by Penny Jordan
She wanted to scream at him to hurry and get it over with, and at the same time acknowledged that she could hardly behave in such an irrational way.
Intelligence told her that it would all be much easier if she could instruct her tense muscles to relax, but some instincts were too ingrained for intelligence, and when Jake withdrew slightly from her she realised he was as aware of her tension as she was herself.
‘All this would be a lot easier if you let me help you to relax first,’ he told her calmly.
Silver stared up into his eyes, marvelling at his ability to remain so calm. She knew exactly what he meant; he had already told her, in explicit and sometimes pithy detail that warned her that in some way he enjoyed her mental and emotional shrinking from what he was saying, that everything he was teaching her to do to him could be reversed to exactly the same effect, and that she would have a much deeper and more instinctive awareness of how to manipulate male arousal if she had experienced her own female arousal first.
But she had told him it wasn’t necessary. And she still considered that it wasn’t.
Because she was afraid of that experience… Even more afraid than she was of his physical possession?
The answer was there in the sharp, shrill denial that came instinctively to her lips.
‘No!’ she spat at him. ‘I don’t want you to do anything other than get this whole damned thing over with.’
For the first time, she sensed his self-control slip. One brief burn of anger beneath the cold clarity of his eyes, one hard tensing of muscles as her frailer flesh took the weight of his body, and she almost gave in and told him she’d changed her mind.
Only pride stopped her. Pride and a certain desperate awareness that if she once allowed him to arouse her to desire, she would somehow have lost a very important part of herself to him… A part of herself that could never be recovered… Her emotional virginity, perhaps? She scorned herself for the thought, and then heard him say grimly, ‘Very well, then, if that’s the way you want it.’
And then she felt his hands on her body, moving her, positioning her as he loomed over her, suddenly dark and alien. She held her breath and forgot to tense her muscles against him, so that his first thrust carried him into her and caused her only to gasp a little at the unexpected ease of it, only to discover as he moved again and then again that she had been too confident too soon, and that the pain that now shot through her was everything she had imagined it would be and more: sharp, tearing, inescapable, filling her so that she cried out and twisted beneath him, dragging her nails against his skin as she fought for release and wasn’t granted it.
The pain went on and on as he drove further into her, ignoring her cries… ignoring her demands, ignoring everything but the goal he had set himself.
And then, miraculously, when she had thought it would last forever, it was over and she was free to curl herself into a ball of fading scalding agony, sick and dizzy with relief, so that she was barely aware of him leaving the bed and going into the bathroom until he came back wearing his bathrobe, holding a glass of water and a small white tablet.
‘I’m sorry it was so bad,’ he told her coolly. ‘But it’s over now and it won’t ever bother you again. Sit up and take this…’
‘What is it?’ she asked him, eyeing the tablet warily, but for some reason she couldn’t understand obeying his command to uncurl her body and crawl into a sitting position. She winced as she did so, still sore and tender inside, even though the pain had abated.
‘Pain-killer,’ he told her. ‘I need them sometimes. It won’t harm you. You’re going to bleed for a while, I suspect. If you’re still bleeding in the morning…’ He frowned and Silver looked away from him, even though he couldn’t see her flush of embarrassment.
She looked at him and for the first time said quietly, ‘Thank you…’
An odd expression crossed his face. One she couldn’t define at all.
He looked down at her almost broodingly, and she wondered what was going on behind the implacable hardness of his face… what thoughts were locked away in that over-alert and too perceptive mind. He had known her fear, felt it, touched it, tasted it; she had given him a unique weapon against herself and yet he had not used it.
And now, when another man might have experienced discomfort, impatience, embarrassment or just the sheer plain desire to turn his back on the whole incident and on her, he was still standing beside her, his fingers resting lightly against her inner wrist, monitoring the feverish race of her pulse.
The deep understanding which had led him not to betray either surprise or anger, the compassion which had given her the pain-killer, his calm, matter-of-fact awareness of the possible physical consequence of the tearing of that too-protective unwanted veil of flesh, betrayed a much deeper awareness of her than she had known.
‘You’ll want to sleep alone,’ he commented now, and then, when she started to move, his fingers curled round her wrist, making her yield to their pressure.
‘No… you stay here. I’ll sleep in your bed tonight.’ His mouth curled and then softened into an incredibly illuminating smile, one she had never seen curve his mouth before, and for a heart-stopping moment she was breathless and motionless beneath its potency, dazzled by its lure and promise. And then it vanished and his mouth was the cynical curl of contempt with which she was so familiar as he added drily, ‘I trust that you don’t go to bed wearing that appalling perfume.’
‘It isn’t appalling. It’s very expensive, and I happen to like it,’ she told him fiercely, hating herself for the odd sensations she had just experienced, wanting to push them out of her mind and bury them deep where she would never have to face them again. They were too disturbing, too distressing, especially now, when not just her body but her mind as well felt drained of all energy and will to combat anything.
‘Liar,’ he derided her softly. ‘It isn’t you at all. You should wear something sharp and fresh, something that smells of young fresh grass after spring rain… something subtle and tormenting—–’ He broke off suddenly, and Silver knew instinctively that he had spoken words he had not intended to say.
