by Penny Jordan
‘But knowing that, how can anyone commit their lives to another person?’ The anguish in Lucy’s eyes struck a chord deep within her own heart. How indeed? she could have said, but instead she reached for Lucy’s hand, tanned, and faintly grubby, but already showing signs of the beauty the girl would one day possess.
‘Quite easily. I can’t find the words to explain to you how it happens Lucy. I do understand how you feel; when I was not very much older than you something happened to me that made me feel as though I could never trust anyone else again as long as I lived—and certainly never love them.’ Engrossed in trying to reassure Lucy, Genista didn’t hear the faint sounds betraying the fact that they were no longer alone. ‘But I did, and when you love you’re willing to risk all the uncertainties in the world. That’s something which is inherent in every human being. You wait and see. Love, true, proper love, does cast out all fear, which is what we’re talking about, isn’t it? The fear of something going wrong; of being hurt. When I fell in love with…’ A twig snapped underfoot, and Genista spun round. Luke was leaning against a tree trunk several yards away. His face had gone white.
‘Uncle Luke!’ Lucy raced towards him and the look of bitter hatred Genista had seen in his eyes was banished instantly.
Lucy chattered ceaselessly to him all the way back to the house, pausing only to draw breath.
‘We went riding this morning,’ she confided. ‘I think Mr Lawson really fancied Genista. He couldn’t stop looking at her, could he?’
She turned to Genista for corroboration. Although the path was broad enough for three, she had fallen back, unable to bear such close proximity to Luke.
‘I’ve already told you,’ Genista replied lightly, ‘I suspect he flirts a little with all his lady customers. I wasn’t sure what to do about dinner,’ she told Luke. ‘I’ve prepared a salad and I thought we’d have steak with it…’
‘Have whatever you like,’ Luke told her curtly. ‘I’m dining out.’
Lucy pulled a face, but he wouldn’t be swayed. He went upstairs when they entered the house, and Genista dawdled in the kitchen, not wanting to go into the bedroom while he was still there.
Lucy wanted to watch a particular television programme and she had gone up to her bedroom to do so when Genista heard the kitchen door open. Luke was dressed elegantly in soft suede cream pants and a dark blue silk shirt, a leather jacket in his hand. His clothes, although expensive, were not the sort Genista would have expected him to wear for a business meeting, and jealousy tore at her with red-hot claws as she envisaged the sort of surroundings for which such casual clothes might be worn—a nightclub perhaps; a fashionable restaurant, but with whom? Her mouth tightened. So much for Luke’s instructions that Lucy was not to be allowed to suspect how things were between them! A hundred angry words clamoured for utterance, but all she could say was, ‘Is this how you expect to convince Lucy that we’re in love? By going out and leaving us alone?’
‘She’d be far more disillusioned if I stayed,’ Luke said harshly. ‘Because the way I feel at the moment, I’m liable to throttle you. And don’t bother to wait up for me.’
The phone rang as the Maserati roared down the drive, and Genista answered it. A woman with a smokily seductive voice asked for Luke and when Genista said that he had gone out, she laughed softly.
‘Good. I thought he might be late, but he’s remembered that I hate to be kept waiting.’
Genista could barely touch the steak. Images of Luke dining in some candlelit restaurant with the owner of the huskily wanton voice tormented her. She would not be a naïve virgin! She would know everything there was to know about pleasing a man, it had all been there in her voice.’
After dinner they would dance, perhaps, Luke holding her close enough to his body for her to feel every sinuous movement, and then later….
‘Genista! Are you all right?’
Lucy’s concerned voice brought her abruptly back to the dining table, and the mutilated roll lying in pieces on her plate.
‘I’m fine.’ Only she wasn’t. Her legs felt dreadfully weak, and silly tears weren’t far away.
‘Well, I think it’s really mean of Uncle Luke to work tonight.’
