by Natalie Fox
‘No, I didn’t hate you. I loved you more than ever and the reason I didn’t make love to you was because you were stopping me. I could see it in your eyes, the fear. It was something new to me and I thought I had done that to you with my crazed torment and revenge. So you see, Gemma, you did hold me off…’
‘I didn’t think I had.’ Could she believe him? If she was to survive she must try.
‘Don’t torture yourself over something that would never have happened, Gemma. That thinking is so destructive.’
She managed a watery smile and shook her head. ‘That’s good advice coming from you.’
He smiled back at her and held her eyes and the anxiety slid from her heart. He took her in his arms and lay her back on the straw and when his lips came to hers it dispelled the last shred of doubt.
There was no room in her heart for anything but Felipe as his kiss deepened and led her away from pain and torment. They were free to love each other without punishment or shame to mar the sweet pleasure.
There was no rush, no hurry, no fevered urgency in the prelude to their lovemaking. The power and the frantic need would come later when their control would run wild and they would go with it wherever it led them. For now there was the need to love and reassure, to explore and rediscover with hearts that were free.
Felipe slowly peeled her wet clothes from her, laughed softly as she winced at the scratchy straw under her naked body. He reached up and pulled a horse blanket under her and she helped him take off his wet shirt, his rain-soaked cotton jeans, her fingers jerky and awkward in her haste. He knelt by her side, naked and powerful, sleek and dark and glistening with moisture. He was magnificent and Gemma reached up to score her fingers down his chest, to feel the contraction of his muscles at the thrill of her touch. In turn he adored every inch of her body with his eyes and his mouth and his hands and Gemma matched every pleasure he gave her, their need to love and show their love powering them to new heights of daring.
The control was slipping and they went with it, each caress and stroke becoming more feverish, more urgent. Gemma ached for him inside her, pleaded softly for it.
Their eyes locked as he moved between her legs, lifting her hips to take the force of his first shattering thrust. He loved the moment of possession, that exquisite plunge into a world of liquid sensuality, a throbbing, pressing heat that pulsed the nerves till they clamoured furiously for that inexplicable moment of power that was so mysterious and unique.
Gemma watched his face, revelling in the look of triumph in his eyes, the baring of his teeth as if in pain as he fully penetrated her at last. That look excited her deeply, raged a fire within her till it consumed all reasoning. He was inside her, where he belonged, loving her, muscular energy reassuring her that their love was whole and beautiful and should never have been doubted. She moved with him, equalling his strength, urging him to the edge of unreality.
She cried out when she could hold on no longer, when the need to let go was so furious that she thought she would die from holding back.
‘I can’t hold back…’ she cried, arching herself against him.
‘Don’t try, querida, don’t stop our love…now, my love, now!’
Together they rose and crashed through the barriers of ecstasy. Life force, golden and molten, pumped miraculously, matching their cries of release and triumph and love. They were free, soaring like eagles in a cloudless blue sky of perfection, free to be together forever and beyond.
‘Felipe has told me everything.’
Gemma nervously smoothed down her painting shirt and gazed at her father as he took up his position in the hard-backed chair for the last time. The canvas hadn’t suffered for its unceremonious dumping on the pine floor, but Gemma’s nerves had suffered as she had waited for her father.
‘I couldn’t have told you,’ she admitted, taking up her palette and brushes and wondering if she would ever get this portrait finished without a complete nervous breakdown. Bianca was packed and ready to go. Mike was flying her to Caracas with Maria and Christina as chaperons in case Bianca got naughty on the flight, and, oddly, Agustªn was going too, en route to somewhere else, where Gemma didn’t know and hadn’t given much thought to. She had more important things on her mind: Felipe and what he had told his father.
‘It was right that Felipe told me,’ Agustªn said quietly. ‘I think I might have had a heart attack if you had told me yourself.’
‘You might not have believed me.’
‘I should have known. The hair, your strength of character, your talent, so very much like your mother. Now tell me, Gemma, tell me about your mother.’
Happily she complied. All her tension and anguish seeping from her soul as she talked and added the final strokes to the best portrait she had ever painted.
‘She still loves you, you know,’ she murmured at last, and suspected that that was what he had wanted to hear from the very start of her story.
Slowly he got up and came to stand next to her to look at the finished portrait, his hand resting on her shoulder. Gemma smiled and covered his hand with her own.
‘I must have been blind,’ he murmured as he studied the picture. ‘It’s all there, isn’t it? The eyes, the mouth.’
