Dark Obsession

by Valerie Marsh

  'Is that why you never told me you loved me?'

  He brought his hands up to hold her face between his palms. 'You never told me either,' he said gently. 'I never knew why you'd married me.'

  'No,' she agreed. 'I was afraid to expose myself with words as well.' Slight colour tinged her face. 'But I thought I'd shown you.'

  'You're hot-blooded, Fran,' he told her bluntly. 'It might not have been only for me.'

  For a second her colour deepened, then she smiled. 'It was though. You've always had the same effect on me.' Half-laughing, she added, 'You're the only man I ever plotted to seduce, anyway.'

  His brows lifted in query, then he looked startled. 'God, I didn't think your intentions were as serious as that!' he exclaimed. 'I'd have run sooner if I'd realised!' The amused alarm faded from his expression and he looked down at her. 'What about now, Fran? Do I still have the same effect on you?'

  She smiled again, this time with deliberate provocation. 'You'll have to find out.'

  He brought his mouth slowly down to hers, questioningly at first, testing for reaction with the memory of the months where there had been none, then, as her lips parted under his, with growing urgency and hunger. She felt his body harden against her, the muscles in his back tensing rigidly as his mind moved on ahead, and to her inexpressible joy and relief a tide of response flooded through her. Her breath catching, she tightened her arms round him and he lifted his head and whispered, 'Yes, darling?'

  In reply she began to undo the buttons of his shirt, her fingers trembling and inept, and stilling her hands he turned and pulled the cases from the bed. In the act of sweeping her clothes to the floor, he hesitated and searched her face. 'We can go to one of the other rooms, Fran.'

  She was tempted but she shook her head. She had to win here, in this room, or the echo of Julia's presence would always remain, muted perhaps, but still not completely silenced.

  Momentarily the old chill formed again, but he pulled her back into his arms. His mouth on her hair, he said, 'I love you—you and only you. Don't think of anything else.'

  It was the first time he had said the words to her directly, and suddenly the magic was back, flaring within her. With a muffled exclamation she turned her face into his shoulder and his hands caressed her for a moment then moved down to seek the clip on the waistband of her skirt.

  Fumbling with it, he muttered with amused impatience, 'I've never understood why they have to make women's clothes so that they fasten the wrong way,' and she laughed on a clear note and reached behind to flick it undone with her finger.

  He looked at her quickly and she saw the last of the doubt and tension leave him. Bending, he kissed the side of her mouth. 'I began to think I should never hear you laugh again.'

  'I thought I would never want to.'

  'I'll make it up to you.' He smiled as he guided her skirt over her hips, then his eyes darkened. 'This will be like it used to be, darling.'

  She nodded, and his hands roved her bared flesh, revelling in the touch, then seized the hem of her jersey top to lift it over her head. He dropped it on to the floor behind her, and she heard humour threaded into the low tones as he hooked his thumb into the side of her lace briefs and said, 'Let's get you out of these concessions to decency.'

  Free from them, she lay back on the bed and watched openly as he swiftly discarded his own clothes. He stood for a moment in front of her, returning her regard, then came down beside her, laughing in his throat.

  'A modest, delicate woman would avert her eyes.'

  'But I'm not one,' she replied frankly.

  'No.' He slid his hand slowly down over her breast to her stomach, pausing as he felt a spasm in the muscles lying just under the smooth flesh. 'You're every man's secret dream—a wanton mistress for a wife.'

  Surprise invading her other emotions, she turned her head quickly. 'Am I?'

  'Didn't you know?'

  'How could I, unless you told me? There's been no one else.'

  The taut lines of his mouth altered as his lips twisted wryly. 'How could you indeed?' His hand continued downwards, and he watched her eyes darken as the pupils dilated. His voice slightly thickened, he said, 'From a much more extensive and varied experience, I can assure you that I find you—unique.'

  His gaze held hers, silently giving her the final reassurance she craved, and with a slow smile she turned towards him. He was holding himself on a tight rein she knew, but some demon prompted her to prove her power over him by making him lose control. She reached out, her touch deliberately sensual and arousing, and his breath hissed sharply between his clenched teeth.

  Grabbing her wrist, he exclaimed, 'Fran, for God's sake! What are you trying to do?'

