by Miranda Lee
Evie bustled in with coffee and after-dinner mints, bringing Jessica a welcome moment of distraction from her escalating blood pressure.
'I'm off now, folks,' Evie said. 'I've cleared up everything except what's on the table. Just pop your dirty plates in the dishwasher, and I'll finish up in the morning. There's a show on telly I want to watch, which starts at nine. See you tomorrow.'
'Bye, Evie,' they both chorused.
'I'm glad to see television isn't banned on the island altogether,' Jessica said dryly once they were alone. 'At least I can go over to Evie's in the evenings if my withdrawal symptoms get too bad.'
'I seem to be suffering from some withdrawal symptoms myself,' Sebastian muttered darkly. 'I wish a few hours of television would cure mine, but I very much doubt it. A few more days of this and I'll be ready for the funny farm.'
'What on earth are you talking about?' she said impatiently. He arched a sardonic eyebrow at her as he downed the last of the wine. 'You mean you don't know? You honestly don't know?'
'No, I honestly don't know!'
'Then I'll just have to tell you, won't I?'
'That might be a good idea.'
His laugh was bitter. 'I doubt it. But the fact of the matter is this. I can't sleep and I can't write.'
Jessica blinked her bewilderment. 'Are you blaming me for that?'
'I'm not blaming you. But you are responsible.'
'Would you kindly like to explain that remark?'
'No, but having come this far, I might as well continue. The awful truth is that from the moment I set eyes on you yesterday, Miss Jessica Rawlins, I was madly attracted to you.'
'A-attracted to me?' she repeated dazedly.
'Well, actually, the word attracted is a bit of an understatement,' he said dryly. 'It was more a case of lust at first sight. Quite embarrassing, really. Surely you must have noticed me gawking at you like an adolescent schoolboy. Evie certainly did.'
So that was why he'd stared at her! But...
She swallowed as her fluster receded and the reality of the situation sank in. He wanted her as much as she wanted him. More, perhaps. He was a man, after all. She tried to speak but couldn't. She didn't know what to say.
'Yes, I can appreciate your surprise over my confession,' he drawled. 'I'm pretty surprised myself that I made it. But I'm just not good at pretending, like some people. Also, as you have no doubt noted, I've been behaving like an absolute bastard to you without sufficient cause. Let me offer my sincerest apologies. My only excuse is that I have obviously been celibate far too long. Now laugh if you like. It really is rather funny, isn't it?'
Jessica didn't laugh. She didn't find it funny in the least! All she could do was stare speechlessly over the table at the man she'd been wanting more than any man she'd ever met.
'For pity's sake, Jessica, don't make me feel any worse than I already do,'
Sebastian snarled into the electric silence. 'I'm sure you're quite used to members of the opposite sex being smitten by your striking beauty. Not to mention your body. So stop playing the offended virgin. I really have no patience with it tonight. You and I both know you're not that.'
She might have been angered by this last barb if she hadn't been so shocked. Having vented his spleen, Sebastian sat there, playing with his empty wineglass, twirling it round and round. It was unnerving to watch. Not that Jessica needed unnerving. She was already totally rattled by his astonishing admission and the thoughts it evoked.
Now there was nothing standing between herself and what she secretly wanted. He would not reject her. He would welcome any admission or advance on her part with open arms.
But it would only be sex on his part. And sex in its most base form. He not only didn't love her, he didn't even like her. He merely wanted to.....
'What if I threw myself on your mercy?' he suggested, his tone coldly self-mocking. 'Begged you to alleviate my pain.'
'Pain?'
'Yes, pain. Do you have any idea what it feels like for a man to want a woman so badly that it's a physical ache? Have you ever wanted anyone like that?'
'Yes,' she said. You, she thought bitterly.
'Then you know what it's like. Have some compassion, woman. Come to bed with me tonight. I'm a good lover. I won't disappoint you.'
She could not speak. Her heart was thudding too wildly, her blood pounding through her head. All she had to do was say yes and he would be hers. All that stood between herself and possible ecstasy was her pride and self-respect.
