by Daphne Clair
Zito’s personality was so strong, so striking, maybe he had never realised how it overshadowed hers. She’d begun to feel no more than an extension of him, a personal accessory like his clothes or the slim gold watch, costing thousands, that he wore, he said, because of its manufacturer’s reputation for reliability.
An echo of the nameless fear that had precipitated her flight curled in the pit of her stomach, and her palms were damp. ‘I seemed to have no relevance to anyone—’
‘No relevance?’
Trying to describe the emotions that had been so increasingly powerful yet difficult to name, she knew she’d floundered further and further into what must sound like irrationality. Or at best, equivocation.
‘You were relevant to me,’ he said.
‘That’s exactly it. Everything I was, everything I did, was somehow tied to my relationship with you.’
‘And that’s bad?’ His puzzled expression gradually changed to ironic enlightenment. ‘You developed a feminist consciousness?’
‘You keep trying to put a label on it,’ Roxane complained, her eyes flashing. ‘It’s too complicated for that.’
‘I keep trying to understand what went wrong,’ he corrected her. ‘My mother said you needed a baby.’
That was when he’d announced that if she wanted a family this might be a good time.
Roxane had looked forward to having Zito’s babies, but despite his light remark about filling the rooms, he’d been in no hurry, and when she’d first broached the subject early in their marriage he said she was young and they could wait.
She’d known his mother had suggested she needed occupation, and felt he was approaching the matter in the same manner as an adult might give a toy to a child to keep her out of mischief. And she’d been surprised at the depth of her resentment, the strength of her unexpected panic reaction. Although she’d hidden both from Zito.
She said, ‘I don’t think that would have helped.’ Unless, perhaps, it had made Zito realise she was a woman, not a child herself to be humoured and indulged and never taken seriously. ‘It was already too late.’
His mouth twisted. ‘Tell me what would have helped,’ he invited.
‘If I’d been older,’ she said, ‘you might have treated me differently, and maybe I could have stood up for myself more.’
‘When did you need to stand up for yourself?’
‘Whenever you made a decision that affected us both. Like where we were going to live—’
‘I took you to see the house before signing the agreement.’
‘You’d already made an offer and verbally clinched the deal.’
‘With the proviso that you had to agree. If you’d hated it—’
‘You knew I wouldn’t hate it—’
‘Well then…’ He shrugged, looking both arrogant and baffled.
‘—and you knew that even if I did hate it, you could talk me round. Or down. Just as you did when I wanted to redecorate the bedroom.’
‘You chose the colours and fabrics.’
‘After I begged you not to hire an interior designer. You insisted on having professionals to do the actual work. You didn’t trust me to sew curtains or paper walls, even when I told you I’d helped my parents do it.’
‘Trust had nothing to do with it!’ He sounded thoroughly exasperated. ‘There was no need for you to tire yourself out when we could afford to pay for the work to be done.’
‘I’m young and fit, and I’d have enjoyed doing it.’
He shrugged angrily. ‘If you had insisted—’
‘I tried. Do you have any idea how forceful you are?’
He was looking at her fixedly. ‘Did I bully you, Roxane?’
‘You just didn’t consult me, even about…when to have our family. I’m glad now that we didn’t—’ she paused there, because a hard, almost murderous expression briefly tautened his face ‘—but you simply announced that you had no intention of putting me through a pregnancy and childbirth for at least a year or two.’
‘I thought you were happy with that. You didn’t argue. I felt you had enough adjusting to do, and at your age there was plenty of time.’
‘You see?’ she asked him gently. ‘You thought… You didn’t ask me what I thought, about anything.’
‘If you disagreed, you could have said so!’
‘I didn’t disagree, and it seemed futile to start an argument when I knew you were right. But I became used to going along with your every suggestion. And whenever I showed some initiative of my own you…you brushed it aside. Nothing I did was of any account.’
