by Penny Jordan
When Alex resisted her attempt to guide him to do what she wanted she growled her female frustration at having her need left unsatisfied beneath his kiss, making a low, keening sound that had no words but which Alex seemed immediately able to translate.
‘I can’t,’ he told her hoarsely, his hand burning hot against her swollen breast. ‘If I do, if I see you...touch you...’
His eyes flashed signals of stormy male desire, the sweetly savage bite of his teeth against the tenderness of her kiss-sensitive lips betraying how he would treat the tormenting and tormented sensitivity of her aroused nipples if she made him remove their frail protective covering. But Beth had gone beyond the safety of heeding any kind of warning.
Something—she neither knew nor cared what—had snapped the taut barrier she had wrapped around her feelings, her responses, her right to enjoy her female sexuality.
It was as though all the hurt she had experienced, all the anger, all the fear and distress, the humiliation and the pain had coalesced, exploded, burned itself out in a fierce transmuting heat that had turned her from her previously shy, inhibited, immature self into a powerfully strong and sexually motivated woman, a woman whose body demanded, expected and intended to have nothing less than total satisfaction of its deepest and most privately, primitively intimate sexual desires.
To her own shock, and her own fierce joy, she recognised that the Beth who had imagined the only way she could ever really enjoy sex would be in the arms of a gentle, considerate lover who would treat her as carefully as a delicately made piece of fragile glass had suddenly been replaced by a Beth who knew instinctively that what she wanted now was to enjoy sex in its rawest, purest, hottest form possible.
Like the silica at its most molten fluid form, she wanted to be taken into the creative care of an expert, an artist, a master of his craft—and of her. She wanted to watch, to be, as he poured the golden liquid form of her being into the crucible of heat that was their mutual desire. She wanted to feel the sharply passionate grate of his teeth against her tender flesh, to feel him being driven by his desire for her in the same way that Adam had been driven to eat the forbidden fruit handed to him by Eve. She wanted to be Alex’s forbidden fruit, she recognised dazedly.
‘Do it,’ she commanded him tautly, dragging his hand down so that his fingers caught in the edge of her bra, revealing the soft shimmer of her naked skin and the beginnings of the wantonly dark areola of her nipple.
Her robe was fully open now, and hanging off her arms. In the mirror Beth could see her own near-naked body.
‘Do it,’ she repeated hypnotically, her eyes wide and dark as she stared up into Alex’s.
‘You don’t know what...’ he began, but Beth shook her head.
‘Do it,’ she told him a third time, holding his gaze as she let her own hand drop away from his.
She could feel his fingers trembling oh, so slightly as he splayed them across her breast, almost as though he wanted to cover her, protect her modesty, and then they tensed and curled and his thumb-tip rubbed across her tightly erect nipple, once, twice, a third time, each time lingering just a breath of time longer against the erect peak.
And then, agonisingly slowly, he very carefully peeled the fine fabric away from her breast completely.
Deep down in her throat Beth made a long, keening sound of female yearning.
In the mirror she could see the robe trailing on the floor behind her as Alex slowly released her and then very unsteadily took a step back from her.
Blindly Beth followed him.
Her body ached with need and heat, and yet the distance that Alex had put between them made her shiver with cold and loss. Instinctively she sought the warmth of his body against her, instinctively she tried to recapture it, moving closer to him, a small half-cry of protest locking her throat as her feet became caught up in the heavy folds of her robe.
As Alex reached out to help her she straightened her arms impatiently, thrusting at the cumbersome folds of the robe. Alex dropped to his knees in front of her, almost as though he intended to stop her or restrain her, but it was already too late. Already the robe had fallen back from her body.
Because her room wasn’t overlooked Beth didn’t fully close the drapes at night, and now the bright sunshine flooding through the gauzy nets revealed her body in all its exquisitely feminine detail. She could see herself in the mirror, and she could see Alex as well.
The hands he had put out to hold her dropped to her waist, shaping its narrow slenderness, his concentration on his exploration of her so intense that Beth scarcely dared to breathe in case she broke it.
His hands moved lower, cradling her hips. Alex leaned forward and very gently kissed her softly rounded belly, the caress of his lips the merest whisper of pleasure and promise but still more than enough to create a reaction that shuddered right through Beth’s body.
Alex’s head was moving upwards, his tongue-tip trailing hot darts of fire over her waist and then her ribcage. Alex’s hands left her hips and his fingers encircled her towelling-clad wrists, then moved upwards to grip the sleeves of her robe as though he intended to pull it back onto her body. Instinctively Beth stiffened in rejection of what she thought he was going to do, resisting his rejection—of her. Alex lifted his head and looked into her eyes. Turbulently Beth looked back at him, a ragged breath tearing at her lungs.
She heard Alex groan, and then shockingly, excitingly, he was wrenching the robe completely free of her body and wrapping his arms possessively around her, his fingers trembling as he tugged at the fastening of her bra, his lips, his mouth, fastening eagerly over the crest of one of her breasts and tugging sensuously on it.
