by Penny Jordan
It was only later, when pleasure had given way to exhaustion, that those moaned words returned to torment her. Luke was lying on his side next to her, one arm curved possessively round her waist, his breathing faintly ragged. She turned away, bewildered and shocked by the way he had aroused her, tremblingly aware that while her mind detested him her body had welcomed him as though he were the lover it had always dreamed of.
'Why in God's name didn't you tell me the truth?'
She tried to turn away, but he wouldn't let her. He raised himself on one a elbow, winding his fingers into her hair so that she was forced to look at him.
'I don't know what you mean.'
It was a stupid thing to say, and she regretted it instantly. His eyes flared bitterly. She had seen him angry before, but never as angry as this.
'Liar! You know damned well what I mean. Why did you let me think you were Bob's mistress, when all the time . . .' He broke off, and Genista was appalled to see how white he was, the bones of his face standing out beneath the tanned skin.
'Why didn't you tell me you were a virgin; that you'd never known a man? Surely to God you must have known . . .'
'Known what?' Genista asked tonelessly. 'All I knew was that you were threatening me.'
'And so you abandoned yourself to me? Why? Were you hoping to punish me? To make me feel guilt?'
'I wanted to protect Bob,' Genista said in the same low voice. 'You were threatening to tell Elaine that we were having an affair, and I couldn't let you do that.'
'But you weren't, were you?' His fingers suddenly tightened hurtingly in her hair, his expression unreadable as he forced her to look up at him.
'Were you thinking of him when I made love to you? Wishing I were him?'
'Does it matter?' Her voice sounded oddly thick with the tears she was trying to suppress. 'Does anything matter any longer?'
'You cared that much about him?'
'He's my friend,' Genista said simply, no longer caring whether he believed her or not.
She didn't have the right to tell him about Elaine's operation, and besides, all she really wanted to do was simply to fall asleep and perhaps for a few hours find escape from the tormenting memory of how her body had betrayed her. It was useless trying to persuade herself that she had not experienced pleasure, that Luke had not taken her to the highest peaks of human experience, and she writhed mentally to think about it. She tried to pull away from him and winced slightly, shrinking as she felt the anger burn up inside him. It was all wrong; she was the one who ought to be experiencing resentment; she was the one who had been wronged.
'You're angry with me?'
His mouth tightened ominously. 'Angry?' He stared incredulously at her. 'Of course I'm damned well angry! You were a virgin. You don't know the first thing about making love, and yet you let me ... Sheer frustration brought me the closest I've ever come to rape. I thought you were playing with me. But that doesn't make me feel any better.'
'We could have the marriage annulled.'
'No!' The denial was decisive. 'You've already made a laughing stock of me once; I'm not giving you a second chance. And besides, as you said yourself, Bob loves his wife. No, Genista. We're married and that's the way we're going to stay, although God knows not many marriages can have a worse start.' He was staring into her face as though he was searching for something.
'Lord knows how I missed it. You're as innocent as a child, and it's written all over you. So why the big act at the party?'
'I didn't like the way you looked at me.'
'And how did I look at you?'
'As though ... as though .. .'
'As though I were imagining what it would be like to go to bed with you? And for that you put us both through all this?'
There was more to it than that, but Genista was feeling too confused and sleepy to argue. It had been his air of calm arrogance, his confident assurance that she was his for the taking, which had infuriated her.
'I didn't want to marry you,' she said.
'But you did—for the sake of a man who wasn't even your lover, but I warn you, Genista, I won't have any ghost making up an unseen third in my bed. We're married.'
'You hurt me!'
The childish cry was born of a desire to punish him for teaching her body to defy her, but she hadn't been prepared for the way his eyes darkened, his mouth compressing as he released her.
'It was inevitable,' he said curtly, 'and the price you paid for your own stupidity. If you'd told me that you'd never been with a man before . . .'
'You would have what?'