‘I deny that!’ He moved again, coming over to her, crouching at her side. He picked up one of her hands and held it, moderating his voice as he gazed down. ‘Not your feelings—’ he temporised reluctantly. ‘I accept that’s how you saw things, but I swear I never intended to belittle you in any way. If you’d told me how you felt, instead of running off—’
‘I wanted to—but I was muddled then as to why I felt so…so trapped. And you never listened anyway.’
Looking away from her again, he said in a low voice, as if against his will, ‘While I was walking this afternoon, I did a lot of thinking. About some of the things you said earlier.’ He stopped for a moment as if he had to force out the rest. ‘I guess I didn’t want to hear any criticism of our marriage. I couldn’t take it.’
‘Why?’ she asked, bewildered.
He met her eyes at last. ‘I wanted to believe you were perfectly happy. Anything else would have sent me into a flat panic. Because from the time you agreed to be my wife, I was never sure I could hold you.’
‘Zito!’ she blurted out. ‘I was besotted with you!’
Which was, she supposed, why she’d let him get used to ordering her life, her every move. And by the time she’d woken up to the fact that he’d taken her over completely, he’d become so accustomed to it that her feeble attempts at autonomy had not even impinged.
His hand tightened on her fingers, and his eyes blazed questions. ‘You were in love,’ he said. ‘But I wasn’t sure if it was with me or with the whole idea of love. It was all new to you. And no amount of telling myself that I was a selfish swine for talking you into marrying me could make me give you up.’
She searched his eyes. ‘You must have been in love before.’
‘Not that way. I knew the moment I laid eyes on you that if I let you go I’d regret it for the rest of my life. Nothing and no one would ever make up for it. Nothing and no one has, over the past hellish year, nor ever will. I tried to fool myself and everyone else that I could get over you. At first out of anger—because anger masked the hurt. Then I pretended to myself that I had loved you once, but it was finished, and the best thing I could do for both of us was to let you go.’ He paused. Then starkly, his voice breaking, he added, ‘I can’t.’
He’d said extravagant, loving things to her before, but never had she heard such shattering emotion as in those two short words, making his voice unsteady as he held her eyes with an intensity in his gaze that shook her.
Her mouth trembled open and, shockingly unexpected, hot tears trickled down her cheeks. She had not in her wildest dreams imagined that his hurt would go so deep. Or his love survive what she had done.
Her vision blurred, and she lifted her free hand to stem the tears that wouldn’t stop. But Zito’s hand was already there, his thumb wiping her cheek, and then his lips were on the other cheek, kissing away the tears. He released her hand and held her face in his palms. She could feel him trembling, and her heart gave a huge leap as his breath feathered her lips.
And then he was kissing her, his mouth soft and tender, comforting, coaxing, and when hers parted beneath it, demanding and sexual.
His fingers slid behind her ears, his thumbs caressing her cheeks, smoothing strands of her hair back, even as he deepened the kiss and her head tilted further under the insistence of his mouth.
She made an inarticulate sound of capitulation and slid her arms about hi
s neck, and he gathered her to him, pressing her back against the pillows, allowing one of his hands to sweep from her taut throat over the soft curve of her breast to her knees. He found the edge of her skirt and pushed it up, his hand skimming her inner thigh to the apex.
His touch was both frighteningly strange and achingly familiar. She shuddered and moved involuntarily against his palm, keeping him there with the pressure of her legs.
He was still kissing her, his tongue making a searching, erotic foray into her mouth, while his hand stroked her, until her whole body was consumed by shimmering sensation. Her thighs parted and she relaxed, weightless and floating on waves of building pleasure. Then he breached the flimsy barrier of cotton and she arched to him, and gave a cry, muffled by his mouth, when his encircling arm shifted and she felt his other hand on her breast.
That was when she went over the edge, when the shimmer became a starburst that consumed her, his touch the catalyst for an explosion of unimaginable power, her body totally out of control, mindless and wanton under his merciless ministration to it, as his expert stimulation wrung every last shuddering sensation from her.
