by Penny Jordan
‘A quarrel with another child…or even with you?’ the grave-eyed WPC pressed her.
Again Sarah shook her head, slowly going through the events of the previous day.
She had already given the other woman a brief description of Robbie’s past and how she had come to be looking after him, without saying anything to suggest that Robbie’s relationship with Gray was in any way unsatisfactory. If Gray chose to tell them otherwise that was his decision, and it was not one which she intended to make for him.
They were interviewed separately and then together; searching questions were asked about Robbie and his background, questions that made Sarah wince, although she noticed that Gray answered them all honestly and quietly, even when the answers did not reflect entirely well on him.
Once or twice the sergeant interviewing him paused, allowing him more time to respond, and once, when Gray admitted that he had not checked on Robbie during the evening, he said sympathetically, ‘Try not to blame yourself, sir. It’s something we’re all guilty of doing at times.’
Sarah was asked separately and away from Gray if she felt that Robbie was in any way either physically or emotionally maltreated by his father. Quickly she shook her head, knowing thankfully that it was the truth. Gray might not be an ideal father, but she acquitted him of wanting to hurt Robbie in any way.
When the police had gathered as much information as they could they left, having offered to leave someone with them, an offer which Gray refused.
Once they had gone Sarah suggested diffidently that she too should leave, thinking that he must want to be on his own, but to her surprise he shook his head, saying quickly, pleadingly almost, ‘No, please…if you could stay…’
When she made no response he added hesitantly, as though he was groping for unfamiliar words and motions, ‘You know Robbie. He knows you…needs you…loves you. If…when they do find him…if you are here…’
So it was for Robbie’s sake that he wanted her to stay and not his own, but then, what had she expected?
She had rung Sally, of course, to let her know what was happening, and immediately her cousin had agreed that she must stay.
Halfway through the interminable morning when she went upstairs to Robbie’s room, needing the comfort of being among his things, she found that Gray was already there, sitting on his son’s bed, with his back to her, his head bowed as he held Robbie’s favourite bear.
She was just about to back silently out of the room, when he said roughly, ‘No, don’t go. God, when I think of how little he is…how vulnerable…I should be out looking for him…not sitting here, waiting.’
Sarah shook her head, and then, realising that he couldn’t see her, went up to him and told him huskily, ‘No, the police said we were to stay here…in case there was any news.’
‘I feel so helpless,’ Gray protested. ‘I feel I should be doing something. He’s my son, for God’s sake…my child.’ He paused, and then said in a much harsher voice, ‘I suppose you think this is all my fault, but, believe me, you can’t blame me more than I blame myself. If only I had checked up on him.’
As she had done before, Sarah reached out instinctively to touch him, a simple, silent gesture of comfort and compassion, her throat too taut with fear for her to be able to speak, but then Gray turned round, his movements blind and uncoordinated, a look of savage self-contempt on his face as he cried out to her, ‘Why…why has he done it? Is he really so afraid of me…does he really hate me so much?’
Immediately Sarah shook her head. ‘No, no, of course he doesn’t,’ she told him softly.
Somehow she must have moved closer to him because when she looked down on his own bent head there were only inches between them, and, although part of her warned her that it was the last thing she ought to do, the compassion and caring that was so deeply ingrained in her personality motivated her now, moving her to reach out and place her hand against his head, a silent gesture of comfort and sympathy.
‘Oh, God, Sarah, if anything happens to him…’
But that wasn’t why her whole body suddenly went rigid with shock…as his action over-set everything she thought she knew about him, Gray moved awkwardly, putting his arms around her, holding her so tightly that she could hardly get her breath, his head pillowed heavily against her breasts as the tortured words were torn from him.
