by Penny Jordan
‘You don’t know how much I’ve wanted to see you like this,’ she heard him telling her thickly as he held her. ‘How much I’ve wanted to know your body’s responsiveness to me… its arousal and desire.’ He bent his head and kissed her slowly, and then kissed her again.
Unexpectedly she felt her senses, her body quicken. She opened her eyes and stared at him, too startled to conceal what she was thinking and feeling, flushing a little when he looked back at her and she read in his eyes his recognition of her thoughts… her need…
Yes, it had all been very different then. Silently Eleanor closed her eyes, willing herself to try and sleep.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
FERN woke up abruptly, momentarily disorientated by the unfamiliarity of her surroundings and the intensity of the dream she had just been having.
It had been a long time since she had even thought about her wedding, never mind dreamed about it, but tonight… She shivered, sitting up in the high old-fashioned bed and pulling the bedclothes securely around her body.
Now that she was properly awake she could detect the cold, sharp, slightly damp smell of the house’s age. Oddly, it wasn’t unpleasant, unlike her dream.
Hugging her arms around her knees, she stared towards the uncurtained window. Cressy had explained that as yet she had not had time to do anything other than make the most basic attempts to furnish and clothe the place.
‘Let’s face it,’ she had told Fern with a grin, ‘neither Graham nor I are the frilly, flowery furnishings type…’
‘No,’ Fern agreed. ‘What you need for here is masses and masses of old brocades; embroidered hangings, that kind of thing.’ Her artistic senses were already busy clothing the empty rooms.
Outside the window the landscape was still cloaked in darkness like the church in her dream, the figures around her vague and shadowy, all apart from the one she had cried out to in anguish as she heard the vicar pronouncing the word which had made her and Nick husband and wife.
Adam! She could still taste his name on her lips, feel the icy cold shock of her own despair and panic.
Adam… Adam… She had cried out in fear as she turned towards him. Towards him and away from Nick, the man to whom she had just made the most binding and compelling of life’s emotional vows.
She had married Nick knowing that she loved Adam.
She could feel the slow, hot crawl of the tears that burned her skin, the ache of knowledge and sadness that filled her body.
It had taken Cressy to make her unwittingly confront the reality which she had so determinedly buried beneath layers of duty and responsibility. And fear? Perhaps most of all fear. Not of acknowledging her love for Adam, but of where that admission would lead her.
Cressy had made her see tonight that she could no longer stay married to Nick.
Strange how it had taken someone else to show her what Nick really was; how he had manipulated and controlled her… used her.
‘But why?’ she had asked Cressy helplessly as she listened to her.
‘Why? Because that’s the kind of person he is,’ Cressy told her flatly. ‘There is no logical reason, Fern. I’ve stood by and watched over the years as Nick has loaded you down with guilt and fear, forcing you to carry burdens you had no need to bear, simply for the pleasure of making you do so. For some reason you’ve managed to convince yourself that you owe him that kind of sacrifice, of self-immolation almost, but you don’t. He’s the one who should feel guilty, not you. What the hell have you got to feel guilty about?’
Fern leaned her head on her knees, closing her eyes briefly. Cressy didn’t know the full story.
She didn’t know how she, Fern, had broken her marriage vows, betrayed her marriage and herself, forcing Adam, out of pity and compassion and automatic male reaction, to…
Abruptly she opened her eyes, her body tensing as though she could physically prevent her thoughts from forming; as though by the fierce compression of her body she could deny her memories.
But did she really want to? Didn’t some treacherous, aching part of her want to hold on to them, to keep and savour them, carefully and jealously guarding them, protecting them from Nick’s malice and from her own guilt?
Didn’t some dangerously self-deluded part of her remember, not the way she had wept and begged Adam to hold her, to touch her and finally and, most shamefully of all, to make love to her, but instead the gentleness of his touch, the joy and pleasure he had given her, the tenderness he had shown her; and then, finally, ultimately, the passion? Just as though his desire for her, his need for her had been so intense that he hadn’t been able to hold back, to control himself any longer? Just as though he loved her.
And even then she had tried to deny what she really felt; had tried to convince herself that she could somehow impose her will on her body and compel it, force it to respond to Nick’s touch the way it had done to Adam’s. But of course it never had. Nor ever would.
She had never dreamed until that day that her body was capable of that kind of physical intensity, never imagined that she could feel such desire, such need, never mind actually reach out past the barriers her upbringing had built up to separate her from her sexuality and be the one to initiate… to want… to beg.
She made a small, angry sound of protest deep in her throat, but it was too late, the memories were too strong for her; she was being dragged relentlessly back to the past, to Adam’s comfortably furnished, welcoming sitting-room, once again experiencing the sense of relief, of safety she had always felt in Adam’s presence.
