by Penny Jordan
He wondered what she was wearing beneath the skirt, and as though he had said the words out loud she smiled provocatively at him and, taking his free hand, placed it on her suede-covered thigh and said softly, ‘Now you know how nice linen feels to touch, why not see if you can’t touch something even nicer?’
She didn’t laugh as she felt the violent tremor that ran through him, but as his hand inched awkwardly up her thigh, and then got caught in the folds of her skirt, so that he had to release it and her before he could slide his hot, dry palm beneath the fabric to discover the cool bareness of her skin, she moved towards him, so that her naked breasts were pressed flat against his chest. Her mouth stroked his throat, drawing a convulsive shudder from him, and as her small, sharp teeth bit delicately into his skin he forgot his nervousness in the tide of sharp need that overwhelmed him. By the time his brain had assimilated what his hand was doing, he had already discovered the fact that beneath the skirt she was completely naked and that his cupped hand could easily hold the soft mound covered with a mat of curls that prickled against his palm. She made a sound against his throat and her sharp teeth bit almost painfully into his flesh. His hand tightened involuntarily and she moved against him.
The blood roared in his ears; his body pulsed frantically as the heat devoured him; he felt her tugging at his shirt, releasing him from both it and his jeans, and then removing her own skirt, casually dismissive of both his nakedness and her own as she moved on to the bed and patted the empty space beside her.
He was trembling so much he could hardly move, his awkwardness and lack of experience forgotten in the burning need that drove him.
He kissed her fiercely and eagerly, grinding his mouth down against hers, his hands kneading the fullness of her breasts as her legs opened to receive him and her nails raked sharply along his spine.
He thrust into her blindly and inexpertly, grinding his teeth with impatience and resentment when her hands caught his hips and held him off for a few seconds that seemed like an eternity as she positioned herself to receive him.
The sensation of being inside her both awed and shocked him, stilling him momentarily as he savoured the silken wrapping of her heated flesh, and then the fierce, pounding desire swept over him, and he moved inexpertly once, twice… and then the hot, flooding torrent of sexual release burst through him, leaving him slumped on top of her, exhausted and drained, and suddenly uncomfortably aware of what he was doing.
He withdrew from her with a stammered apology that made her raise her eyes to heaven and say crisply, ‘Well, you’ve certainly got something to apologise for. Haven’t you ever heard that gentlemen come last?’ she derided him, watching the hot colour sting his face without sympathy.
‘I suppose I’ll have to let you off, seeing as that was your first time,’ she added acidly, and then laughed as she saw the shock dawn in his eyes.
‘What’s wrong? Did you think I wouldn’t know?’ she demanded mockingly. ‘My God, if it wasn’t your first time, then all I can say is that you’re a pretty poor specimen… You didn’t even try to give me any satisfaction…’
She rolled over and said briskly, ‘OK, little boy, you’ve had your fun… now it’s my turn to have mine.’ She looked at him, and he was cringingly conscious of the exhausted limpness of his body. As though something of his confusion and misery reached out to her, she said half scornfully, ‘Oh, the equipment’s fine… you just don’t know how to use it, that’s all.’
She gave him a smile which was at the same time both bewitching and mocking.
‘This is your lucky night, little boy, because I’m feeling generous enough to teach you…’
She grimaced herself, knowing full well that it wasn’t generosity that was motivating her, but frustration. She could send him away and then give herself the physical release she needed, but it wouldn’t be the same as feeling this superbly male creature moving inside her, filling her with the hard pulse of his flesh… pleasuring her as she was sure he would pleasure her once she had shown him how.
‘The first thing you need to know is that you must forget about that…’ she told him, indicating his limp penis, ‘and concentrate instead on this.’
Her hand briefly covered her own sex and was then removed. Her total lack of embarrassment was something new to him, and it both puzzled and intrigued him. According to the experiences of his schoolmates, women were something that had to be pursued and coaxed into allowing them the freedom of their bodies, but this one wasn’t like that…
Half of him wanted to run from her, sensing that he was way, way out of his league, but the other half noted the way her fingers rested lightly against her sex for the merest heartbeat, pressing firmly against the mound of flesh, and that same part of him also noted the thrust of her nipples and how they too were slightly swollen, and some of the things he had heard about and read about came back to him illuminatingly, so that when she said coolly, ‘It takes far longer for a woman to become aroused than a man, so the first thing you need to know is how to initiate that arousal,’ he was able to move towards her with a creditable assumption of sophistication and say casually as he cupped her breasts with his hands,
‘Like this, you mean?’
He trembled a little as he ran the pads of his thumbs over and around her nipples, not sure if she was going to laugh at him, and then he felt her body jerk as though an electric current had run through it, and he ran the pads of his thumbs over and over her nipples again, this time pressing them against the swollen flesh and rubbing it experimentally.
When she arched her back and her head fell back, he stopped abruptly, confused by her action.
She swore briefly under her breath, and when she raised her head he could see that her eyes had narrowed to slumberous cats’ slits and that her face had suffused with colour.
‘I didn’t want you to stop, you idiot,’ she derided him, adding tauntingly, ‘You don’t know anything, do you? Women don’t just like to be touched… They like to be stroked, kissed, sucked, bitten.’