‘Gray…’ Her voice trembled unconsciously, pleading with him to do what she could not do herself, but when he didn’t move, but simply seemed to tighten his grip on her, his body starting to shake as his emotions engulfed him, Sarah knew that it had to be she who broke this unexpected physical contact between them.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SARAH reached out to break the physical contact between them, but, as though Gray sensed what she was about to do, without raising his head, the words muffled against her body, his breath a hot, vital force that penetrated the thin fabric of her blouse to make her sensitive flesh urgently and erotically aware of him, he begged her hoarsely, ‘No, please, Sarah. Just let me…just hold me.’
And then, as she stood there, her body trembling with the shocked awareness of her own response to him, he swore suddenly and savagely, telling her, ‘Oh, God, I don’t know what’s happening to me any more. You’re on my mind night and day, do you know that? I dream about you…wake up aching for you…imagining…God, I need you so much now. I…’
He tensed suddenly, as though abruptly becoming aware of what he was saying, of her shock…and then he started to lift his head away from her body, his face averted from her as he added, his voice raw with self-disgust, ‘Even now, when all I should be thinking about is Robbie, I still want you…still—’
‘It’s the shock,’ Sarah told him wildly. ‘It sometimes has an odd effect on people. It makes them behave irrationally. It…’
She stopped speaking as she looked down and saw that a couple of the buttons on her shirt had pulled free of the buttonholes, leaving her creamy cleavage fully exposed.
Her hand trembled as she reached for the button, her panicky movement catching Gray’s attention. Her whole body tensed as she realised he was looking at her, her breath quickening, her chest rising and falling far too quickly, betraying her agitation.
As though it had received an inaudible but positive command from him, the hand she had raised to cover her bare flesh in an instinctive gesture of feminine modesty fell away, and, while her pulse and heart-rate increased frantically in response to their sensual awareness of Gray’s physical desire, all her other physical responses were slowed down almost to the point of paralysis, a hazy, dreamy, almost hypnotic, drugged state of inertia full of brilliant colours and sensitised by her growing feminine awareness of the fact that Gray wanted her, that he needed her, that he desired her.
All her ability to reason or question was suspended, obliterated by the greater power of her emotional and physical knowledge that for once the barriers between them were down; that for once they were meeting on equal ground; that for once Gray was casting aside the armour plating of his dislike of her and allowing her to see the real vulnerable human being behind that armour.
For once they were united instead of on opposing sides, sharing their anxiety for Robbie’s safety, and because it was her nature to do so, because her instinctive response to any fellow human in intense pain was to offer them comfort and succour, Sarah had no thought of repulsing Gray, no thought of withdrawing herself from him, of denying him.
What she hadn’t bargained for, though, was that her own need…her own desire, should be as sharply pitched, as shockingly intense, as his.
She knew that she loved and desired him, but, for her, sexual desire, even when heightened by the intensity of the love she felt for him, had been something that was softened and mellowed by an instinctive reticence, a shyness almost, coupled with a lack of anything more than the kind of experience gained from youthful experimentation.
And yet now suddenly, as Gray held her, groaning her name against the soft, smooth
flesh of her breasts, tugging the rest of the blouse buttons free of the buttonholes, she was overcome by an almost savage flare of corresponding desire, a need so intense that it stopped the breath in her throat and made her long to cry out with impatience, to wrench her own clothes from her body and then his, to lie with him flesh to flesh. Her whole body went rigid with the intensity of what she was feeling. She had to bite down hard on her bottom lip to stop herself from urging him to hurry…She could feel his hands trembling as he tugged off her blouse; she could smell the sharply acrid male scent of his skin with its heat and muskiness and suddenly realised that the reason for this was that without even knowing she was doing so she had started to wrench his T-shirt free of his jeans, her hands splaying possessively against his body, and shockingly all the realisation of what she was doing did was to reinforce and increase the heat burning inside her so that she heard herself moan in sharp frustrated protest at not being able to remove his T-shirt completely.
Against her body Gray tensed. The heat of his breath against her skin made her tremble and ache with a wanton need to be completely free of her clothes so that not just his hands but his mouth as well could ease the torment of need escalating so rapidly inside her.
