by Penny Jordan
After all, she had far too much to worry about right now to have the time to spare worrying about her emotional vulnerability to a man she hardly knew.
Just as she had far too much physical work to do to waste one single precious moment of it watching the clock and wondering frantically if Luke was actually going to appear, she admonished herself as she turned her head to glance quickly at the kitchen clock.
But if Luke didn’t arrive, how would she get the bedroom finished, and…?
If he didn’t arrive she had plenty of work to do in the garden, she told herself, and as for the bedroom…well, if the worst came to the worst, she would just have to revert to her original plan of decorating it herself. Granted, she would not be able to make it look as attractive, but at least it would be clean and fresh.
Last night she had told herself that if she never saw Luke again if would probably be for the best, and that opinion still held good.
So why was she tensing her body and glancing so anxiously at the clock? Why was she stretching her ears, trying to catch the sound of an approaching car? Why was she battling against the sharp bitter taste of disappointment and the pain that went with it? Surely not because she wanted to see Luke?
After all, she hardly knew the man. No, her heart corrected her. Her mind hardly knew him, but her body…her senses… She gave a small shudder as she tried to ignore what those same senses were trying to tell her, but they rebelliously refused to be silenced.
He had bewitched them, cast a spell on her stupid vulnerable body and emotions, she told herself angrily. It would serve him right if she took his kisses at face value and allowed herself to believe…
What? That he was falling in love with her? How ridiculous, her brain said scornfully, but where her heart and her emotions were concerned she knew that she was already fighting a rear-guard action, and had been doing so almost from the moment he had first kissed her.
It couldn’t be happening like this, she denied frantically. She couldn’t be falling in love with him. She wasn’t that stupid… She had already been hurt once, but instinct warned that the pain she had suffered over Paul would be like a small scratch compared to the mortal wound of the pain which Luke could inflict on her.
At ten-past ten Luke had not arrived. At half-past she suspected that he was not going to do so, but no matter how much she told herself stalwartly that it was all for the best her heart still ached, and when she put on her wellington boots and an old jacket so that she could go out and do some gardening her throat was tight with tears of disappointment and misery.
Once out in the garden it was impossible to know where to begin. What was presumably lawn looked like a field; where there had originally been flowerbeds was now a tangle of weeds, and it was only when she had pushed past the overgrown briars of what must have once been a rose-bed and spied the primroses growing beneath the unpruned suckers that she knew where her work was going to begin.
Half an hour later she had cleared a respectable breathing-space of rich clean soil around the plants. It was still only mid-April and a sharp keen wind whipped her hair into a tangle and stung her skin, but it wasn’t the wind that was responsible for the tears now dried to salt on her skin, tears which had seeped relentlessly from her eyes the whole time she was working.
Crying over a man she had known less than a handful of days. She was being ridiculous…diotic, but that didn’t stop her whole body tightening in a convulsion of shocked joy when a movement just beyond her vision caught her attention and she turned her head to see Luke walking towards her.
‘Sorry about this,’ he apologised as soon as he was within speaking distance, ‘but something came up, and, of course, without a damned telephone I couldn’t get in touch with you to let you know I was going to be late.’
The wind had blown his hair into a similar disorder to hers, ruffling it so that she could see its thick natural curl.
She discovered that she had childishly put her hands behind her back and realised that her gesture had been an instinctive attempt to stop herself from reaching out to touch him.
That alone betrayed how far she had already come down a path she had forbidden herself to tread. She was not a person who reached out easily or naturally to others to touch them. Her childhood had been devoid of that kind of physical contact, and even now, when she was fully adult, she often found herself shrinking back from physical contact with others.
Even more frighteningly, no matter how much she searched her memory she could find no recollection of ever having had that instinctive, automatic reflex need to reach out to Paul the way she has just almost done to Luke, but then she knew already that those feelings she had had for Paul, those feelings she had believed to be the beginnings of love, had been no more than a mild reflection of Paul’s own sexual desire for her. She had been flattered by his initial attention and because of that flattery, because of the great need within her to give and receive love, she had deceived herself into thinking she loved him. Her feelings then had grown tentatively, uncertainly and slowly.
What she felt now for Luke was totally different; the emotions she felt towards him had literally burst into life overnight. One moment, or so it seemed, she had had no knowledge of his existence; the next…the next he had kissed her, and with that kiss he had either cast a spell on her or touched her so powerfully emotionally that she was now unable to do so much as feel her heart beat without thinking of him.
It made no difference how many times she told herself that she didn’t want these feelings; that she was being a fool and worse…that she was going to be hurt. It made no difference how many stern resolutions she made when she was apart from him, as the moment she saw him they were all swept away by the magnetic pull he had on her emotions.
Love at first sight. A ridiculous fairy-tale, a fantasy; impossible to believe in, impossible to trust.
‘You’ve been working hard,’ Luke praised.
He bent down to admire the primrose she had revealed and as he did so she caught the scent of his skin, warm and male against the coldness of the fresh air. A wave of dizziness trembled through her, an immediate physical reaction to his nearness that was so acute that it made her heart thunder and her pulses race.
