by Penny Jordan
‘No, I don’t think I do either.’
He was standing beside her now, looking down at her with that same grave expression with which he had regarded her earlier.
‘You’ve been crying.’ He reached out and touched her face, causing her to shrink back from him. ‘Do you still want me, Lacey?’
The shock of it turned her rigid. She stared at him, unable to conceal her feelings. ‘No. No, I don’t,’ she lied vehemently.
‘That’s a pity,’ he responded evenly. ‘Because I want you. I want you more than I’ve wanted anything or anyone in my entire life. Twenty years of celibacy is a long, long time, isn’t it?’
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It was a joke, some kind of macabre joke; it had to be.
‘It’s been a long day,’ he was telling her. ‘And an even longer week, and right now there’s nothing I need more than to lie down and relax for a while, and since this is a very large bed, and since you don’t have any physical feelings for me whatsoever, I’m sure you won’t mind if I just lie down beside you on it for an hour or so, will you?’
He was getting undressed as he spoke and her senses responded helplessly to the sight of his body, tougher, harder now than it had been in his youth, more male somehow, more…more desirable, or was it just that her own maturity had made her so much more attuned to her own physical needs and desires?
She knew she ought to be doing something to stop him, telling him that this wasn’t what she wanted, challenging him to explain why, if he was now claiming he wanted her, he had walked away from her so easily before; but it was already too late, her stomach muscles clenching as he removed the last of his clothes. She tried to look away and found she could not.
He was easing back the bedclothes, coming down beside her, reaching for her. Panic engulfed her. Once he touched her, once her body felt the longed-for contact with his, she would be lost, helpless to control her response to him.
‘I want you, Lacey,’ he was telling her as he moved against her, his hands stroking over her skin, making him shudder and tense as he drew her firmly against him. ‘I want you more than I can find the words to tell you.’ He kissed her, silencing her protest, whispering against her mouth, ‘Let me show you instead, Lacey. Let me show you all the pleasure I’ve missed showing you all these years.’
He was touching her with hands that knew her body already; knew it and knew how to pleasure it, and she had no defences against that kind of knowledge, her frantic pleas to be released from her bondage her desire was imposing on her drowned out by the very intensity of that desire.
Lewis kissed her throat, her shoulders, the soft curves of her breasts, his hands shaping her ribcage, her waist and then her hips, holding her so intimately against him that she couldn’t stop the way her body was responding to him.
His mouth against her breast made her cry out and rake her nails against his back, her body arching, enticing, inviting.
She could feel him looking at her and immediately she started to tense, suddenly acutely self-conscious and ashamed of her response to him.
She was a woman now, not a girl; a woman, moreover, who had borne a child. His child.
His hands held her waist, his dark head bent over her body. Shock kicked through her as he moved, his hands spanning her hips, his face resting against her belly, his voice harsh, almost tortured.
‘My child. You’ve had my child. Even now…even knowing the truth, I still think I’m going to wake up and discover…’ His voice thickened and she felt the dampness of his tears against her skin as he told her, ‘Do you know just what this means to me? To discover after all these years…after believing that I’d never…’
She responded instinctively to his emotion, reaching out to cradle him against her, whispering to him as she had done to Jessica herself when she had been small, stroking the thick dark hair, feeling her body quicken with emotion as he started to press fierce kisses against her.
How often had she longed during her pregnancy for this intimacy between them, this shared joy in the child she had conceived? How often had she wanted this tenderness from him then?
‘All these years, and I still can’t believe it.’
His hand touched her thigh, stroking its silky inner skin; his mouth moved lower over her stomach and its tenderness was gone, replaced by a male urgency that made her clench her stomach muscles and try to push him away, panicked by the intimacy of what he was doing, knowing that once she allowed herself to experience the pleasure of that intimacy it would tear away her final shreds of self-control.
But already his mouth was caressing her inner thigh; already his hands were turning her, lifting her; already her body was trembling with expectation, with need, with the memory of the pleasure he could give her.
She tried to stop him, driven by an instinct for self-preservation, but Lewis wouldn’t let her, instead holding her, caressing her until she was mindless with need, no longer trying to push him away, but moving eagerly against him, letting him give her the pleasure her body now so desperately craved, unable to stop him from knowing just how wantonly responsive she was to him as the ripples of sensation gathered and grew and then exploded in shock waves of release that should have left her satiated and exhausted but which instead seemed only to fuel her need to have him inside her, fulfilling some atavistic drive for a completion which she could only vaguely comprehend.
It was as though she had hungered, starved for so long for this one man that now there was no cessation of her need for him.
While he held her, and stroked her skin with soothing gentle hands, she lay against him, letting her flesh absorb the reality of him. Her lips touched his chest; it was damp with sweat. She lapped delicately at his dampness, tasting its salty tang, and against her palm his heart suddenly exploded into a frantic race.
‘Lacey, don’t,’ he warned her huskily. His hands slid into her tousled hair as he held her slightly away from him and looked down at her. She could see the desire in his eyes, feel it in his body. He might not love her any more, but physically he wanted her. Where was her pride? she asked herself as she looked back at him. Where was her self-respect? Why was she letting this happen when she knew that he could only be motivated by a combination of pity and masculine lust, while she…?