‘I expect it was something unavoidable,’ Genista said lightly, trying not to let her voice tremble. She pushed away her strawberries and cream untouched. ‘If you don’t mind, Lucy, I think I’ll have an early night. I’m feeling dreadfully tired for some reason. It must be all that fresh air.’
‘Mm, I’m feeling quite sleepy myself. I want to write to Mother, so I’ll have an early night as well. Shall I do the washing up for you?’
There was a luxurious dishwasher in the kitchen, but nevertheless they did the washing up between them, Genista finding comfort in the mechanically routine task. Lucy chatted about her school as they worked, and Genista learned that despite the younger girl’s averred dislike of school, in reality she had a keen interest in literature and the arts.
‘Have you ever thought of becoming a librarian?’ Genista suggested, when Lucy was bemoaning the lack of opportunities for people with an arts degree. ‘And it needn’t be merely library work, although that in itself is a very good career. Television and radio stations often need researchers; if your qualifications are good enough you could get a super job.’
It was something which Lucy had obviously not thought of previously, and by the time they had exhausted the subject it was later than Genista had realised.
She tried to soak away some of her tension in a hot bath, secure in the knowledge that Luke was hardly likely to leave his companion at ten-thirty to come rushing back to his unwanted wife!
She scented the water generously with her favourite bath oil and lay back, trying to force her tense muscles to relax.
Afterwards she wrapped herself in a huge fluffy peach towel and started to dry her hair.
The bedroom she shared with Luke was obviously the master bedroom.
In addition to the bedroom itself, there was a bathroom, luxuriously equipped and tiled with toning sanitary ware in shades of coffee and brown. The bath was huge, and set into the floor—more than adequate for two people, Genista had reflected, before she realised the direction her unwary thoughts were taking.
Off the bedroom was a dressing room lined with fitted wardrobes, all mirror-fronted. Luke had indicated that she was to make use of them, and she had hung her few clothes in one small corner. She would need to make a trip to London to collect the rest of her things. Luke had barely given her time on their brief call on the way back from Cumbria. She also wanted to collect her car.
Her hair lay over her shoulders in a cascade of russet silk. The bedroom was decorated in shades of toning peach and coffee; neither too masculine nor fluffily feminine. Genista loved the pure cotton sheets and beautiful handmade bedspread. The sheets felt blissfully cool as she slid beneath them. She heard the grandfather clock in the hall strike eleven as she closed her eyes.
Genista opened her eyes. The bedroom was all in darkness, and at first she couldn’t place the sound that had woken her. Outside she heard an owl and shivered, shrinking back against the pillows as a shadow detached itself from the wall.
‘Luke!’
‘Who did you think it was?’ he drawled unkindly. ‘Bob? or Trevor Lawson?’
She had no defence against him in this mood. He stood silhouetted by the window, his body powerfully lithe in the hip hugging cream pants, his shirt unfastened, as he started to remove it.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me if I enjoyed my evening?’
His goading touched a painful nerve. She sat up in bed, unaware of the purity of her features in the moonlight, her hair spread round her like a soft cloak.
‘I didn’t realise wifely concern was supposed to be part of our bargain. What do you want me to do? Ask how much you enjoyed making love to another woman? Marriage to me was an expensive price to pay for satisfying your lust, Luke, especially now that you no longer want me.’
‘
What makes you think that?’ His tone was softly jeering. ‘And as for being satisfied…’
Her heart seemed to have lodged in the back of her throat. She made a small sound of protest, muffled beneath the hands which lifted her from the bed, removing her thin cotton covering to reveal every slender contour of her quivering flesh.
‘Some appetites are fed by starvation,’ Luke said slowly, his eyes beginning a slow inspection of the moonlit flesh beneath his hands. ‘And others thrive on feeding.’
Meaning, no doubt, that his desire for her was in no way diminished by having spent the last few hours in someone else’s arms, Genista thought, trying to quell her growing feeling of nausea. She wouldn’t let him make love to her merely to satisfy a need!