‘What is it?’ she heard him asking her, and then, as though the tension in her body answered his question for him, he demanded more roughly, as he released her to strip off his T-shirt, ‘Is it this, Sarah? Is it this that you want…my flesh against yours…my body next to yours?’
She was trembling so violently that speech was impossible, but the way her body was reacting to the sight of him, to the words he was saying to her, to the heat and scent of his flesh, was a far more betraying response than any verbal answer she could have given him.
In a gesture totally unfamiliar to her, something she would never normally have done or imagined herself doing, she closed her eyes, swaying closer to him, unconsciously heightening the allure of her own body, her breasts covered only by the fine lace of her bra where he had pushed open her shirt, reaching for him, smoothing her hands over his skin with eager, aching intensity, her fingers trembling as she touched him, unaware of just how sensual and arousing her response to him was until he cried out her name in a harshly guttural voice and gathered her to him, his mouth hot and moist as he caressed the taut line of her throat, his hands cupping her breasts, a little hesitantly at first, as though he was half afraid of hurting or frightening her. But then, when she pushed closer to him, wordlessly pleading with him, he reached behind her to unfasten her bra, his hands moulding her naked breasts, the sensation of the male roughness of his skin against her own tender softness so erotically stimulating that she cried out in sharp need, her hands tensing into the warm flesh of his shoulders, a tiny whimper of stifled pleasure heightening the aroused tension of their breathing when he touched her erect nipples.
She heard him say something, and thought at first that the intensity of her response must have shocked him, but even as she was tensing, trying to control the way her body ached for him, he was pushing her down against the bed, pinning the lower half of her body beneath his own so that she was immediately and exultantly conscious of his arousal, shockingly excited by the weight and the heat of him between her thighs while his mouth dragged feverishly along her throat and then lower to where his hands were cupping her breasts.
As though he knew exactly what she was feeling, as though he shared the compulsive, almost violent surge of desire that held her in thrall, he made no attempt at gentle exploration of her swollen breasts, instead his mouth fiercely drawing on the aching hardness of her nipple. The sensation that shot through her made her back arch as her whole body went into a violent spasm of pleasure, a taut, haunting cry escaping her lips, her hands clutching at his arms, his shoulders, his back, as her body became one unbearable ache of anguished need.
She had never known there could be a sensation like this, a need like this, a desire so intense that it obliterated everything else, that it reduced the entire universe to that one point on her body, where his mouth caused her such a sensation of pleasure that it was almost unendurable.
He was saying something to her, words that flowed over her with the balm of the soft drag of his mouth against her skin as he tried to soothe the intensity of her desire. He was telling her that she was so exquisitely sensitive that she was making him lose his self-control; that his desire for her was threatening to overwhelm him; that he wanted her more than he wanted life itself, Sarah recognised as she tried half incoherently to respond to his husky disjointed words, and to tell him that she felt the same way; that she ached inside so much for him that unless he soothed that ache with the hard pulse of his body the agony of it would kill her.
She felt him unfastening her skirt, guiding her hands to the fastening of his jeans and then, as though unable to bear any kind of delay, taking over the task himself, ripping off his jeans with savage unsteadiness, while she looked with totally uninhibited and unfamiliar avid intensity at his body.
He was everything that a man should have been and her heartbeat increased to a frantic race of rapidity as she stared at him, aching for him, loving him, her senses bemused by the compulsion that drove her.
She hadn’t forgotten about Robbie. He was still there, a different kind of ache, a different kind of pain, her anguish for him somehow or other the motivating force that had kindled this unexpected and uninhibited passion. It was as though somehow being with Gray like this was some kind of ritual…some kind of primitive appeasement of a hungry and cruel power…some kind of ritual sacrifice of self, that made her shake with shocked reaction to her own lack of control at the very same time as she revelled in the way that, having stripped off his own clothes, Gray removed the rest of hers, and then simply looked at her.
