A Reason for Being

by Penny Jordan

  She bit frantically at his skin, feeling his muscles flex, feeling the male hardness of him against her as he moved her legs so that he could push one of his between them.

  Heat rose up inside her, the fantasies of her teenage years forgotten as she responded frantically to his touch, her teeth biting eagerly at his skin, while her mouth trembled betrayingly against it. The hardness of him, so tantalisingly close to her own flesh and yet so frustratingly far away from the place where she most wanted it to be, made her moan deep in her throat, her body writhing helplessly against him.

  ‘Tell me you want me,’ he demanded harshly against her ear, encouraging the wanton movement of her hips with his hands, hands that spanned and cupped the soft round shape of her, and yet somehow at the same time contrived to torment her with brief, far more intimate caresses that she ached to prolong.

  ‘Tell me,’ he demanded again, his voice raw and uneven, and his hand moved, sliding inside her briefs to touch her where her quivering flesh had been yearning for him for what seemed like a lifetime.

  Maggie moaned, incapable of saying a word as her body pulsed and expanded, trembling on the threshold of a pleasure that beckoned like a mirage, and like a mirage vanished when Marcus removed his hand.

  Shivering and suddenly shockingly aware of what she was doing, Maggie tried to pull away from him, protesting, ‘No, Marcus… Not now, not here…’

  Instead of letting her go, he gripped her arms savagely, his face contorted and suddenly unfamiliar.

  ‘Yes,’ he told her thickly. ‘Yes, Maggie. Yes…right here and right now. Like this.’ And as he pushed her back against the desk she heard the metallic sound of his zip being unfastened, and in the brief seconds of panic that followed, she had time only to moan a short protest before she felt him lifting her, holding her and then filling her with strong, determined thrusts that blasted from her mind everything bar the frantic, urgent ache that was buried somewhere deep inside her, and the knowledge that she must help him find and ease if she had to die to do so.

  The pain, so sharp and so unexpected in the midst of so much frantic pleasure, made her tense and open her eyes in shock, to find Marcus looking back at her, not just in shock but in disbelief and something else, something tinged with pleasure and regret. But before she could question it his body surged against her, and as he fought to control it and ease away from her the pain died and the need grew, and instead of releasing him she clung, whimpering her protests into his throat, her body arching so provocatively and pleadingly against him that he tensed and then covered her mouth with his own to silence the small sounds she was making, his body driving so fiercely into hers that she convulsed with pleasure at each stroke, causing him to cry out sharply, unable to hold back on his own need.

  What seemed like a long time after the first strong, convulsive spasms of pleasure had passed, Maggie could still find tiny shudders of after pleasure rippling through her, causing her to shiver openly as Marcus looked down at her broodingly.

  ‘I had no idea that there hadn’t been anyone else,’ he told her flatly, withdrawing from her and turned his back on her as he struggled with his jeans.

  In a state that approached complete mental and physical exhaustion, Maggie made no attempt to redress herself. She tried to move, wincing at the soreness in her muscles, and Marcus swung round to look at her.

  As he moved, Maggie looked away, and then she saw Isobel’s engagement ring glittering malevolently on the desk, and all at once the realisation of what she had done hit her.

  She started to shake violently, and felt Marcus reach out to touch her, but she shrugged him off as though his touch contaminated her.

  ‘Maggie, we have to talk…’

  ‘No,’ she told him shrilly. ‘There’s nothing to talk about. You’ve had your revenge, Marcus. Paid me back for what I did to you. Made me…’ She couldn’t speak for the tears thickening her voice, but when Marcus made to reach out to her a second time, she swung round violently, shaking her head.

  ‘No…don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me again,’ she cried out, wrenching away from him.

  ‘Maggie…wait…you don’t understand!’

  Didn’t she? Maggie asked herself bitterly. Of course she did, and she was just about to tell him as much when she heard the car and realised that it was probably the girls coming home. Mrs Simmonds had offered to run them back on her way to visit a friend.

