by Penny Jordan
Although it wasn’t particularly late the house was in darkness apart from the single lamp glowing in her window, which she had left switched on when coming out. Mrs Cummings, she remembered, had said she was going out to visit her sister.
Never had the thought of the solitude of her own room been so welcome. She intended to have a bath and then go straight to bed. She was completely drained both mentally and physically.
Her door opened smoothly as she inserted her key, and she stepped into the small foyer. Her bruised face had started to throb painfully and she felt grubby and contaminated somehow by the ugly scene she had experienced. She would not be so naïve another time, and she certainly intended to give Clive Richmond a wide berth from now on.
She pushed open the door and stepped into the warm pool of light cast by the lamp, freezing to the spot as Drew uncoiled his lean frame from her settee.
‘Mrs Cummings let me in,’ he told her calmly, his expression suddenly changing as he saw her face. ‘My God, what.…’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Kirsty told him jerkily. ‘Please leave. I don’t know what you’re doing here anyway. Clive told me that Beverley was visiting the Baileys tonight.’
‘Clive told you?’ He pounced, a bitterly cynical expression in his eyes as he looked again at her bruised face. ‘And Clive did this to you, did he? A rough lover, I take it!’
The contempt in his eyes was like a lash on already torn skin, but Kirsty refused to give in to the weak desire to burst into tears, instead saying challengingly, ‘And what if he is? What business is it of yours?’
He reached for her hand before she could stop him, turning it palm down so that the lamplight glittered on her ring.
‘I should have thought this made it pretty much my business,’ he told her, indicating the ring, ‘and the fact that Clive chose to ignore it is hardly a good character reference—just the opposite. He’s the type of man who enjoys stealing from others.’
His assessment was so correct that she was left speechless.
‘Did he, Kirsty?’ Drew demanded harshly, the tone of his voice demanding a response.
‘If you’re referring to me, he could hardly “steal” what doesn’t belong to you,’ Kirsty reminded him. She was about to tell him that the could hardly care what her relationship with Clive was, when he stunned her by saying softly,
‘Then perhaps it’s time it did.’
With two strides he had closed the gap between them, and Kirsty was being crushed against the wall of his chest, his voice grating against her ear as he muttered savagely, ‘If it’s physical violence that turns you on, try this for size!’ And then his mouth was grinding down on hers, savaging the tender flesh as she struggled impotently in his arms.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BRIEFLY, Kirsty saw their reflections in the uncurtained window, Drew, tall and powerful, his body enveloping her smaller frame, intimacy cloaking their real emotions.
‘Drew, don’t do this,’ she begged, dragging her mouth free from the assault of his, but he wasn’t listening to her. His eyes were fastened on the small tear in her sweater, the expression in this turning her blood to ice, fear, freezing her muscles as he lifted his eyes to her face.
‘Drew, it wasn’t like that…’ she protested, but he didn’t seem to hear her.
‘And to think I fell for that sweet, innocent act!’ he muttered thickly. ‘But you aren’t innocent any more, are you, Kirsty?’ He touched her mouth, probing with one finger, a cynical smile curving his mouth as she winced from the pain of her bruised flesh, trying to find the words to convince him that he was wrong. He was like a leashed animal in the small confines of her room, and the pent-up bitterness of his fury frightened her; all the more so because there was no reason for it.
The only possible objection he could have to her being with Clive was on the grounds of their supposed ‘engagement’, which they both knew to be fictitious, and his rage was as irrational as her jealousy had been when she discovered he was with Beverley Travers. Only her jealousy had a sound basis—she loved him, while he felt nothing at all for her.
She glanced nervously towards him and amended her thoughts. He did feel something for her. It was glittering in his eyes, etched into the cynicism of his face, and her stomach churned desperately as she recognised desire burning behind the cool façade. But why, and why now?
Was it because he thought she was no longer a virgin? Kirsty shuddered, cast adrift on an unfamiliar sea, longing for a known landmark to cling to, but they had all been swept away, just as Drew was threatening to sweep away her fragile defences.
‘To think I denied myself because I thought I hadn’t the right to destroy your innocence! Well, I’m not going to deny myself any longer. Do you know how long I’ve been sitting there there waiting for you to come back from your lover’s arms? Over two hours,’ he told her bitingly.
‘I didn’t know you were coming round,’ Kirsty protested, trying to squirm out of his grasp. ‘Clive told me he was having a party…’ She flushed, biting her lip. She hadn’t intended to let that slip; she had no wish for Drew to mock her naïveté, but she needn’t have worried, because it was obvious that he didn’t believe her.