She started to tell him so, fear silencing her as she saw savage hunger in his eyes. Perhaps his evening had not been as successful as she had imagined. Perhaps his girl-friend had deliberately led him on, teasing and enticing but withholding herself, and she was merely being used as a vehicle to slake his thirst for someone else. She thought she had experienced every pain it was possible for a human being to experience, but now she knew that this was not so. The thought that Luke was contemplating making love for her purely for physical release brought an agony that made her feel physically ill.
‘I’m tired, Luke…’ She couldn’t bring herself to look at him as she uttered the lie, but she hoped it would have the desired effect and that he would release her. His thumbs were stroking the inner flesh of her wrists seductively, and she wanted nothing so much as to melt passionately against him, feeling him stir with the same primitive force which was already weakening her resistance.
‘Tired? Can’t you think of a better excuse than that?’
‘All right then, I don’t want you,’ Genista lied desperately. ‘I hate you touching me, Luke. I wish you’d go away and leave me alone…’
‘Oh, I shall,’ he said softly through gritted teeth, ‘but not until I’ve made you beg and plead for me to stay with you, Genista. Before tonight’s over that cool, frosty little voice of yours will be sobbing my name, ragged with passion—A passion I already know you can experience.’
His own voice had taken on a deeper timbre which found an answering chord deep inside her. She longed to refute his words, but her tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of her mouth, preventing speech whilst an intense longing pulsated within her. In the moon-shadowed room she could see Luke’s dark outline; the tanned flesh of his chest, rising lightly with his breathing, the lean tautness of his hips, the powerful muscles of his thighs, roughened with their light covering of dark hair beneath his cream pants. He came towards her and she retreated instinctively, until she was pressing herself back against the bed, her body tensing as she waited for him to touch her. His hands either side of her head on the pillow imprisoned her, his lean body only inches away, as he lowered his head and touched her lips almost experimentally.
She tried to avoid the caress, twisting her head frantically away, but each time she did so her cheek brushed the hard warmth of his hands, while her own were held rigidly at her sides for fear they might inadvertently come into contact with Luke’s body.
His lips moved from her mouth to her cheek. She turned away desperately, realising her mistake when her lips immediately came into contact with Luke’s. He made no attempt to hurry the kiss, taking his time, forcing her lips to part for him, and still he made no other attempt to touch her. She tensed in anticipation of the sensual demand implicit in the intimacy of his kiss, but it never came, instead just when all her own yearning desire rose up inside her to overcome the barriers of her self-control, her lips were released, their hunger unappeased, the briefly tantalising kisses pressed lightly on her face no compensation for the abrupt cessation of the drugging pressure of his mouth on hers.
Genista endured the torment as long as she could, willing herself not to humiliate herself any further by allowing him to see how much he had already aroused her. If she just forced herself to endure his deliberate arousal a little while longer he was sure to grow bored with the game and release her. But she was soon forced to confess that his control was the greater, as minute succeeded long, agonising minute and every part of her body was urging her to bury her fingers in the thick dark hair growing low on the nape of his neck, and unashamedly hold his mouth against hers to complete that kiss he had broken off so cruelly.
Her body ached for his touch. She had to close her eyes against the sudden intruding recollection of his tanned fingers cupping the creamy softness of her breast, stroking it into urgent fullness, before moving downwards, coaxing from her unawakened body the responses which had eventually driven her into his arms in a frenzy of need.
It wouldn’t be that way this time, she told herself. She mustn’t allow it to be that way, but as his breath warmed her throat and her body traitorously remembered all she had willed it to forget, a soft, husky sound broke past her closed lips.
She stilled the soft whimper immediately, but not before Luke had heard it.
‘It’s not quite as easy as you thought, is it, Genista?’ he taunted softly. ‘It’s hard to be high and mighty when your body is crying out for satisfaction, isn’t it? Well, now you know how I felt. Did you think I enjoyed it?’ he demanded savagely, ‘Do you think any man enjoys wanting a woman the way I wanted you?’
‘Wanting without loving is…degrading!’ Genista flung at him, close to tears.