  ‘That will be Susie and Sara,’ she told Marcus shakily. She couldn’t let them see her like this, and as she heard the kitchen door open and the car drive off she pulled away from Marcus and hurried upstairs.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SOMEWHERE in the distance, Maggie heard the church clock chime the hour. She moved restlessly in her bed, wondering savagely why it was that when she most needed the merciful oblivion of sleep it chose to elude her.

  She had come to bed at ten-thirty, emotionally exhausted and almost haunted by her mental image of Marcus’s grim face. Twice after dinner he had told her that he needed to talk to her, but on both occasions she had been saved from that confrontation by the girls demanding her attention.

  The ordeal couldn’t be put off for ever, though, and when it came she would need to have a watertight and face-saving excuse for acting as she had. Why, oh, why was it that her imagination, the cause of so much pain and anguish in the past, suddenly now deserted her, leaving her bereft of any logical reason why she should have allowed Marcus to make love to her, other than the truth?

  She groaned and rolled over, acknowledging that it was impossible for her to sleep. She doubted that she would ever be able to wipe her memory clean of its image of the shock in Marcus’s face as she opened her eyes to look at him, her body lethargic and sated by their lovemaking, her brain dulled… She had known then, as she faced that look of grim disbelief, that making love to her as a person had been the last thing he’d wanted to do. She had even thought she had glimpsed a swift dawning of distaste in the darkening of his eyes, but she had looked away, not wanting to see the truth, not wanting to know.

  His desire…his need…his love, they were all for Isobel, and she had simply been a…a convenient body and nothing more.

  The clock chimed the quarter-hour. Quarter-past one in the morning; she couldn’t lie here like this until it was seven o’clock, going over and over what had happened, wondering how on earth she was going to endure living alongside Marcus from now on, and yet knowing at the same time that she could not break her promise to her cousins.

  If only she had some sleeping tablets or something…preferably an entire bottleful, she thought grimly, acknowledging as the thought formed that ending her own life was not the answer.

  When she had come to bed, Marcus was still up. She had seen his shadow falling across the desk as she passed the study. Now, much as she longed to go downstairs and make herself a hot, milky drink, the thought that Marcus might still be up kept her where she was.

  Her bedside lamp was on; the book she had found and been trying to read lay discarded on the bedside table. The more she thought about the comfort of that hot drink, the more she yearned to taste it, and then, just as she had decided to take the risk of running into Marcus, she thought she heard the sound of a door closing downstairs and immediately she tensed.

  Her ears, alert for the slightest sound, caught the faint creak of the stairs, so faint that it was impossible to tell if they were caused by footsteps or were simply the grumblings of an old house settling down for the night.

  There were no more sounds, and her breath leaked noisily from her lungs. She was just telling herself that she was acting like a fool when her bedroom door opened and Marcus walked in.

  He was carrying a tray with two mugs on it, steam and the smell of hot chocolate emanating from them.

  As she looked at him in silent dismay, he leaned heavily against the wall, as though the climb up the stairs had tired him. Her bedside lamp showed her quite plainly the lines of worry and grim determination carved in
to his face.

  ‘I heard you moving about in bed,’ he told her emotionlessly. ‘We need to talk, Maggie, and you know it.’ He seemed so tired…so drained, that all her fear of what such a talk might reveal about her feelings for him left her.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed shakily, adding with a brave attempt at humour as she looked at the mugs, ‘What’s this, Marcus? A peace offering?’

  ‘Well, it certainly isn’t drugged or laced with some magical aphrodisiac, if that’s what’s worrying you,’ he told her grimly.

  He walked over to the bed hesitantly, putting the tray down on the small table and then looking round for a chair. As he did so, Maggie noticed him massaging the outside of his thigh as though the muscle was causing him pain.

  ‘I never asked you how you got on at hospital,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘Well enough. Apparently it’s too soon yet to know how much residual damage there may or may not be. They tell me I’ve been very lucky. It could have meant an amputation.’

