by Penny Jordan
Sylvie licked her lips a second time as she caught the burning look he was giving her.
His jeans followed his shirt and her stomach quivered, her heart leapt like a spawning salmon. Against the stark whiteness of his boxer shorts his skin gleamed, warmly tanned, and his body...his maleness...
Quickly she averted her eyes, suddenly conscious of her inexperience, her naiveté, her virginity, but her self-consciousness was quickly forgotten, swept away in a dizzying tide of longing and excitement. In another handful of seconds, less, she would be free to do what she had longed to do for what felt like for ever, free to look, to touch...to...
‘Ran...’
Helplessly she closed the distance between them, rubbing her face blissfully against the soft warmth of his chest, breathing in the male scent of him in bemused adoration before shyly pressing her closed lips to his skin.
He felt so good, smelled so good; tentatively she opened her eyes and then her mouth, licking exploratively at his skin. In her ear she could feel the rapid increase in Ran’s heartbeat. His arms tightened around her and then, suddenly, he was picking her up, carrying her over to the bed, laying her on it, touching her skin, stroking her body, kissing her in all the ways she had imagined and showing her at the same time just how far short of the wondrous reality her imagination had fallen.
In his hands her breasts swelled and ached, her nipples taut, begging to be touched, kissed, sucked.
Unable to stop herself, Sylvie started to moan softly as his mouth tugged gently on her breast, her body arching, twisting, filled, driven by such an intensity of need that she herself was lost in it.
‘Ran... Ran...’
Frantically she moaned his name against his hot skin, touching, licking, kissing as much of him as she could reach.
‘Ran...now...please...now,’ she heard herself demanding, even though part of her mind wondered just why she felt so overwhelmed by her own sense of urgency, by her own need to have the hot male strength of him buried deep inside her. She just knew that she did.
She could feel him touching her intimately with his fingers as he kissed her but she pushed them away. Everything that was female and intuitive within her urged her to reject something that was only a substitute for what her body, her nature, her essence, demanded, instinctively refusing a satisfaction which could not give her what nature had designed her for.
No completion, no conception could take place through what he was offering her and her body; her senses, her nature demanded what they believed was their due.
Without any previous experience to guide her Sylvie responded to her own instincts, lifting her hips, rubbing herself against him, moaning her urgent need until she felt Ran’s hands move to her hips, holding her, lifting her as he finally moved against her.
A small tremor of shock made her gasp out loud, her body tensing and her eyes widening as she felt the reality of his body within hers. She had never really thought about the practicalities of sex...and he felt so...so male...so...so big...
She felt him check slightly and saw him frown, saw the recognition of her inexperience, her virginity, dawn in his eyes, but as he tried to draw back from her Sylvie wrapped herself around him, holding him, and then it was too late; then his body took over, demanding the satisfaction hers had been promising it.
It was everything and more that Sylvie had imagined—bliss, heaven... perfection, even if afterwards, as she curled up happily next to Ran, she did feel slightly sore... Slightly sore but oh, so deliciously pleased with herself. She was a woman now. Ran’s woman... They would be married at Otel Place, of course, and Alex would give her away... Happily she drifted off to sleep.
In the morning when she woke up she was in bed alone, and at first she thought she must have dreamt the entire incident, but when she went padding into her living room she found Ran standing there fully dressed, staring out of the window. Overjoyed, she rushed over to him, flinging her arms around him, but instead of responding as she had expected, instead of turning round and holding her, kissing her, picking her up and carrying her back to bed, he firmly disengaged her arms and pushed her sternly away.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ she demanded, not understanding. ‘Last night—’
‘Last night was a mistake,’ Ran interrupted her curtly. ‘It should never have happened and I wish to God... Why didn’t you tell me you were still a virgin?’
‘I... I...’ Sylvie could feel her eyes starting to fill with tears.
This wasn’t how it should be—Ran aloof, cold and distant, almost accusing.
‘Ran, I love you,’ she told him shakily. ‘I want us to be together...married...’
