by Penny Jordan
Her hands found his back, at first clinging to him for support, and then relaxing, stroking, caressing, exploring, unconsciously mimicking the deepening passion of his kiss as she moved against him, wanting him…needing him… loving him.
She tugged his shirt free of his belt, shivering with pleasure as she touched his bare skin, tracing the bones of his spine, measuring the width of his shoulders, sliding her open palms over his skin, absorbing its heat, its strength, its satin texture, while her body ached to know him with every one of her other senses as well…his scent…his taste…his husky male sounds of need and pleasure; she craved the knowledge, the intimacy of these as much as she craved his hands against her body, his flesh within her own.
And even when she heard herself telling him so, whispering the ragged words between kisses which were escalating so fast to such a hitherto unknown degree of intimacy that she was already lost, gone far, far beyond the recall of her frantic brain’s pleas for caution, she couldn’t stop herself.
‘This; you want this?’ she heard Gareth demanding rawly as he slid his hands beneath her jumper, spanning her ribcage, stroking lightly against the fine silk that enclosed her breasts, her skin so sensitive, her need so acute that just that lightest brushing of his fingertips against it was enough to make her cry out softly, her body shivering with sexual tension, her breasts already swollen, aching.
‘Gareth…please.’
‘What is it? What is it you want? Is it this?’
His thumbs moved softly against her nipples, making her whimper frantically and arch against him and then cry out in frustration when he stopped touching her.
‘Shush. It’s all right…it’s all right.’
The soothing words were whispered against her ear, but her body was too feverishly aroused to heed them, so he groaned out loud as she continued to twist and turn frantically against him, blindly seeking relief of the ache burning her flesh, hindering him in his attempts to remove her sweater.
It was only when she felt the shaft of cool air touch her skin that she realised what he was doing, her body stilling as she waited breathlessly for him to relieve her of its burden.
‘Beautiful, you’re so beautiful. I always knew you’d be just like this.’
The words were whispered against her skin like silk, hot moist silk, just like the slow kisses burning her collarbone, her throat.
She tugged frantically at the front of his shirt, wanting to caress him as he was doing her, wanting to bury her hot mouth in the cool enticement of his skin, to lap at his flesh with eager, delicate, cat-like licks so that he cried out beneath its delicate abrasion, wanting her with the same intensity with which she wanted him.
She had no awareness of how she had come by this new sensual knowledge, this awareness of the erotic complicity and allure of touch and taste, of need and desire; she only knew that she wanted his body open and receptive to the exploration of her hands and her mouth just as much as her own flesh ached for that same intimacy and desire from him.
When he stopped kissing her she couldn’t bear the loss of physical contact, sliding her hands into his hair, holding him against her body, willing him to feel the need that burned inside her, making her breasts softly swollen, her nipples tight and hard.
She almost sobbed in relief as she felt the heat of his breath between her breasts, the caress of his mouth as it slid over her skin.
She had forgotten that she was still wearing her bra, but she couldn’t endure it if he stopped what he was doing now, and somehow or other he seemed to realise it because his mouth slid over the curve of her breasts, over the silk; over the taut peak of her nipple where it settled and then suckled, slowly at first, hesitantly almost, as though he was afraid to hurt her, and then, when he recognised the need behind the stifled whimpers of pleasure emerging from her throat, he was less gentle, much less gentle, rough almost, as if he was sharing the same rip-tide of desire which had engulfed her.
Without the pressure of his body to hold her upright against the door, she suspected she would probably have collapsed, her body had become so weak, so sensually obsessed with his.
When his teeth raked her nipple she cried out in pleasure, arching her back, curling her fingers into his hair, repeating his name over and over again in a rhythmic litany that unconsciously echoed the rising pulse of her own arousal.
When Gareth leaned against her she melted inside, returning the pressure of his body as he slowly stood up. The silk of her bra clung moistly to her breast where he had suckled on it, outlining the tautness of her nipple. Gareth brushed his thumb slowly over it and then repeated the caress a little more roughly so that the friction of the damp fabric against her tender skin made her ache for the warm abrasion of his lips…his tongue…his teeth.
She started to shiver, and instantly he stopped, apologising rawly, ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that you…God, Syb, you’re turning me inside out, do you know that? I want you so much that I could take you here and now where we’re standing, and then still go on wanting you so that by the time I’d carried you to my bed I’d want you all over again, but the last thing I want to do is hurt you,’ he told her broodingly.
His words should have shocked her back to reality, but instead they added dangerously volatile fuel to the fire already raging inside her, bringing to life needs that whispered so shockingly, so wantonly to her that it was impossible to resist their enticement.
Against his ear she told him shakily and huskily, ‘You weren’t hurting me, and…and I didn’t want you to stop.’
She shuddered again, unable to control what she was feeling, and forced herself to look at him while she did so, knowing what he must read in her eyes.
‘This…you want this again?’ he demanded with rough, almost disbelieving pleasure, his thumb slowly caressing her.