‘What made you start here?’ he asked her with some amusement as he stood up and surveyed the wilderness all around them.
Logically Melanie supposed that she might more properly have started work at some more organised point, and she flushed a little as she explained to him how the primroses had caught her eye, and how she had felt she must free them from their choking burden of weeds.
‘They seemed so…so alone somehow. I wanted to help them, to show them that someone cared.’
Her voice faltered and then stopped as she realised she was making a complete fool of herself, a feeling which was confirmed when Luke said softly, ‘Is that why you’ve been crying? Because you felt sorry for the primroses?’
‘I wasn’t crying,’ she fibbed. ‘It was just the wind. I’m not used to living in the country; to being outside; it made my eyes water.’
She might have got away with it if she hadn’t started to turn away from him, desperately anxious that he shouldn’t make any further comments about her tear-stained face, but even as she moved he was moving too.
One hand on her shoulder, Luke turned her firmly and easily into the warmth of his body while the other cupped her face, his thumb stroking the skin which was stained with her tears.
His scent…that scent which was particularly his was all around her now, dizzying her; bewitching her.
As he lowered his head, he whispered softly against her ear, ‘Lucky primroses to have you to shed tears for them and rescue them,’ and then his mouth was on her skin, his tongue tenderly licking away the salty traces of her tears.
Her knees felt as though they were about to buckle beneath her. She must have moved, although she had no conscious awareness of having done so, only of being closer to him—so close that she could feel
the steady thud of his heart, which was quickly becoming far less steady as his body registered her nearness and reacted to her with such frank maleness that she tensed instinctively. Not in rejection, but perhaps a little in shock. It was still all so new to her; this intimacy which he seemed to take so much for granted; it was still a source of such amazement to her that her closeness could arouse him so quickly and so erotically.
She hadn’t spoken, hadn’t even tried to break the embrace, but he must have registered that tiny locking of her muscles because his tongue tip stopped its delicious caressing of her skin, and his mouth moved to her ear, where he murmured, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t intend that to happen.’ As he spoke he eased his body slightly away from hers, but his hand was still cupping her face, and somehow or other the gentle pressure of his fingers was forcing her to look up at him so that he could see right into her eyes.
‘The trouble is,’ he whispered against her mouth, ‘you have an effect on me I find impossible to control. Right now there’s nothing I want more than to take you to bed and make love to you.’
Hearing it put so openly into words panicked her. She tried to pull away from him, almost gabbling, ‘No…no, I can’t…it’s…’
‘Too soon,’ he supplied wryly for her, not, as she had half feared, either taking offence or appearing resentful. ‘Yes, I know that, and I also want you to know that I’m not in the habit of behaving like this.’
Both hands were now cupping her face, his thumbs stroking her skin, soothing her jangling nerves, calming her frantic panic, the slow sound of his voice almost mesmeric.
Even so she still managed to tell him shakily, ‘That wasn’t the impression I got the first time we met.’
He laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling slightly, amusement curling his mouth, as he teased gently, ‘Wasn’t it?’
He was looking directly into her eyes. She had no idea what it was he saw there, but suddenly his own expression changed, the amusement dying to be replaced by a sombre, deeper scrutiny that made her nerves tense with a feminine awareness of danger.
‘That was different,’ he told her huskily. ‘Then it was just a game.’
Then? It took her a long time and a lot of courage to ask shakily, ‘And now?’
His thumbs were still caressing her skin, but now the sensation wasn’t soothing: it was erotic, dangerous, compelling.
‘And now it isn’t a game any more,’ he told her seriously. ‘Not for me.’
So this was what it was like to have a craving and to have that craving appeased; this was what it was like to have fasted and then to touch the heights of enhanced awareness; this was what it was like to wake up one day and discover that one’s precious dream had turned into reality.
Slowly she raised herself up on her tiptoes and placed her arms around his neck.
As she whispered huskily against his skin, ‘And not for me either,’ she wondered it he would ever know how much courage it had taken her to utter those words.
‘Melanie.’
The way he said her name was like a clarion call of pure rich bells, filled with resonance and joy.
‘Look at me,’ he commanded, but when she did she discovered that it was his mouth that was immediately within the focus of her eyes, and once she had looked at it and remembered how it had felt against her own she discovered that it was impossible to look away.
She heard Luke say her name again, something between agony and amusement caught in his voice, so that she lifted her gaze to his eyes and then trembled at the brilliance she could see in them.
When he kissed her she responded to him ardently, giving herself to him totally, with all the love she felt for him but was too shy to speak of, and this time when he held her against his body and she felt its hard arousal it wasn’t shock that tightened her muscles but pleasure and anticipation.
She felt his hands moving urgently over her body and tensed briefly. In the past when men had tried to caress her with such intimacy she had rejected their caresses, had felt no reciprocal desire for their touch but rather a strong feeling of tension and disquiet—even with Paul, and he had been angry with her too. Yet now, in Luke’s embrace, when his hands burrowed beneath her top to stroke the satin smoothness of her bare skin, the frisson of sensation she experienced was one of fiercely exciting pleasure and arousal; the need inside her not to immediately put a stop to what he was doing but instead to facilitate his exploration of her body to move against him in deliberate invitation so that his hands gently cupped the soft swell of her breasts.