  Maggie couldn’t help it. She shuddered violently, her eyes immediately registering her feelings.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she stammered when he looked frowningly at her. She couldn’t tell him of that brief, shocking mental image she had just had of him trapped beneath the weight of the fallen horse…of his body shattered and torn.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he told her grimly. ‘As Isobel told me this afternoon, no man with any feelings could expect a woman to feel anything but disgusted horror at the thought of…’

  ‘No…no, it’s not that at all,’ Maggie interrupted him emotionally, reaching out to touch his arm as he abandoned his search for a chair and sat down on her bed instead.

  ‘No?’ he queried wryly. ‘What was it, then?’

  Biting her lip, Maggie turned away from him. How could she tell him the truth? If she had any sense, she would get this interview over with as quickly as possible.

  ‘I’m sorry about your engagement…about Isobel,’ she told him quietly.

  ‘I haven’t come up here to talk about that.’

  She focused on him properly for the first time, and realised on a tiny shock of pain that, beneath his outward calm, he was almost as tense as she was herself.

  ‘Maggie, just what the hell did you mean when you said earlier that I was punishing you?’

  She stared at him, dumbfounded; this was the very last question she had expected.

  ‘I…you must know what I mean,’ she stammered at last, and when he made no response other than to continue to watch her in a way that made it plain he wasn’t going to let the subject drop, she said painfully, looking away from him and focusing on the bedroom window, ‘I know you must hate me, Marcus…for what I did…before. It was a terrible thing to do. I can’t offer you any excuse other than to say that…’ She paused, her mouth dry, wishing she had never started on this path of torture and knowing that Marcus wouldn’t allow her to stop now until she had reached the end; and yet perhaps in saying the words, in admitting to him the folly of her youthful feelings, might there not be some form of catharsis that would free her once and for all from her guilt?

  It was enough to make her take a deep breath and turn to face him.

  ‘I was very much in love with you, you see…and I thought…or rather, I’d deceived myself into believing that you loved me in return…not as a cousin or an adopted brother, but as a man. When I heard you saying you were getting engaged…’ She gave a deep shudder. ‘Oh, Marcus, what can I say, other than that I think perhaps I was a little insane in the way that over-emotional and too intense teenage girls sometimes can be. You had given me no reason to believe what I did…it was just my own stupid, dangerous imagination. I believed you loved me because I wanted to believe it. I know how you must hate me for what I did, how you must have ached to make me suffer as much as you have done yourself, but believe me, I have suffered. All these years of guilt…’

  She was almost wringing her hands, her body shaking as the words poured from her, her voice raw and so painful to the man listening to her that he actually found he had to swallow as though to relieve a soreness in his own throat.

  ‘I know I deserve to be punished for what I did then…but your engagement to Isobel… Believe me, I had no intention of destroying that. I know I virtually forced my way in here. I know you don’t want me to stay…’

  ‘Don’t want you to stay? Maggie, there hasn’t been a day or a night for the last ten years when I haven’t wanted you to come back.’

  Maggie stared at him, her whole body frozen with shock.

  ‘What?’ she whispered in disbelief through almost numb lips. ‘But that’s impossible! You told me to leave. You…’

  ‘I lost my temper…my self-control…I couldn’t believe what was happening. I never wanted you to leave home like that, Maggie. You were such a child. I went frantic trying to find you. I lived for months tormented by visions of you alone… hurt…too proud to come back. I couldn’t sleep or eat for imagining what might happen to you, and your grandfather was too ill for me to leave him.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I saw the notice in the paper. I suppose I did that, didn’t I?’ she asked miserably. ‘Brought on that third stroke?’