‘Some party!’ he grated. ‘And it’s not over.’
Kirsty grasped his forearms protestingly as he reached for the edge of her sweater.
‘Drew, no!’ she protested huskily. ‘You have no right to…’
‘No right? Haven’t you forgotten this?’ he asked silkily, touching her ring. ‘This gives me some pretty formidable rights these days, Kirsty, and this time I’m going to take them; even if it is rather late in the day. Perhaps I ought to thank Clive after all,’ he added with cruel emphasis. ‘Virgins don’t exactly make exciting partners…’
Kirsty closed her eyes in mute protest at the cynicism of both his words and his expression. He made it sound so clinical and cold; not how she had imagined things at all—especially not with her very first lover, and all at once she had the icy conviction that Drew was going to be her first lover. She could read the determination in his hard mouth; the grip of his hands on her hipbones where her jumper ended.
‘Fight all you want, Kirsty,’ he breathed smokily as she tried to evade him. ‘We both know what the eventual outcome will be, but if playing the unwilling victim is what turns you on, you go right ahead—just don’t expect me to play along with you. But first…’ His hands gripped her jumper, Kirsty stilling instinctively as she saw the banked-down rage in his eyes.
‘Either you take this thing off, or I rip it off you piece by piece,’ he said softly. ‘And Kirsty,’ he added as she stood like a wooden doll and he stripped the jumper from her, ‘don’t ever wear it in my presence again.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’ Kirsty managed with a shaky flippancy. ‘Don’t you like the colour?’
‘What I don’t like is the way it makes me feel,’ he told her enigmatically, ‘but right now all I want to concentrate on is the way you make me feel. You’re a very desirable female, Kirsty—but then of course you already know that, don’t you?’
His hands rested on her rib cage, just below the soft thrust of her breasts, clearly marked with the beginnings of bruises where Clive had touched her. Drew splayed his own hand across her breast, obliterating the faint marks, and a tremulous, uncertain sensation spread upwards, dispelling the ice in her veins. Dear God, what was the matter with her? Kirsty wondered. After the way he had just spoken to her she should be loathing Drew, and yet her pulses leapt in undeniable response to his touch.
‘You want me, Kirsty,’ he murmured against her ear. ‘Don’t bother denying it. It’s been there between us all along.’
‘Perhaps I do,’ Kirsty admitted, trying to conceal the shimmer of tears in her eyes, ‘but that doesn’t mean that I don’t loathe myself for doing so.’
His response was to tighten his arms around her, his lips burning a fiery trail against her sensitive flesh, strong teeth nibbling at the tautly r
esponsive cord in her throat, until she could feel her resistance slipping away like an ebb tide, leaving her stranded and vulnerable.
Of their own accord her fingers twined themselves in the night-darkness of Drew’s hair, small sighing sounds of pleasure escaping her lips as his fingers moved over her collarbone and downwards, stroking over her skin, until it was dry and burning with fire to know his touch more intimately.
She wasn’t even aware of his fingers deftly unfastening her bra; only the thrilling surge of pleasure as the brief garment fell away and Drew’s hands cupped her overheated flesh, caressing and soothing its burgeoning arousal. Soft and pliant as a kitten, Kirsty wound her arms round him, pressing her body close to the rigid masculinity of Drew’s, gasping in sudden awareness of his arousal as his hands tightened on her hips, making no secret of the powerful thrust of male muscles.
Their quarrel, and all his insults, were forgotten, every sensitive nerve in Kirsty’s body responding to Drew’s skilled caresses. She wasn’t aware of them moving to her bedroom, or of Drew carrying her to the bed, until he was lying full length on it beside her, his eyes feasting on the unexpected voluptuousness of her body. His hands encircling her waist, a deeply absorbed expression in his eyes as they moved slowly over her skin until she couldn’t stop the softly pleading, ‘Don’t!’ which escaped her lips.
‘There’s no reason to be shy now.’
For some reason he sounded more sad than angry, and Kirsty sensed that the bitterness which had driven him had given way to the same irresistible pull of pleasure she was experiencing. ‘It’s a very pleasurable sensation to have your body admired by your lover,’ Drew told her in a deeply sensual voice. His thumb was probing the trembling curve of her mouth, and her bruises were forgotten as she tensed on a spiral of urgent excitement.
‘Drew, I…’
‘Go ahead,’ he told her huskily, reading her mind. ‘You don’t have to ask permission. In fact…’
A shiver of pleasure touched her skin as Drew removed first his sweater and then the checked shirt he was wearing underneath. In the dim glow from the lamp in the other room Kirsty could see the warm gold of his flesh, still tanned from time spent abroad. Dark hairs matted his chest, arrowing downwards, drawing her eyes wonderingly over his body to widen and gaze, confused, at the buckle of his belt.