'There are ways and ways, Genista. I thought your experience matched my own, and I wanted you so badly that I wasn't in the mood for the kind of loveplay that would have made things easier for you.'
Her cheeks burned at his frankness and she was glad of the darkness to hide her blushes.
'Go to sleep,' Luke told her brusquely. 'We'll talk in the morning.'
To her amazement she slept quite well, although it was still early when she awoke. The unfamiliar weight of Luke's arm across her body puzzled her at first, until the events of the previous evening came rushing back with shattering clarity. Her body felt strange, lethargic and oddly boneless, almost as though it no longer belonged exclusively to her.
Luke was lying next to her, the dark beginnings of a beard shadowing his jaw. In sleep he looked younger, a faint flush lying along his cheekbones, thick, dark lashes fanning the delicate skin beneath his eyes. Genista suppressed an alien urge to lean across and touch him, subduing the need to know more about this man with whom she had experienced nature's most intimate bond. He stirred in his sleep and she froze in horror as the sheet slipped from his shoulders revealing the scratches along his back. Vividly she remembered digging her nails into his firm flesh as waves of ecstasy swept her, and she dragged her eyes away from the sight of his torn skin, shuddering with revulsion to think that she had acted so primitively.
His arm lay just below her breasts, reminding her of the intimacy with which he had touched her—and how much she had wanted him to touch her, his hands and lips exploring every inch of her satin flesh.
Unable to bear her thoughts any longer, she pushed aside the bedclothes and slithered away from his constraining arm. Gathering up clean underclothes, she headed for the bathroom, ignoring the bath in favour of the benefits of a brisk shower. Her shower gel was in her case, and she tiptoed stealthily back into the bedroom, not wanting to wake Luke. Vague thoughts of leaving the hotel before he awoke crossed her mind. She had no fears now that he would say anything to Elaine---how could he? He knew quite well that she and Bob had never been intimate, but she could not make a move until she had cleansed her body from the memories of last night.
Turning the spray on fully, she was too busily engrossed in lathering herself to hear the soft footfall on the tile floor, and it was only the closing of the bathroom door that alerted her to the fact that she was no longer alone. She looked up and saw Luke leaning against the closed door, arms folded across his bare chest, a brief towelling robe belted loosely round his waist.
'Trying to wash away the taint of my touch?' he jeered unpleasantly. 'It won't work. They say that the memory of her first lover is something a woman carries with her all her life.'
'I just wanted a shower.' Her towel was lying on the floor out of reach, and she wished desperately that she had the courage to reach for the shower curtain and pull it between them. Luke was studying her body with something closely akin to clinical detachment, and it didn't help remembering how he had touched it the previous night. To her shame and horror Genista felt her breasts swell slightly as though aroused by his glance.
'So that you could feel "clean" again before you left me? That's what you were planning, wasn't it? We're staying together, Genista. I've already told you, no one makes a fool of me twice. I won't have people saying that my wife walked out on me after one night of wedded bliss. If you leave me, I'll tell Elaine you and Bob were havi
ng an affair. Oh, I know it's not true, but she obviously doesn't, otherwise you would never have agreed to marry me in the first place. I don't know why you're so anxious to protect his marriage, but if the fear of destroying it is what it takes to keep you at my side, then destroy it I will, if you ever try to leave.'
'But we can't live together!' Genista was aghast. He might as well condemn them both to a life sen-teance in prison.
'Why not? Because I took your virginity? Because I "hurt" you? If that's what's bothering you—and I suspect it is, perhaps now's a good time to show you that there doesn't have to be pain.'
He had removed his robe before Genista could gather her scattered wits. The foaming gel she had been lathering into her skin adhered to him as he reached for her, but instead of lifting her out of the shower, he began a slow caressing movement over her back, stroking the tense muscles, until they began to relax against her will. His fingers rested lightly against her waist for a moment, before descending further to explore the narrow curves of her hips. The nerves in her stomach quivered protestingly, wanting to deny the power of those arousing hands, but already the weak, melting sensation she remembered from last night was spreading upwards from her thighs. Luke's fingers against the sensitive chord of her spine making her shiver with mingled pleasure and fear.