‘Yes. Yes. But…but this time without anything between us,’ she implored him; and then as he complied, quickly unsnapping her bra so that she could let it fall away from her body, and she felt the fierce spirals of reaction beginning to tighten inside her, she managed to tell him huskily, ‘And your mouth, Gareth. Please, I want your mouth as well.’
She thought she heard him groan, but she might have been mistaken. However, she knew that he had heard her as seconds later she was shuddering with quickening delight as his mouth tugged fiercely on her eager flesh.
She didn’t know when he unzipped her jeans. Didn’t know how he managed to ease her out of them without her registering it, that awareness completely submerged by the fierce paroxysm of pleasure that gripped her as his hand slid between her legs, caressed her body, while he whispered lavish words of praise into her ear, telling her how much he ached for closer contact with its soft moistness, how much pleasure it gave him to caress her so intimately.
Sybilla heard him, but couldn’t make any verbal response to him as her body reacted to his touch.
Her hands moved up under his shirt and down over his back, registering its damp slickness as she tried to close the distance between them and to satisfy the ache pulsing deep inside her with a more intimate contact with him, but he stopped her, kissing her quickly and then telling her huskily, ‘No, Syb. I can’t…I daren’t…I…’
She couldn’t bear it…couldn’t endure it. She would die if he didn’t ease the ache within her now in the only way every instinct she possessed told her it could be eased.
Pride, self-respect, caution were all forgotten as she pressed herself against him, rotating her hips, pleading openly, ‘Gareth…please…please don’t say that… Not now. I need you so much. I…’
She hadn’t realised she was actually crying until he cupped her face, groaning as he licked away her tears.
‘And don’t you think it’s exactly the same for me? That I want you just as much? For God’s sake, Syb. Feel…feel what you’re doing to me.’
When he took her hand and placed it against his body he shuddered, his flesh so taut…so hard beneath her fingers that she automatically made a t
iny mewing sound of distress deep in her throat and pleaded, ‘Gareth, please…please now. I want you now…now…now…’
She was no longer in control of what she was saying…what she was doing…what she was inviting; a deeper, age-old instinct had taken over from reality and logic, an instinct that possessed her…drove her…making her say and do things that would normally have made her blench with horror and disbelief.
She felt Gareth move, levering himself away from her, and she reached out towards him despairingly, clutching at his shirt, closing her eyes so that she wouldn’t have to watch him walk away from her.
‘Shush…it’s all right…it’s all right,’ he told her roughly, and suddenly, blissfully, unbelievably it was.
He had removed his jeans, removed everything bar the shirt from which she had virtually ripped all the buttons in her attempts to get closer to his body, and now he was removing the rest of her clothes as well, pausing briefly to lightly suckle both breasts before picking her up.
As she wrapped her body around his she felt him shudder, his teeth biting sharply into her throat as he protested rawly, ‘Syb, please. It’s my first time with you and I want to make it last forever, but, with what you’re doing to me right now, I don’t think I can even make it over to the bed.’
For some reason the words excited her, aroused her, inciting her to a wantonness she would have sworn was completely alien to her nature, so that she moved eagerly against him and urged him, ‘Now, Gareth. I want you now…please now.’
The result was inevitable, the sensation of being pushed back against the door, while Gareth cushioned her back from the impact as best he could, so erotically satisfying that her whole body seemed to melt against him, welcoming the surging power of him, her legs tightening around him, locking him against her as he started to kiss her, his tongue mirroring the penetrating strength of his body.
He was her first lover, and yet her body welcomed him as though it had known him forever, clinging silkily to him, closing lovingly around him, welcoming him, cherishing him so that the pleasure she was giving him was repaid in full as her body reacted to the delight of knowing him so intimately, tiny coiling spirals of pleasure beginning to build up inside her, making her cry out and cling, making her plead and praise, twist and ache, making her so totally uninhibited and giving that it was all he could do to control his own desire until he felt the first sharp contractions that marked her own climax.
When she cried out in shocked discovery, unable to stop herself from submitting to its domination, her eyes opened wide and she discovered that Gareth was looking right back at her and that it was too late now to conceal from him what she was feeling. It was like a clouded sky suddenly being rent apart by lightning, and she felt as overawed, as shocked and afraid almost as some long-ago primitive man might have felt at seeing the skies part to reveal a glimpse of immortality. And then, just when she thought that it was over, that she had scaled the highest mortal peak, she trembled under the sensation of being filled with the pulsing heat of Gareth’s own completion, her body so sensitive to him that that pulsing emission set off tiny after-shocks of pleasure to stimulate her nerve-endings.
‘Gareth…’
‘Shush,’ he murmured as he kissed her and slowly shifted her weight in his arms. ‘Not now. What I want now is to take you to bed, to hold you and to go on holding you.’
He was carrying her across to his bed, pushing back the covers, sliding her into its delicious coolness, easing his body down against hers, holding her. She ought not to be doing this, her brain warned her, but it was what her body craved, and her senses overruled the weak voice of her brain.
* * *
When Sybilla woke up later it was dark.
‘Hungry?’ Gareth asked her, somehow sensing that she was awake, even though she hadn’t moved.
