by Kim Lawrence
‘Don’t!’ The panic-stricken word emerged strangled from between her trembling lips. She didn’t know what was happening to her; she felt powerless to combat the drowning sensation. She felt intensely conscious of her own body, of the way her pulse was racing, the tenderness in her breasts as they brushed against her shirt, the growing ache low in her belly and a vague, mingled confusion of fear and impatience.
A growl was torn from his throat before his mouth covered hers. The movement was hard, hungry; she absorbed the impression of warmth, fragrant moisture, a sensation of overwhelming intimacy that made her body grow soft and pliant, her senses tuned to the tumultuous response that was building up within her.
With a sudden cry, lost in his mouth, her arms went around his waist; unable to meet across the expanse of his back, her fingers dug into the hardly muscled expanse as, with a series of small whimpers, she plastered herself against him.
Being removed physically from him was such a shock that it was several seconds before the sense of intense deprivation would permit her chest to expand sufficiently to breathe. Humiliation didn’t take long to supplant the insidious hunger that had conspired to sweep away her better judgement. She was overwhelmed by the appalling weakness that had made her a willing—no, eager—participant.
She had thought she could handle this awareness, an awareness of the aggressive sensuality that Luke simply oozed and her own reluctant acknowledgement that she was responding to it at any number of inappropriate moments. But this! She inwardly cringed at the eager way she had co-operated with the somewhat brutal onslaught. He hadn’t even tried to seduce her tenderly, she realised, and it had been he who had halted the escalation; that was the crowning humiliation.
Her chest rising with the exertion of combating the sensations that were quietly dragging her apart, she met his eyes, and stared at the person she held directly responsible for the violation of her will.
‘I believe you mentioned something about sex,’ he drawled slowly as she chewed her lower lip, her expression defiant but apprehensive, the flesh along her high cheekbones still tinged with a delicate colour all the more apparent because of the pallor of the rest of her face. ‘Not a very refined performance, but I believe you got the drift.’
The cool, analytical expression on his face made something deep inside her rebel. How could she have revealed so much of herself when so little had been offered? she wondered despairingly. It was becoming clearer by the second. It had been a major error of judgement being here when, short of sprouting wings, she had to endure Luke’s company. Not that she had had much say in the matter!
‘Why did you do that?’ she asked, her voice accusing, trembling.
He shrugged. ‘You wanted me to,’ he announced casually, and his lips thinned in an expression of almost bored scorn as she swelled with angry denial. ‘You don’t imagine I’d actually choose to kiss your father’s daughter, do you?’ he asked disparagingly, pushing the chair beside him with a jerky, violent movement that made it crash to the floor with a noise they both ignored. ‘You always were an insidious little thing,’ he said, speaking oddly, the words swift and angry. ‘Big eyes that managed to look as though I’d inflicted some mortal wound. Those eyes managed to make a person forget you were the little girl who had everything, including an in-built sense of superiority, a deep conviction that everything would fall into your lap without you raising a finger. If it didn’t, Daddy would fix it. Is that why it hurt so much to find out Gavin had been cheating, Em? Couldn’t you believe anyone would dare not to fit in with your scheme?’
A faint frown marred her brow as she glared at him. The rush of angry contempt was bewilderingly swift. She didn’t even bother formulating a defence; her childhood had been less than blissful, and if she had felt some odd affinity with Luke it had probably been because he was the only person who had ever treated her as though she wasn’t some human equivalent of fast food—to provide instant gratification on the occasions a little girl was meant to be displayed, and ignored in the interim.
Something didn’t quite add up. For a moment there he had seemed just as eager a participant as she had… the next he was behaving as though she made his skin crawl. Could men fake things so completely? she wondered miserably, flushing as she recalled the hard arousal of his body pressed against her own. ‘If you touch me again I’ll…I’ll make you sorry,’ she flung at him hotly.
