by Penny Jordan
‘It wasn’t a—’ Abruptly Courage stopped.
‘Very sensible,’ Gideon approved mockingly. ‘Anyway, why bother lying anyway? You probably weren’t even a virgin all those years ago, and if you had been…’
‘You wouldn’t have wanted to know,’ Courage finished bitterly for him. ‘Yes. I do realise that. After all, it wasn’t me you expected in the first place, was it? It was my stepsister…’
‘She’d been giving me come-on signs for weeks…’ Gideon gave a careless shrug. ‘Sex was still something of a novelty to me in those days, and I didn’t—’
‘Care who you had it with?’ Courage interrupted acidly. ‘So what’s changed?’
She turned away from him as she spoke, and then froze in shock as he moved so quickly that she didn’t even realise what was happening until he was holding her, imprisoning her, with one arm pinning her against his body, long, lean fingers digging painfully into her waist, while the other hand curled round her throat, forcing her face up towards his own.
‘Oh, I care,’ he told her throatily. ‘In fact, I care so much that in anticipation of the pleasure I’m going to have with you I’ve been celibate for what is beginning to feel like one hell of a long time…’
Despite the way her body was starting to shake, from somewhere Courage found the strength to tell him breathlessly, ‘That’s not true… The other night…’
‘The other night was nothing…’ Gideon told her silkily. ‘I hope you’ve had plenty of sleep while I’ve been away, because I promise you, you aren’t going to get much tonight.’
To her shock, Courage felt her whole body jerk in physical response to what he was saying, as though he had somehow already touched it in the most intimate and physically compelling way.
She didn’t believe it. How could her body be physically responsive to him when mentally and emotionally she now loathed him… hated him?
But she could see from Gideon’s expression that he had already registered that give-away reaction of her body, and that he was responding to it.
Outside, the thunder which had been steadily rumbling ominously closer suddenly burst into a shattering explosion of noise, quickly followed by an intense flash of lightning, distracting Courage’s attention away from Gideon, her body suddenly stiffening as she felt the warmth of his hands on the bare skin of her back beneath her top.
‘You can always change your mind,’ Gideon taunted her as he unclipped her bra and then unfastened the buttons securing her top. ‘Just say the word and I’ll collect repayment of your debt from your grandmother instead…’
‘You know I can’t let you do that,’ Courage told him. ‘You’re not a man—you’re not even human,’ she spat out at him when he stopped her instinctive movement to cross her arms over her bare breasts as he removed her clothes.
She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of fighting physically with him, of panicking and giving him an excuse to manhandle and maul her even more than he was doing now, and besides…
Her face flushed and she refused to give in to the temptation of looking down at her body. She didn’t really need to confirm her fear that her nipples—reacting, surely, to the brush of warm air against their nakedness and certainly not to the fact that Gideon was looking at them—had suddenly hardened, thrusting erotically swollen peaks into full view.
She wasn’t going to fall into the trap of remembering how it had felt when Gideon had touched them, kissed them, drawn them into his mouth and suckled on them until she had cried out against the almost unbearable pangs of pleasure he was giving her. Things had been different then; she had been different.
‘Amazing,’ she heard Gideon drawl. ‘How do you do that, I wonder? A professional secret, no doubt.’
Beneath the gritty cynicism in his voice Courage could hear a sensual roughness that alarmed her more than his cynicism ever could.
It warned her that he was aroused, that he had not been lying earlier when he had told her he wanted her.
‘Are you going to take off the rest, or shall I do it for you?’ she heard him asking her.
‘I’m not undressing for you,’ Courage responded angrily. ‘And if you—’
‘No…? Then just remember that this was your choice,’ Gideon warned her, cutting through her speech and grabbing hold of her, picking her up before she could stop him and carrying her the short distance to the waiting bed.
Outside, the sky was almost black now, the rain hissing against the windows, the air inside the room almost stiflingly unbreathable.
Courage could feel the sweat breaking out on her skin, even while she was shivering with shock and dread.
‘It’s too late to change your mind now,’ Gideon mocked her as he lowered her to the bed without letting her go.
She stared fixedly over his shoulder, determinedly ignoring the proximity of his half-clad body, refusing to acknowledge the effect the hot, male scent of his skin was having on her memory patterns, on her female responsiveness, clamping down tightly on every muscle within her body—but most especially that part of her that refused to listen to what her brain and her emotions were trying to tell it; that part of her which wantonly acknowledged only that the sexuality of the man holding her was erotically exciting to it, that it recognised him, wanted him.
‘Now, let’s get rid of these, shall we?’ she heard Gideon saying softly as his fingers curled round the waistline of her elasticated leggings.
His face was on a level with her own as he looked mockingly down into her eyes, enjoying the angry flame of fury that burned there.
There was nothing she could do to stop him, Courage knew… Nothing dignified, that was. And if she did try to fight him, what chance did she have of succeeding?
Her glance slid betrayingly to his body—the breadth and depth of his chest, with its hard male muscles. Both her arms together were scarcely as thick as one of his, and as for the hands now inexorably tugging her leggings down… If Gideon had wished them to do so they could have gripped her waist so painfully hard that they would have crushed her vulnerable flesh.