Heat burned through her, her skin suddenly on fire, suddenly so sensitive and aware that she could actually feel the pulsing hardness of her excited nipples long before Luke’s fingers touched them.
When they did, deliberately sliding the silky fabric of her bra free of her skin, she made an involuntary, eager sound of pleasure against his mouth, unable to stop herself from whispering his name, caught as she was between awe and shock.
She had never dreamed it was possible to experience so many wonderful sensations just from one simple caress, and she couldn’t help wondering, if just the touch of his hand could make her feel like this, what she would feel when…if, if he were actually to caress the same eager tenderness of her breasts with his mouth.
The shudder which convulsed her was felt by them both. It made her tense and open her eyes, her skin flooding with embarrassed hot colour while Luke lifted his mouth from hers and looked down at her.
His eyes held a dazed softness and yet a heat that sent prickles of sensation dancing along her nerve-endings, and when he focused on her, looking first into her eyes and then at her mouth, her heart seemed to do a somersault inside her body.
‘You’re right,’ he told her softly. ‘This is neither the time nor the place.’
His hands were still cupping her breasts, and as he spoke he moved the pads of his thumbs gently against her hard nipples, kissing her mouth tenderly, but without passion.
‘We’d better go in and get on with that decorating,’ he added regretfully, gently easing his hands away from her body, but the metal strap on his watch must have caught on the wool of her sweater because as he moved his arm away from her, her sweater rose up over her body.
Whether it was her own gasp that warned him, or whether he merely chanced to glance down and become aware of what was happening, Melanie had no idea. All she did know was that suddenly Luke seemed to tense, holding them both frozen in an unmoving tableau which had his gaze fixed on the pale nudity of her breasts, their smoothness disturbed by the rash of goose-pimples brought on by a mixture of shock and cold.
She could hear Luke apologising, quickly unhooking the pulled thread from his watch-strap, deftly dealing with it so that her jumper would not ultimately be damaged, even as he turned his own body, ensuring that hers was shielded from the sharpness of the cool breeze, so now it was only the warmth of the sun that played against her skin, warming it where it had originally been cold.
As the goose-pimples faded in that warmth, Melanie discovered several different things; the first and most shocking surely being the discovery that not only was there a very definite and very sensual pleasure to be had in feeling the sun’s warmth against her skin, especially against such an intimate and sensitive part of her body, but also that there was something highly erotic and disturbing to her own sexual self-control in knowing that her body was so wantonly revealed to Luke’s eyes, even if she herself was not responsible for that situation.
Indeed, as she hurriedly averted her face and mentally willed Luke to hurry up and complete his self-imposed task, she found herself acknowledging that it was almost as though her body was actually enjoying flaunting itself before Luke’s gaze.
At last she was free, but just as she was about to restore her clothing to its original order Luke stopped her, gently taking hold of her hands and then circling her wrists with fingers that held her strongly but without any threat or discomfort.
Instinctively she looked down to
see what he was doing, and then blushed rosily at the sight of her own breasts, their flesh pale and blue-veined, her nipples in contrast very flushed, very swollen and erect.
‘Luke…’ she began to protest, but her voice became a choked sound in her throat as he bent his head and, as though earlier he had read her mind and registered her need, he very slowly started to caress the soft skin between her breasts with his mouth, gradually moving outwards over the gentle swell of her body until at last he reached the sensitive aureole of her breast.
He must at some stage have released her wrists, but she herself had had no awareness of him doing so until she raised her hands to clasp them round his head, and saw that she was free to do so.
Her heart was thudding frantically, her breathing so erratic, so uneven, so shudderingly difficult to accomplish that each breath she took seemed to increase her dizziness and with it her inability to do anything other than to give in to the sensations storming through her.
As Luke drew slowly and sweetly on the taut peak of her breast she heard herself cry out in sensual torment, knew she had curled her fingers into his skin, knew she was behaving with a wantonness that ought to have shocked her, and yet at the same time was powerless to do anything about it other than to make an eager, urgent sound of keening need deep in her throat when Luke slowly lifted his mouth from one breast and then tormentingly repeated the caress against the other.
Quite what would have happened then if they had not been interrupted by the sound of a low-flying plane coming towards them, Melanie had no idea. She only knew that, had he chosen to do so, Luke could quite easily have lain her down here on the damp hard earth and made love to her here among the long tangled grasses, and her body would have welcomed him with eagerness and passion, and that despite the fact that he would have been its first lover.
Even more than the fact that she had been so aroused to desire and need that it had been Luke and not she who had heard the plane first, what shocked her was not that she would have accepted Luke’s lovemaking, but that she would have wanted it, invited it, incited and subtly pleaded for it with a hundred feminine messages she had never even known until now that her body was capable of sending.