‘Perhaps I just wanted to mess up your pragmatic little mind. Sex can do that.’ He gave a low, mocking laugh. ’the word makes you blush virginally. Did Gavin like the ingénue approach? Do you always light up at the flick of a switch?’ he continued on a note of curiosity. ‘I don’t know why you’re quite this mad, infant, or do you save the fireworks for the ones with serious intentions?’
‘If my ancestry troubles you so much, I don’t really see why my sexuality or lack of it need concern you at all,’ she snapped back, unhappy by his casual reference to her instantaneous reaction to him. Silently she cursed fate that she was so susceptible to the one man on the face of the earth who definitely wasn’t for her. She’d found out what she’d been missing, and she wished she hadn’t.
‘All alone in the middle of nowhere,’ he said reflectively. ‘A man might forget his qualms and take advantage of his opportunity…’ He let his voice trail away, his expression terrifyingly speculative.
Emily was sure it was bluff, but all the same…She recalled his expression of fastidious distaste a little earlier, when he had derided the idea of actually making love to her from anything other than a desire to humiliate, exact punishment for the accident of her birth…He wouldn’t go that far to exact revenge, would he? Alarm and uncertainty swept through her veins. She looked at him through the veil of her long lashes—his intolerable complacency made her want to scream.
He was no better than her father, for all his faults. No, he was worse, she decided, recalling the bewitching touch of his hands lightly touching her body…Heavens, he’d been able to turn her into a quivering wreck without even touching her, she thought on a rising tide of despair.
‘Am I supposed to be terrified?’ she enquired with a calm interest that was at odds with the cunous sensation she felt, akin to the mingled fear and exhilaration experienced when a big dipper had reached the peak of its ascent and goose-bumps rose under the skin. ‘Because, if so, save it,’ she advised tartly. ‘After all, you might to able to fool the masses who are blessed enough not to know you, but I do and I’ve never liked you,’ she told him in a quivering voice. ’so snide, so bloody superior! Of course, my father’s despicable—I’m no idiot, I can accept that. But he is my father. You look down from your morally superior heights and with the same breath calmly manipulate people to further your own ends. You’re no better than he is!’ At this point it behoved her to make a sweeping exit, but after one step she realised that there was no exit. She stopped uncertainly in the middle of the room, feeling inexplicably foolish under his steely stare.
The silence in the room was oppresive. Emily wondered whether he was going to let her fling those accusations with impunity.
‘Did Gavin know about the temper?’ he said half to himself with a penetrating appraisal from his sapphire eyes before a slow, devastating smile relieved the grimness of his expression. ‘Perhaps that was why he felt obliged to agree with you, infant, for fear of the sharp edge of your tongue.’
‘Gavin never did anything…’ she began before she recalled exactly what Gavin had done.
‘Except sleep with the sister?’ He shrugged. ‘But it’s all in the family, isn’t it? I find it strange that you react so much more violently to my relatively minor misdemeanour. After all, a few home truths and a kiss or two wouldn’t rate on most folks’ scale of unacceptable behaviour as equal to sleeping with the fiancée’s sister.’ His eyes narrowed and his thumbs hooked in the belt of his jeans as he threw his head back, watching her with the unblinking, cat-like stare which could be so disturbing. Emily felt a cold sweat break out along he
r back with the knowledge that she’d pushed Gavin far too firmly to the back of her mind, considering she’d been prepared to spend her life with the man only hours before. ‘But then these things are all relative,’ he purred in that raspy, velvety voice which made her fingers describe themselves into claws in her fists.
Hateful, hateful snake, she thought, squaring her shoulders. His self-appointed task was to torment! ‘I want to go home.’
‘What home?’ he enquired brutally.
‘Happy about that, are you? As a matter of fact I’m without a job, too. Gavin was being…is being transferred to Paris, so I refused the job they offered me as a probationary teacher. That should make you wildly ecstatic. It does occur to me that now I’ve been symbolically disowned there is little point in my staying here. I can’t see there’s much more damage you can do.’ There was, but she wasn’t about to tell him about that.
‘Maybe I want you here,’ he replied swiftly in a goaded tone that was difficult to decipher.