Well, if desire was all he could feel for her, then let it at least be a desire which matched her own; a desire which would break through his self-control…as he had broken through hers; a desire which would make him cry out her name and cling to her, as lost to reality as she had been herself.
Ignoring his words, she bent her head and recommenced her sensual journey.
She could feel his tension as her tongue started to caress the flat hardness of his stomach. His hands gripped her arms; she could almost feel the blood hammering through his veins. He wanted her to stop…not to take her intimacy any further, but she couldn’t.
It wasn’t just for him that she was doing this, she recognised shockingly; it was for herself as well. She wanted this intimacy with him…
That knowledge shocked her, shamed her that she could allow herself to be so carried away by her love and desire for him.
She started to pull back from him, thinking it was what he wanted, but immediately he held her against him, inviting the intimacy he had seemed to reject earlier, whispering her name over and over again, his hands tangling in her hair, his body shuddering with need as he whispered to her how much he wanted the soft touch of her lips against his skin, the warmth of her mouth caressing him intimately. Her response was immediate, passionate, underlining her love, joy flooding through her at his response to her.
When he finally stopped her, telling her how much he wanted her, how much he needed her, how much he had missed her, she responded to him eagerly, yearning for his possession, welcoming its powerful, surging thrust, wrapping herself around his body so that he groaned out loud, filling her ears with his words of need and praise just as he filled her body physically with his body.
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Later, sated and sleepy, she allowed him to draw her down beside him and curl her into his arms, her senses fulfilled and at peace.
She was on the verge of sleep when she remembered that there was something she had to say to him, some important point she had to make, some protective defence she had to erect against him. She struggled to grasp what it was, and when she had, opened her eyes to look fully into his and said firmly, ‘This doesn’t mean anything, you know. It’s just…it’s just sex, that’s all. Just sex.’
She shivered forlornly as she closed her eyes. What had happened between them should never have been allowed to happen. She ought to have had more self-control, more self-respect, but it had happened, and what she had to do now was to make sure that he never guessed that not only was he her only lover but he was the only lover she had ever and would ever want.
As she finally fell asleep, Lewis looked down into her face, his eyes shadowed with sadness.
Only sex. Was that really all it had meant to her? And yet, if so, could he really blame her? He had left her alone to bear his child…he had hurt her…denied her. It did no good now reminding himself that he had acted out of love…that he…that he had what? Made a tragic mistake. Would she believe him if he told her that now? Would he have believed her had their positions been reversed?
He remembered the way she had touched him…loved him…and he winced.
All these years and there had never been anyone else for her. It made him feel humble, and yet at the same time it made him feel…what? Very male…very proud. He grimaced to himself, a little shocked that he could feel such machismo at his age when he should be well past that kind of youthful conceit.
Soon they would have to talk…he would have to explain. Lacey stirred in his arms, nestling closer to him. He looked down at her, drawing her closer to him. When he had looked at her earlier and seen the desire…the need in her eyes, a taut frisson of sensation had raced through his body. She was so beautiful, so desirable, it seemed unbelievable that she hadn’t turned to someone else. It couldn’t have been for the lack of an opportunity to do so.
He had seen with his own eyes how other men reacted to her. Ian Hanson for instance.
A fine thrill of anguish pierced him, an urgent need to hold on to her and never let her go. If only she could forgive him…understand. His hand slid to her stomach and he remembered how earlier she had sensed…had known what was running through his mind…had known that he was thinking of the past, of all that he had denied himself in denying both her and his child. He still wasn’t totally over the shock of discovering that he was a father, after all the years of self-denial and fear, after telling himself that he could never take the risk of passing on his own deficiency to a child—not for himself but for that child. And then to discover Jessica.
He moved Lacey gently in his arms and bent his head, tenderly kissing the smooth softness of her stomach. The evening sunlight touched her skin, highlighting the dark areolae of her nipples, still faintly swollen and erect. As Lewis touched first one and then the other with grave delicacy, she stirred slightly in her sleep.
Just sex, she had called it. That might have been all it was to her, but to him…it had been so much more, so very, very much more.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WRAPPED in a delicious, warm lethargy, Lacey came slowly awake. She was conscious of an unfamiliar weight across her waist, an unfamiliar presence in her bed. She opened her eyes and stared in confusion at Lewis.
He was still fast asleep, his jaw dark with an overnight growth of beard. His hair was tousled, one tanned shoulder exposed where the sheet had slipped away. He smelled musky and male, the scent of his skin sending small skittering sensations racing over her skin.
She felt too relaxed to move, too lazy to…She tensed abruptly as she heard a sound downstairs.
Someone was opening the kitchen door, and running lightly upstairs.
Before Lacey could do a single thing to react to this knowledge her bedroom door was thrown open and Jessica came rushing in, announcing, ‘Ma, I’m sorry about going to see Dad without telling you first, but I—’
She stopped abruptly, her eyes rounding with shock as she focused on the dark head on the pillow next to Lacey’s, immediately starting to back towards the door, her face faintly flushed.