‘We both need to get some sleep,’ he told her curtly. ‘But if you need me for… anything during the night…’
She shot up in bed, simultaneously reaching for the sheet to cover her body—a wasted gesture since he couldn’t see it—and wincing sharply with the pain that splintered inside her, so that he heard her sharp indrawn breath. Then she realised that he had not been taunting her with sexual innuendo, as she had thought, but had simply meant if she was in any physical discomfort.
She had spent enough dreary hours recovering from the pain of her own operations to know why he should be so aware of how long and dark those nights could be when the physical body was tormented by its ills and the pain stretched out tentacle-like fingers, which it hooked into vulnerable flesh and raked it into an agony that never seemed to subside.
‘This tablet should do the trick if it’s one of Annie’s wonder pills,’ she told him gruffly, not knowing why now, after all that had happened, she should feel awkward and embarrassed by his detached concern… why the mere thought of having to ask him for comfort and relief of any kind should make her skin go hot and cold and her mind shudder back from the edge of some unsuspected chasm which lured her to its edge even while she cringed back from it.
She wanted him to leave so that she could go into the bathroom and clean her body, not of his touch, which at all times had been minimal and clinical, but of the evidence of her own humanity and weakness. But he stayed where he was, hovering over her like a dark eagle while she swallowed the pill and drank the water, and even after that, until the pain started to subside and her eyes started to close.
They parted the next morning, outside the bank, where Silver formally handed over to him his money and where they faced one another gravely, still two antagonists. Her body felt stiff and slightly sore, but there was no bleeding and she knew with inner convic
tion that she would soon heal.
As he took the money he said firmly, ‘I won’t wish you good luck. I know you believe you’re right in what you’re doing, but I can tell you that you’re not. Unfortunately, by the time you come to that realisation yourself, it will be too late. It’s one of life’s more bitter truisms that we can’t learn from the experience of others.
‘I, too, have had my time of black despair, my thirst for destruction, my need to reach out and contaminate with my hatred those who contaminated me and mine with theirs; I, too, have known what it means to set myself above the law and consider myself justified in doing so.
‘Revenge is a drug; once it gets hold of you it doesn’t let go, it pervades your whole life.’
He couldn’t have said anything more calculated to strengthen her hand.
‘That might be your experience, it won’t necessarily be mine. My father taught me to shoot when I was twelve years old,’ Silver told him thinly, angry with him that he should choose now of all times to give her an unwanted moral lecture. ‘Always shoot to kill, he told me. And always kill cleanly…’
He smiled at her then, mocking her with his soul-deep awareness of her thoughts as he said softly, ‘Yes, but mutilation has such a subtle appeal, doesn’t it? What point is there in inflicting a wound if the victim doesn’t feel it… and it is mutilation you thirst for, isn’t it, Silver? Mutilation and destruction…’
‘What I plan to do has nothing to do with you,’ she told him distantly, dismissing him with the ice that ran through her voice like the chill of northern snows. ‘I did what I had to do, and now it’s over.’
She turned her back on him and swung down the street, a tall, silver-haired woman whose arresting beauty drew glances from everyone she passed. But for once she was unconcerned with the effect of her looks, and for the first time, although she herself didn’t know it, her face was that of a woman real and alive, full of emotion and character, and not simply a mask of beauty almost unreal in its perfection.
She had two more days before she left Switzerland and returned to London. She took a taxi back to her rented chalet, dismissing the maid, who was so well trained that she exhibited no surprise either at Silver’s command or at her reappearance in the middle of the day, after an unexplained absence of several weeks.
From the chalet she rang Annie, who expressed pleasure at hearing from her.
‘Where have you been?’ she scolded. ‘I’ve been worried about you.’
‘Oh, I had things to do,’ Silver told her vaguely, quickly changing the subject. ‘Annie, I’m leaving in a couple of days… How about dinner this evening?’
‘I’d have loved to, but Jake beat you to it. Unless of course you want to join us…’
Silver paused for a moment, her heartbeat quickening. Would Jake tell Annie what had happened? Somehow she doubted it, and anyway, what would it matter if he did? There was no point in joining them for dinner simply to sit in torment all evening waiting for Jake to mock her by revealing their arrangement. Despite the fact that she felt that Jake and Annie were not lovers, she wondered if perhaps tonight they would be together… if Jake would want to wipe from his memory any record of her by superimposing another woman’s essence over hers.
What did it matter who the hell he slept with? she derided herself as she refused the invitation and hung up.
She had things to do… phone-calls to make…
In London she had an agent who would be expecting to hear from her. The apartment she had purchased through that agent and handed over to a very up-market and expensive interior designer should be ready for her by now. It was time to start psyching herself up to her new image. From now on she was leaving the past behind her.
When she returned to London it would be as a completely different person. A person who was already in some ways familiar to her, and yet in very many others still a stranger.