'I see you're one of those old-fashioned girls who doesn't believe in sunbathing in the nude? Last night I thought it was merely another carefully designed ploy to arouse and tease—all men enjoy the thrill of thinking they're the first, whether it's seeing or touching—and I got both, didn't I?'
She wanted to deny it, but his lips were tracing butterfly-light kisses along her throat, his thumb stroking the acutely sensitive skin behind her small ear. She was trembling as though gripped by some tropical fever, her eyes drawn irresistibly to the tanned flesh of Luke's body, which proclaimed all too obviously that he did not believe in undue modesty when it came to a suntan.
'I know you want to touch me.' The calm words panicked her, then Luke's hand cupped her chin. 'It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's only natural to want to give pleasure as well as to receive it. Your skin tastes of peaches.' He bit her flesh delicately, his hands sliding down to her waist to hold her against him. She lifted a hand to push him away, but it was wet and slipperly from the gel and slid impotently over his skin. The impact of his muscled body beneath her palm triggered off the same desire she had experienced earlier that morning to discover more about him.
'Genista?'
She looked upwards. Luke's fingers tangled in her hair, holding the base of her skull so that his lips were given licence to plunder the vulnerable line of hers. Only this time there was no force in the kisses, only a tormentingly teasing provocation that promised and withheld, until she had forgot-ton that this was a man whom she professed to hate and wanted only to prolong the briefly tantalising pressure of his kiss until it hardened and demanded the way it had done last night. Her small moan of frustration as once again his lips were withdrawn after the briefest of caresses impelled her to reach upwards, clasping her fingers behind Luke's neck, her body pressed against him so that the next time his mouth touched hers she could prevent him from depriving her of its contact. His shoulders felt sleekly smooth beneath her questing fingers, and when this time his kiss fulfilled its earlier promise, probing and tasting all the inner sweetness of her mouth, her hands moved urgently against his skin, exploring, and learning every tautly male contour, until her roaming fingers were captured and held against his chest, rasped by the thick curling body hair darkening the tanned flesh.
'You're learning, but I came in here to take a shower, not make love.' He reached behind her for the soap and she was filled by the most ridiculous sense of deprivation. What was the matter with her? she chided herself. She ought to be feeling relieved, not .. . not .. . She struggled for a moment, but then her innate sense of honesty surfaced and she was forced to admit the truth— she was disappointed; bitterly disappointed because Luke did not want to continue making love to her!
She moved away blindly, and heard him laugh softly above her. 'Where do you think you're going? I told you last night we'd take a shower together, and that's exactly what we're going to do.'
'I don't want to.'
'But you're going to anyway.'
He was already soaping himself, and she followed the action mindlessly, her tongue wetting suddenly dry lips as she watched the sleek play of his muscles beneath his skin.
'Now you try.' Her hands were suddenly caught and placed against his body, his eyes mocking her shocked expression as he said softly, 'You were managing okay when I walked in here. If it helps just close your eyes and try to remind yourself I'm still a human being, even if I am a slightly different shape.'
Slightly! Genista told herself that it was fastidious disgust that coiled through her as she massaged soap reluctantly against his skin, but when his own hands brought a shuddering response from her own body as they stroked and caressed with a surety that spoke of long experience she could deny the truth no longer. Each caress was punctuated with a kiss, each kiss gradually deepening in intensity until she herself was pressing feverish kisses against Luke's throat and shoulders. Not even the fine spray of the shower rinsing away the soap broke the spell Luke's touch had aroused. When he carried her to the bed, she felt only an aching need for him to prolong his lovemaking. All her inhibitions seemed to have vanished. She responded feverishly to the touch of his hands and lips, moaning softly as his hands cupped her breasts, swollen with desire. The pain of the previous night was forgotten.