Beth felt faint with liquid, dizzyingly dazzling, wanton pleasure. Her hands reached out to clasp Alex’s head and hold him against her body, her fingers sliding into the thick richness of his hair, tugging at it, kneading his scalp, small purring noises escaping from her throat as she moved as sensuously against him as a cat being stroked, every movement of her body against his sinuous and hypnotic.
Through half-closed eyes she saw their combined images in the mirror, images that once would have shocked and distressed her but which now merely added even greater fuel to the fire that burned through her. The sight of Alex’s head against her breast, the creaminess of her skin against the darkness of his hair, the dark rigidity of her nipple demanding that it be given parity with its twin, the colour that burned Alex’s face, the moist sheen she could see on her breast as he transferred his attentions from one nipple to the other—all of them combined to add to the intensity of the visual image of her own sensuality.
There was something so pagan about the whole image, about her virtual nakedness, only the sheer flimsiness of her very brief briefs a teasing barrier to Alex’s hands and touch, her head thrown back in pure sensual enjoyment, her breasts full and passion-tipped, and Alex on his knees in front of her, at once both her supplicant and her master, her feminine power momentarily controlling his much stronger masculine strength. Her desire controlling his, controlling him.
She was the raw material of the beauty they could create together; he was the one who would mould it, shape it, the one who would mould and shape her. Her feelings, her thoughts, her emotions were so elemental, so intense, so powerful that Beth was held totally in thrall to them.
For the first time in her life she was tasting the full power of her womanhood, and she—Abruptly she tensed as she heard someone rattling her bedroom door warningly.
Immediately she froze, looking wildly for her robe, but Alex was already on his feet, wrapping it round her, allowing her to flee to the sanctuary of her bathroom.
* * *
‘Beth...it’s all right, he’s gone...you can come out now.’
Beth gnawed at her bottom lip.
In the five minutes or so it had taken the waiter to clear awa
y their uneaten breakfast she had come back down to earth with a savage, spine-jarring, emotion-lurching and generally guilt-racked thud.
What on earth had she been doing—and why? All right, so sexually she was attracted to Alex, but that didn’t mean that she had to act like a hormone-driven teenager, for heaven’s sake. A hormone-driven teenager or a frustrated, sexually unsatisfied twenty-four-year-old woman.
Beth wasn’t sure which image of herself she liked the least. Which image... Her face burned as she caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror and her thoughts strayed betrayingly to those other images she had recently seen of herself.
‘Beth,’ Alex was repeating. ‘It’s okay, he’s gone...’
She would have to go out sooner or later. She couldn’t stay here all day, and anyway, why should she be the one to feel conscience-stricken and uncomfortable? she asked herself sturdily. After all, Alex had been just as carried away as she had herself, just as driven by desire and lust... But to be driven by lust was perfectly acceptable for a man, whereas...
These days it was just as acceptable for a woman, Beth told herself firmly. These days a woman no longer had to be fettered by the old shibboleths that had denied them their own sexuality and the right to express it. These days a woman did not have to convince herself that she loved a man just in order to enjoy her physical desire for his body and her own satisfaction. No, indeed... So why was she cowering here in the bathroom as though...as though she had done something to feel ashamed of? She wasn’t...she hadn’t...she told herself fiercely as she tugged open the bathroom door.
Determinedly she gave a businesslike glance at her watch as she told Alex crisply, with only just a hint of a tremor in her voice, ‘I really think you ought to leave. I’ve got rather a lot I want to do today...’
Alex was frowning at her.
‘I thought you said you were having a day off and that you wanted to do some sightseeing...’
Beth frowned in vexation.
‘Yes. Yes, I did...I do... But...’
‘It’s raining now—the city should be relatively free of tourists. I suggest we start with a walk along the river. We could have lunch here in Prague, and then this afternoon...’
He stopped and gave her a look of heart-stopping intimacy. ‘This afternoon we shall walk over the Charles Bridge...and then there’s something special I want to show you...’
Beth opened her mouth to tell him that he was taking far too much for granted, that she didn’t want his company, that she didn’t want anything from him, but instead, and much to her own chagrin, she heard herself telling him, ‘I...I need to get dressed. I...’
‘You want me to leave.’ Alex gave her a deliciously intimate smile. ‘I know what you’re saying,’ he agreed huskily. ‘If I stay here with you there’s no way I’m going to be able... Tempted though I am, this is neither the time nor the place. Tempted though I am,’ he repeated. He closed the distance between them and murmured against her lips, ‘And believe me, Bethany, I am very, very tempted. Oh, yes, I am very tempted...’
Beth told herself that she was trying to resist him, and that the only reason she’d opened her mouth was to tell him to stop, but unfortunately he seemed to mistake her actions, and the next thing she knew he was kissing her with a renewal of the passion he had shown earlier. But this time he didn’t take it any further. This time he released her and stepped back from her, gently pressing his fingers to his own mouth and then touching them lightly to hers before telling her huskily, ‘I’ll come back for you in half an hour.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
BETH FLICKED THE droplets of rain off her jacket and stared across the mist-shrouded vista in front of her. She and Alex were looking along the river, its bridges, so clearly depicted in so many tourist postcards, now barely discernible. The artists who normally thronged the streets selling their work to the tourists had already packed away their sketches, only an enterprising umbrella seller standing his ground.