He lifted his mouth, and black eyes glittered into hers, a taut smile on his lips, his cheekbones prominent while he watched the utter abandonment he’d caused, and listened to her gasping sounds of uncontrolled delight.
When at last she lay still, exhausted and panting, her eyes closed, she felt his roughened cheek against her thigh, and his lips resting there for a long second.
He pulled down her skirt, and his mouth softly touched hers, a fleeting kiss.
His arms came about her again, lifting her until she lay against his chest. She forced her eyes open, found him looking down at her with a dark, brooding fire in his eyes.
‘Bed,’ he said.
Roxane nodded.
As he lifted her she closed her eyes again, listening to every breath he took, every quiet step across the room and into the hall, every careful tread up the stairway.
In the dark, he lowered her to the bed, and she made no demur when he began undressing her, taking his time.
He slipped off her shirt and undid the zip of her skirt and removed that too. He caressed her shoulders, slid down the straps of her bra, and dropped a kiss in the hollow of her throat, then gently turned her to unfasten the hook at her back. His hands stroked down her arms, taking the garment with them. Turning, she saw him straighten in the dim light from the window and quickly shuck his own clothes. Even though she could see no more than a blurred outline of wide shoulders and narrower hips, her breathing quickened.
Then he threw back the covers and lay beside her, drawing the sheet over them both.
His arm came under her and he drew her against him, holding her snugly with her back to him, his arms wrapped around her from behind.
‘If you want to sleep,’ he said in her ear, ‘it’s okay. I just need to hold you.’
Something melted inside her. She could feel his arousal, and knew he was physically unsatisfied. Yet he was prepared to postpone his own satisfaction indefinitely if she was too sated to reciprocate.
Silently she took one of his hands and moved it to her breast. She heard the quick intake of his breath, and a sigh as he let it out again. His fingers moved, tested, teased and aroused. Now both hands were stroking and sweetly tormenting. His lips brushed her nape, wandered down her spine. Sinuously, she flexed her body against him, curving her back a little so that her breasts filled his palms.
His mouth continued its slow, inexorable trail. When he reached the base of her spine his hands left her breasts and went to her hips, turning and lifting her gently as he straddled her from behind, the sheet flung back. He slipped her last garment off and then his fingers slid under her thighs, parting them slightly as he kissed the warm curves he’d exposed.
Her cheek against the pillow, Roxane gave a moan of pleasure, her hands clenching. Zito bent and kissed her just below her ear, his mouth lingering while his tongue explored.
He leaned back and moved his fingers a few inches, touched her, and she gave a small sob of anticipation and need. ‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘Zito…’
‘I’m here,’ he answered. And he was, all heat and hardness, gliding into the wet satiny folds awaiting him, filling her, moving with her, taking and being taken, thrusting and withdrawing, his fingers still weaving magic, his muscled thighs holding hers between them, and a familiar sense of wonder and mystery swept over her at the realisation that Zito was so close to her, literally inside her, something she had never learned to take for granted, every time seeming new and unique and miraculous.
Then her body took her over and she heard her own incoherent voice, knew that her hands were creasing the pillowslip, and her body was convulsing about his.
Along with the wave after wave of physical release, she was conscious of a sense of triumph as he too lost control, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her thighs, his body tense and taut in anticipation, and then shuddering into spasms of orgiastic pleasure.
He collapsed on top of her, but after a couple of deep, gasping breaths he withdrew and rolled over, turning her and pulling her to him, her breasts against his heaving chest, and kissed her mouth, long and slow and gentle. She put a hand on his bare skin, finding it dampened with sweat, and laid her head on his shoulder.
His arm tightened. He nuzzled a kiss against her temple. ‘Thank God,’ he muttered. ‘Are you all right, my darling? I didn’t hurt your ankle?’
Roxane kissed his salty skin. ‘No.’ She felt floaty and unreal, but blissful. Reaching over to the bedside table, she found tissues, then settled herself against him, breathing in the tangy scent of him, and murmured, ‘Mmm.’