'Say it, Genista,' Luke demanded harshly, when the convulsive arching of her body beneath him betrayed her growing need. 'Tell me you want me.'
'I want you.'
She gasped a little at the fierceness of his kiss and then responded to it, losing herself in the sensations building up inside her in intensity until she was matching him step for step, his possession a welcome relief after the aching emptiness she had been experiencing.
This time there was no pain, only a gradual build-up to pleasure so prolonged that Luke's name had become a mindless refrain on her tongue smothered by the hard pressure of his mouth as they clung together in mutual abandonment.
'Don't ever try to tell me we're not sexually compatible at least,' Luke said roughly when it was over. 'You might love Bob, but I'm the one who can arouse you to the point where nothing matters other than that I possess you completely.'
It was several seconds before Genista realised that Luke thought she loved Bob. It was on the tip of her tongue to correct him when some sixth sense warned her not to. What she felt for him was only desire, of course; how could it be anything else, and yet deep down inside her she knew that she could never have responded so abandonedly to any man she did not love. Love? For Luke? But that was ridiculous. Was it? a small voice questioned. Wasn't it possible that all her initial aggression and fear of him had been sparked off by a primitive need for self-preservation? Hadn't she known instinctively then that in some way he threatened her peace of mind; represented the sort of danger she had promised herself she had left behind with Richard?
But she couldn't love Luke. Why not? that same small voice asked calmly.
It couldn't possibly be true. She refused to believe it. It was sexual desire, that was all. She closed her eyes, letting sleep wash over her. She dreamed of Luke and awoke with damp eyes to find him sitting in a chair by the window reading a paper.
'Do you often cry in your sleep?'
'I don't know.' He looked so savagely angry that she felt frightened. The fact that he was dressed while she lay naked beneath the protective sheets made her feel at a disadvantage.
'Oh, for God's sake don't look at me like that! Dream of Bob if you must, but I warn you, Genista, if I ever think you're dreaming of him when you're in my arms, I'll take my pleasure from you as a man does with a woman he's bought for the night!'
She flinched as he flung the paper down and walked
towards the door. 'I'm going out for a walk. I'll be back for lunch. And remember, this marriage stands for just as long as I want it to.'
When he had gone Genista cried as she had not done even when they brought the news of her parents' death. Not for Bob, but for herself, because when she dreamed of Luke she had dreamed that she had been begging him to make love to her, and he had turned his back on her, jeering that love was the last emotion he would feel for her. Alone she faced the truth. She loved him and must have done so, unknowingly right from the start. A deep shudder went right through her. She could only pray that he tired of her quickly, before she betrayed her feelings to him. His mockery of her love was something she could not endure. Sexually compatible, he had called them, but she knew that her body's response was that of a woman deeply in love with the man who possesses her. She loved him! If only she had discovered this before they had married. Wild horses would not have dragged her to the altar had she done so, but it was too late now. They were married. She was Luke's wife. The woman he had married purely because he wanted to possess her; the woman he had thought the property of another man. For the first time she bitterly regretted her lack of experience. With it she might have known how best to hold his interest, perhaps even fan it so that he never grew bored with her. She was being ridiculous, she told herself. Desire was no sound basis for marriage. It would wane eventually, it was bound to do so. And she would be left with nothing. No, not nothing—she would have a broken heart.
CHAPTER SIX
The morning dragged by. Had she been on her own Genista might have entertained herself by taking a . walk through the glorious Lakeland countryside, but she was not alone. Her eyes kept straying to the window which overlooked the wooded hillside, but there was no sign of Luke.
Where had he gone when he left their room? The thought of her response to his lovemaking brought a fresh stab of pain. How could she have been so blind to her own danger? How could she not have realised what was happening to her? In a less worldly age she might have described her feelings for him as 'love at first sight', but because such naivete was the object of mockery amongst her contemporaries, she had wilfully deceived herself that the immediate awareness she had felt had been strong dislike. How could any woman who professed to dislike a man respond to his lovemaking the way she had responded to Luke?