by Penny Jordan
‘I was just on my way to bed,’ she told him unsteadily.
He had obviously only just arrived back. He was still wearing a formal business suit and tension lines were etched either side of his mouth, caused, no doubt, by his drive back from Cornwall. Courage had heard on the news earlier that there had been a hold-up on the motorway due to some roadworks.
‘So I see.’
The look he gave her as he swept her body from head to foot in a deliberately detailed sensual scrutiny made Courage curl her toes protestingly into the soft carpet, but instinct warned her not to protest or acknowledge that she was aware of the taunting provocation of what he was doing. There was an air of dangerous tension about him that put her own nerves on edge.
‘I won’t keep you long. I just wanted to go over the arrangements for the Japanese visit with you.’
‘N-now?’ Courage stammered. ‘But…’
‘I’ll be leaving for Kuwait tomorrow,’ Gideon reminded her, ‘and I expect you’ll want to visit your grandmother. How is she, by the way?’
He had taken hold of the door as he spoke, pushing it open so that Courage had no option but to give way and let him in.
The small apartment was far more luxurious than the type of accommodation she was normally used to—in most of the hotels where she had worked she had counted herself extremely lucky to have her own shoe-box of a room. Here she had a comfortably sized double bedroom, a shower-room, a good sized living-room and a small kitchen—more than enough space for her.
But somehow now, with Gideon in it, the room seemed to have shrunk so much that there was nowhere for her to go without having to walk unnervingly close to him; it even seemed as though there was barely enough oxygen for the two of them to breathe, or at least that was what her lungs were telling her as they fought to take in enough air, her chest and throat suddenly constricting.
‘She…she’s come through the operation very well,’ she told Gideon. ‘The specialist is very pleased with the way everything went…’
‘But?’ Gideon stressed, his eyebrows lifting query-ingly as he frowned down at her.
‘There is no but,’ Courage denied. She wanted to pick her own time to ask him if she could delay starting the repayments on his loan, and this was most definitely not it. Not when he had caught her off-guard and she was feeling so vulnerable… Not when all she had on was a soft and now very damp towel, and she was all too conscious of the way her body was reacting to his presence beneath its uncertain protection.
No. When she had to approach him about the loan she wanted to be fully in control of the situation and of herself. But there was something she did have to say now, she acknowledged.
Gideon had walked over to the fireplace and was studying the silver-framed photograph she had placed there of her grandparents and her father. Anxious to keep as much distance between them as she could, Courage backed away from him until she felt the edge of the sofa cushions preventing her from going any further. It was only just a little over a metre, but at least it was better than nothing, Courage decided, as she cleared her throat and began nervously.
‘I still haven’t thanked you properly for lending me the money to pay for Gran’s operation. I really am grateful to you and…’
‘Are you, now? Just how grateful, I wonder? Let’s just find out, shall we? You can thank me now.’
Too stunned to speak or move, Courage stared at him in confused shock as he came towards her, his movements as dangerous and purposeful as any four-legged predator.
As he took hold of her her reactions came too late and were far too little, just a helpless little moan of protest immediately stifled by the hard pressure of his mouth. The hands she lifted to fend him off were dealt with just as ruthlessly, both her wrists held captive by one hand while he used the other to pull her even more closely against him and keep her there.
Angrily Courage tried to push him away, her eyes darting fiery sparks of fury into the hard sexuality of his.
Oddly she felt no sense of fear, only an adrenalin-driven flood of emotion cresting dangerously unfamiliar excitement.
Excitement because she knew she was engaged in a battle she could only lose. Excitement because of knowing how perilously little chance she had of withstanding the explicit demand of Gideon’s fiercely male kiss, and excitement because she knew in her heart of hearts that this… that he was what she wanted.
A tiny shudder convulsed her body and then another, her lips parting in helpless response to the probing demand of Gideon’s tongue.
She felt his hands on her body, searching for and finding the end of her towel and then tugging it free with a gentleness that would have surprised her had she been in any state to pay attention to such things.
As it was, the brief sensation of cool air against her skin meant only that she was completely naked—and the sudden swelling of her breasts and tightening of her nipples had nothing to do with any drop in the temperature and everything to do with the fact that she knew that Gideon was looking at her and that soon he would be touching her.
That she, who had always been modest to the point of prudery about her body, should be filled with this desire to have Gideon look at her was a disconcertingly startling experience.
She shuddered again, this time more intensely, her own eyes widening as she saw the glitter in Gideon’s as he looked at her.
‘No…’
The protest was instinctively protective, as was the step she took away from him, but she had forgotten that the sofa was immediately behind her and that there was nowhere for her to go.
‘Yes,’ Gideon told her softly.
He was still looking at her…her eyes…her mouth… the intensity of his gaze mesmerising her, making her shiver helplessly.
She was looking right into his eyes when he raised his hand and very deliberately drew a slow circle around one nipple with the tip of his finger.
Courage’s body reacted as violently as though he had poured a thousand volts of electricity into it, her face, the whole of her body flooding with betraying heat as her eyes betrayed to him just how sensually sensitive she was to his touch.