‘Do you think I don’t know that? But that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible, so come down off your cloud and acknowledge that you’re a human being, just like any other.’
She told herself that he just wanted to humiliate her; just wanted some sort of warped revenge because he resented having wanted her, but when he pinned her wildly thrashing hands behind her back and let his lips wander at will over the pale silkiness of her body, she was soon far beyond caring. His lightest touch seemed to ignite fires she had never dreamed could burn; reveal a sensuality she had never known she possessed, and while her mind writhed in humiliated agony at the punishment he was deliberately inflicting her body responded with an intensity which seemed to feed his deep hunger.
His name rose sobbingly to her lips, cried wrenchingly through mingled pleasure and pain, and although she glimpsed satisfaction in his eyes as he raised his head to acknowledge his victory, the hard pressure of his hands was not withdrawn, the torment continuing until she could bear her self-imposed restraints no longer and her fingers trembled in anguish against his skin, their mutual passion blazing up into an inferno which carried them both over the edge of the earth to a place where nothing mattered but the dousing of its flames.
‘Please, Luke!’ Genista murmured weakly at one point when the withholding of his ultimate possession was an agony she could no longer endure.
Salty tears poured down her cheeks, her pride was in tatters, but she no longer cared. All she wanted was the pleasure of Luke’s complete possession. His skin tasted of salt and sweat, and she touched it with a hunger which she could no longer hide, shaking with the depth of her need, pleading mutely for the final act which would turn them from two separate human beings into one complete entity. His arms slid round her, holding her against him, his breathing harshly ragged. She could feel the hard pressure of his desire, and melted on a soundless moan beneath the fierce pressure of a kiss which drove back the final barriers, as at last he answered the unspoken plea of her body.
She knew with some inner instinct she had not known she possessed that for him this was the first time he had fully possessed her without holding back, and tinging her despair that she had given way so easily to the seduction of her senses was triumph that for a few brief seconds at least he had wanted her every bit as desperately as she had wanted him.
Later, when she was on the verge of sleep, he leaned over her, cupping her face, so that he could watch her eyes.
‘Never tell me again that you don’t want me,’ he told her cruelly. ‘Please, Luke…’ The savage mimic
ry of her pleas to him made her blench. ‘Perhaps I should have recorded it, just to remind myself of what you’re like when you’re a woman. I could have played it to Bob, and let him know what he’s missing.’
Nothing had changed, Genista thought, as the tears rolled silently down her cheeks, and she had been a fool to think it might just be because they had shared a few ecstatic seconds of pleasure. For her, what she had given to Luke had been given with love, but he had taken with revenge and lust, and that was something she must always remember.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SHE was alone again when she woke up, so much so that she might have doubted that the elemental lovemaking of the previous evening had ever taken place had it not been for the faint bruises on her arms, and the memory of how her body had responded with pagan abandon to Luke’s mastery.
She and Lucy went to London after an early lunch. Lucy was enchanted with the teenage fashions in the shops, and Genista watched her indulgently, knowing that despite her outer care-free air inwardly her thoughts were on her parents.
They had afternoon tea at Fortnum’s—a treat which very much appealed, if Lucy’s wide-eyed appreciation was anything to go by—and afterwards they went back to Genista’s apartment.
‘You did get married in a rush, didn’t you?’ Lucy commented as Genista opened her wardrobe door. ‘What a gorgeous fur!’ she exclaimed enviously, spotting Genista’s fox jacket. ‘I wouldn’t have left that behind.’
‘I don’t normally have much use for it in June,’ Genista told her dryly. Seeing her winter clothes hanging in the cupboard reminded her painfully that by winter she could very well be back in this apartment—alone. Only she knew how close she had come last night to breathing her love—only she knew that she had betrayed it. Every kiss, every caress had been an open admission of her feelings, but Luke did not know it. No doubt he was accustomed to women who treated sex in much the same way as a man—as an appetite to be indulged and then forgotten, whereas for her the act of love had been a culmination of all that she felt for him.