She walked into her bedroom and removed from her case a thick file. In it were all the details she had assembled for her new life… for her new image, right down to her name. From the moment she left this chalet behind her, she would be playing that new role. Silver Montaine, that was who she was now, widow of a Swiss, but wholly an Anglophile.
One more night and then she would be on her way home. She looked around the large, impersonal bedroom, shivering despite its almost sub-tropical temperature, conscious of a sensation of loss which crept up on her, taking her unawares, making her frown and glance over her shoulder as though half expecting to see Jake walk through the door.
Jake! She tried to dismiss him from her mind and found she could not. Last night the bed had carried his scent; she had woken with it all around her. She shuddered at the memory. Tonight was going to be a very long night indeed. Then she remembered the mild sedatives Annie had prescribed for her just after she had first left hospital.
She found them at the bottom of her leather handbag and took one, grimacing as she swallowed it, trying not to remember last night and the way Jake had watched her while she took his pain-killer; the medical palliative offered to her after she had refused the physical one.
An early night, a sound sleep, the ability to switch herself off from Switzerland and Jake… These were the things she needed now… And then Paris and her new wardrobe, and then home with her new face… her new personality… her new name and past…
She had a bath, experimentally stretching her muscles and discovering that last night’s pain had completely gone. That pleased her. It seemed a good omen for the future. She was reaching for the perfumed body lotion to stroke into her skin when she stopped and instead lifted the jar to her nose, sniffing it delicately and then hesitating.
She had chosen that particular perfume for a specific reason and yet now she felt reluctant to wear it. Impatient with herself, she recapped the jar and pulled on the ancient brushed cotton nightdress that was a legacy from her past, grimacing at her own reflection as she did so. How disparate the two images of herself looked. Her face was all perfect, stunning beauty, her eyes as they had always been, in colour at least, although in the past they had not been so almond-tipped and mystically slumberous… and her mouth no longer over-large for her face, but instead sensually full.
She studied the silver tangle of her hair, curling slightly in the steam from her bath, and then switched her attention to the homeliness of her nightdress, subduing the faint bubble of laughter. From the neck down she looked like an unawakened adolescent, the curves of her breasts barely discernible, her nipples unaroused and flat against the fabric, her wrists and ankles betraying the fact that the nightdress was something she had outgrown.
But from the throat up… She threw back her head, studying the arch of her throat with concentration, pouting slightly, trying to imagine how a man would visualise her… how Charles would react to the sight of her. On impulse she tugged off the nightdress and studied the lines of her body. That at least was her own, she reflected acidly, far thinner and more shapely than it had been, perhaps, but still untouched by the surgeon’s knife. The fullness of her breasts, the glowing coral of her nipples, the narrow indentation of her waist, the smooth flatness of her belly, the unexpectedness of the triangle of russet hair at the apex of her thighs, and then her thighs themselves, slender, sleek, fluidly muscled, an athlete’s body, softening into femininity but hinting at sensual strength… that at least was her own…
Suddenly her head had begun to ache and her mouth felt dry. The sedative was making her drowsy, and she left the nightdress where it lay and padded into the bedroom, switching off the lamps as she went and flipping back the silk sheets, grimacing a little at their almost vulgar opulence, trying not to think of the cool crispness of the cotton sheets on Jake’s bed… Sheets that had reminded her of Ireland, and of her childhood and the lavender-scented sheets on her bed there. Sheets embroidered with her family’s crest, and a little worn in places. Sheets which had been ordered by a bride who had married into the family while Victoria was still on the throne.
The bed was vast, and Silver moved restlessly in it, disliking the over-softness of the mattress, instinctively trying to resist the pull of the drug, but ultimately giving in to it.
On the other side of the valley Jake and Annie had finished dinner and were sitting in her small private sitting-room in her quarters at the back of the Institute.
Jake stood up. ‘Thanks for dinner, Annie.’
She got up too. ‘There are some letters for you. Do you want me to read them?’
When he nodded, she did so, her own expression growing grave when she had finished.
‘So… confirmation that your fourth man is in London, but your tracing agents haven’t been able to discover where or who he is…’
‘No… I’m going to have to go over there myself.’
‘Jake, isn’t it time that you let it rest? That you let Beth rest?’ Annie suggested gently. She knew that she was taking a risk, that Jake hated any mention of his wife’s death, and she could sympathise with him.
She had felt much the same way when her own husband had died.
Tom and Jake had been in the same regiment and had become good friends, a friendship which had continued when they had both left the army to join the government department of special agents fighting against the growing menace of the drug traffickers.
After Tom had been killed in the bomb blast which had taken Jake’s sight, Annie had insisted on removing her husband’s friend from the overcrowded hospital where she had found him, and bringing him here to Switzerland.
After his recovery physically, he had spent several months at a special rehabilitation centre run for the blind.
It had been during the early days of his recuperation that he had told her what he was doing.
Initially the government had turned a blind eye to the personal vendetta he was carrying out against Beth’s killers—after all, as drug dealers they were his legitimate quarry—but once he had lost his sight he was no longer employable as a government agent, and so he had to pursue his one remaining quarry at second hand.