Fire burned through his guts as she caught hold of his head and lowered it to her breasts.
She moaned as he sucked on her, arching her back and dragging his hands down her body, holding one of them between her thighs while she rubbed herself rhythmically against it and then lifted her head to whisper commands in his ear that he followed blindly and implicitly.
This time, when he entered her, he was sure he was going to pleasure her, and when after no more than a few fiercely blissful thrusts it was over and she was moving angrily away from him he felt sick with mortification that he had failed her.
The exhaustion that made his body tremble uncontrollably made it impossible for him to do anything other than lie on the bed, fighting for breath and self-control, his eyes closed as he tried to shut out her angry, sullen face.
When he felt the rhythmic movement of the bed he opened his eyes in bewilderment, his muscles locking in shocked amazement as he saw what she was doing.
She was lying with her legs wide open, her back against the mound of pillows, her fingers moving quickly and knowledgeably against her own sex.
She saw that he was watching her and her fingers stilled.
‘What’s wrong?’ she taunted him. ‘If you can’t satisfy me, I’ll have to do it myself, won’t I?’
And, quite calmly, as though he weren’t there, she closed her eyes and went back to her subtle and skilled manipulation of her own flesh.
Appalled and fascinated, Jake found that he couldn’t look away… couldn’t do anything other than simply stare and feel his breath lock in his throat as his body registered the rhythmic movements of hers.
He was young enough and fit enough to recover very quickly from his own climax and Saffron, furiously angry both with him for disappointing her and with herself for being stupid enough to have thought that he might be able to satisfy her, resolutely continued to shut him out, keeping her eyes tightly closed while her body slowly hummed with pleasure and the
quick, delicate movements of her fingers aroused the familiar onset of pre-climax sensation.
She didn’t see Jake move, and indeed had almost forgotten he was even there as she concentrated wholly on reaching her own inner goal, so that the totally unexpected sensation of his teeth raking her sensitive breasts, and his hands pushing away her own so that he could enter her stimulated, eager body with a fierce, hard thrust and then another, made her jerk convulsively as an electric sensation raced from her breast to her groin and then convulsed her again as his body enforced its rhythm on her, and his teeth savaged the tender bud of her nipple so that she felt the delicious onset of sharp desire.
This time it was different… This time he was slow to climax, driving into her and into her so that her flesh convulsed around him and held him while she cried out and raked him with her nails.
Even then it wasn’t enough, and he stayed with her, driving both her and himself to an ecstasy that made her scream her pleasure until her throat was raw and so was his back.
Afterwards, satisfied, and almost purring with the release of it, she was disposed to be indulgent.
Before he left her in the cool shadows of the winter dawn, borrowing her car to drive back to Fitton Park and then crawl into his familiar narrow bed in a state of mental and physical exhaustion, she had shown him what it felt like to have her hands and mouth caressing his flesh, and she had shown him also what it felt like to take her into his mouth and to pleasure her until her stifled whimpers of pleasure became guttural sounds of need, only silenced by the hot thrust of his flesh deep within the silken net of hers.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
IT WAS Jake’s aunt who woke him, gabbling something unintelligible in his ear about Justin and his grandfather as she shook him frantically, her voice high-pitched and hysterical with shocked fear.
He opened his eyes reluctantly, coming out of his deep sleep like a swimmer coming up through too-deep water. He was naked under the bedclothes, but his aunt, who was normally frigidly obsessive about what she termed ‘keeping to decent standards’, made no move to turn away from the bed as the sheet slipped down over his bare torso.
He shook his head, trying to clear his brain; images of last night still lingered hauntingly there, and his body, young and strong, was still in a state of semi-arousal.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ he demanded thickly, suddenly remembering the scene in the stable and his grandfather’s bitter rejection of Justin.
‘It’s Justin and Father… Come quickly… Oh, my God, what are we going to do?’
He was alert now, reaching to the other side of the bed for his discarded jeans, pulling them on as quickly and discreetly as he could under the cover of the bedclothes, while at the other side of the bed his aunt continued to wring her hands and gabble hysterically.
What was happening downstairs? He knew his grandfather’s temper, and knew that the old man would not hesitate to unleash it on Justin. He flinched as he thought of his over-sensitive brother being subjected to the same kind of beating he himself had endured so often.
Justin could not stand physical pain. He would weep and beg, and that would drive his grandfather to even further paroxysms of fury…
‘Where are they?’ he demanded tersely, getting out of bed, pulling on a pair of tennis shoes.
‘In the gun-room… Oh, God, what’s going to happen… what will people say…?’
He was already halfway down the narrow stairs that led up to this third storey of humble rooms and corridors, but he hesitated, a cold finger of horror touching his spine. His stomach moved queasily as the fear spread. Without a word to his aunt, he started to run, not stopping until he had burst into the small, narrow room behind his grandfather’s study, where his grandfather’s shotguns were kept chained and padlocked to their stands.
He had known with one part of his mind what he would find, but the shock of it numbed him so that for what seemed to be a lifetime he could only stand and stare at the two bodies.