  She hardly knew herself, but his suddenly narrowed stare held comprehension. He murmured, 'So…' then rolled her roughly on to her back, holding her by the hair to position her for his descending lips, while his other hand tormented her, enflaming, then withholding until she tore her mouth free and whispered disjointedly, 'Grant, please… you've had your revenge…'

  In total surrender she pulled him on to her, curving her body to receive him in a mute display of need. Her breath came out in a gasp as he responded, then they were both lost in the fierce, mindless striving towards release. It was swift and violent, a frenzy of blind desire that had built up during the weeks they had lain apart, tortured by memories. Always in the past, even at the height of passion, Grant had retained an awareness that he could unwittingly hurt her with the force of his lovemaking, but now he was unheeding and it gave her an added, primitive pleasure. Lifted to the unbearable brink she heard her own voice, shocking in its raw desperation, crying out and pleading, until the insupportable tension gave way before a convulsive, rippling ecstasy.

  For a moment she was lost, cut off from everything by the intensity of feeling, then she was brought back by the savage grip of his arms and the final, crushing pressure of his full weight before he collapsed down on to her.

  They remained locked together while his breathing eased, then he raised his head to look at her. She smiled faintly, only half returned to normal awareness, her pulses still thudding, and he sighed and rested his forehead against her.

  'I'm sorry—I was rough with you.'

  'It's all right,' she told him softly. Reaching up, she spread her fingers in the blackness of his hair. 'And anyway, you don't need to be sorry. I don't know why, but it was what I wanted. I provoked you into it.' He eased himself away and lay on his side, sliding an arm beneath her to pull her close again, and she added, 'I love you,' and rested her cheek against his chest. 'I used to tell you when you were asleep before. And inside my head.'

  'We had a slight communications problem,' he said drily.

  'Yes. And all our troubles could have been cured with three words—seven letters.'

  'You can't count,' he told her, laughing under his breath. 'I seem to remember telling you once before that you were practically illiterate.'

  'So what's one letter,' Fran retorted. She lay in drowsy contentment until a wood pigeon clattered on to the roof above the window, calling to her attention to the afternoon sunlight pouring into the room. Lifting his arm she tried to read his watch and said, 'What time is it? I can't see.'

  'Twenty-past five.' He watched the dawning horror in her expression with amusement, and pulled her down again when she tried to sit up.

  'Grant, let me go! Ralph will be knocking soon to say he's leaving.'

  'Let him,' he said idly. 'We just don't answer the door.'

  'But he'll wonder why! Both our cars are still outside!'

  'I don't give a damn. It's no business of his if I want to make love to my wife in the afternoon. As long as I go down to feed the dogs there's no reason why we shouldn't stay here till morning.'

  'Yes there is. If anyone else called it would be all round the village and I'm not having them smirking every time I go into the shop.' She looked round at the disorder in the room. 'Get some clothes on while I straighten th
is chaos.'

  Half-amused, half-serious, he returned, 'Get some on yourself before I say to hell with everyone.'

  She retrieved her housecoat from the pile intended for packing and made for the bathroom. When she returned from showering Grant was dressed, and from his wet hair, must have used the other bathroom. Holding her housecoat together, she gathered up her crumpled skirt and top and threw them into a corner for the laundry, then turned back to find Grant had up-ended the cases on to the floor and was storing them back in the wardrobe. For a moment her stomach lurched. Another half hour and she would have been gone and on her way to London.

  Almost afraid to ask, she said, 'Grant, did you know I intended leaving today, or was it just chance you came back?'

  His face became sombre. 'I was reasonably sure. Your petrol tank was already three-quarters full but you had it topped up again yesterday. There was no need unless you were going on a long journey.' He closed the wardrobe doors and looked across at her. 'I told you I was going into Worcester so you would think you had the afternoon clear and I could come back and catch you. I'm not really sure what I hoped to gain by it, except that otherwise I knew I should just come home one day and find you gone.'

  There was a stark note in his voice as he ended, and her eyes suddenly flooding with tears, she said, 'Oh, Grant…' then halted, overcome by her conflicting emotions. Helplessly, she told him, 'I'm sorry.'

  His smile crooked, he asked, 'Why? Was it any more your fault than mine?'

  She shook her head, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, and he pulled her against him and bent to kiss her forehead. 'Don't cry because I haven't got a handkerchief to offer you this time. It's somewhere among this conglomeration round our feet.'

  Fran laughed as he had intended her to, and began to gather up the clothes and put them on hangers. Glancing through the window she caught a glimpse of the groom in the lane and turned on Grant in mild triumph. 'There, I told you—Ralph is coming now.'

