by Penny Jordan
Her heart was beating so fast it felt as though it was going to break through her chest-wall—and not from fear… Not any more.
She was breathing fast and very, very shallowly, and as his fingers circled her wrist and found the frantic pulse that raced there she could see the way his own chest lifted and fell in rapid counterpoint to her own dizzy excitement.
Courage had forgotten why she had come here; she was completely mesmerised by what was happening to her, totally oblivious to reality, awed and dazed by the discovery of her own sensuality and the power of the man holding her to arouse and excite it.
‘I like you when you’re like this, all shy and uncertain, like a virgin with her first man. But you’re not a virgin, are you? No virgin looks at a man the way you’ve been looking at me.’
When Courage gasped, her eyes widening, he laughed softly.
‘Oh, yes… Very good. You know all the tricks, don’t you? All the ways to make a man feel good… to make him want you… But I want far more from you than pretended virginity. You know exactly what I want from you, don’t you? And your body is telling me that you want the same things…’ he growled against her mouth.
Courage tensed as he moved against her, grinding his hips into her so that she was shockingly aware of how hard his body was, how aroused.
‘Oh, God. Come here and let me show you how much I want you…’
His voice was rougher now, his control slipping as his hands cupped her face and she felt his mouth move against her own, slowly at first, so that she could feel the full warmth of his lips. A thrill of wonder and pleasure twisted through her, her own mouth clinging with innocent seduction to his as she responded instinctively to his sensual exploration of her mouth.
No one had ever kissed her properly before, but somehow now that didn’t seem to matter—her body, her senses seemed to know instinctively how she should respond.
‘Hell, stop tormenting me. Open your mouth, kiss me back.’
The rawly agonised plea made Courage tremble. Her lips parted obediently, her heart thudding in frantic excitement as she felt the thrust of his tongue penetrating her mouth. His lower body was still moving against hers, its sensual movement and male hardness arousing all kinds of unfamiliar and shocking sensations deep inside her own body.
When his hand touched her breast she gave a small moan of shocked pleasure. Beneath her dress she could feel her nipples hardening. Her feelings were intensified by his low groan of reciprocal pleasure as he found the hard point of her breast and caressed it urgently with the pad of his thumb.
‘I want you… God, how I want you.’
He was levering her away from the wall, reaching behind her for the zip of her dress, holding her so that her breasts…so that all of her was pressed tightly against him, as though he couldn’t bear to break his contact with her, as though he couldn’t bear to let her go.
Courage trembled wildly in his arms. This was just how she had imagined it would be—only more so. For she had never allowed her imaginings to take her this far… never truly realised just how wonderful it would feel to be kissed so passionately, to be told how much she was desired.
‘You’re trembling like a baby…’
She could hear the soft, male tenderness in his voice, and for some unknown reason it made her want to cling to him and cry.
‘Don’t worry… It won’t be long now… Just let me get you out of this dress so that I can hold you close to me… feel your skin against mine. Touch and kiss you all over.’
As Courage shuddered, helplessly caught up in her own reaction to his words, she felt his breathing start to quicken.
‘You want that, don’t you? Well, I want it too. I’ll just bet that you taste as sweet as honey and that you feel as soft and as expensive as pure silk. Oh, God, it’s going to be so good for us… I want you so much…’
‘I want you too…’ Courage told him huskily, wrapping her arms around his neck, frantically kissing the exposed column of his throat, her fingers reaching out for the temptation of the dark body hair she could feel beneath his T-shirt as she waited for him to slide down the zipper of her dress.
Only suddenly he wasn’t moving. Suddenly he wasn’t holding her any more… Suddenly his hands were no longer caressing her but pulling away from her, placed on her shoulders as he thrust her almost roughly away from him, demanding furiously, ‘What the hell is going on? You’re not Laney—who the hell are you? Who the hell are you?’
The shock of his rejection, coming at the height of her own passionate desire for him, brought Courage abruptly back to reality, her whole body shivering in re-action as she realised what she was doing.
Sick shame engulfed her, her face burning with embarrassed heat. What on earth had come over her? Tears pricked her eyes, her throat closing up with pain and disbelief.
Now, with him standing half a dozen paces away from her, leaving her to stand alone in the cold damp of the evening air, it seemed impossible to believe that less than five minutes earlier they had been locked in a mutually passionate and intense embrace, wanting each other so desperately that…
Totally unable to comprehend what had happened, why she had behaved so…so recklessly, and in a way that was totally out of character for her, Courage could only stand there with shocked tears pouring silently down her face.
Why on earth had she let such a thing happen? Why hadn’t she said something—told him that she wasn’t Laney?
‘What the hell’s going on? Who the hell are you?’ he repeated furiously. ‘Come on, tell me.’
Courage flinched back into the deepest corner of the summer-house, frightened by his anger in a way that she had not been by his passion. Another wave of shame engulfed her as she remembered exactly how and what that had made her feel. A virgin she might be, but there were some things, some feelings, that even virgins could quite clearly interpret and understand.