‘You want it,’ Gideon told her thickly, still holding her gaze. ‘You know you do…’
Courage closed her eyes, unable to withstand the look he was giving her and unable to deny his statement either.
She had never felt like this before. Never. It was like being held tight in the grip of a need so savage that it was almost a pain—the kind of pain that could drive you to madness, to becoming an aching, needing, hungry, empty body of flesh beneath the hands of the man who generated those emotions.
Her knowledge of what was happening to her shocked and appalled her. Where was the strength she needed to fight it? Why was she simply succumbing to the dark, dangerous undertow that was sucking her down into waters far too deep and dangerous for her to survive in?
Gideon’s fingertip traced another circle and then another around her nipple.
Without having to look at it she knew it was hard and swollen, echoing the same ache that was pulsing so heavily deep down inside her body.
There was something wanton—pagan, almost—about being with Gideon like this, completely naked and vulnerable to what he was causing her to feel while he remained fully clothed, distant from her. Almost at the same time she could sense his own fiercely controlled physical desire.
‘You like that, do you…? You want me to do it again…? Well, I want you to do this,’ he whispered against her ear as he took hold of her hand and placed it low down on his body.
Instinctively Courage recoiled, trying to snatch her hand away, but he kept it pressed against the hard heat of his arousal.
This kind of intimacy, this type of caress… It was for teenagers, surely—groping frantically at one another in the darkness while they could—not for adults, Courage felt. Somehow she had thought that Gideon was not the kind of man who would want to be touched like that—that he would hold himself aloof from this s
ort of thing. But while her mind rejected what he was telling her he wanted to do her senses, her body, her traitorous fingers seemed to find the sensual contact with his flesh dangerously exciting.
So exciting, in fact, that when Gideon began to move closer to her, slowly kissing his way along her jaw, cupping her face in both of his hands as he caressed the exquisitely sensitive spot just behind her ear, his fingertips stroking her skin, she started to make soft, frantic mewing sounds of mingled pleasure and frustration deep down in her throat. Her senses were dominated by her need to touch him more closely, more intimately, without the barrier of his suit.
Nothing remotely like this had ever happened to her before.
Only once before in her whole life had she experienced this kind of need…this kind of arousal.
Her whole body suddenly went still, her eyes widening. She saw Gideon raise his head and look at her.
What she was doing wasn’t right… It was a betrayal of all her most private dreams. To give in to the sexual desire he seemed to ignite inside her with such demonic skill would be a desecration of everything she held most dear.
She opened her mouth to tell him so, and then closed it again on a stifled sob of shocked pleasure as Gideon bent his head to her breast. With nerve-wrenching, slow deliberation he ran the tip of his tongue around the flushed aureole of flesh, and then over and over its hard, aching tip, until the swollen skin was bathed in moistness and Courage was moaning softly under her breath, her back arching in mute demand, her nails digging into his shoulders as she silently willed him to put an end to her torture and suck the scorching, throbbing need from her.
When he finally did so a sensation so physically intense that her body shuddered violently in response to it ran like a fiery cord from her breast to her womb, contracting her body with such fierce waves of pleasure that they made her cry out in shock.
‘It must be a hell of a long time since you last had a man, if that can bring you to orgasm,’ she heard Gideon muttering rawly against her mouth, as he released her breast to kiss her and pull off his clothes.
‘Well, you might have had yours, but I’ve still to have mine. So I hope you’ll understand if I revert to type and don’t behave like a gentleman,’ he told Courage roughly, as he stepped free of his clothes and reached for her.
She might have had her orgasm, as Gideon had said, but that didn’t appear to mean that her body was satiated. Far from it, Courage recognised only seconds later, as Gideon picked her up.
Just the lightest friction of his body hair against her breasts was making her whole body tremble, while the knowledge of how close the hand he had curled round her thigh was to the warm, wet centre of her body…
The thought of how she was going to feel once he was inside her was making her dizzy with excitement and longing.
‘I always knew you’d be good,’ Gideon told her softly as he pushed open the bedroom door and carried her over to the bed.
As he placed her on it he lowered his head and circled her navel with his tongue. The hand which had been caressing her thigh now slid between them, not touching her, just holding still while Gideon lifted his head and looked into her eyes.
Her own gaze faltered beneath his and slid away down his body; a hot shudder rippled through her as she focused helplessly on his manhood.
She didn’t need experience to tell her how she would feel once Gideon was inside her, how he would fill and pleasure her. After all, in her dreams she had already known this intimacy with him many, many times; in her dreams she had already felt the heat and passion of him, touched and caressed him, known the pleasure of holding him deep within her own body.
Dizzily Courage tried to cling on to reality, to reject the emotional trap her body was setting for her—trying to confuse her by pretending that Gideon was her dream lover… He was no such thing. He was…
As Gideon started to touch her, his fingers stroking tantalisingly against her, she exhaled her pent-up breath on a small, frantic moan. What did reality matter anyway…? What did anything matter but this…? Gideon and what he was doing to her.
