by Penny Jordan
‘I want you so much.’
The words were drawn from her as painfully as tears. She was powerless to suppress them and even more powerless to suppress her love for him. But it wasn’t love. Dracco had told her that. It was just sex!
Her whole body shuddered.
Did Lisa make him react like this? Did he make her want him like this?
The savagery of her feelings lacerated her pride, but somehow she couldn’t withstand the pressure of her need.
‘Take me to bed, Dracco,’ she urged him.
Because she wanted him or because she wanted to prove to herself that she was woman enough to overpower his resistance? That what Lisa had done she too could do?
She felt him hesitate.
‘You were the one who wanted this,’ she reminded him. ’You’re the one who wants me to have your child.’
She knew, of course, that when she returned to sanity, when the madness of her longing and misery left her, she would despise herself for using such a weapon, for demeaning herself. But right now, what did such things matter? Right now she wanted him so much…too much.
This time it was different. This time she was anticipating every touch, every sensation, savagely hungry for him, her body rising up to meet him and demanding more. More!
But then abruptly, like someone who had fed themselves on rich confectionery, she suddenly felt nauseated by what she was doing, appalled and disgusted by her own greed and lack of self-control.
This was sex, she reminded herself. Sex, not love. Was she really so lacking in self-control, in self-respect, that she could be satisfied with a physical act given without any kind of emotional grace?
‘What is it?’
She could feel Dracco’s hands holding her stiffening body as he leaned over her in the summer darkness.
‘I’ve changed my mind.’
She could feel the sharpness of his indrawn breath.
‘Am I allowed to ask why?’
She could hear the tension underlying the outwardly silky words.
‘You wouldn’t understand.’ Any minute now she was going to cry. Defensively she turned her head away from him.
‘Try me.’
Was it her imagination or was his voice softer, gentler? His hands on her arms certainly were. She could feel him rubbing her skin, soothing it, stroking it as though in some way he was trying to reassure and comfort her. A touch could say so much more than words. A touch couldn’t lie…could it? Or was it more that her lack of experience was making her read too much into it?
She felt drained, defeated, overwhelmed by her emotions.
‘I don’t want it to be just sex between us, Dracco.’
There was a long silence whilst she waited for him to answer, during which Imogen asked herself furiously why on earth she had made such an admission.
‘No? Then what do you want it to be?’
His hands were on her shoulders now, cupping them, working up delicately towards her throat, gently massaging away her tension.
Imogen gave a small gasp as she felt the tiny quivers of sensation darting over her skin. The pulse at the base of her throat had started to beat fast again. Dracco placed his thumb on it, measuring it, and then lifted his hand to her lips, rubbing against her bottom lip very slowly.
‘Tell me, Imogen,’ he demanded huskily, his voice a soft, sensual enticement. ‘What is it you want from me?’
Her whole body was trembling now. It was those two little words ‘from me’ that had done it.
‘I want you, Dracco!’ she told him helplessly. ‘I want you.’
And then she was reaching for his mouth with her own, devouring it with tiny, longing-filled little kisses interspersed with soft, whispery moans.
It wasn’t the way it had been before. It was sharper, sweeter, deeper, with her not merely responding but actively drawing her own response from him! Touching him with fingers that trembled slightly and then grew more confident as she saw the naked agony of wanting delineating every aspect of his expression. He wanted her touch, needed it, yearned for it so much that he was prepared to walk across burning coals to get to it and her. It gave Imogen a wave of shockingly savage pleasure to see it.
She rode that pleasure like a surfer, telling herself that she was the one controlling it and Dracco, until suddenly it crested, splintering her into a thousand diamond darts of tormentingly hot need which only the sure thrust of Dracco’s body within her own could satisfy.
Only when it was over and she was sure that Dracco was asleep did she allow herself to cry, to grieve for what Dracco had not given her—his love.
It didn’t matter what Dracco said, what male logic he tried to superimpose on her feelings to validate his own lack of love for her and force an emotional distance between them, Imogen knew she loved him. She didn’t want to and it galled and lacerated her sensitive pride to know that she did.
She had lost count of the time she had wasted trying to rationalise her emotions, trying to list mentally all the reasons she had for not loving him. Her heart just wasn’t prepared to listen to them. Not even when she tormented it with the strongest antidote of all—not even when she reminded it about Lisa!
Imogen hesitated as she stopped her car outside the house, next to Dracco’s. He had told her only the previous evening that he intended to work as much as he could in future from home.
‘With modern technology I don’t really need a London base any more, and, besides…’ He had glanced with deliberate emphasis at her stomach as he spoke. Imogen had felt a now familiar fluttering of guilty panic invade her body.
Sometimes it was almost as though he already knew and he was deliberately directing the conversation down an avenue that would give her no choice but to tell him of her own growing conviction that she had conceived their child.
But she didn’t want to do so. Not yet. And, anyway, she had nothing official to go on. Only her own awed belief that she was carrying a new life. She could quite easily have found out one way or the other, but she didn’t want to do so, and she didn’t want to question just why not either.