‘I’m… Courage Bingham. Laney is my stepsister,’ Courage told him shakily, her voice low and taut with the intensity of her shame and fear. ‘She… she asked me to meet you here so that—’
‘So that what?’ he interrupted her savagely. ‘So that you could take her place? Why? It gives you some kind of kinky thrill, does it, comparing notes?’
‘No… No…it wasn’t like that,’ Courage denied sickly. ‘You don’t understand, I—’
‘Like hell, I don’t,’ he swore angrily. ‘I understand all right… I understand that you were coming on to me like sweet hell, and that there was no way that hot, sexy little body of yours was going to stop giving out its “touch me, take me” signals to mine until it had got just what it wanted from me. And we both know what it wanted and how much, don’t we?’
Courage made a soft, strangled gasp of protest deep in her throat, the tears rolling in silent swiftness down her face.
She wanted to cry out to him to stop it, to stop taking the delicate fabric of her dreams and tearing it, besmirching them, ripping them into tattered, grubby shreds.
When he had held her in his arms, kissed her, touched her, whispered his desire to her, she had felt the sweetest, purest surge of physical and emotional yearning. But now all that was gone, destroyed by his cruel condemnation of her. And yet, deep down inside, she felt that she deserved his cruelty. After all, it was not really her he had wanted, her he had believed he was holding and making love to, and he had every right to be furious with her for her unwitting deception of him.
‘I didn’t mean—’ she began, trying to overcome her own emotions to explain to him that she had never intended to deceive him, but he wouldn’t let her.
‘You didn’t mean what?’ he challenged her bitingly, interrupting her. ‘You didn’t mean to go all the way? Well, I’ve got news for you, princess, the next time you play such a dangerous game you might not be so lucky. I happen to be a little bit choosy about who I bed— another man might not be. After all, when it’s offered as blatantly as you were offering it to me—’
‘Someone’s
coming,’ Courage interrupted him, panic flaring inside her as she heard the male footsteps coming down the path. It could only be her stepfather… And instinctively she was afraid of what would happen if he found her here in the summer-house with this man.
‘Quick, you must go. It will be my stepfather…’ Without waiting for him to say anything, Courage darted past him and through the door. Her strongest instinct was not to protect herself but to protect him as she hurried towards the two people she could see coming down the path, praying that Laney’s would-be lover, whoever he was, would be able to slip away without being seen.
‘Look, there she is…I told you so,’ Courage heard her stepsister cry out triumphantly as she hurried towards them.
‘Courage, what are you doing down here…? Who have you been with?’ her stepfather demanded furiously.
‘No one… I haven’t—’ Courage started to lie unconvincingly, while Laney objected maliciously.
‘She’s lying, Daddy. I know who he is… What else would she be doing down here at this time of night other than meeting someone? Anyway, I heard her making the arrangements… I heard her on the telephone, telling him she would meet him here. The gardener’s boy, of all people. Honestly… You’ll have to sack him. You’d think she’d have more taste, but then again… perhaps not. Look at her, Daddy… Look at her. She’s nothing but a little whore… I did try to tell you.’
Her stepfather had gone past Courage to inspect the summer-house, but to Courage’s relief he found no one.
‘Poor Courage—some lover,’ Laney commented cruelly. ‘I do hope you didn’t let him go too far. Imagine letting someone like that paw you with his filthy hands…’
She gave a delicate fake shudder as her father came back to join them, swinging the torch he had been holding upwards so that Courage was caught mercilessly in its full beam.
‘Oh, dear. He wasn’t very gentle with you, was he?’ Laney taunted her. ‘He’s left your mouth all bruised. But then that type goes in for that sort of thing… love-bites, I think they call them… Horrid, common bruises all over their lovers’ necks… He hasn’t left one on yours, has he…?’
Courage felt her skin start to burn as she remembered the delicately gentle and oh, so erotic sensation of his mouth sucking gently at her skin. Not on her neck, as Laney had suggested, but on the delicate inner flesh of her inner wrist and elbow.
The hours that followed were a nightmare of bitter accusations and recriminations, not just from her step-father but from her mother as well. But through it all Courage steadfastly refused to betray her stepsister. What, after all, was the point? Who would believe her? And besides, she was guilty, wasn’t she…?
She had allowed him, whoever he was, to kiss her, hold her, touch her… And in her own eyes, if not in those of her mother and stepfather, she had allowed him to make her feel the things so precious and sacred to her that she had promised herself only the man she loved would be able to make her feel; only the man she loved should cause that kind of emotional and physical response within her.
The shame of what had happened ate into her, causing her to keep to her room, unable to eat or sleep properly, and her shocked white face betrayed her feelings on the day her stepfather announced, in evident satisfaction, that he had arranged for her partner in crime to be dismissed from his job.
‘No, you can’t do that,’ Courage had protested. ‘It wasn’t his fault.’
‘See, Daddy, I told you,’ Laney had pounced gleefully. ‘She’s admitting it. She’s no better than she ought to be… I warned you what she was like…’
‘Why… why did you do it…? Why did you bring your father down to the summer-house?’ Courage asked her stepsister, when she finally got the opportunity to talk to her.
