ she protested in panic. ‘There couldn’t... We couldn’t...’
‘Oh yes, there could,’ James corrected her roughly, ‘and we most certainly did, if my memory serves me right. And, whilst I’ve never had occasion to put them to the test, I have no reason to doubt the efficiency of my reproductive organs and last night they—’
‘Stop it... stop it...’ Poppy begged torturedly, covering her face with her hands as she sobbed. ‘You’re just trying to frighten me. I can’t be... You can’t have...’
She heard James laughing savagely at her as she uncovered her face to look at him, his mouth twisted in contempt.
‘How modest,’ he jeered. ‘You can’t even bring yourself to say the words, can you? How modest... how proper... and, my God, how inappropriate ... Shall I tell you what you said to me last night, what you asked me for?’ he demanded mercilessly. ‘Shall I repeat for you the words you said to me... the way you urged me, begged me to fill you with—?’
‘No... no...’ Poppy moaned. ‘I keep telling you it was a mistake...’
‘A mistake?’ James shook his head. ‘Oh, no...it wasn’t a mistake,’ he told her, ‘it was your mistake, Poppy. Your mistake.’
He released her so unexpectedly that she staggered slightly, her legs shockingly weak, but when James would have reached out to steady her she pushed him away angrily, fighting to suppress the tears she desperately needed to cry.
‘I don’t know how I could ever have believed that you were Chris,’ Poppy cried out in anguish. ‘You are nothing like him—nothing. Chris is kind and gentle; he’s... he would never—’
‘Never what?’ James interrupted her savagely. ‘Never arouse you the way I did, never make you want him the way you wanted me, never make you feel, experience, know what it really is to be a woman? Is that what you were going to say, Poppy?’
‘No,’ she denied vehemently.
‘No,’ James agreed crushingly. ‘You aren’t capable of being that honest with yourself, are you? You prefer the delusion of your cosy, pretty, girlish dream. Well, try being even more honest with yourself, Poppy. Try telling yourself that if you had been in bed with Chris the reason you would have woken up this morning still in your virginally intact state would have been, quite simply, because he didn’t want you.’
‘And you did,’ Poppy challenged him shakily, desperately trying to use her anger to protect herself from the pain of acknowledging the truth of his words.
‘I wanted a woman,’ James told her cruelly, ‘and you made yourself available. I’m not the man to look a gift-horse in the mouth...’<
br />
‘You do surprise me,’ Poppy flashed back with heavy sarcasm. ‘I never thought of you as a man who’d be satisfied with a woman who really wanted another man...’
‘Who says I was satisfied?’ James taunted her. ‘If you really think that your immature, adolescent fumblings came anywhere near to giving me satisfaction, you’ve got a hell of a lot to learn—only next time don’t expect me to do the teaching.’
‘Don’t worry, I shan’t,’ Poppy told him furiously, but inside her anger was already draining away, leaving her feeling sick and empty and not just shamed by her inexplicable behaviour in bed with James, but also vulnerably conscious of the sexual inexperience he had mocked her for.
She longed for the ability to make some witty, crushing remark—the kind of remark she could imagine her friend Star making, which would leave her the victor of their verbal confrontation—but Poppy knew that she simply didn’t have either the strength or the energy to find one.
From now on, for the rest of her life, no matter what else might happen to her, each and every time she looked at James she was going to remember just what had happened between them and how she...
‘I don’t care what it takes or where I have to sleep tonight—I am not going to share that bed with you again,’ she told him shakily.
The smile he gave her was as cruel as a hunting wolf‘s—a baring of his teeth almost that made her feel that he would like nothing more than to savage and destroy her.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her silkily. ‘Afraid that you might discover that it isn’t really Chris you want after all and that your body—?’
‘No...’ Poppy denied quickly—too quickly? she wondered miserably as she saw the look in James’s eyes. That wasn’t the reason why she didn’t want to share that bed with him for a second night, she reassured herself as she made her way down to the conference hall. Of course it wasn’t. How could it be?
She knew that it was another man she had really wanted, another body she had really yearned and ached for even if...even though...
She swallowed painfully, unable to deny the unwanted and tormentingly vivid memory she had of looking into James’s eyes, of knowing who he was and still wanting, still saying...
‘Hey, are you all right?’
Poppy realised that she had actually closed her eyes and walked right into Gunther as she heard the concern in the young German’s voice and opened them to see him looking anxiously at her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised huskily. ‘I was just thinking about... something...’
‘There is no need to apologise,’ he told her with a charming smile. ‘I was indeed hoping that I might have the chance to talk with you today—’
‘Don’t tell me you want my services as a linguist?’ Poppy teased, responding to the warmth in his smile and only too glad to have something, someone to take her mind off James and the appalling events of the previous night. ‘If you do, I certainly shan’t believe you,’ she added. ‘Your English is very good.’
‘No...not that,’ he assured her. ‘What I wanted to ask was if you would have dinner with me this evening...’
Have dinner with him. Poppy gave him a bewitchingly dazzling smile.
‘I’d love to,’ she told him fervently and honestly. Anything, she felt; right now she would be grateful for anything and anyone who kept her away from James.
‘Poppy, if you’ve quite finished socialising...’
James’s voice cracked between them like a whip, making Poppy spin round guiltily, her nervous, ‘James,’ causing Gunther to look slightly puzzled as he watched her.