Was it because she wanted to punish him? Or was it because a part of her hoped that his desire to father their child would keep him close to her and away from Lisa?
She was beginning to hate what her love for him was making her do, the kind of woman it was turning her into. What had happened to her moral beliefs, her pride?
They were having a truly golden summer weather-wise, and in their local town this morning she had bumped into a friend from her schooldays. They had had coffee together, exchanging recent histories. Lulu, her friend, had been living with her partner since they had left university. She had recently been headhunted for a job, which would mean her relocating to New York.
‘I envy you,’ she had confessed to Imogen. ’You’ve done things the right way around, explored the world and then settled down. I can’t bear the thought of losing Mac, but I want to do something with my life. I want to see something of the world, to explore it and my own talents.’
‘Won’t Mac go with you?’ Imogen had asked her sympathetically.
‘Not a chance,’ Lulu had told her ruefully. ‘He wants us to get married, have babies.’ She had pulled a wry face. ’I’ve got three brothers and five step-siblings, the youngest of whom is still in nappies… Right now the thought of a baby…’
‘Do you love him?’ Imogen had asked her quietly.
The look Lulu had given her in response to her question had spoken volumes.
‘You’re right,’ Lulu had agreed ruefully. ’I’m just going to have to accustom myself to the thought of frequent transatlantic travel—and finding a good nanny.’
They had parted, agreeing that they must make a regular date to meet up, and Imogen had driven back to the house reflecting on how good it felt to have started to develop a network of supportive friends.
A new interior-design business had opened in the town, and Imogen had arranged for the young women who ran it to call
at the house one day so that they could discuss some ideas Imogen had for redecorating.
As she walked through the back door Dracco came into the kitchen. As always when she saw him Imogen’s feelings were mixed and very emotional. She loved and wanted him so much, and yet at the same time she dreaded being with him because of the pain it gave her to know that he did not return her feelings.
‘I thought we might have lunch out today,’ Dracco announced, casually removing the supermarket bags she was carrying and starting to put away their contents for her.
‘I…I thought you were working?’ she responded uncertainly.
Dracco paused in the act of opening the fridge door.
‘I am, but I can take a couple of hours off. You mentioned that you’d like to do something with the garden; there’s a particularly good garden centre with its own design team, a specialist outfit that has an excellent reputation, about ten miles away.’
Imogen chewed on her bottom lip. It was true that she did want to redesign the garden. With the needs of an active toddler to consider, the notion of a safe enclosed play area close to the house quite naturally appealed to her.
She and Dracco hadn’t been out together as a couple since the early days of their reunion, nearly two months ago now. She chewed harder on her lip. He was spending more time at home, though.
‘There’s a very good restaurant where we could have lunch down by the river,’ Dracco was saying.
If she was to refuse to go with him he might be tempted to ask Lisa. The sheer savagery of the jealousy that gored her made her catch her breath. What was the matter? She ought to hate and despise him for what he was doing, for what he was, instead of… What she was feeling was totally illogical! But then, when had love ever been anything else?
Helplessly Imogen watched him. She could feel the sheer intensity of her love melting her resistance.
‘When were you thinking of leaving?’ she asked him.
‘Now,’ Dracco told her promptly, putting the last of the groceries away and then coming towards her. ‘Ready?’
His hand was beneath her elbow, guiding her back towards the door. What was the point of denying herself the opportunity of being with him when she wanted it so much? When she wanted him so much, she acknowledged with a small, sensual shudder of pleasure at his touch.
‘No, not a pond.’
Imogen could feel the sharp look Dracco gave her as she shook her head in rejection of the garden designer’s suggestion for a water feature in the patio area proposed for the garden.
‘But you love the garden’s existing formal fish pond,’ Dracco reminded her with a small frown.
‘Yes, I do,’ Imogen agreed. She could feel her face starting to burn self-consciously as both men looked at her, waiting for her to explain her rejection. ‘I was thinking that a pond so close to the house might not be a good idea,’ she began hesitantly, pausing before continuing, ‘Small children can drown so easily and quickly in even a few inches of water.’
The young garden designer gave a small, approving nod.
‘Of course. I should have realised. And there are some totally child-safe alternatives that we could discuss—water bubbling over pebbles; that sort of thing.’
As she listened to him Imogen was conscious of Dracco’s silence and his concentrated gaze, although he waited until she had thanked the designer for his suggestions and moved out of his earshot before bending his head to murmur speculatively in her ear, ‘There isn’t anything you want to tell me, is there, Imo?’
‘No.’ Imogen knew she sounded both defensive and flustered. ‘When there is something…anything…to tell you then I will.’
‘I’m sure that you will,’ Dracco agreed urbanely. ‘After all, there’s no way you’re going to put yourself in the position of having to have sex again with me—unnecessarily—is there? Mmm?’
Imogen gave him a seethingly angry look. How dared he torment her like this, mocking her for her vulnerability to him, for her desire for him?
He had taken to coming to bed later, so late, in fact, that by the time he eventually did so she had fallen into an exhausted sleep.