Up until now her body had been her own private territory, something she fed and clothed and kept reasonably fit, but not particularly something that she thought of as sensual or erotic in any way, and yet now…
Was she imagining it, or did her skin have a new gleam, a new softness…had her body always known how to abandon itself into such feminine wantonness…how to curve and move so that it would make a man shudder and then groan before reaching out to drag one trembling hand along its supine curve…a hand that tightened almost possessively against her waist and then lingered on the round warmth of her thigh so that she moved instinctively and incitingly against its pressure, inviting its possession of the hidden feminine core of her body?
And all the time he watched her, his eyes registering every tiny response and reflecting it back to her so that her own desire was heightened by his, so that, long before she was crying out to him that she wanted more than the erotic caress of his fingers against her intimate flesh, he had read her desire to have his body within her own in the sudden shocked perception that had darkened her eyes, and was responding to it.
It had been a long time since she had first made love, the fumbling and unsatisfactory consummation of a teenage passion which had left her feeling cheated and wondering what all the excitement was actually about, and, as though he had somehow sensed this, he hesitated, as if afraid to hurt her, but Sarah had a woman’s knowledge of her own body, and of its needs and its capabilities, and she arched up against him, holding him to her, feeling his body tremble as he was unable to hold back on his response to her.
It was an intense, almost savage-edged coming together, a frantic explosion of a mutual need to expiate their anguish and fear, their desire escalating with violent speed to a point of fierce explosion which left Sarah so weak that she was incapable of moving, every muscle turned to jelly, the hot, slow tears of sexual release seeping from her eyes.
Unable to raise her hand to rub them away, she let them fall. Gray had started to move away from her, but now he stopped, his fingers gentle as he brushed away her tears, his mouth tender as he licked the moisture from her skin.
The unexpectedness of such tenderness after the compulsive violence of their coming tog
ether brought a huge lump of pain to her throat. While she had been held in thrall to the intensity of their mutual need there had been no ability within her to think of anything other than the immediacy of the moment, but now that moment was over, and she was coming back down to earth, to the sick realisation of what she had done…She wanted to move, to cover herself, to crawl away somewhere and preferably die there, she realised in sick shame, but she felt too exhausted, too drained to move, and, besides, Gray was still holding her.
She closed her eyes, wanting, as she had not done before, to conceal her expression and her vulnerability from him.
She had no need to ask herself what had motivated him. It had been sex, that was all, a physical outlet for his anxiety over Robbie. It wasn’t such an unusual male reaction to that kind of nightmare situation, after all…rather like a divorcing couple who suddenly discovered a need within themselves, just as their emotional commitment to one another was over, to indulge in fiercely physical sex, sometimes when sex of any kind had long ago faded almost entirely from their relationship…but then she realised that Gray was still holding her, still touching her, and she started to tremble, her thoughts becoming confused and disjointed. He was kissing her, slowly tracing the bone-structure of her face, his thumb-tip caressing the soft outline of her mouth, while his tongue explored the delicate contours of her ear, sending convulsive shivers of pleasure racing over her skin, re-arousing her body in a way that five minutes ago she would have sworn was impossible.
This time there was a deliberate, almost controlled slowness about the way that Gray touched her, a desire that, although equally intense, was somehow less compulsive, less driven, so that, where before she had experienced a hard, sharp-edged sexual hunger, this time she seemed to be wrapped up in a softening languor of sensuality that made her feel as if she was slowly drifting deeper and deeper into an erotic cocoon of mindless bliss.A sensation that was heightened by the slow scalding heat that poured through her body when Gray caressed every inch of her skin with the delicately intimate exploration of his mouth, taking her response to him to such a pitch that she cried out against the slow inexorable pressure of it, wanting both the release of fulfilment and yet at the same time the heightened pleasure of prolonging her slowly spiralling desire.