She drew a shaky breath and closed her eyes against the demanding rush of tears that threatened to flood them.
The top of Gideon’s head was just beneath her chin now; she could feel the soft brush of his hair, the warmth of his breath.
She could feel, as well, the touch of his knuckles against her hips as he continued to remove her leggings. Despairingly she wished bitterly that the whole thing was over, that he would hurry up and get it over instead of torturing her like this. But then he was enjoying her pain, her fear…her humiliation. Just as he’d told her he intended to do.
She shivered as she felt the warmth of his breath in the valley between her breasts, and then froze as she felt his mouth slowly caressing the soft swell of one breast.
Somehow she had not expected this. Somehow she had assumed that his possession of her would merely involve a detached conjoining of their bodies. That he might want to indulge in love-play… to caress her… to arouse her as he had done before, was something that had never occurred to her.
Frantically she tried to push his head away, but it was too late. His mouth was already caressing her nipple.
The fate of her leggings was forgotten as Courage fought not to give in to the physical compulsion that flooded her. The urge to curl her fingers into his hair and hold his head against her body was strong, so much stronger this time than it had been that first time… Because now her body knew the pleasure that Gideon could give it.
Courage’s face burned with humiliated shame. How could her body still want him like this—still ache so wantonly for him? Tears burned her eyes behind her closed eyelids.
How triumphant Gideon would be if he knew what he was doing to her…how much she wanted him.
His mouth moved on to her other breast, and Courage had to dig her nails into the bed beneath her to stop herself from reaching up to him. Her whole body was rigid with the muscle tension she had imposed on
it in an attempt to prevent herself from betraying what she was feeling.
But beneath her locked muscles she could feel the urgency of its rebellion, its hungry need to soften and move in seductive incitement, its heated, quivering desire to feel Gideon moving within it.
She could feel the warmth of his breath against her stomach now, the tip of his tongue drawing tormenting circles around her navel.
With a shock of horror, Courage realised that he intended to follow the removal of her clothes with the mocking exploration of his mouth and tongue. Too late now to wish that she had never challenged him, that she had simply removed her clothes herself.
She should have known how much delight he would take in punishing her for her defiance. After all, he already knew just what the intimacy of the kind of caresses he was inflicting on her now would do to her self-control, and he must know, as well, how much she would despise herself for her physical reaction to him.
It was different for a man, of course, she acknowledged bitterly. A man need not feel any sense of shame or self-contempt, need not despise himself for being physically aroused by a woman he did not love and who did not love him. Certainly Gideon had already made it more than plain that he felt not the least little bit of discomfort in acknowledging his desire for her.
His hands were on the top of her thighs now…her naked thighs. Her muscles, unable to bear the strains he was imposing on them, started to tremble—only the finest of internal tremors at first, and then, as her control slipped, open shivers of frantic movement.
‘So many clever little tricks,’ she heard Gideon exclaiming in marvelling tones as he opened his hands, his fingers cool and hard, palms flat down on her trembling thighs, measuring their jerky, uncontrollable self-betrayal.
‘But I’ve already told you,’ he continued, his voice hardening, ‘there’s no point in you faking inexperienced apprehension. So those delightfully erotic little shivers of mock-uncontrollable arousal are completely wasted on me.’
The taunting cruelty of his words snapped the final thread of Courage’s self-control.
‘I’m not faking anything,’ she told him furiously, angry tears shimmering in her eyes as she glared bitterly into the gaze he had lifted to meet hers. ‘And for your information, I wouldn’t even know how to fake it. I don’t even know—’ She stopped abruptly, appalled to hear what she was saying.
‘I just want to get this whole thing over and done with,’ she mumbled, unable to bear looking at him any more. ‘I just want it over. Do you understand?’ she repeated shakily, her hands balled into two small, tight fists at her sides.
‘Oh, yes. I understand,’ she heard Gideon saying, with a soft emphasis that made fresh alarm flare inside her. ‘I understand very well indeed.
‘So what you are saying is that you don’t want me to touch you like this?’ he asked her throatily as his fingertips caressed her still-trembling thigh, causing Courage to catch her breath audibly and, equally betrayingly, to try and move her body out of his reach.
‘Or like this…?’ Gideon continued smoothly, with even more throaty emphasis. He watched her frantic attempts to control her body while he stroked even closer to the intimate heart of her body.
‘Or like this…?’ This time his voice was slightly muffled as he bent his head and placed his mouth to her body, which reacted as helplessly as though a bolt of lightning from the storm outside had jolted right through it.
Her panicky, ‘No—no, don’t…’ was ignored as easily as the movement of her hands as she tried to dislodge Gideon.
She couldn’t bear to look down to where she knew his dark head lay, between her now openly trembling thighs.
His touch as his fingers parted the protective outer lips to her sex was as gentle and careful as though they genuinely were lovers. He used no force or aggression. But then he didn’t need to, Courage acknowledged in miserable humiliation. She would almost have preferred it if he had had to. Anything would have been preferable to knowing how much her body wanted the intimacy of the caresses he was offering it.