‘And risk being contaminated by a Stapely?’ she replied huskily. If he had wanted her…The unbidden thought brought a tide of desolation. ‘I won’t be some sacrificial lamb, Luke,’ she warned him.
‘What did you have in mind to place on the altar, Emmy? Your body? I refused the offer of that once before,’ he reminded her crudely. ‘I feel sure all this emotional excess has exhausted you.’ He flung a sleeping-bag at her, which she automatically caught. ‘I’ve only got around to making one bedroom habitable. Don’t look so stricken, infant,’ he sneered. ’there’s a folding thing in the dressing-room, just about your size.’
The reminder of her youthful indiscretion made her wince. Subtlety had not been high on the agenda; her imagination had taken over completely that summer to the point where she had convinced herself that her feelings were fully reciprocated. He had to have noticed, of course, but this was the first time he’d referred to it. That in itself, now she came to think about it, was surprising. She lowered her eyes to conceal to what extent the memory could still mortify her.
‘Where?’ she asked stiffly.
‘Top of the stairs, bathroom’s to the left.’ He watched her climb the stairs, her back stiff, the drift of honey hair across her face hiding her expression from his view. Once she was out of sight his shoulders sagged, the lines of exhaustion on his face deepening. He reached into a cupboard, pulled out a bottle of malt whisky and covered the bottom of a tumbler with the liquid. He drained it in one gulp, grimacing, and stood watching the staircase, his expression one of frustrated self-disgust.
CHAPTER FOUR
BY the time Emily had made up the bed she could barely keep her eyes open. Not bothering to search her overnight bag for a nightdress, she slid out of her clothes and, wearing only a pair of brief pants, slipped inside the sleeping-bag. She embraced the dark oblivion of sleep as it washed insistently over her.
She dreamt, and it was disturbing enough for her to surface, her throat raw with screams that rent the silence with jagged, serated tears. The content had vanished, leaving only profound fear. As a child, and then again in her teens, she had often woken this way; but not for a long time now. Her body shook spasmodically as if gripped by a fever.
She sat up, her skin slick and clammy, and, fumbling, she reached for an unfamiliar switch in the darkness. Her hand touched something warm, human, she gave a fresh shriek and the room was illuminated in subdued light that seemed intense to her night vision.
‘Calm down.’ Luke loomed over her, tall and dark, his face harsh and taut m the shadows.
He sounded angry, probably at having his sleep interrupted, she thought, reality seeping through the miasma of nebulous dread.
In a flash the essential details of her nightmare were upon her. Luke making love to the blonde, herself unable to move in the doorway, her juvenile fantasies disintegrating around her, the sound of their laughter like sandpaper on her nerve-endings. She’d felt deeply betrayed, humiliated. The present had in some way thrown her into a time warp, at least while she slumbered and her subconscious came out to play. It would have been easy to dismiss the reminder of a youthful crush, but not so easy to dismiss the taste of pain and humiliation this ghost from the past could still summon after all these years. The passion, the obsessive craving, it had faded over the years, leaving behind an antagonism, a wariness of Luke she no longer traced to its source. Had she permitted herself to experience anything as strong since?
A scream was still caught in her throat like an aching solid thing. She fought for composure, her lungs making a laboured bid to draw oxygen. The bed creaked as Luke lowered himself on to the edge. Emily opened her eyes, which seemed too large in her drawn, finely boned face, the sweep of dark lashes throwing a shadow across her cheekbones.
‘Sorry I woke you.’ Her voice was husky; the effort of appearing normal was physically painful. She wanted Luke to go away and leave her to give in to the avalanche of misery that demanded release. She couldn’t do so in front of him—through the pain that one fact remained uppermost. It was very important not to let Luke see her pain, use her weakness to form his weapons of ridicule and scorn.
His brows drew together in a fierce, violent frown. ‘For God’s sake, stop looking so damned noble and let go,’ he snarled with brutal impatience. He grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her towards him. She was too shocked to protest as she found herself drawn roughly against his chest. It wasn’t tenderness, but it was enough to liberate her feelings. He allowed her sobs to run their course until only an occasional hiccup of misery shook her limp frame.
