by Penny Jordan
The little things, like leaning over her as he studied her work, were nothing, taken on their own, but each time her body was made physically aware of him, of the sight and smell of him, until her nerves were tightening in apprehension every time he came within a yard of her. He hadn’t suggested she share his bed again. In fact he had unearthed a padded sleeping-bag which she now slept in downstairs. This morning he had come downstairs wearing only jeans and had proceeded to wash at the kitchen sink, claiming that the kitchen was warmer than the bathroom, and although she had tried hard not to look at him, time and time again her eyes had been drawn to the muscled sleekness of his back, brown from constant exposure to the sun, as though he was in the habit of spending many months a year abroad. Her imagination tortured her with brief, fleeting images of his body, of him, lounging indolently on some beach, very probably with a beautiful woman.
Of the two of them, she knew who had accomplished the most work—and it wasn’t her. Oh, she pretended to work all right, forcing herself to study the books she had brought with her, but all the time acutely conscious of Race working on the other side of the table, his concentration a true and patently deep one. She knew he cared nothing for her as a person. He wanted her physically and his pride was wounded because she had withstood him; there were a hundred or more reasons why she should keep him at bay, and she was intelligent enough to know them all. So why did she lie awake at night thinking of him, wishing she was sharing the large double bed with him, wishing that lean, powerful male body was her only covering?
Desire, without love, was something she didn’t want to experience, but Race exerted a magnetic pull on her senses which was fed by her love for him, and she was bitterly afraid that with every day that passed her ability to hold him at bay was lessening. She tried to concentrate on her writing, knowing it was impossible when a mediaeval de Travers who had defied his family to fight alongside Richard III took on all Race’s physical attributes, and the girl he loved, a cousin who Heather had intended would reject him in favour of a staunchly Lancastrian neighbour, gave herself to him with an intensity of passion that startled Heather when she eventually read what she had written.
She was no fool, and her mouth compressed a little grimly when she had finished with the typewritten sheets. What she had written about there were her own feelings, her own desires, and they had been powerful enough to change the course of her book. Even so, she couldn’t bring herself to change what she had written.
She glanced across at Race, the dark head bent over some papers of his own, his involvement in what he was reading total. When he wasn’t deliberately making her aware of him, he ignored her completely, a subtle form of torture that Heather was intelligent enough to recognise, but not emotionally strong enough to withstand. She glanced out of the window. After brilliant sunshine for almost two days, the sky was starting to cloud again. A thaw had been forecast, but Race had mocked her when he heard it, warning her that they were high up enough not to be affected by it.
How much longer would her self-control last? She knew exactly by what degree, daily, her heartbeat accelerated when Race tormented her by stripping in front of her while he washed at the sink, a ploy which she knew to be completely deliberate, and the effectiveness of which she refused to acknowledge by leaving the room, maintaining a pretence of indifference to his body which she was far from feeling. That and a dozen or so gestures similarly designed to make her aware of him were fast undermining her control, and Race, she was sure, knew it.
CHAPTER SIX
‘WE’RE out of logs, I’d better go and get some more.’
The laconic comment was no different from the half a dozen or so others Race had addressed to Heather during the last couple of days. His glance encompassed her body, clad in the protection of socks, jeans and a thick woollen jumper worn over a much finer under-one, as he got up, and added, ‘I must say I’d welcome a thaw, it will be nice to get back to civilisation, to see a woman who acts like a woman.’
His comment was too acutely perceptive, but Heather remained unruffled. She had plenty of pretty and attractive clothes with her that she could have worn and which would have kept her equally warm, but her inner defence mechanism had urged her to choose the least feminine things in her wardrobe, as though by muffling herself up and distorting the shape of her body she could hold Race at bay more easily.
It wasn’t the first time he had been out to get more logs, and Heather wasn’t too disturbed when fifteen minutes slipped by without him returning. It was her day to prepare lunch and she had made a pie from some tinned meat, adding her own pastry; a little stodgy perhaps, she thought, pulling a slight face and hoping that she wouldn’t have put on too much weight during her enforced stay.
When Race had been gone half an hour she began to worry. She opened the back door, shivering in the icy wind that lashed against the cottage, frowning over the footprints that led away from the house in the direction of the lane. Fear, as cold and icy as the wind, clutched at her heart. Had Race gone and left her? Blind panic assailed her, overriding every tenet of logic, her mind unable to cope with anything other than the evidence of those footprints leading away from the house and Race’s patent absence.
Perhaps he had got tired of playing games with her, of tormenting her, and perhaps he was yearning, as he had said this morning, for other and more congenial female companionship? Did he intend to leave her here? Was this another part of her punishment?
Shivering with cold and reaction, she closed the kitchen door, leaning tiredly against it. She would give him another fifteen minutes and if he hadn’t returned at the end of that time she would…. She would go after him, she decided grimly. If he could make it to the village then so could she. She would show him that she was just as capable of leaving as he was, that she detested his company as much as he did hers, that he wasn’t alone in wanting to escape their enforced intimacy.