‘Married? You’re a child still, Sylvie... Your mother...’
‘I’m not a child, I’m nearly twenty,’ she protested frantically.
‘You’re a child,’ Ran insisted, ‘and if I’d known... Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you let me think that you and Wayne were lovers?’
‘I did tell you but you wouldn’t listen. I thought you’d be pleased...that you’d want to be the first...the only one...’ she told him pathetically.
‘Pleased? Oh, my God.’ Ran started to laugh, a harshly bitter laugh. ‘The only thing that could make this appalling situation any worse would be to discover that you’re pregnant...’
Sylvie’s face went white. Last night, lost in the throes of her love and their shared intimacy, she had craved the conception of his child, and to have to listen to him now, telling her that that was the last thing he wanted, that she was the last person he wanted, was the cruellest blow she had ever experienced.
‘I’m on the pill,’ she told him quietly, ducking her head as she explained, ‘There were... I had... My doctor recommended it for other reasons.’
It was the truth, and it made her blood run cold now to remember how unwilling she had been to take it. Thank God she had. To have exposed a child, her child, to the dislike, the bitterness she could see in Ran’s eyes and hear in his voice would have been more than she could bear.
All her dreams and her hopes lay in ruins around her, destroyed by Ran’s rejection of her.
‘Go and get dressed, please,’ she heard him demanding. ‘I have to leave soon, but first we need to talk.’
Get dressed!
Suddenly she felt as acutely self-conscious, as guilty as the first Eve must have done. As she tugged on her clothes in the privacy of her bedroom she knew that she had paid a heavy price for the intimacy of Ran’s love-making—the loss not just of her innocence, but the destruction of her love, her faith, her belief in herself as a woman. She felt as though she never wanted to see Ran again, as though she could never bear to face him again, as though someone had wrenched away a protective curtain. She saw that last night could have been nothing more to him than the mere satisfying of a sexual itch, that she had been nothing more to him than someone, a body, to relieve his sexual frustration with.
As she walked back into the living room he handed her a mug of coffee. Taking it from him, she was careful to make sure that not only did her fingers not touch his but that they did not even touch the mug where his had done. She felt scorched, besmirched, soiled from the experience of knowing just how little he had actually wanted her. What she wanted more than anything else now was to get him out of here, out of her flat, out of her life, out of her heart for ever.
‘Sylvie...’
‘I don’t want to talk about it, Ran,’ she told him proudly, turning her back to him. ‘It happened. It was a mistake, we both know that, but a girl has to lose her virginity some time...’ She gave a small painful shrug. ‘Wayne will be pleased. Like you, he didn’t want to be the first...’
What on earth was she saying...implying...? Sylvie wondered sickly as her pride demanded, commanded, forced her to retaliate, lie and to convince Ran that he hadn’t hurt her, that he couldn’t possibly have the power to hurt her.
‘You begged me to make love to you so that you could have sex with Wayne?’
She could hear disbelief and something else in the harsh fury of Ran’s voice, but shakily she ignored it, holding up her head as she turned round to confront him.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ she agreed.
‘I don’t believe you,’ Ran told her flatly, adding grimly, ‘You said you loved me. You were even talking about marriage...’
Sylvie gave a small dismissive shrug.
‘Isn’t that what a virgin is supposed to do?’ She pulled an uncaring face. ‘How could I possibly love you, Ran? Why should I love you? All you ever do is criticise me. I want you to leave...’
‘Sylvie, you can’t just—’
‘Wayne will be coming round soon,’ she fibbed, adding carelessly, ‘He’s been telling me for ages to find someone to...to lose my virginity with. He’s very experienced and he likes his lovers to know...to know what sex is all about... Wayne’s the man I love.’
What was she saying? Sylvie could hardly believe the lies she was hearing herself speak, but Ran seemed to have no difficulty in accepting them.
Slamming down his barely touched mug of coffee, he came towards her.
Immediately Sylvie backed away.
‘I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss,’ she told him, adding flippantly, ‘It’s no big deal after all—’
‘No...maybe not to you,’ Ran interrupted her grimly.