‘Just a safeguard, that’s all,’ Laney told her lazily, grinning her triumph. ‘He was the kind who wouldn’t be easily put off. He took things more seriously than I intended. I realised that he’d probably keep on trying to pester me… make a nuisance of himself… start imagining that just because I’d been friendly towards him it meant something. Pathetic, really. I’m glad Daddy got him the sack.
‘How far did he get, by the way, before he discovered you weren’t me? Not very far, I’ll bet. He must have found holding that cold, frigid body of yours a real turn-off. My God, I almost wish you had let him go all the way. Just imagine it, Little Miss Goody-two-shoes, pregnant by the gardener’s labourer…’
She started to laugh, while Courage fought down the hot, bitter tears burning her eyes.
Two days later her grandmother arrived, and within the week, having seen how distressed and unhappy Courage was, she had persuaded her daughter-in-law, Courage’s mother, to allow her to take formal charge of her grandchild.
If her stepfather hadn’t been away on business at the time, Courage suspected she would not have been allowed to leave so easily, but for once the fates seemed disposed to be generous to her.
‘Darling, I understand how you feel about this young man losing his job,’ her grandmother told her gently, when Courage explained the situation to her, ‘but we don’t even know his name, or the name of the company he worked for, and you say Laney refuses to tell you, so I just don’t see what we can do.’
Courage had been forced to accept that she was right, although why she should be concerned about the future of someone who had made it more than clear to her that he considered her a worse than poor substitute for her stepsister, she had no real idea.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE telephone rang, bringing Courage sharply back to reality and the present. She tensed for a moment, her body stiffening defensively as she reached out reluctantly to pick up the receiver. Her fingers trembled slightly as she curled them warily around it, but the voice on the other end of the line wasn’t the one she was defending herself against hearing, it was her grandmother’s.
‘Courage, is everything all right?’ she asked. ‘Only, if you aren’t going to be able to get back in time to drive me to the specialist’s I can always get a taxi.’
It shook Courage to hear an unfamiliar note of uncertainty and frailty in her grandmother’s voice. Guiltily she quickly reassured her.
‘No, Gran, I’m just about to leave. Don’t worry, we’ll make it on time. I just got a little bit delayed.’
By the time she had driven home and collected her grandmother, Courage had managed to put her disturbing reaction to the sound of Gideon Reynolds’ voice down to mere quixotic coincidence. It was, of course, impossible tor Gideon Reynolds and that long-ago young man to be one and the same person, and heaven alone knew what peculiar subterranean workings of her psyche had been responsible for her ever imagining that they might be.
The telephone was notorious for distorting the sound of the human voice, and, besides, she had far more important matters to worry about than memories and emotions she ought to have pushed behind her years ago—such as her grandmother’s health, for instance.
Quickly Courage glanced sideways to check on her grandmother. Was it her imagination, or did she really look a little frailer, a little bit older?
The situation wasn’t critical yet—Dr Howard had said, adding, ‘But with such a condition, nothing can ever be totally predicted… or taken for granted.’
Ruefully Courage discovered that she was pressing her foot down slightly harder on the accelerator, in an automatic reaction to her anxiety for her grandmother.
They were seeing the specialist in his private consulting-rooms in the city. Mentally Courage tried to calculate how long it would take them to park, and if they would be lucky enough to find a space close to the elegant row of eighteenth-century houses that ran alongside the river down from the ancient medieval wall which enclosed the original monastery hospice.
The city had a long medical connection, going back to the time of the monks who had established themselves in the area early in the eleventh century. After the Reformation, the Earl of Roewood, who had been rewarded for his support of the King,
had been given the monastery and its surrounding lands. Aware of the ill-feeling the King’s actions had caused in the area, he had gifted the monks’ hospice to the city.
The original building had now been ‘restored’, along with what was left of the rest of the monastery, and provided a focal point for visiting tourists along with the cathedral and the cobbled medieval buildings and streets around it. A new hospital had now been built just outside the city, but many of the medical specialists who worked there kept to the old tradition of having consulting-rooms in the elegant row of houses.
Courage repressed a small sound of irritation as a coach cut across the road in front of her and then proceeded to block it as its driver tried to negotiate the sharp bend. In summer the city seethed with tourists, bringing into the area a good deal of very welcome extra income but at the same time impeding the progress of the normal everyday life of its citizens.
As they headed down towards the river Courage mentally kept her fingers crossed that they would find a parking space, otherwise she would have to drop her grandmother off outside the specialist’s rooms and go and park the car somewhere else.
She suspected that, given the chance, her grand-mother would try to persuade the specialist to minimise the severity of her condition. Not for her own sake but for hers, Courage acknowledged, breathing a small sound of satisfaction as she turned into the road which housed the specialist’s rooms and saw a parking space almost immediately in front of them.
As she waited for her grandmother to get out of the car—she knew that if she attempted to help her, her grandmother would take it as another sign that Courage thought she was growing old and be angry with her for it—Courage admired the way the sunlight dappled the still slow-moving water of the river, shaded along its banks by the willows planted at the water’s edge, behind which ran a carefully tended area of grass interspersed by wrought-iron and wooden benches.