But pride and self-respect were important to Jessica. She had a feeling the reason her mother had ended up a drunken wreck was a lack of both at some point in her life. Jessica had never liked the concept of casual or selfish sex. That was for sluts. And men.
She'd been a virgin till she was twenty-two, and even after that, she'd always believed herself in love with the few men she'd allowed to bed her.
'But I don't love you!' she blurted, voicing her inner dismay that she was on the brink of blindly saying yes to him, despite everything. His mouth twisted in a wry smile. 'I'm not asking you to love me, Jess, just to let me make love to you. I find it hard to believe that a woman as intelligent and sophisticated as you thinks sex and love always have to go together. Haven't you ever been to bed with a man you didn't love before?'
'No!' she denied hotly.
His astonishment was very real. His eyes flared wide, then narrowed. 'No?'
Her blush was so fierce it had to be visible, even in the subdued light. 'I...at least...not consciously. I thought I was in love with them at the time.'
'Hm. Interesting. And did they hurt you in the end? These men you thought you loved?'
'You could say that,' she said stiffly.
He nodded slowly. 'Love can be cruel. It demands too much, expects too highly. One is inevitably disappointed. Sex, however, never disappoints, if that's all one wants.'
'That's a matter of opinion,' she snapped before she could snatch the words back.
His eyes moved over her heated face—watchful, knowing and intelligent eyes. 'You've found sex disappointing, Jess?' he asked with a gentle curiosity that was incredibly disarming.
'Sometimes,' she muttered, looking into her untouched coffee.
'Sometimes, or always?' he persisted.
Her eyes jerked angrily to his. 'Will you just drop this?'
'No. I won't. I think it's a crying shame that a woman as beautiful as you has not had a satisfying sex life. It's also a mystery to me. You've no idea how much sensuality you project, Jess. It leaps from your body and your eyes all the time. That's why I have been like a cat on a hot tin roof ever since you arrived, because my poor frustrated male flesh was besieged by the silent messages sent out by your highly sexually charged self. Frankly I'm stunned to find out you're unfulfilled in that regard. I can only think you've been very unlucky with your choice of lovers so far.'
'And you think you'd do better? A man I don't love?'
'I'd sure as hell like to try,' he said, a wickedly sardonic smile pulling at his mouth.
'I'll just bet you would!' she flung at him.
She glared at him, at his mouth, his hands, his body. And she wanted them all. On her, and inside her.
His words came back to haunt her, those words he'd said to her that very first day, about how she could do what she liked out here on this island in this isolated house, and no one would ever know or judge. He was offering himself to her for the night, and she would be an utter fool to refuse. For it was what she wanted more than anything else in the world. If she let this chance go by she knew she would regret it for the rest of her life. But it was so hard to say the words, to voice her agreement. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth, and the palms of her hands had gone clammy. Speak up, her dark side urged recklessly. He's yours. Take him!
'All right then,' she said at last. 'Try!'
His smile faded abruptly, and he was very still for several excruciatingly long moments. 'You don't mean that,' he said at last, clear
ly sceptical. He hadn't expected her surrender, had not bargained on it.
'Oh, yes, I do!'
Heat flooded all through her body. Now you've done it, that dark little voice crowed inside.
But it was not met with self-disgust this time. Or shame.
A strange satisfaction rose to squash any negative feelings. There was a sense of triumph. And excitement.
Her chin lifted. 'I definitely do,' she repeated, her voice steady and strong and sure.
CHAPTER NINE
JESSICA stood on the back veranda, her hands curled tightly over the wooden railing, her shoulders squared against the feelings rampaging through her. Delayed shock warred with a very real dismay at what she had agreed to in the dining room. Yet both kept being overridden by that voice, that dark and insidious voice that kept whispering wickedly weakening things inside her head.
You can't change your mind now. You don't really want to. You want him to take you to bed. You want him more than you've ever wanted anything in your whole life!