‘God, you’re wet. You’re so wet that you feel like you are ready for me now… Are you, Courage? Do you want me…? Do you want to open your legs and wrap them round me, draw me deep inside you?
‘Take care, though,’ he warned her as he started to move against her, slowly stroking himself inside her. ‘I don’t want to disappoint you, to leave you aching and unsatisfied. That’s a very special kind of hell, isn’t it? It makes you lie awake at night, aching for someone who isn’t there. Has anyone ever made you feel like that, Courage? Somehow I doubt it. You’re not the kind of woman who allows her lovers to disappoint her, are you?’
Her lovers… Courage froze, her body tensing, panic and pain flaring simultaneously through her as what he was saying shocked through her, pain abruptly replacing pleasure as reality threatened the fragile cloak of her self-deception… What lovers?
She saw Gideon frown as he felt her body tighten around him and fight him.
‘Stop it,’ he warned her, tight-lipped. ‘It might flatter the egos of your other lovers to pretend that you’re still a virgin, but don’t play the virgin for me. It does nothing for me. And besides, I know the truth.’
Courage gasped as she felt the swift, sharp stab of pain overwhelm her body. But, even as she was reacting to it, it was gone, her shocked muscles responding to the hypnotic rhythm of Gideon’s ever-deeper thrusts. A feeling—the same feeling she had experienced as he sucked on her breasts—was gathering deep inside her body, and with it a compelling sense of urgency that drove her, possessed her…
Sleepily Courage stretched languorously against the male hands caressing her body, smiling in the darkness as her body recognised and welcomed the touch of its lover. As she raised her arms to draw him closer, she sighed in soft, drowsy satisfaction.
This eager welcoming of his body by hers, this silent, night-covered perfect meshing of their bodies was, after all, nothing new to her; she had known it a thousand times and more in her dreams. Just as she had known him, would have known him anywhere—the scent of his skin, the way he moved, the way he held her… touched her. All of them had been recorded so faithfully and in such detail by her sensual memory that they were instantly recognisable.
She murmured happily in soft appreciation as his hands stroked over her skin, touching him in return, tracing the smooth column of his throat with her lips, feeling the fierce upsurge in his heartbeat.
Once, long ago in a dark, shadowed garden, she had wanted to touch him like this, had trembled in awe and excitement when he touched her. Had wanted him, ached for him, with a need and hunger that had been as pure and innocent as she had been herself.
Then she had been too shy, too overwhelmed by the shocking intensity of her own feelings to respond to them. Now…
She heard the low, masculine sound of pleasure he made as she touched him, felt him move his body invitingly against her hand.
He was a stranger to her, a man she had known once briefly, very briefly, when the reality of her own womanhood had still been a mystery to her. A man who even now in so many ways was still a stranger to her, and yet somehow it was as though her body—their bodies—were so sensually familiar and pleasurable to one another that they automatically moved together in perfect harmony.
The words Gideon had used to her, the harshness in his voice, which had confused and hurt her, had become unimportant when he touched her and held her. No man could give a woman so much pleasure and risk the pain of her potential rejection when he invited her to do the same for him without feeling some emotion.
There was no doubt in Courage’s mind or heart now, as she lovingly pressed herself against him, inviting the possessive invasion of his body, welcoming the full power of the deep thrusts which she had initially nervously rejected, that Gideon was the man she had been tricked into meeting in her parents’ garden, and it was that knowledge that set her gloriously free of the inhibiti
ons and reservations which had previously imprisoned her sexuality.
Then, all those years ago, she had been cheated of the natural and longed for conclusion to their lovemaking. Now…
She shuddered in timeless ecstasy as she felt her body slide helplessly under the spell of Gideon’s pulsing rhythm and start to match it…
When she woke up it was daylight and Gideon had gone, but her body and her bed still carried his scent and she closed her eyes, luxuriating in recreating the feel and presence of him.
Gideon and the man who had made love to her so intensely, so heart-stoppingly that she had never been able to forget him, never been able to let any other man take his place, were one and the same.
She should have trusted her instinct over that phone call, she acknowledged sleepily. If she had…
They must have been destined to be lovers… No wonder she had been so strongly sexually attracted to him.
Were his memories of her as strong as hers of him? She frowned, opening her eyes. If so, why hadn’t he said something? Did he, perhaps, not remember her at all…? Could he even have forgotten all about her?
She shivered slightly, steely little ice-picks of doubt piercing the sleepy pleasure of her daydreams.
What if to Gideon she was just another willing bed-partner? What if she meant nothing to him as a person at all? What if all those special dreams… those tender, loving thoughts… that special knowledge which had made the pleasure of being loved by him and loving him in return so much more than a merely physical coming together had not been something which he had shared at all?
Hadn’t she herself refused to believe what her senses were telling her at first, convinced that the stretching of coincidence so far simply could not happen?
After the euphoria of the night’s emotional and physical heights, the feeling that filled her now was like a sickening, swift fall back to earth.
Of course Gideon had recognised her. He must have done… His body must have known, just as hers had done…