The effect of a powerful service revolver fired at such short range had made both their faces indistinguishable… pulped masses of flesh, blood and bone that he wanted to turn away from but could not.
He had started to tremble, a fierce, thrilling sensation of nausea and shock that gripped his body in fine convulsions. Sweat broke out on his forehead. Justin was holding the pistol, his fingers curled round it in the rigor of death.
‘Oh, God…’ He felt the tears sting his throat and eyes and backed hurriedly towards the door, bumping into his aunt.
‘I heard them quarrelling last night,’ she told him, calmer now that he was standing between her and the shocking sight of her father and her nephew. ‘Father was shouting at Justin…’ She gave a tiny shiver. ‘That was after dinner when I was on my way to bed… I took one of my sleeping tablets… I never heard you come in.’
A fresh complication… How was he going to explain why he had not been here without implicating Saffron?
He was seventeen years old, but suddenly he felt as though he were seventy. He looked at his aunt and recognised that she could neither help nor support him. She was not a young woman, nor a strong one emotionally, and now she looked as though she was on the point of collapsing.
‘What are we going to do?’ She was wringing her hands again.
There was only one thing they could do.
‘I’d better go and ring the police,’ Jake said heavily.
She tried to stop him, screaming at him that he couldn’t, that if he did the news would be all over Cheshire within a day, but Jake remained firm. Sickened and shocked though he was by the sight of the two bodies, and by the knowledge of all that had happened, he had enough maturity to recognise that this was something that couldn’t be hidden.
After he had rung the police, he hesitated and then telephoned their local vicar, not really knowing who else to turn to. His aunt was a regular churchgoer, and it was more for her sake than anything else that he had taken this step, but later he was to reflect with gratitude that he could hardly have had anyone better to stand by him during the rigorous hours of cross-examination by the police authorities.
There was no point in concealing the truth. While his aunt had hysterics in the drawing-room, and was comforted by a WPC who looked about the same age as Saffron and reminded Jake bitterly and guiltily of the way he had spent the evening while his brother and grandfather had been dying, Jake was standing in his grandfather’s study, explaining as briefly and lucidly as he could the events of the previous day.
He winced when the police inspector said tersely, ‘So what you’re saying, in effect, was that your brother had brought a male lover home with him and that your grandfather discovered them together…’
He inclined his head briefly, his mouth hard and terse, and, as the inspector commented later to his wife, he had felt heartily sorry for the lad, because it was obvious that he had been close to the older boy, and to wake up and find what he had found…
The police were pretty sure they knew what had happened… His aunt had confirmed that they had been quarrelling… One of them, maybe Richard Fitton, or maybe his grandson, had reached for one of the guns.
What was pretty clear was that Justin Fitton had somehow or other, whether deliberately or by accident while they were struggling, fired the gun and killed his grandfather, and had then turned the same gun on himself.
The inspector looked at the heavy service revolver and sighed faintly.
‘It belonged to my father,’ Jake told him quietly, and saw a faint flicker of sympathy in the older man’s eyes. ‘My grandfather always kept it cleaned and loaded…’
‘A dangerous practice,’ the inspector said heavily.
The vicar, who had arrived in time to hear his summing up of what he suspected had happened, said calmly, ‘Something like this tends to get a lot of unwanted media attention, and in the circumstances I think it might be best if Miss Fitton and Jake came to stay at the vicarage for the time being, if you’ve
no objection.’
‘None at all… A lot of idiotic journalists milling around looking for enough dirt to sell their grimy rags doesn’t do anything to help us,’ the inspector said disgustedly. ‘Scavengers, the lot of them…’ He glanced at Jake’s white, averted face, and said awkwardly, ‘We’ll do our best to keep things as quiet as we can, lad.’
Jake had already told him, without mentioning Saffron by name, why he had not been in the house the previous evening, and once again the inspector had felt a flash of sympathy for him… He looked a sensible enough lad, and if it was true that the old man had virtually been living on a small pension while the house crumbled around him, then there were going to be hard times for this boy now… He had a son of his own, just sixteen, and he wondered savagely how he would have coped with a similar situation.
While he talked to the vicar, Jake looked numbly at the now shrouded bodies of his uncle and brother. Guilt rolled through him like a sickness. If he had been there… He felt angry tears prick his eyeballs and, as though he knew what he was going through, the vicar moved away from the inspector and came to stand beside him.
He made no attempt to touch him and just said quietly, ‘I know it isn’t easy, but try to look on it as God’s will, Jake… And remember, it would be arrogant of you, and a usurpation of a power that does not belong to you, to believe that any of this…’ he gestured to the two bodies ‘… could have either been caused or prevented by any action of yours.’
Jake balled his fists at his sides, aching to cry out that the vicar was a fool if he hoped to placate him with such banal comfort, and yet a part of him was soothed by his words, clinging on to them with gratitude and praying that he might be right. At the same time he prayed to his brother for forgiveness… for not being there… aching inside for the tragedy and loss.
It wasn’t possible to keep the story out of the papers, but by the time it broke Jake had had time to become accustomed to the reality of what had happened.
His aunt had completely collapsed, and at her own suggestion was now staying with the Davenport-Leghs.