Jessica gulped down the gathering lump in her throat, then glanced at the clear night sky, with its full moon and myriad stars.
It was a night for lovers, she conceded. A night for romance. But Sebastian wasn't looking for romance. Or love. He wanted what most men had wanted from her over the years, the difference being that this time, she wanted the same thing.
Sex.
Jessica shivered as she thought of all that small word entailed. The nakedness. The intimacy. The act itself. It was an extraordinary thought that soon she would lie beneath a totally nude Sebastian while he fused his flesh with hers.
It was less than forty-eight hours since they'd met. It felt like a lifetime!
As did the fifteen minutes since she'd agreed to give him her body to do with as he willed.
Oh, God, she thought despairingly. What have I done?
'What are you doing out here?'
She whirled to find Sebastian standing in the doorway, frowning at her.
'Have.. .have you finished?' she asked shakily. He'd offered to clear the table while she fled to the bathroom, instant nerves bringing on a sudden call of nature. She hadn't been able to bring herself to go to her bedroom and change into something more comfortable, as he'd suggested. Nothing was going to make her feel more comfortable at this moment.
'Yes,' he said, still eyeing her warily. 'The dishwasher is busily chugging away.'
'Thank you.' Jessica wrapped her arms around herself, feeling not cold but suddenly shy before him. Or was it ashamed? Did he think her cheap for having agreed to sex without love?
Probably, she accepted unhappily. That old double standard still applied, no matter how much women tried to change the status quo. A man who slept around without caring and commitment gained kudos from his mates, and was chased after by women for his prowess. He was a stud, whereas a woman of similar morals was a slut.
'I want you to know that I don't usually do things like this,' she said defensively, her arms still wrapped tightly around her.
He came forward and slowly but firmly unwound her arms before placing them around his neck. 'I can see that,' he said, sliding his arms around her then pulling her against him. 'It makes me want you all the more.'
He kissed her softly on her nose, then her cheek, then the corner of her mouth. Her lips were parted and quivering by the time he covered them with his own. There was no barrier to his tongue as it slid deep into her mouth. Jessica linked her fingers behind Sebastian's neck and clung on like grim death lest she fall down, for her knees had suddenly gone to jelly and her head was spinning. His arms tightened around her, and she was dimly aware of her breasts pressed painfully against his chest.
Her main focus, however, was on that sensually probing tongue and how it was making her feel, what it was making her want. Him, inside her, not his tongue. Him, all over her. Him, and only him, for ever and ever. She moaned a tortured denial at this crazy notion. Anyone would think she loved the man.
This isn't love, Jessica reminded herself brutally. It's lust. Sebastian's a man of the world and he spelled it out to you earlier. You 're enjoying sex without love, the same as men and wanton women have for centuries. Jessica shivered in his arms. Did that make her wanton? She certainly felt wanton under his plundering mouth and welded to his appallingly aroused body.
Vivid images flashed into her mind, starkly explicit and shockingly erotic. Sebastian, undressing her here, where they stood, touching her all over, taking her on this veranda, in the moonlight, her cries of ecstasy sounding shamefully loud in the stillness of the night.
'Jess,' he groaned thickly into her swollen lips.
'Mmmm?' The dazed murmur was all she could manage. She was still off in another world, a world where there was no shame, only the darkest and deepest of pleasures.
'You shouldn't have rubbed yourself against me like that,' he muttered. 'But no matter. It was probably all for the best. But I'll have to leave you for a minute or two.'
He was gone a full thirty seconds before she could assemble her jumbled brain enough to make sense of his words. When she realised what had happened, she groaned her embarrassment and spun round to grip the railing with a white-knuckled intensity.
Dear God, she hadn't even realised she had been rubbing against him. Though she accepted it must have been so. She'd been beside herself with longing for him.
Even now, with her fantasy fast fading, her heart was still pounding urgently within her chest. She wanted Sebastian back, with his mouth on hers again, and the hard warmth of his body enveloping hers.
As though her mind had conjured him up, he was suddenly there, his arms winding like steel bands around her chest from behind, pinning her upper arms to her sides.