  'I'll go down to him.' He paused, half-way to the door. 'And to set your mind at rest I'll put both cars out of sight in the garage and lock all the downstairs doors. If anybody does call, we're out.' She laughed, an odd mixture of excitement and embarrassment, and he added softly, 'So don't get dressed again.'

  He went down, and a moment later voices floated up from beneath the window, Ralph's slow spoken rumble, and Grant's quick, decisive rejoinders. Grant was trying to hurry him, but he refused to be deterred from his one-paced recital of the day's events. She opened the window a crack and Grant's words came up clearly, impatience beginning to break through in his tone.

  'I'll talk to you about it in the morning, Ralph. I'm going out this evening and I haven't got time now.'

  Even Ralph could hardly ignore such an obvious dismissal, and Fran devoutly hoped he didn't hear Grant putting the cars away as he went out of the gate.

  It took longer to clear all the things away than it had done to assemble them, and she was closing the final drawer with a sigh when Grant shouldered the door open. He was bearing two glasses and a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket, and her brows lifted as he carefully placed them on his bedside table.

  'I thought you didn't really like champagne?'

  He grinned. 'I feel in the mood for it. There's something delightfully decadent about the thought of drinking it in bed. And besides, we're celebrating.'

  He eased the cork out of the bottle, holding it over the ice bucket, and when he held her glass out to her, she asked, 'What's the toast?'

  He held her gaze steadily. 'The next ten, twenty, thirty, forty years?'

  Through blurred eyes she saw him take her glass out of her hand again, then he held her silently, her cheek pressed against his chest. 'I can live without you,' he told her quietly. 'I did before, and the world wouldn't have ended if you'd left me today, but it wouldn't have been much of a life. There's a difference between happiness and existence.'

  'I know,' she said thickly. She paused to swallow the constriction in her throat. 'I used to try to be logical about what I felt. I told myself that if I'd been born in a different time and a different place I should never have met you.' She shook her head. 'But it didn't make any difference. I couldn't bear to go on living with you as we were, but I didn't know how I was going to live without you either.'

  Her voice broke, and he said, 'Hush, it's all over.' His arms tightened, then he lifted her chin so he could look into her face. 'Drink your champagne and stop thinking about what bloody fools we nearly were. We can both frighten ourselves to death doing that.'

  He held the glass to her lips and obediently she drank some, and said wistfully, 'I wish Mrs Matthews didn't have to come back. We shouldn't be celebrating up here if she wasn't away.'

  With a quick, brilliant smile, he said, 'So we'll make the most of it.' He slid his hand inside her housecoat and lifted the swell of her breast in his palm, gently caressing with his thumb. 'It won't be all that long before she retires.'

  She bit her lip at the insistent movement, annoyed because she could hear laughter in his voice. Defensively, she said, 'It's all right for you—you don't have her dripping disapproval over you all day.' She was struck by a sudden thought and felt warmth steal up her face. 'Oh God, I suppose she knows everything.' At Grant's nod of confirmation she closed her eyes despairingly. 'No wonder she's hostile.'

  'There's a simple cure for her.' Meeting Fran's look of enquiry, he said, 'Stop taking that damned pill. She'll start to mellow the moment you tell her you're pregnant.'

  For a few seconds, realisation held her still. Aware of something hidden, Grant's hand ceased its pleasurable movement, and he asked sharply, 'What is it?'

  A curious sensation washed over her and she gave a slow smile.

  'I've already stopped.'

  His eyes probed her face. As her smile registered, his searching frown died and his hand travelled down to rest, fingers spread, on her flat stomach. Deep inside her she felt a quiver. The act of love was designed to create life, and the thought that it might result in conception gave her a spreading, physical pleasure which had nothing to do with desire. The instinctive feeling surged through her, so strong she knew it must show in her face, and she glanced up and saw with a small shock that Grant's expression mirrored her own.

  Half-questioning, she said, 'But you didn't mind about Julia. I thought you didn't want children either.'

  'I did—I always have done.' His hands smoothed down her arms then gripped hard. 'But I wanted them to be ours, Fran.'

  Too choked by emotion to speak she clung to him fiercely. Even more than with words of love he had shown the depths to which he was committed to her. Reaching up she pulled his head towards her until she could find his lips, exulting in the swift response she aroused. Passion hardened his mouth on hers, the hungry searching pressure feeding the rapid rise of desire. When he raised his head again she could feel the heavy beat of his heart and pulses, but the thickly lashed eyes were narrowed in a smile, and he said softly, 'This time, my darling, it's going to be different again.'