Initially she had been too distraught to protest or object when he had taken hold of her arm in the street, but as he gently guided her into the soft comfort of the deeply upholstered sofa, quietly insisting that she tell him what was wrong, she had suddenly come to her senses, struggling against the firm pressure of the hands which had so carefully brought her to this sanctuary.
How could she tell Adam what was wrong; how could she admit to him that she had failed as a wife, as a woman… that Nick, her husband, was having an affair with someone else?
Before their marriage Nick had once told her cruelly that Adam would be pleased to hear that they were getting engaged.
‘It seems he’s been a bit concerned that you might be getting too… fond of him… that you might have misinterpreted things… imagined that… taken him more seriously than he intended.’
How she had writhed in embarrassment and mortification then as she listened to Nick, her face, her whole body consumed with the heat of the blush that burned through her as she pictured Adam confiding his concern to his stepbrother.
After that she had gone out of her way to make sure that Adam knew that he had been wrong, that she had never been foolish enough to believe that he had been interested in her in any emotional or sexual way, determinedly playing up to Nick’s proprietorial manner towards her, grateful to him for saving her from the embarrassment she would have faced if he had not warned her.
‘I must go,’ she had told Adam shakily, but he had shaken his head, refusing to move, blocking her exit with the male bulk of his body as he said quietly,
‘Not until you tell me what’s wrong. I mean it, Fern,’ he had added gently.
‘It’s nothing… nothing,’ she had told him, but his mouth had tightened, the bone-structure sharply revealed against his skin as he leaned forward and gently touched his fingertips to her damp face.
‘Nothing?’ he queried, watching her. ‘Then why have you been crying?’
It was then that she should have pulled herself together, reminded herself of exactly what his relationship with her was: of what his relationship with Nick was, and got up and walked out; but instead, as though his words, his touch had somehow turned the key and unlocked the floodgates behind which she had suppressed everything that she had been feeling, she had burst into tears, crying so hard that her body had physically shaken with the force of her pent-up emotions.
It had been impossible for her to speak, im
possible for her to explain or to protest when Adam had suddenly cursed roughly beneath his breath and then gathered her up into his arms, pressing her face into the curve of his shoulder, his hand sliding into the thick mass of her hair, his arms wrapping round her, holding her tightly and safely against him.
It had been like coming home, finding a safe harbour, being given sanctuary… being let back into her own special Eden, and as she breathed in the familiar male scent of him, felt the warmth of his body against her own, felt the tension ease from her flesh as it recognised the feel of his, she had quite simply given in.
She had told him everything. How Nick had lied to her, deceived her; how he had betrayed her with someone else… She had even told him how much of a failure she was as a wife… a woman, the words choked out between her tears as she purged herself of her pain and fear, the self-consciousness and guilt she had become accustomed to feeling in Adam’s presence gone and in its place an overwhelming sense of peace and security.
‘It’s all my fault,’ she told him helplessly, lifting her head from his shoulder and looking up at him.
‘No. That’s not true…’
The harshness in his voice silenced her, her body stilling as she looked into his eyes and saw herself reflected there: saw the intimacy of their embrace, felt the sudden shift in her own emotional balance, the thrill of electric sensation that ran through her as she recognised what she was experiencing.
Helplessly her gaze slid from his eyes to his mouth and lingered there, her need, her hunger so overwhelming that it totally obliterated everything else.
She heard him saying her name, his voice unsteady, urgent with a warning she deliberately chose to ignore.
In the past when they had kissed it had been with the chasteness of friendship and she had not known how to communicate to him her desire.
But she was a woman now, not a girl, and she ached so sharply and intensely inside to know the touch of his mouth on hers as a lover, to experience the taste and texture of his passion, that she was already leaning towards him, her breath constricting in her throat as she whispered his name and placed her mouth against his.
He was not to blame for what had followed. He was after all human, and a man—very much a man, as she discovered when she moved her mouth delicately over his, her body trembling as she gave in to her need to explore the texture of his lips, the response of her senses so overwhelming that it totally drowned out everything else.
She was vaguely aware of his mouth moving, framing her name in a taut protest; she could feel the muscles in his throat moving against the palm of her hand, feel the tension in his body, but as she clung to him his reaction changed, the hands which had grasped her forearms as though he intended to push her away suddenly relaxing, their touch becoming caressing instead of constricting.
As she felt his fingertips smoothing over her skin, stroking the delicate flesh of her inner arms, following the blue line of her veins as it disappeared beneath the loose sleeves of her top, her whole body became engulfed in an open rigour of need so intense that her flesh shuddered in the aftershock of it, leaving her clinging helplessly to Adam’s body, her breasts pressed flat against his chest, her arms wrapped tightly around him, her mouth soft and helpless with shock against his.