‘My, I never expected it to rain, not after how bright it was this morning!’ Beth heard an American voice exclaim. She still had no real idea just why she had allowed Alex to persuade her to come with him. It had certainly not been her intention when she’d woken up this morning. A pink glow of self-consciousness coloured her face as her senses told her exactly why she might have changed her mind. Of course, her decision had nothing to do with that most unfortunate incident in her bedroom earlier this morning. Nothing whatsoever. That had been a mistake...a...a...
‘Look,’ Alex told her, taking hold of her arm and directing her attention to the hillside to their left. As he did so Alex drew Beth closer to him. It was just because the heavy drenching rain was making her feel damp and chilly that she felt this desire to nestle closer to him, Beth assured herself. That was all... It was simply a basic human need for warmth that was causing her to accept the warmth of his protective arm and the even greater warmth of his body.
They had lunch in a small traditional restaurant where the patron obviously knew Alex and welcomed him enthusiastically. But to Beth’s consternation the man seemed to be under the misapprehension that Beth was Alex’s girlfriend.
‘There will be a big wedding here in Prague...yes?’ he said jovially to Alex. ‘We have many fine churches here,’ he told Beth.
‘Why did you let him think that?’ Beth asked Alex later, when they had left the restaurant.
‘Why did I let him think what?’ Alex teased her, pretending not to understand.
Beth flashed him an indignant look.
‘You know what I mean,’ she accused him. ‘Why did you let him think that we are...?’
‘What? A couple...lovers...? Is it so very far from the truth?’ Alex asked her meaningfully.
‘We hardly know one another,’ Beth protested. Why was he doing this...pretending to genuinely care about her? She could understand him trying to flirt with her in order to secure her business, both for himself and for his family, but to try to pretend that there was more to what he was doing than mere flirtation...
‘I want to go back to the hotel,’ she told him curtly. ‘There are things I have to do...’
‘Not yet,’ Alex denied, taking hold of her arm before she could stop him and drawing her in the direction of the river.
Up ahead of them Beth could see the ancient span of the Charles Bridge.
Awed by its antiquity, and her own awareness of all that it must have witnessed and withstood, Beth allowed him to guide her towards it. There was something about it, a stalwartness, a sombreness, that struck an unexpected chord within her.
‘My grandfather once told me that always, in his darkest moments, he thought of this bridge and all that it and his people had endured,’ Alex told her quietly.
His quiet, soft-voiced comment, so very much in tune with her own unspoken thoughts, shocked her a little. They weren’t supposed to be so emotionally in accord; they shouldn’t be able to pick up on each other’s thoughts.
In an attempt to distance herself from what she was feeling, Beth said quickly, ‘Tell me more about your grandfather.’
Alex was smiling at her. A smile that rocked her heart. Fiercely she reminded herself of all the reasons why she could not allow herself to respond to him.
Whilst Alex was talking to her about his grandfather the rain started to come down even more heavily.
‘Quick, down here,’ he broke off to instruct her, taking hold of her hand and hurrying her towards a small alcove set protectively into the last span of the bridge.
Without thinking, Beth automatically followed him. In the shelter it provided them with she could see Alex looking searchingly at her. Her heart started to beat far too fast.
‘Beth, I know it’s probably too soon to tell you this, but I think I’m falling in...’ He stopped and looked down into her eyes. ‘It’s crazy, I know, but I�
��ve fallen in love with you,’ he groaned.
‘No!’ Immediately Beth panicked. ‘No, that’s not possible,’ she denied. ‘I don’t want to hear this, Alex...’
Inside she felt as though she was being torn apart. Did he really think she was foolish enough, desperate enough, vulnerable enough to fall for his lies?
* * *
Beth was slightly more familiar with the city now, and she knew from the direction they were taking that they were walking back to the hotel. It was still raining—heavily—but even though she told herself that it would be a relief to be free of Alex there was still an uncomfortable heaviness around her heart.
The after-effects of her lunch and the distinctive and disturbing ache she was still suffering after this morning’s interrupted lovemaking, Beth assured herself stoically. That was all. There was no emotional base to what she was feeling. How could there be? She felt nothing emotional for Alex at all... If she had wanted him...needed him...been aroused by him, then that had simply been a sexual wanting, a sexual needing, a sexual arousal. There had been nothing emotional about it. Nothing... Men didn’t have the power to affect her emotionally any more. She didn’t like them...didn’t trust them... She was far better off on her own, using them in the way that they used her sex.
They had reached the hotel. Beth was just about to hurry towards the main entrance when Alex caught hold of her wrist.
‘No, this way,’ he instructed her, moving off in the direction of the car park and tugging her with him.
‘Where are we going? Where are you taking me?’ Beth asked as Alex unlocked the door of his hire car, refusing to release her until he had carefully tucked her into the passenger seat.