'I was as quick as I could be,' he murmured as he nuzzled her neck, brushing cool lips across her burning skin. His arms were cool, as well, droplets of water on his fine body hair showing that he had showered during his brief desertion. 'I didn't want to waste all that lovely mad passion.'
Jessica only heard the word mad.
I must be, she thought dizzily. Quite mad. He only has to touch me and I turn into a different woman. A stranger with totally alien responses and desires. Never before have I felt such abandon or excitement. He has bewitched me.
'Tell me what you were thinking about earlier,' he murmured seductively.
'When I was kissing you.'
She shook her head, then gasped when his lips opened and closed on her neck, sucking at the already fevered skin till the sensations went from pleasure to pain.
'Stop,' she gasped, and wriggled against him.
It was then that she realised he was naked, totally, stunningly naked.
'Then tell me,' he insisted. 'I won't be shocked.'
Again, she shook her head, her eyes wide with the mental image of his nude body pressed up against hers.
'You were wanting me,' he whispered in her ear. 'Weren't you?'
'Yes,' she confessed with a shudder.
One of his arms released its hold to start stroking her throat, tipping her neck up and her head back against his shoulder with each upward caress. Her eyes squeezed shut when his hand moved down her throat, down to caress her cleavage, to tease and torment her as yet untouched breasts.
'How were you wanting me, Jess?' he demanded, his voice remaining soft and almost dreamlike. ' Where were you wanting me?'
'Here,' she choked out, as though impelled to answer by his sheer willpower.
'Here,' she repeated, her voice becoming more dazed as his fingers continued to trace the curves of her bra.
'Here and now?'
'Yes,' she rasped.
'Tell me more. Tell me what I did in your mind.'
'You...you undressed me,' came her thickened words. 'And touched me.'
'Where?' His hand had slipped inside a bra cup, and one of his fingertips began gently rolling the rocklike nipple.
'E-everywhere.'
'And then what happened?' he asked, hi
s voice amazingly calm, whereas hers, hers was trembling violently. 'Did I make love to you? Here, against the railing? As we're standing now?'
'Oh.' Her face flamed, along with her body.
'I see I did. And did I satisfy you in your mind?'
'Yes,' she groaned. Dear Lord, why didn't he stop making her talk about it? It was turning her on like crazy. His hand in her bra was turning her on like crazy. She felt like she was going to explode!
'How many times?'
She moaned her dismay. 'I... I don't know.'
'Has that ever happened to you before?'
She had to laugh.
His hand stilled on her breast. 'Are you saying you've never been satisfied by a man before?'
'Only... afterwards.'
'What about before?'
'Before?' Her tone echoed her bewilderment at the concept. He removed his hand from her bra then, and slowly started to undo the buttons of her shirt while he kept her pinned against the railing, her back to him. Oddly, panic immediately assailed her, which was as confusing as it was disappointing. She hadn't felt panic in her fantasy. She had been all wild and willing abandonment.
But it seemed a fantasy was just that. A fantasy. Reality was not going to be as cooperative.
'No,' she said, her hands flying to cover his. 'I can't. Not out here.'
'Trust me, Jess,' he said, holding her hands still with one of his while he touched her with the other. His fingers moved with deceptive tenderness over her chest, reawakening her breasts through her clothes. Soon panic was the last thing on her mind. All she could think about was that warm, strong hand and where it was wandering. It moved up to stroke her throat and then her face, tracing her eyebrows and eyelids, her nose and finally her mouth. She moaned as his fingers rubbed lightly over her lips. When they fell softly apart he inserted one of his fingers, and she found herself sucking on it, the mindless response echoing the fever pitch of arousal he'd brought her to, arousal that could no longer lay claim to conscience, or control, or command over what she was doing.
Her arms fell limply to her sides when he released them. She made no protest when he eased her away a little and finished undoing the buttons on her shirt. The thin white shirt was soon peeled back from her shoulders and discarded, along with her bra.