She said his name—in denial? A protest? A need? She had never known which, only that the helpless little sound of anguish she had made against his mouth had seemed to trigger off something within him which even he himself had no power to control.
To describe what had then happened as a kiss was probably like describing Niagara Falls as a tumbling brook. It was true that their mouths had met and merged, that their lips had caressed and clung, that their tongues had twisted against one another in the sinuous, sensual dance beloved of all lovers; but a kiss described merely the meeting of two mouths, two pairs of lips, two tongues.
What they shared was an embrace, so intimate, so intense, so consuming that its effect on her was as powerful as though they had actually been lovers in every physical sense.
And yet when Adam released her, slowly untangling his fingers from the silky thickness of her hair, whispering soft words of comfort and reassurance to her as he continued to caress her mouth with his, smoothing her hair back from her face, hot and flushed now, instead of coming back down to earth and recognising what she had done, she had clung to him, shamelessly winding her arms round him, pressing her body against his with a wantonness, a deliberateness she had not known herself capable of expressing. Her lips trembled and she moved them fiercely against his skin, tasting the sexual heat of him, feeling the rough abrasion of his jaw against the soft inside of her mouth, shivering openly with all that she was feeling as she begged him not to send her away… not to stop touching her now; not to deny her womanhood this need it had to experience fulfilment, to feel his hands on her body, his flesh deep within her own, driving away the emptiness Nick had left within her.
He had hesitated, tried to reason with her, tried to stop her, but she had overruled him, pleading, begging, and finally touching him with such a sure intimacy, knowledge and a desperation she had not known she possessed so that he had finally given way, holding her, touching her, stripping the clothes from their bodies with hands that trembled slightly, kissing the firm swell of her breasts, gently at first and then with such urgency that she had cried out in a thrilled shock of pleasure, her arousal so intense that tiny climactic quivers already ran through her.
She had thought of herself as a woman of negative sex drive, blaming herself, as she knew that Nick blamed her, for the lack of excitement or pleasure his touch engendered, resigning herself to the fact that for her the sexual side of their marriage was at best a sharing of intimacy and at worst a passage to be endured with guilt for her own inability to respond to Nick’s carefully choreographed caresses.
She knew, because Nick himself had told her so, that his sexual expertise had given pleasure to other women, which made it all the more confusing and disarming that she should respond so much more intensely and overwhelmingly to Adam’s touch than to Nick’s, especially when her brain recognised that there was nothing calculated or planned about the way Adam was touching her; that, like her, he was far too caught up in the rolling surge of his own desire to lead her through a carefully planned arousal technique.
But it seemed she needed no technique, no skilled, carefully monitored sequence of caresses; her body was already trembling on the brink of orgasm, the sheer delight of feeling Adam’s skin against her own, of breathing in the familiar and yet headily unfamiliar scent of him, spiked as it now was with the heat of his arousal and desire, of touching him hesitantly at first with just her fingertips and then voluptuously sliding the whole of her hand against his flesh, absorbing its texture, feeling the hardness of his bones, the power of his muscles, and knowing that magically, beneath her touch, all that strength and power became so weakened that she caused him to groan out loud; these were enough to bring her to a state of arousal so intense and so unfamiliar that she had no time to fight against it or to try to control it. It swamped her, engulfed her, delighted and terrified her as finally she was forced to abandon herself completely to it, pushing herself against Adam, lifting her hips against him, her body urgently seeking the union it needed as eagerly and voluptuously as though they had already been lovers a thousand times.
In the end though she had had to do more than arch her body against him in a sinuous instinctive movement of invitation and demand, and the hands he placed on her hips were there not to hold her against him while he slowly filled her with the longed-for hardness of his body, but instead to hold her away from him while he told her that they could not… must not…
But she was beyond listening to reason, beyond accepting as she would surely normally have done his rejection of her; now it was not just her body that screamed tensely for release but her senses, her emotions as well, and as he gently urged her away from him she did something she had never imagined herself doing,
reaching out to touch him, closing her fingers round him, moaning his name, pressing hot, agonised kisses against his skin, begging him not to leave her, not to refuse her.
Beneath her hand he was hard and erect. She had never touched Nick like this, never imagined doing so, not wanted to, and yet now she was unable to withdraw her dizzy, fascinated gaze from Adam’s body, a sense of wonder and power softening the urgency of her own desire as she absorbed the hot silky feel of his skin; the strength and need that pulsed against her fingertips, and, most tellingly of all, a wholly female and previously unknown awareness of how very vulnerable that strength and power was; how even the most male and indomitable man as Adam could be rendered vulnerable by a woman’s touch.