And she knew why, of course. He didn’t want to sleep with her because he really wanted Lisa. How could he be so cruel, so uncaring of her feelings? Surely he must know just how much he was hurting her?
Their lunch, followed by a walk along the river, and then well over an hour here at the garden centre had left her feeling unusually tired. She had noticed increasingly over the last few days a lassitude which tended to overwhelm her during the afternoons, sometimes to such an extent that she had actually fallen asleep. Luckily the hot, sunny spell of weather they were having meant that she could lie in the garden on a sun lounger and doze off to sleep under the pretext of sunbathing.
Now, as they walked back to Dracco’s car, Imogen could feel her footsteps lagging, and despite her frantic attempts to do so she couldn’t quite manage to smother a sleepy yawn.
Dracco, of course, saw it and stopped in mid-stride to frown down at her and demand, ‘Tired?’
‘It disturbs my sleep when you come to bed so late,’ Imogen parried.
‘If that’s meant to be a hint that you’d like me to come to bed earlier…?’
‘It isn’t,’ Imogen denied immediately. ‘Why should I want you to? I’m not the one who forced this marriage on you, Dracco.’
Before he could retaliate she hurried ahead of him, and then ignored him when he caught up with her just as she reached the car.
A young family of three small children and their father were playing with a ball, and as she watched them Imogen was suddenly reminded of the street children in Rio. Not that these well-fed and obviously very much loved children in front of her were anything like Rio’s unwanted orphans, but seeing them made her think about her old life and the people she had shared it with.
Unexpectedly she suddenly ached for the stalwart comfort of Sister Maria’s calm wisdom.
Imogen woke up with a start. She had actually gone to bed after their return from the garden centre, claiming not totally untruthfully that she had a headache. Having showered and re-dressed, she headed lethargically for the stairs. Soon now she was going to have to put her suspicions to the test, not that she really had any doubts that she was pregnant, but once that knowledge was ‘official’ then she was honour-bound to make it known to Dracco.
Normally a couple looked forward to the arrival of a child, especially a wanted child, as an event that would bring them closer together, but in their case Imogen was certain that it would have totally the opposite effect. Once she had given him the child he wanted there would be no room in Dracco’s life for her.
Halfway down the stairs, where they turned at a right angle to themselves, there was a small half-landing with a tall, deep window that overlooked the driveway. The stained glass in it had a soft-hued richness which had always delighted Imogen. She stopped automatically to look through it and then froze as she recognised the familiar figure of her stepmother picking her way from her car to the front door on spindly high-heeled sandals.
So far as she knew, Lisa had not visited the house since their confrontation.
Instinctively Imogen stepped back out of sight as Lisa rang the front-doorbell. She heard the study door open and held her breath as she listened to Dracco’s strong masculine footsteps and felt the small surge of early-evening air waft into the hallway as he opened the door.
‘Lisa.’ His voice was expressionless, but in a way that dragged sharp, poisoned nails of anguish across Imogen’s heart.
Since Lisa’s previous visit to the house Imogen had not confronted the role she knew her stepmother had played and she suspected continued to play in Dracco’s life. But her awareness of it shadowed every aspect of their life together. Lying awake on her own in their bed at night she had tormented herself with the knowledge that Dracco was staying away from her because he really wanted to be with Lisa.
She had known exactly why Dracco had
not wanted her love, and why he had been so insistent that all they had done together was to have sex, a physical coupling devoid of emotion. He kept his love only for Lisa. And yet, knowing that, she had still wanted him, responded to him, stupidly allowed herself to believe in the impossible fantasy that she, Imogen, had to mean something to him, that he couldn’t possibly be with her if she didn’t. She had even been so desperate for his love that she had allowed him to mock her for her own helpless desire for him.
Every time he taunted her about it she sensed some deep, hidden, ambivalent feeling behind his words. Because he resented her for taking what should only be given to the woman he loved?
Imogen could feel herself starting to shiver and then to shudder, deep, racking manifestations of her traumatic emotional pain. She could hear Lisa saying with soft seductiveness, ‘I knew you’d be expecting me.’
And then the study door was closing, shutting her out, enclosing both of them in their own private world.
If she closed her eyes Imogen could see them in it…could see the way the late-afternoon sun would illuminate dust motes of gold through the long sash windows either side of the traditional fireplace her father had insisted on keeping. The desk, an antique partners’ desk at which she could vividly remember both her father and Dracco sitting, working amicably together, was in one corner of the room. Behind it were floor-to-ceiling bookcases. To one side of the fireplace was a large leather chair, and in front of it a narrow sofa, long enough for her to lie down on at full stretch, something which she had done often in the early days after her mother’s death.
Was Dracco laying Lisa down on that sofa now, slowly, lovingly, longingly undressing her whilst she…?
Imogen gave a low, tortured moan of pure anguish.
She wanted to scream, to cry, to claw at her very flesh for so foolishly and wantonly betraying her, to tear her treacherous heart out of her body, to sear and seal her emotions so she would never feel again, but most of all she wanted to run as far and as fast away from Dracco as she could. Just as she had done once before.