How eagerly it swelled for the sensual invasion of his tongue, the hot, erotic possession of his mouth. The frantic cries of denial she was making might have been authorised and legitimised by her brain, but her body was openly and wantonly denying every one of them, aligning itself to Gideon, laughing at her, betraying her.
Panic seized her as she fought to control the drugging pleasure he was giving her body and realised that she couldn’t—that the need and longing he was arousing within her were too strong for her to subdue. That shamingly, while her shocked, bruised emotions and brain recoiled from the unbearable intimacy of the caresses he was giving her, her body was responding to them with an intensity that flagrantly ignored her demands to it not to do so.
‘Oh, yes, you certainly want to get it over and done with,’ Gideon taunted her as he pulled away slightly and then began feathering tormentingly brief kisses against the quivering flesh of her stomach.
Tears stung Courage’s eyes. How he must hate her to want to do this to her. But, as much as he hated and loathed her, she knew that his hatred and loathing could not possibly come anywhere near matching her own. Her body’s betrayal of her was the most frightening thing she had ever experienced, and the most humiliating.
There was just enough light left now for Courage to see that Gideon’s body glistened slightly with sweat, and that the hand he stretched out to smooth from her hip to her breast trembled slightly as it touched her—but not as much as she trembled as he bent his head and kissed the hollow between her breasts, and then the breast itself.
She stiffened and tried to push him away as she felt the brush of his thighs against her body.
‘It’s too late now to feign reluctance,’ she heard him telling her thickly. ‘You want me and you know it.’
‘No.’ Courage denied, summoning the last of her strength to defy him. ‘My body wants you…my flesh. But that’s only because it doesn’t have the capability, the ability to recognise what you really are. It only knows that you can arouse it. But my body is not the whole of me, Gideon… It isn’t my mind, my consciousness… the real essence of me… my heart and my emotions… They don’t want you, because they know you for what you really are…’
She cried out as she felt him seize hold of her arms, smothering her defiant words with the hot, hard pressure of his mouth, her whole body shuddering as he moved against it and she felt the first powerful surge of his body within her own.
This wasn’t making love, she acknowledged bitterly as she fought to suppress the tears she could feel threatening to fall. It wasn’t even sex. It was a battle…war… A fierce, silent struggle in which each of them fought to destroy the other, to drive the other to a point where they would lose control and fall helplessly into the empty, agonisingly lonely space that lay beyond the edge of that final precipice.
In virtually the same instant as her body felt the pleasure of that exquisite sensation of total release, her emotions, her heart, her soul were plunged into a pit of the darkest despair.
This should not be happening. Her body should not be able to experience so much pleasure, so much fulfillment, with a man she must not love… A man who did not love her.
As her body trembled in the aftermath of physical release, the perspiration cooling on her over-heated skin, the ache of emotional pain within her was more than she could bear.
Behind her slightly closed eyelids she could feel the hot burn of the tears she ached to cry. Gideon was lying close to her, still holding her in his arms for some unfathomable reason—probably so that he could torment her still further by mocking her for her response to him.
She flinched openly as he moved closer to her, and then stiffened in disbelief as she felt his lips moving gently against her skin, her throat, her jaw, the corners of her now tightly closed eyes. His breath was warm and disconcertingly unsteady as it touched her flesh—surely a sign which from any other man a woman—even one as inexperienced as h
erself—might logically interpret as an indication of emotional arousal equally as strong as the physical arousal he had so recently demonstrated. That simply couldn’t be the case where Gideon was concerned, though—not with her. Not when he had been at such pains to make his contempt and dislike of her so very, very clear.
Her throat ached as she felt his fingertips touch her mouth in gentle exploration, tracing its outline almost lingeringly. She heard him draw in his breath, and then it was the turn of her own breathing to betray her as she felt his lips brush hers, slowly and carefully.
Wasn’t this what every woman longed for—a lover who would continue to show her physical affection and emotional tenderness even after his desire for her had been satiated? She certainly had dreamed of it, but now even the sanctity of that special female ideal had been destroyed for her by Gideon’s cruel pretence.
If she and Gideon had really been lovers—if he had shared the love and need she felt for him—these moments held fast in his arms while he covered her face in gentle kisses and placed her hand against the damp warmth of his body, just where his heart was still thudding so heavily, would surely have been some of the most precious they would ever share, the most treasured in her memories. As it was…
‘Don’t…’ Courage begged him, her denial scraping painfully against her tense, dry throat, as she tried to pull her hand away. ‘What is it…? What more do you want?’ she cried out emotionally when he refused to let her go. ‘You’ve done what you wanted. Had what you wanted!’
And in doing so had completely destroyed her dreams, her deepest held beliefs about herself and her sexuality and the man with whom she would share it.
‘Not yet, I haven’t,’ Gideon contradicted her flatly. ‘Not by a long chalk. This is just the beginning—the first instalment on a debt on which the interest is still running—and at compound rates…