‘Not to you either,’ Sylvie told him. Her phone started to ring and she hurried towards it, telling him over her shoulder, ‘That will be Wayne...’
It wasn’t, and she knew that the poor double-glazing salesperson must have been astonished and probably shocked by the tone of her conversation as she overrode his sales pitch, telling him that she had done what he wanted and that she couldn’t wait to see him, to be with him properly, if he knew what she meant. Blowing noisy kisses into the receiver, she ended the call and then turned to Ran, telling him coolly, ‘Wayne’s on his way, so unless you want to stand and watch to see just how quick a learner I am...’
She was still smiling—the hurting, false, ridiculous smile she had pinned to her face as she’d challenged him—when she heard the door slam behind him, and then continued to wear it for several minutes after he had gone, despite the fact that tears were flooding from her eyes.
It was later that morning that she actually bumped into Wayne, completely by chance. In the two hours since Ran had left she had had more than enough time to dwell on what had happened and what she had said, and by the time she saw Wayne she had convinced herself that it was totally impossible for her ever to see Ran again...ever to see anyone again who was even remotely connected with him.
‘Hi there, doll,’ Wayne greeted her with a grin. ‘Looks like it’s time to say goodbye. I’m meeting up with the eco-warriors this afternoon.’
Swiftly Sylvie made up her mind, seizing on the opportunity to make her escape, not just from Ran but from everything that was associated with him—her love, her shame, and her fear that he would somehow guess that she had lied to him.
‘I’m coming with you,’ she told Wayne determinedly, adding before he could argue, ‘My stepbrother has sent me some money so I can afford to support myself.’
‘How much has he sent you?’ Wayne questioned her interestedly.
An hour later, having packed everything that she would need, Sylvie locked the door of her flat behind her and went to join Wayne, who was waiting in his car.
She was a new Sylvie now, a different Sylvie. Ran, her love for him, the life she had once led—all were in the past and best forgotten.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A NOISE in the garden outside her window brought Sylvie out of her reverie. Startled, she let her unfocused gaze sweep the moonlit darkness and then sweep it again, her body stiffening as she saw Ran turn away and disappear into the shadows.
How long had he been standing there watching her? She knew from his clothes that he must have been working, probably checking for poachers who, she guessed, were as much a potential threat here as they had often been on her stepbrother’s estate.
Shivering, she headed back to her bed. It was gone three o’clock in the morning and as she touched her face she realised that it was wet with her tears.
Why in heaven’s name did she have to be so pathetic...standing there with tears pouring down her face whilst she relived the pain of the past? Oh, but she envied Ran. Her mouth twisted into a bitter smile as she tried to imagine him ever crying a single tear over her.
What had happened to her will-power, her strength; to the promise she had made herself before coming here—that things were going to be different, that never again would Ran be allowed to treat her with the same contempt he had shown her when they had faced one another as foes, enemies, on opposite sides, when she had allowed the eco-warriors to invade Alex’s land, to destroy the pretty woodland glade that she had once worked so hard to help create...just as Ran had destroyed her love and also destroyed her?
He had hated her for that almost as much as she had hated him. She had seen it in his eyes when he’d insisted on joining the others to see her off to America.
‘Why are you here?’ she had taunted.
‘Why do you think?’ he had responded, and of course she had known. He wanted to be sure that she really was leaving.
And now she was back—back to make the unwanted and agonisingly painful discovery that some things didn’t change, that some loves didn’t die.
She wasn’t twenty any longer; it was impossible for her to run away now, to take refuge in disappearing, as she’d tried to escape herself and her love. She had a job to do, responsibilities, and besides, what had running away the first time actually achieved? It hadn’t stopped her loving him, had it?
In the protective darkness of the moonlit garden Ran leaned back against the trunk of a concealing tree and closed his eyes. The discovery that Sylvie was going to be representing the Trust had reinforced all the irony he had felt when he had first learnt of his unexpected inheritance. He might not be a millionaire, but his lifestyle now and his prospects were certainly a far cry from what they had been when Sylvie’s mother had insisted on Alex speaking to him about Sylvie’s youthful crush on him.