‘I didn’t see it myself till Maria pointed it out,’ Gemma laughed. ‘Agustªn,’ she suddenly said. ‘Felipe and I——’
He turned her to face him, held her hands at her side. ‘It’s all right. Am I such an ogre that you think I would deprive my own daughter of her happiness? You have my blessing…’
‘But…you wanted one of your own kind for Felipe…’
‘And that is precisely what he has. You’re South American, dear Gemma, one of our own.’
Gemma laughed and colour rose to her face in a flush of happiness. ‘Yes, of course, I keep forgetting,’ she murmured.
‘Now I must leave,’ Agustªn said, glancing at his watch. ‘I have a connection to make in Caracas.’
‘Business?’
He kissed her forehead. ‘Unfinished business.’
‘Am I permitted to ask where?’ She grinned, a sparkle to her saucer-wide eyes.
He smiled secretively. ‘A little village in Surrey where long ago I saw a mother and baby daughter playing in the garden on a warm summer afternoon.’
‘Give her my love.’ Gemma smiled happily and he nodded.
‘You and Felipe will have the place to yourself for a while. Make the most of it, dear daughter, for when we return you women will have to knuckle down to being dutiful, obedient Latin American wives.’
‘Don’t count on it!’ Gemma laughed as he walked across the studio to the door.
‘Tame her,’ she heard him order Felipe as they crossed in the doorway.
‘What was that all about?’ Felipe asked as he swept her into his arms.
‘Oh, just good old-fashioned chauvinism waving its red flag. Just wait till my mother gets hold of him; he won’t know what’s hit him.’
‘If it’s a tenth of what you’ve hit me with I pity him,’ Felipe laughed. ‘It’s finished, then.’ He stepped back with her still in his arms to admire the portrait. ‘It’s good, Gemma—superb, in fact.’
‘Will it be my last?’ She didn’t want it to be; she wanted to carry on her career.
He grinned down at her, knowing what was going through her mind. ‘That’s a very leading question and one we have never discussed before.’
‘Perhaps we should discuss it now. There’s so much we don’t know about each other, Felipe, so much we haven’t covered in our relationship. You know the trouble we get into when we put other things first,’ she laughed.
‘“Other things” being this, I suppose.’ His lips rested on hers, tenderly, lovingly. His hands moved under her shirt to cup her breasts. His hands were still on her heated flesh when he drew his mouth from hers. ‘Maybe in fifty years’ time when we can tear ourselves out of each other’s arms we’ll sit down and get to know each other properly.’
‘We mig
ht find we are totally incompatible,’ she teased.
‘By then it will be too late; we’ll be in our dotage and no one else will want us.’
Gemma slid her arms around Felipe’s neck. ‘Then we’ll truly be lumbered with each other.’ She kissed his chin then gazed up at him. ‘Is it going to be all right?’ she murmured worriedly. ‘Us, I mean?’
‘What are you afraid of, Gemma? I love you, always have, since the moment I saw you across that crowded gallery floor…’
‘Me too. Love at first sight and nothing but torment since. It wasn’t the right way to do it, Felipe.’
‘The pain and the bitterness is over, my darling. We’ve been lucky, hauled our love back from the brink of destruction. Agustªn and your mother lost a lifetime of happiness and I’m not going to let that happen to us.’
He swept her into his arms and carried her to the day-bed, lay down beside her and gathered her into his arms. ‘I’ll never hurt you again, Gemma. I brought you here to punish you because the pain of my love was tying me in knots. I tormented us both with my cruelty. It will never happen again, I promise you.’
‘Oh,’ she breathed.
He backed off from her and looked down in puzzlement. ‘You sound disappointed.’ She linked her hands around his neck, coiled her fingers in his silky curls. ‘Well, there are a few torments that can be addictive.’
He grinned and slid a hand under her shirt. ‘And a few we haven’t found yet. But we have a lifetime to discover them, together, and we’ll make a start now.’
He lowered his mouth to hers and Gemma was ready for him with her own lips parted in rapture. Revenge, torture, pain and bitterness. He had shown her it all, but now the hurt was over.
She shifted restlessly under him as his hands slid tantalisingly down her body, touching, caressing, teasing them both towards the brink of a world that was their very own. Felipe’s mystical world where sensuality and hedonism were transformed into a delicious love torment that would carry them through the rest of their days.
This was the sweetest torment of all.
eISBN 978-14592-7675-8
LOVE IN TORMENT
First North American Publication 1996
Copyright© 1992 by Natalie Fox
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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention
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Table of Contents
Cover Page
Excerpt
About the Author
Other Books By
Title Page
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
Copyright