‘You still love me,’ he said.
She heard an unaccustomed note of humility in his voice, tinged with wonder, and smiled against his shoulder. ‘Mmm.’
Somewhere in the recesses of her mind a flashing red light was trying to penetrate the fog of delicious lethargy that obscured her thoughts, but she didn’t want to take notice of it right now. It seemed sacrilege to spoil the moment. Deliberately she closed her mind’s eye against the intrusive warning.
Zito’s hand rested on her hip. It felt absolutely right. His body against the length of hers felt right. His chin tucked against her hair, the remembered skin textures when she let her hand stray across his chest, finding planes and shallow indentations, a fuzz of curls, and the tiny, intriguing male nipples—everything about him was so familiar it was as though his body were a part of her own.
She must have drifted off for a while. She woke when Zito eased his arm from under her.
‘Zito?’ She was almost convinced she was dreaming that Zito was in her bed.
‘Sorry, darling,’ he said. ‘My arm was going to sleep, but not the rest of me.’
‘You can’t sleep?’
‘I don’t want to sleep. I’d rather lie here and listen to you sleeping.’
‘Oh.’ Still nicely muzzy, she smiled in the darkness. ‘Did I snore?’
He laughed a little, settling against the pillows with his arms behind his head. ‘No. But I can hear you breathing beside me.’
‘Boring,’ she said.
‘Not a bit. I’ve been lying here and imagining all the things I want to do with you when you wake up.’
‘I’m awake now.’
He turned his head. She could see the glitter of his eyes and little else. ‘So come here.’
He reached for her and she went willingly into his arms again. Later she told herself she hadn’t been properly awake and wasn’t responsible. But being half asleep didn’t stop her from reacting with sizzling awareness to all the things Zito said he’d imagined while she was sleeping beside him. Nor from adding a few creative notions of her own. By the time they slept again, it was near dawn.
The sun streaming in the window wakened her. They hadn’t drawn the curtains last night and, she realised, squinting at the small clock on the bedside table, she hadn
’t set her alarm either.
She was going to be late for work.
Zito lay beside her, and despite herself she couldn’t help but pause to look at him, one arm flung out, his face smoothed in sleep, unaware, his bare chest rising and falling steadily above the bedclothes that had ridden down to his hips.
She eased herself from the bed, and tried to stand up, wincing as her ankle twinged emphatically.
No crutches. Neither of them had thought to bring them upstairs last night.
Last night. She glanced at Zito again, and unwelcome reality began to seep in. Last night shouldn’t have happened. It was too soon. For once he had seemed ready to listen to her, had been truly trying to understand. There had been a glimmer of hope, but far too quickly it had turned to a blaze of passion, obliterating every other consideration.
They had hardly begun to scratch the surface of the real problem, and now here they were sleeping together. Sex had never been a permanent solution before. So how could it be now?
Sucking in a deep breath, she put her hand on the bedside table and tried a tentative step. She could still be stiff from sleeping. Perhaps it would get better. She left the table and took a step with her good foot. Then tried the other again.
‘Aah!’ She couldn’t stop the strangled little shriek of pain, quickly transferring her weight to the uninjured foot.
‘Roxane?’ Zito stirred, then sat up, thrusting a hand into his tousled hair. ‘What are you doing?’
She was stranded a few steps from the bed with nothing to hold on to. Naked, and scared to try her ankle again. ‘We forgot my crutches.’
He threw back the covers and got to his feet, picked her up and deposited her on the bed, then lay beside her and pulled the covers over them both.
‘You’ve gone white.’ His hand touched her cheek, his eyes questioning.
‘It hurt when I tried to stand. I’m okay now.’
‘Sure?’ He still looked anxious.
‘Yes. Truly.’
He watched her, and in a few seconds the coldness on her cheeks and temples receded and she saw relief in Zito’s eyes. ‘That’s better,’ he said.