‘Jess!’
Beside her Lacey felt Lewis move and stretch and then sit up.
‘Dad…’
Jessica stared at them both, her shock and embarrassment replaced by a wide grin.
‘Well, of all the…And just how long has this been going on?’ she demanded teasingly. ‘What a pair of dark horses you two are! There’s me, thinking…worrying that…and all the time the two of you…’ She came over to the bed, her face alight with happiness, flinging her arms around them both as she exclaimed, ‘Oh, this is wonderful…brilliant! I can’t believe it! The two of you together!’ She sat down on the bed, happiness radiating out from her, while Lacey stared at her in consternation, trying desperately to find a way to halt her excited chatter and put right her misconceptions.
She knew that, beside her, Lewis was now fully awake, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She knew that he must be feeling as shocked and disconcerted as she was herself. After all, how on earth did one explain to their obviously deliriously delighted daughter that, far from having romantically come together, they…
‘So you approve, then, do you Jess?’
Lewis’s wry question broke into Lacey’s frantic thoughts, halting them.
‘Well, I must say, when I walked in here and realised that there was a strange man in bed with Ma I was a little taken aback,’ Jessica was replying mock severely to him. ‘But once I realised it was you…Oh, for goodness’ sake! How long has this been going on? And I knew nothing about it! It’s so romantic after all these years…the two of you getting back together. When’s the wedding?’ She laughed. ‘I hope you’re not expecting me to play bridesmaid.’
Lacey was too appalled to speak. She had gone through shock, embarrassment, disbelief, and now she felt she was incapable of registering any more emotions but someone had to say something…do something before the whole thing got completely out of hand, and, since Lewis didn’t seem to be going to do so, it was up to her…
She took a deep breath.
‘Jessica, this isn’t—’
Beneath the bedclothes, Lewis reached for her hand and gripped it warningly. ‘What your mother’s trying to say is that we haven’t got as far as making any formal plans yet.’
‘But you are definitely getting back together. Well, you must be,’Jessica said cheerfully. ‘I know Ma, and there’s just no way she’d be here in bed with you like this if that weren’t the case—’
‘Look, why don’t you go downstairs and put the kettle on? Give your mother and me a chance to make ourselves respectable,’ Lewis suggested, interrupting her.
‘OK, I’ll give you just ten minutes, and if you’re not both downstairs by then…’
As she walked towards the door, Jessica stopped and turned back to look at them, tears sparkling in her eyes.
‘Oh, I can’t tell you how much this means to me—both of you together. It’s…it’s…it’s brill…simply brill.’
She turned round and was gone, leaving Lacey looking helplessly at Lewis, her forehead creased with anxiety and concern, her own emotions, her own feelings of embarrassment and guilt forgotten as she worried about Jessica’s reaction when she learned the truth.
Before she could speak, Lewis said quietly, ‘Whether we like it or not, it seems that for the present at least you and I are going to have to play along with Jessica’s belief that we’re reunited and passionately in love.’
‘No, we can’t do that.’
‘What do you suggest as an alternative?’ His mouth twisted cynically. ‘Telling her that, contrary to her romantic beliefs, we just went to bed together for sex?’
The brutality of it made her feel sick, filling her w
ith anguished self-disgust. She had known all along that it was only desire, lust that had motivated him, but hearing him put it so clinically, so coldly made her want to weep with chagrin and despair.
‘Is that what you want?’ he demanded insistently.
Lacey shook her head, unable to look at him.
‘Look,’ his voice softened a little, ‘I know this isn’t easy for either of us, but we have to put our own feelings to one side and think of Jessica. It obviously means a great deal to her that we’ve—as she thinks—reconciled our differences and come together again. What harm can it really do to allow her to go on believing that for a little while? At the very least it will give us time to gently find a way of telling her that we don’t think it’s going to work out after all. But if you insist on telling her the truth…now…’
Lacey shook her head. How could she do that after the way she had seen Jessica react to the sight of them together? If she told her daughter now that they had just been indulging in cold, loveless sex…She swallowed hard. How could she do…? No, Lewis was right. They would have to wait.
‘Shall I get dressed first and go down and keep Jess occupied? It will give you time to come to terms with—’
‘With what?’ she demanded bitterly. ‘With lying to my own daughter…with pretending that you and I…?’ She couldn’t go on. Her throat was too thick with tears.
This was all her fault…hers and no one else’s. If she hadn’t made it so plain to Lewis that she wanted him…desired him…She felt sick with self-mortification, with guilt.
Lewis started to get out of bed. She turned her head away.
‘About last night,’ she heard him say, but she shook her head in denial.
‘No, please, Lewis. I can’t talk about it now. Dear God, why on earth did Jessica have to find us like this?’
IT WAS A question Lacey was forced to ask herself over and over again in the days that followed.
Far from containing the damage already done, the fact that they were allowing Jessica to believe that they had been reconciled and were making plans for the future only seemed to exacerbate it. Jessica, it seemed, couldn’t contain her delight in what she considered to be their good news.