Twenty minutes later, clad in her wellington boots, her thick hooded jacket pulled over her jumpers and firmly zipped up, thick mittens covering her hands, Heather stepped outside. It had started to snow again, thick swirling flakes that stuck to her eyelashes and tasted cold on her tongue, but she followed doggedly in Race’s footsteps, her breathing growing laboured as the cold bit into her lungs and tore at her skin, the milling flakes, half blinding her as she bent her body against the wind, refusing to give in to the inner voice that urged her to go back to the cottage and warmth.
‘Heather!’
The first time she heard her name she thought she was hallucinating, but the second time she stopped, straightening up to discover its source.
‘Heather, just what the hell do you think you’re doing?’ This time she recognised Race’s voice, and the barely suppressed anger it contained. He was walking towards her—from the cottage, snowflakes clinging to his shoulders and chest.
‘Surely you’re not that much of a coward? Or is death really preferable to me?’
‘Oh, Race!’ Heather barely registered his taunting comment. She covered the short distance between them, flinging herself against his body, wrapping her arms round him in her relief to see him, sobbing his name between shaken breaths. ‘I thought you’d left me,’ she told him huskily. ‘I saw your footprints, and….’
‘I was just seeing how deep the snow was, estimating our chances of getting out,’ he told her, but his tone was absent, as though there was something more important on his mind than the possible length of their imprisonment. He was looking at her with an expression in his eyes that made her catch her breath, her lips unknowingly parting in mute invitation, sweetly hot pleasure firing her blood as he pulled off his gloves and unzipped her jacket to slide his hands beneath her jumper and mould her body, her name thickly unfamiliar on his lips as his fingers bit into her shoulders and his mouth touched exploratively against her lips, his eyes glittering darkly between half closed lids as he muttered something explosively under his breath and then possessed her mouth in a kiss that fed the need sh
e had felt building up inside her for days.
She was starving, starving for the touch and warmth of him, for this hungry assault of desire that matched her own need, for the hard pressure of his body against her, and she was drowning, melting fathoms deep in pleasure, when he pulled away, his movements jerky as he closed her jacket, his face grimly shuttered as he turned her round to face the house and said, ‘Come on, let’s get back before we freeze.’
But she wasn’t freezing, Heather thought light-headedly, she was melting, burning up with a need that whispered siren-like for appeasement, urging her to take what was offered and enjoy it. Race might not love her, but he would be an excellent lover. Her body knew it and turned traitor to her mind. The torment of thinking he had gone, of thinking that she had lost him turned the key that locked the door of her self-control, her only barrier against what she felt for him. Now with that standing open she felt feverish with the desire she had striven to keep hidden, her body pulsating with hunger and need.
When they reached the cottage reality intruded, and she kept her face averted from Race’s as she stripped off her jacket and boots, knowing that behind her he was doing the same thing.
Two courses were open to her now. She could either pretend that nothing had happened and trust that Race would follow her lead, but if she did that she would have to endure the knowledge that he knew how she had felt, that she had wanted him, but that she had been too cowardly to admit it. The other alternative made her body tingle with fire and apprehension, but what was the point of denying herself?
All right, so he didn’t love her, but he wanted her, and with him her body would experience a pleasure she would never find with anyone else. But what about afterwards? What about when he was tired of her, when she was alone….
She would have her memories, she told herself stubbornly, her body playing the devil’s advocate, urging her to give in to the wild flood of desire invading her body. This morning she had experienced for one brief hour the agony of losing him. How on earth was she going to cope with hundreds of such hours? Why try to deceive herself that he would not tire of her? She was sexually inexperienced, no match for his expertise, she was a challenge that once conquered would lose appeal, but none of it was strong enough to hold back her physical longing for him.
Thinking he had left her had forced upon her a crisis point, and which road she took from it depended entirely on her. Race hadn’t said a word about the kiss they had shared, but she was willing to bet that he knew almost exactly what she had felt, apart from the fact that he did not know that she loved him, and that was only because as far as he was concerned it was an emotion that simply did not exist. He thought she was motivated by desire as he was himself, and wasn’t there a certain element of safety in letting him continue to think that? A salve for her pride when eventually he left her.
Without conscious thought the decision had been reached, but to carry it through demanded a resolution she wasn’t sure she possessed. Race had eaten the meal she had served, his eyes narrowing over her own untouched plate, his mouth curling slightly as he drawled, ‘Not hungry?’
Now was her chance, all she had to say was ‘not for food’, all she had to do was look at him with the same naked hunger she had once seen in his eyes… but somehow her nerve failed her and she shook her head, half stumbling as she got up to remove their plates, Race’s hands on her waist steadying her, his lips warm against her ear as he murmured, ‘Coward….’
He knew! He knew exactly what she was feeling, thinking, and he wasn’t going to make it easy for her. She was pretty sure he had told her he would make her beg in a fit of the temper Jennifer told her he possessed, but in the cold light of day enough damage had been done to his pride by her rejection for him to want to make her suffer. But she couldn’t ask him to make love to her, she couldn’t!
During the afternoon a further thaw was forecast, and when Race went to close the curtains, he told Heather that it was raining.