  ‘No,’ Marcus told her forcefully, and then added more gently, ‘Oh, Maggie, what burdens I’ve put on your shoulders. No…I never told your grandfather you’d run away. I let him think you were staying at the vicarage until things had calmed down. I told him…’ He checked and then added, ‘That third stroke was inevitable, I’m afraid. I already knew that. The doctor had warned me just after he had the second one that it was only a matter of time. In fact, he lived rather longer than either I or the specialist had expected. And while we’re on the subject, he changed his will because he wanted to protect all of you…not to punish you. He left the house to me, but with the stipulation that it would always be your home. You were so young, Maggie, and Susie and Sara even younger…’

  ‘Yes…I don’t mind…about the house, I mean,’ she told him quietly. ‘It was just the shock of Isobel telling me.’

  ‘She had no right to do that,’ Marcus interrupted fiercely. ‘No right at all.’

  Maggie stared at him. He was talking about his ex-fiancée as though he loathed her.

  ‘You’ve no idea what torment I went through wanting to come after you to find you and bring you home where you belonged, but I couldn’t leave your grandfather. And then I got your letter saying that you were all right, but that you intended to stay in London…that you were never coming home and that you didn’t want any further contact with me.’

  Maggie sighed. ‘John made me write it.’

  ‘John?’ He looked at her sharply, a shadow in his eyes that in other circumstances she would have suspected came from jealousy.

  ‘Yes…’ Briefly she explained about her friendship with Lara and her father. ‘They tried to persuade me to tell them who I was and where I came from, but when I wouldn’t, John insisted that I at least write to you. He couldn’t believe that you wouldn’t be concerned.’

  ‘He was right,’ Marcus agreed grimly. ‘I was almost out of my mind. A couple of malicious comments and suddenly my whole world seemed to have blown up in my face.’

  He saw Maggie’s expression and made a harsh sound deep in his throat, catching hold of her upper arms, his hands warm and firm against her delicate skin.

  ‘No, Maggie! Not your comments… You said before that I had given you no reason to imagine I saw you as anything other than an adopted sister… That isn’t true.’

  His fingers tightened momentarily on her skin.

  ‘As for my wanting to punish you…’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘If anyone should be punished, it’s me! You see, Maggie, I knew exactly how you felt about me, and sometimes when you looked at me with those huge, hungry eyes of yours, I’d have to fight with myself not to take you in my arms. You were so young…too young. I knew I’d have to give you time to grow up, but once you had…’ He broke off and shook his he
ad.

  ‘But that was before I realised what a selfish brute I was becoming. It took someone’s rather malicious comment to show me the truth. A woman—who she was it doesn’t matter—an older, rather disappointed woman, I suspect, who pointed out to me one day that women who marry very young are seldom content because they’ve never been allowed to grow up, and that men who marry very young girls have all manner of emotional problems themselves and are often unable to cope when their child-brides turn into adult women. All generalisations, of course, but her comments held enough of the truth to make me sit back and think about what I was doing to you, about what the kind of life you led was doing to you, and I saw that in all fairness you had to have the opportunity to go out and make your own life…to find out if your feelings for me were those of a child or a woman.

  ‘I lied when I said I was getting engaged, Maggie, but the situation between us was becoming so explosive that it was the only way I could think of to put a distance between us. You were just about to start at college. Your grandfather knew how I felt about you. In fact, he fully approved of the idea of us getting married, but I explained to him that I felt you needed time. But that I knew if I tried to explain to you, you’d probably overrule both my arguments and my common sense. I wanted you so damnably, you see,’ he said in a strained voice. ‘Ached for you…yearned for you…craved for you; I couldn’t trust myself to hold you at arm’s length, once either of us crossed that very narrow chasm between us. But everything blew up in my face when you turned on me. I’d underestimated the intensity of your feelings, not made allowances for your intuitive knowledge of how I felt about you…’

  ‘You loved me?’ Maggie broke in, stunned by his disclosures. ‘You loved me, and yet…’

  She broke off, suddenly seeing the wisdom and common sense of what he had tried to do. At seventeen, she had been far too immature for marriage. She had known far too little of human nature, including her own; the age gap between them would have meant that she would have entered marriage not as an adult but as a child, and that such a marriage would ultimately have foundered, she had little doubt at all.