by Penny Jordan
'Then you gave me that brush-off. I wanted to hate you, to hurt you as you'd hurt me, and then I found out that you were the girl Greg had told me was having an affair with Bob. I nearly went mad with jealousy. I couldn't bear to think of him looking at you, touching you ... I had to take you away from him, so I forced you into marriage. I told myself that in time you would come to love me. You had to love me. That night when I made love to you, I thought I was going out of my mind. Every instinct told me that you'd never known any man, but I couldn't rely on my instincts. I knew you and Bob had been lovers! When I discovered the truth I could have killed myself. But I didn't.' His mouth twisted bitterly. 'Perhaps it would have been better if I had done, that at least would have been a quick death. This way, dying slowly inch by inch, hurts far more.
'Any decent self-respecting man would have set you free then, but I couldn't. I told myself I wouldn't touch you, that I'd wait and teach you to love me, but I couldn't stop myself from wanting you. I knew that forcing you to respond to me sexually would only increase your loathing of me, but it was the only way I could reach you, the only way I could make you come alive for me. Bob possessed your heart, and I told myself that possessing your body was some compensation, but it wasn't. I can't go on any longer, Genista. Bob is married and intends to stay married. So won't you give me a chance? I promise I won't so much as lay a finger on you unless you ask me to, I. . .'
Genista could bear it no longer. Luke had humbled himself enough, and listening to him she had run the whole gamut of emotions from sheer disbelief through pain to tear-filled joy as she heard him describe the emotions which up until now she had thought hers alone. Luke loved her!
He still had his back to her. She left the bed and walked up to him without making a sound, but some sixth sense must have alerted him. He turned towards her, his hands tightening on her shoulders with a pressure that bruised her bones as he held her away from him. If she had not believed his words, his face was sufficient to assure her that he was speaking the truth. It was the face of a man who has endured untold agony, and she longed to reach up and smooth away the pain.
'You said you wouldn't touch me,' she reminded him gently, watching the immense self-control with which he withdrew his hands, clenching and unclenching his fingers as though the action brought him some measure of physical relief.
'Unless I asked you to.'
He turned away from her, and a quiver of pain ran through her. They had wasted so much time already, it seemed pointless to torment him now.
'Please touch me, Luke,' she begged hungrily, letting both her eyes and her voice betray her need. 'Take me, possess me, and make me whole again, because without you I simply can't function. You've taught me the true meaning of love, you've brought my body to full womanhood, and shown me things I never knew existed. I love you!'
The words were smothered beneath his mouth, his whole body shaking feverishly as he dragged her against him. For a moment neither spoke, content for the drugging, endless kiss to say all that needed to be said. Their clothes were an unbearable barrier which neither hesitated to remove, and Genista gasped once as she felt the driving force of the passion Luke had dammed up, and then she was joining him joyfully, urging him to show her that she was not merely dreaming.
He carried her to the bed and laid her on it tenderly, kissing her as he had done once before, with the same reverence that worshipped the perfection of her femininity, just as she gloried in his intense maleness.
This time there were no barriers. She was able to see so much that had been hidden from her before. Just as she had hidden her love from Luke so he had concealed his from her. Her body quivered in pleasure beneath his hand as she abandoned herself to his mastery, touching new pinnacles of pleasure, her body so acutely sensitised to him that even the lightest puff of breath aroused and enticed.
Her hands explored his body with a freedom she had never allowed herself before, and with his possession came a pleasure that transcended everything that had gone before.
In its sweet aftermath she lay supine in his arms, glorying in the heavy thud of his heart beneath her ear and the sure knowledge that the pleasure, they had just shared had been mutually overwhelming. It hadn't taken the hoarse words of love Luke had muttered between his kisses, nor his brief triumphant cry at the moment of possession, to tell her this; she had seen it in his face when he told her of his suffering, and known that it had never been and never could be merely desire which had prompted his actions.
Jilly had been right after all. He had fallen in love with her at first sight. The knowledge made her feel humble and grateful that she had been granted this second chance to seize the precious gift she had wantonly spurned earlier through ignorance.
'I never loved Bob—not in the way you thought,' she told him gently. 'But I daren't take the risk that you might go to Elaine.' Quickly she told him about Elaine's operation, drawing a soft groan of self-anger from Luke's throat.
'I'll make it all up to you,' he swore huskily. 'When they told me at the hospital that you were carrying my child, I could have killed Verity for preventing me being at home to stop you leaving.'
Genista trembled. Verity! She had forgotten her!
Luke felt her stiffen and tilted her chin. 'What's the matter?' he asked.
'Verity ... I thought you loved her,' Genista mumbled. 'She came to see me. She told me you wanted to get rid of me . . .' Tears welled and fell, and were kissed away one by one, until the raging furnace which had turned to glowing embers in the aftermath of their lovemaking took fire again, and Luke's explanation had to wait upon a deeply passionate kiss which left them both trembling with the renewal of their desire.
'She got in touch with me when Philip went back to Marina,' he told her then. 'She told me she still wanted me; and subtly indicated that unless I played ball she would break up Philip and Marina a second time. I couldn't take that chance. I had to play along with her, even though I was loathing every moment of it. She knows the truth now.' His voice was very grim.
'But you loved her once.' The words had to be said, even though saying them drove them into her heart like sharp thorns.
'No.' Luke was emphatic. 'I wanted her, and very badly, but I was never under any illusions about what she was. She was the one who announced our engagement, and then when I refused to co-operate she turned her attention to Philip— something for which I've never really forgiven myself. I knew what she was like, I knew the sort of predator she was. I could willingly kill her for hurting you, though.
'Tell me you love me,' he demanded roughly. 'I still haven't heard you say it—not properly...'
'Funny,' Genista teased, 'I thought I'd managed to get the message over loud and clear!'
His sudden tension communicated itself to her, and she looked up, her heart beating swiftly at the expression in his eyes. She alone had the power to make this man look like this; to arouse his love and desire. .
She lifted her hands to cup his face, revelling in the slight rasp of his skin against her palms.
'I love you, Luke,' she said softly, drawing his head down towards her, her lips parting tremulously in anticipation.
His harsh groan of satisfaction was stifled as their lips met. 'I don't intend to spend any more nights driving around the countryside for fear of what my longing for you might force me to do,' he told her huskily, banishing for ever the faint shadow that he might actually have accepted what Verity had so blatantly offered him. And to think that all the time she thought he was merely assuaging his love for Verity with her, when in actual fact . . . She drew a ragged breath, laughing a little at her own folly—at their joint folly.
'And the baby,' Luke said unevenly. 'I thought you must hate me and it—but the doctor told me how you'd begged him with your first words to tell you that you hadn't lost it.'
'It's your child,' Genista said simply, 'a part of you. A reminder that you had actually wanted me . . . loved me . . .'
They both hea
rd the sound of car tyres on the gravel at the same time.
'The taxi!' Genista exclaimed in horror, clapping her hands to her mouth. 'I'd forgotten all about it!'
'Leave it to me,' Luke told her, reaching for his trousers. He smiled briefly as he reached the door. 'Don't go away, will you?' 'What will you tell him?' Genista asked.
Luke smiled again. 'I shall tell him that my wife is staying here—where she belongs,' he said softly. 'And then I'm going to come back and show her how much I love her—if she'll let me.'
Genista's smile held the radiance of a rainbow after rain. As he went downstairs she leaned back against the pillows, her fingers laced lightly across her still flat stomach. Luke's child! Her throat tightened with happy tears, and when Luke came back, she opened her arms wide to receive him, the past and its bitterness forgotten as together they re-avowed their love.