‘We could be out of here by tomorrow,’ he added, ‘unless it starts to freeze again. You’d better pray that it doesn’t, I think,’ he added softly, and Heather knew he was aware of how dangerously close to losing her self-control she was.
It was his turn to cook dinner, and when he suggested a small celebration, she looked at him suspiciously. ‘We might as well celebrate the commencement of the thaw, although that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I brought this with me,’ he told her wryly, indicating a bottle of champagne.
Her cheeks still flushed by the implication of his words, Heather escaped upstairs. One more night and then she would be free. So why did she feel so depressed?
She already knew the answer. She studied her clothes absently, unaware that she was reaching for the folds of the one dress she had brought with her, ‘just in case’, until her fingers brushed the soft fabric. In soft wool, the material had a vaguely tartan design in reds and blacks. The dress buttoned down the front, the collar and cuffs white, the collar faintly puritan. Even before she put it on Heather knew she had chosen the road she intended to take, and resolutely she blinded her mind to all the objections it could raise. Why shouldn’t she have tonight? Why shouldn’t she have the bitter-sweet pleasure of knowing Race’s lovemaking?
She dressed carefully, the new underwear Jennifer had bought her, her favourite perfume, sheer silk stockings and careful make-up, all surely ridiculous when one thought of the remoteness and coldness of the cottage, but just for tonight.
On the point of fastening her dress, she changed her mind, quickly unhooking her bra and putting it away. She had always considered her breasts a little too full for her to go bra-less, but tonight there was something about their soft roundness beneath the fine wool that made her fingers tremble over the buttons as she quickly fastened them before she could change her mind.
Going downstairs was one of the hardest things she had ever done. Race looked up just before she reached the bottom, not saying a word, but his eyes registered every detail of her appearance.
‘It seems we’re celebrating with a vengeance,’ he said at last, and Heather was glad the muted glow of the oil lamps hid her flushed cheeks from him.
‘Well, it might be our last night,’ she told him lightly, ‘we’ll soon be back in civilisation.’
‘If you wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on the meal I could make some attempt to do justice to your… metamorphosis.’
Heather wondered at the pause before the last word, trying to guess what he was thinking, if he had been deceived by her claim that she had changed simply because it was their last night, or if he had guessed…. There was no indication of his feelings to be read in his expression and she nodded mutely, walking into the kitchen to check on the chicken chasseur cooking in the oven.
Race came back just as she was on the verge of succumbing to a fit of nerves. He had changed into dark, well-fitting pants that clung to his hips and stretched tautly over his thighs as he came downstairs. His shirt was a pale blur in the half-light, open slightly at the throat, his lean fingers busily inserting links into his cuff as he came towards her.
He had found a tin of grapefruit which they had for a starter; the wine he had chilled outside the door was clear and refreshing to Heather’s palate. She was normally the most moderate of drinkers, but something in the coolly level grey gaze made her drink more quickly than usual. Would he make her speak her need? Could she?
As she sipped her wine she felt her nerves quieting, and she made no demur when Race refilled her glass, watching him with a building core of sensual excitement as he served the chicken. Every movement he made was economical, and intensely male. The pale silk of his shirt tightened over his body as he served her chicken and she was consumed by a longing to reach out and touch him, to place her lips to the exposed column of his throat and let her tongue delicately explore the tanned flesh.
‘Is that enough, Heather?’ The sound of his voice jerked her out of her daydream, her cheeks flushing hotly as she realised
he had witnessed her absorption.
She could barely touch her food, buoyed up with a nervous excitement that fed on the sight of him in front of her just as the wine she was drinking lent her courage.
When they had finished eating she offered to make the coffee. Race wasn’t going to make it easy for her, she knew that now. He had poured them both a glass of champagne and he was seated before the fire, leaning back against the settee, legs outthrust in front of him. He wasn’t going to make it easy for her at all, but how could she simply ask him to make love to her? She couldn’t. But she could show him what she wanted, and hope that his desire for her would do the rest and that he wouldn’t demand full payment for earlier rejection.
Her hands were shaking when she carried the coffee through into the living room. She put her own cup down on a small table by the fire and then took Race’s cup to him. There was a table on the opposite side of the settee, and he looked up at her through lashes that concealed his expression too well from her as she approached.
‘Put it down here for me, would you, Heather?’ he said softly, indicating the table.
She could have walked round and put the cup down on the table, but instead she leaned across him, one hand holding the cup, the other bracing herself against the back of the settee. She knew the action deliberately and tantalisingly outlined the rounded curve of her breasts, and was half appalled at the deliberate enticement of her movements. She had never done anything like this before. She knew Race was watching her, his eyes lingering openly on her body, and excitement tingled through her, curling through the pit of her stomach.
‘Thanks.’ The laconic word crushed her fantasies of being taken in his arms, the blow to her pride shatteringly humiliating, the urge to run away and hide herself from him compellingly urgent, so urgent that she barely realised that he was still talking until his fingers circled her wrist, holding her where she was, his voice softly tormenting as he murmured, ‘What’s the matter, Heather? Did I do something to offend you? Or was it something I didn’t do? It isn’t very nice to be rejected, is it, and I take it that’s what all this is about?’