Uncertainly she shook her head, unable to believe what she had done…that she and Gareth…
‘No, neither am I…at least, not for food,’ he told her lazily. ‘But when it comes to you, my love, I have an appetite that isn’t going to be easily appeased at all.’
Still in shock, she felt him turn her towards him and start kissing her. She tried weakly not to respond, but her body seemed to have other ideas.
As he kissed her Gareth told her, ‘I still can’t believe this is really happening. After all this time. And to be your first lover.’
He felt her tense and said tenderly, ‘Did you think I wouldn’t know…or that I wouldn’t care? Do you really think me so crass?’ His finger traced the shape of her upper lip.
‘This time it’s going to be different,’ he told her huskily. ‘This time it’s going to be so slow and gentle that it will feel as if the pleasure’s going to last forever.’
It was all he had promised her and more: a slow, sweet build-up followed by an equally sweet, almost agonising release and then the delicious drift of his mouth over her skin, at first soothing it and then arousing it so that she actually cried out for the intimate invasion of his tongue within her body, welcoming the unexpected surge of quickening pleasure that overtook her and made her cling pleadingly to him, wantonly imploring him to let her caress him as intimately as he had done her.
Afterwards she slept as deeply as a child, while he watched her, wondering if she knew yet just how much she had betrayed to him and what she would do once she did.
Perhaps she thought that because no words of love had passed her lips he wouldn’t know.
He touched her tenderly, sighing. He was equally at fault; he could have told her…should have told her, but he had wanted to hear it first from her…after all the years of yearning… wanting…aching for her.
She had given herself so generously to him—was he a fool to want her to give her love equally generously, equally freely?
* * *
The next time Sybilla woke up it was light. Gareth still slept beside her, bringing her a shocked return to reality, to the knowledge of what she had done…how she had behaved. Her face burned with embarrassment and confusion. How could she have? She shuddered, crawling quickly from the bed…Gareth’s bed.
Useless trying to deny the pleasure her body had found there…the pleasure it had given, but to have had that pleasure without an equal measure of love—that was what she could not understand…not in Gareth, who was, after all, a male and alien in so many unfathomable and unknown ways, but in herself, whom she had thought she had known inside-out.
She dressed quickly, not risking taking a shower, and somehow guiltily enjoying the scent of Gareth on her skin. Outside, the air was clear and cold still, the sun hidden behind misty cloud. She wandered aimlessly through the garden but ended up, as she had known she must, not far from the summer house where she had overhead that fateful conversation between Gareth and his grandfather. She sat down on a stone bench, her chin cupped in her hands. She couldn’t stay on in town now. That was impossible. She doubted if she could even bring herself to face Gareth.
What on earth would he think when he woke up and remembered? The best thing for both of them would be if they never had to see one another again. He would want to be confronted with the reality of what had occurred between them as little as she did herself.
She stared miserably at the weed choking the small plant growing at her feet, tugging fiercely at it, wincing as its sharp leaves tore her skin, tears of pain and despair flooding her eyes.
‘I thought I might find you here.’
She stiffened as she heard Gareth’s voice behind her.
‘This always used to be one of your favourite spots.’ He paused and then told her gently, ‘We need to talk, you and I, don’t we?’
It was his gentleness that hurt the most, his determination not to shirk or avoid confronting what had happened when she knew with painful honesty that it had been her desire…her wantonness…her initiation more than his that had led to what had happened between them.
‘Would it help if I go first?’ he offered lightly.
For a moment she was almost tempted to smile, but she was too afraid for laughter…too raw inside emotionally…too aware of how badly she had behaved.
Without waiting for her reply, Gareth continued steadily, ‘It was down here that I first realised two things of vital importance to my life. The first was that I love you…the second was that I had no right to burden you with that love since you were virtually still a child, while I…well, legally, at any rate, I was an adult. That I had somehow to separate myself from you and allow you to grow up unburdened by my needs…my emotions. You see, Sybilla, I knew how easy it would be to betray both you and myself by exploiting the adolescent emotions you were beginning to feel for me, and so I decided our friendship must end. Not without a good deal of heart-searching, I can tell you.
‘And so when you started to distance yourself from me I told myself that I was glad…that it was only right that you should grow outwards towards boys of your own age and not inwards towards me, and yet I hated it…loathed it…was bitterly, searingly jealous…ached for you so much that I could have committed murder to have you.
‘In the end it got too much for me to endure. I thought you must have guessed how I felt, you were so cold towards me. I decided to leave the country, to give you time to grow up and myself time to control what I felt for you. Later, when you were adult, there would be time for us to come together if that was what fate planned for us…to meet as two adults; and yet whenever I did come home you were very carefully not here, and the love I felt for you began to corrode inside me to make me bitter and angry.
‘You didn’t want me. You were never going to want me. From my grandfather I learned how well you were doing, how your life was filled with your career, your friends…the men who admired and wanted you. He knew how I felt…pitied me for it, I think…certainly tried to warn me not to hope for something you might never want to give me…and then he died, and I came back.
‘And almost immediately all the jealous imaginings of the years we’d been apart became reality—first when I saw that shaving-cream and then when I saw you with Lewis. Your lover…or so I thought.