‘We are here to work,’ James reminded her curtly. ‘I’ve got a meeting with a consortium of Japanese buyers in fifteen minutes and I’ll need you there to translate, and there are several points I need to run through with you first.’
‘I’ll be with you in a moment, James,’ Poppy told him, trying to stand her ground instead of tamely giving in to the command she had heard in his voice.
She might be his cousin and an employee of the company but she was still her own person, still had her rights. Tilting her chin, she looked away from him and back to Gunther and told him clearly, ‘I’d love to have dinner with you tonight, Gunther. Would eight o’clock be all right...?’
Instead of walking away and giving her the privacy to complete her conversation with the young German, James had waited for her like a jailer, determined not to let her get away, she decided angrily as she fell into step beside him and they made their way through the crush towards their own stand.
‘If it’s his bed you’re thinking of sharing tonight, Poppy,’ James warned her cynically as he took hold of her arm and guided her through the surging throng, ‘I should warn you that you won’t get much privacy, nor much bed space. The hotel management have already had to put an extra bed in the room he’s booked into as a result of their overbooking!’
‘How dare you say that?’ Poppy hissed furiously at him, her face burning. She couldn’t bear the way he was making her feel so... so cheap... so... ‘Just because... just because I... Just because of what happened last night,’ she told him in a breathless rush, ‘that doesn’t mean that I’m now going to go to... to have sex with... with anyone...’
‘Really? You do surprise me...’ James told her sardonically. ‘After all, if you haven’t got the scruples not to use one man in place of another, I shouldn’t have thought—’
Smack!
Through the tears clouding her eyes, Poppy could see the hazy dark red outline of her open-handed slap against the lean tautness of James’s face. She stared at it in shocked, silent horror, unable to believe what she had done, unable to believe the anger, the lack of self-control, the sheer weight of misery and self-disgust which had driven her to overreact in such a way.
As the crowd pressed and surged around them, she was conscious only of James and the frightening stillness of his body, the icy coldness of his eyes, the tension of the coiled strength within him that menaced and held her in paralysed thrall.
‘How very predictable and old-fashioned of you,’ he told her softly, at last. ‘But I’ve got news for you, Poppy. As an innocent and appallingly inexperienced virgin you might just...just have been able to get away with such outdated and sexually stereotyped behaviour, but since you can’t any longer lay claim to your mummified virginal state it’s time you learned that physical violence from a woman to a man can do a lot more than just get his adrenalin pumping...and that, in the language of sex, it can be a big come-on, as much an indication of desire as verbally saying to a man that you want him...’
‘No!’ Poppy asserted. Her face felt stiff, wooden, numb, so that it was almost impossible for her lips to frame the small, vehement denial.
‘Yes,’ James insisted softly. ‘Oh, yes, Poppy—and before you start making any more denials you might also think about this. Even in the days when it was acceptable for a woman to slap a man’s face, it was a weapon she used knowing that it was a two-edged sword—that the man in question might take it as the rebuke she intended but that he might retaliate by assuaging the blow to his pride by inflicting one to hers...’
When he saw the way she was looking at him, James’s mouth twisted contemptuously. ‘Oh, come on, Poppy,’ he derided her. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never read a book or seen a film where the hero retaliates to the heroine’s slap by taking hold of her and kissing the breath out of her...’
‘That’s just fiction,’ Poppy protested shakily. ‘And besides, you... you aren’t a hero... and...’
‘And you certainly aren’t a heroine?’ James supplied for her. ‘Maybe you’re not, but just try remembering, the next time you feel like venting that nasty temper of yours on me, that I’m fully capable of retaliating and that I know just how to make you wish to hell that you’d had second thoughts...’
‘By kissing me!’ Poppy scorned, outwardly defiant but inwardly shaking with the tension and shock of the intense anger she could feel emanating from him. The
re had been anger between them before, but never anything like this, never anything as dangerous or out of control as the heaviness in the air she could feel vibrating between them now.
‘No,’ James told her quietly, shaking his head. But just as the breath was starting to leak in luxurious relief from her lungs he threw her into an ice-cold yet furnace-hot seizure of sick disbelief as he told her slowly and with obvious relish, ‘No, Poppy, not by kissing you but by taking you upstairs and spreading you out beneath me on the bed and—’
‘What?’ Poppy dared to demand hoarsely as she tried to mask her fear. ‘By raping me?’
The smile he gave her made a violent spasm of tension engulf her body, visibly shaking it whilst he watched her knowingly.
‘Oh, no,’ he told her silkily, ‘it wouldn’t be rape, Poppy, not with you crying out to me that you wanted me, begging me to touch you, to take you, to...’
She was going to faint, Poppy decided. She could already feel the coldness invading her body.
Closing her eyes, she willed the betraying symptoms to subside and not to shame her even more than she had already been shamed.
‘I hate you, James,’ she told her cousin through gritted teeth. ‘I hate you more than I have ever hated anyone else in my life...’
She was desperately tempted to turn and walk away from him, to lose herself in the crowd. It would be easy to do... easy to escape him... but for how long? Ultimately she would have to face him and, with him, the additional taunt not just of what had happened last night but of her lack of professionalism in her work as well.
No, the best way to treat him was to behave with indifference, simply to ignore him, to distance herself completely from him and from what had happened. To close off within her mind the entire episode, to seal it up and bury it somewhere where she would never, ever have to look at it again.
‘And so how are you enjoying the conference?’
Poppy made a wry face as Gunther smiled at her across the dinner table.