Feeling him shift made Emily aware that his tolerence was wearing thin. Almost at the same instant as she squirmed to push herself away she became aware of other previously overlooked details. She was the next best thing to naked and her breasts were in close contact with a hair-roughened chest. The sensation was a first; she couldn’t believe it had taken her this long to appreciate the abrasive contact. She felt her flesh acknowledge flagrantly the intimacy of her situation.
With an inarticulate sound of dismay she pulled away. This broke the tactile embarrassment, but rather too late she realised that it revealed her to his unashamedly interested eyes. The blue gaze flickered from her flushed face down to the gentle sway of her breasts, pearly pale in the subdued light, gleaming with an opalescence that made Luke’s breathing grow shallower. He seemed transfixed by the sight; his eyes followed the blue tracery of veins that were visible through the skin. The expression in his eyes was primitively ferocious
It was as if she was immobilised by the onslaught of his silent gaze A robe, black, knotted loosely at the waist and gaping where her head had moments before lain, was all he appeared to be wearing. Involuntarily her eyes slid down the lengh of his legs, darkly tanned, covered with a dusting of dark hair. She made the return journey with an unfocused, dazed expression, trying to blot out the impact of the muscular power of his thighs on her senses.
She was trying to analyse the paroxysm of sensation that was aggravating every nerve-ending in her body. Luke’s eyes, glowing with a frightening intensity, made her instantaneously aware of an important part of his personality—the earthy sensuality that suddenly hit her with a stunning force.
Her mind was a disorganised maze of impressions, half-formed concepts; she longed for solitude to allow these things to develop undisturbed by the analysis— the knowledge—she could see in the sapphire stare. Why did Luke always seem to know something she didn’t?
‘He’s not worth dreaming about,’ he said tightly.
‘He?’ She stared at him blankly. He was talking about Gavin, she realised, interpreting his words incredulously. She ought to have been dreaming of her ex-fiancé.
She was still sitting there, her nakedness on display, and the realisation came with a surge of blood that stained her skin. Shaking, she clutched at the sleeping-bag, pulling it up to her chin. Her knees went up to her chest and she hugged her arms protectively around herself.
‘It was ju
st a nightmare,’ she said huskily, feeling obliged to infuse a touch of normality into the proceedings—not that there was the first thing normal in Luke’s sitting half naked on her bed!
The expression on his face as he watched her frenzied efforts at concealment made her feel even more flustered and unsophisticated. Women were seen topless around countless pools and on numerous beaches; she should have been able to deal with the situation with more panache, more finesse.
It wasn’t being caught disrobed, it was being caught by Luke. She digested this insight with unease. If Gavin had discovered her in a similar situation she wouldn’t have felt this acute painful awareness of her body; she’d have laughed the incident off and probably fought off his easily subdued advances. Luke wasn’t about to make any advances to a Stapely, she reminded herself, unless, as earlier, he wanted to prove a point. A surge of adrenalin made her heart step up a beat as she skimmed over the idea. He wouldn’t…She’d never…Was this really her feeling the heat of excitement as she speculated about the unthinkable? What would it feel like to have him touch her skin…?
‘Was it a bad nightmare?’
Which one? she wondered with self-derisive irony. She tensed, startled by the fact that his soft words had set up a chain reaction that was trying to make her relax and accept the languor, incited by his casual enquiry. It had nothing to do with the content of his words; it was just a gut response to the sound of his voice. Luke didn’t actually care, she reminded herself; he was a man devoid of humanity and compassion. He was using her, which was fine, because she would only use him. What was not fine was this inexplicable arrival in her erotically arid life of a tenacious thread of interest. She mentally corrected herself—interest was too insipid a term to describe the reluctant fascination that was in danger of turning the silken thread to steel bonds which would cut deep into her native inhibitions and sense of self-preservation. At all costs she wanted to avoid any repeat obsessiveness.