He had been aware, of course, of her feelings, aware of them and aware too that at seventeen she was far too young, far too emotionally immature for the sort of relationship that he, as a man in his twenties, might have wanted.
‘What the hell does Sylvie’s mother think I’m going to do?’ he had demanded angrily as he’d paced the floor of Alex’s library.
Sympathetically Alex had shaken his head as he’d told him quietly, ‘This isn’t exactly easy for me, Ran. You’re my friend as well as—’
‘Your employee...’ Angrily Ran had grimaced. ‘No doubt as far as Sylvie’s mother is concerned I’m only one step removed from being a servant,’ he had expostulated scornfully.
Wisely, Alex had said nothing, allowing him to express his ire and distaste instead.
‘You must share her concern,’ he had concluded, ‘otherwise you wouldn’t have raised the subject.’
‘Yes, in some ways I do,’ Alex had agreed steadily. ‘Not, I hardly need say, because I think you are in any way socially inferior to Sylvie. I know your family background, Ran, and your lineage, and if there’s any shortfall of social acceptability here it’s far more on Sylvie’s side than yours. But I hope you know me well enough to know that that kind of attitude is totally abhorrent to me. No, my concern lies in a rather different direction and, in all honesty, it’s Sylvie I should more properly be speaking to and not you, but...well, she isn’t my sister, there’s no blood tie between us, and teenage girls and their emotions are, I’m afraid, somewhat outside my own limited experience. So...the truth is that Sylvie believes herself in love with you with all the ferocity that teenagers do believe in such things. For your sake as much as for hers I feel that such feelings are best not...encouraged. She’s young and very vulnerable and I should hate to see her hurt...to see either o
f you hurt,’ he had amended gently when he had seen Ran’s expression.
‘What the hell do you think I’m going to do to her?’ Ran had exploded. ‘Take her to bed and...?’
‘Is it really so impossible that you might be tempted to?’ Alex had asked him quietly. ‘I’m not criticising or condemning, Ran; physically she’s mature and she loves you—or believes she does—’
‘She’s got a crush on me that she’ll soon grow out of,’ Ran had interrupted him grimly. ‘That’s what you want me to say, isn’t it? And I should keep my hands off her until she does grow out of it...out of me... But what if I feel differently, Alex? What if I want...?’ He had shaken his head, angry with himself as well as with Alex. More angry with himself than he was with Alex who he knew was only doing what he saw as his duty by his stepsister.
‘You’re right, she’s a child still, and the sooner she grows up and forgets all about me the better,’ Ran had told him hardily. ‘And as for taking her to bed,’ he had thrown at Alex as he turned to leave, ‘well, there’s always a cure for that.’
And so there had been, for a while at least, until he had grown sickened and shamed by the emptiness of the sexual encounters he was sharing with women who meant as little to him emotionally as he did to them. And, even with that form of release, keeping the promise he had made to Alex and himself hadn’t been easy. There had been times, far too many of them, when he had nearly weakened, like when he had fished her out of the muddy lake and taken her back to his cottage. Oh, God, the temptation then to take what she was so innocently offering him, to take on the role not so much of seducer as sorcerer, transmuting the frail strength of her youthful crush on him into the enduring bond of real adult love.
But, despite the temptation which kissing her had presented, somehow he had always managed to tell himself of the differences that lay between them in age, experience and in prospects. He loved his job and wouldn’t have wanted to change it for anything or anyone, but there was no denying that to expect a girl, brought up as Sylvie had been with every conceivable luxury, to move into the kind of accommodation estate managers normally occupied, to live the often lonely lifestyle that would be hers when he was working... He just couldn’t do it. Had she been older, wiser...poorer...it might have been different. And so he had resisted the temptation to give in to her desire and his own love, and he had praised himself for his selflessness, until the fateful day he had taken her Alex’s cheque.