‘If you keep looking at me like that, Kirsty, you’ll have to do more than just look,’ Drew growled against her throat, ‘and soon,’ he concluded suggestively.
‘Drew
‘Don’t talk, Kirsty, just feel, like this,’ he told her urgently, possessing her mouth hotly, and depriving her of breath. Her hands moved instinctively over his skin, thrilling to the sensation of silk-sheathed muscle and sinew, contracting beneath her delicate exploration. Her lips, released from the intoxicating dominance of Drew’s, made shy forays against his skin, tasting the male-scented flesh, revelling in the heady experience of feeling Drew’s passionately urgent response, shyness and doubt swept aside in the avalanche of feeling that swept her as she felt Drew’s skin beneath her lips. She wanted to go on and on touching and tasting, exploring the intoxicatingly alien maleness. Her fingers curled impotently into the waistband of his jeans, in sudden shock.
‘What’s the matter?’ Drew’s lips trailed seductively over the curves of her breasts, his hands gripping her hips as he held her firmly against him. ‘For God’s sake, Kirsty,’ he muttered hoarsely, ‘what are you trying to do to me—drive me out of my mind? Help me get these damned jeans off. I want to feel you against me,’ he added huskily. ‘All of you.’
The sight of his naked body made her catch her breath in awe. Muscles rippled silkily beneath his skin as he moved, tall and powerfully built, his body that of a perfectly formed athlete.
‘You’re looking at me as if I’m the first naked man you’ve ever seen,’ Drew taunted softly, ‘and it’s doing dangerous things to my self-control. I wanted to hurt you tonight, Kirsty,’ he told her, ‘but somehow all the anger’s gone, and all I want to do right now is to make love to you until there simply isn’t room for anything else but that. You’re beautiful, Kirsty, every single bit of you.’ He bent his head and a shaft of exquisite pleasure shot through her as his tongue touched provocatively against the aroused centre of her nipple, stroking and caressing until she was on fire with a heated need to know a more satisfying possession, gratified only when Drew’s mouth eventually closed possessively over the aroused peak, pleasure almost too great to be borne boiling up inside her like a whirlpool.
Drew’s ardent possession of her breasts swept away the last of her reserve, and Kirsty stopped fighting her growing desire to yield to her need to touch and caress him as intimately as he was touching her. The light kisses she pressed against the burning heat of his skin evoked a response that overwhelmed her, Drew choosing to show her how far along the paths of sensuality she still had to go, by tracing kisses over the gentle swell of her stomach, devastating her with the intimacy of his touch.
‘Drew!’
She writhed wantonly against him, moaning faintly with pleasure as he moved against her, sliding between her thighs, his hands cradling her hips so that she arched instinctively against him, inciting his possession, relishing the fierce possession of his mouth buried against hers, the urgent thrust of his body against her, coiling her stomach muscles in nervous anticipation.
Some childlike impulse made her squeeze her eyes tightly closed, although she didn’t realise how painfully her fingernails were biting into Drew’s back, until he relinquished her mouth to murmur protestingly in her ear, ‘Relax!’
She tried to do as she said, letting herself slide down into the sensual fever racing through her blood, not making any attempt to combat her urgent need for his possession. She loved him, and instinct told her this might be the only time they would share such intimacy. Dimly she knew that she ought to be resisting; ought to be reminding herself that Drew didn’t love her, but with the rough pressure of his long legs against hers, her breasts crushed against the warmth of his chest, the fierce thud of his heartbeat drowning out her own and the feverish thrust of his body as desire overwhelmed him it was impossible to think of anything but the heady pleasure of here and now.
‘Drew. Drew…’ His name left her lips on a whispered litany, her head moving restlessly from side to side. His hands shaped her face, holding it captive as he plundered her mouth, taking all that she gave in sweet surrender and still demanding more until she was lightheaded with pleasure.
‘I want you, Kirsty,’ Drew muttered thickly against her mouth. ‘So much that I don’t even care any more that…’ He checked swiftly as a small gasp of pain escaped her, drawing away to stare down into her flushed face. ‘Kirsty?’
She turned away childishly, closing her eyes.
‘Kirsty, you aren’t… Clive didn’t make love to you, did he?’ he demanded softly, forcing her to look at him. ‘My God,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘God, what have I done?’ He spoke more to himself than to her, and Kirsty watched him with huge hurt eyes as he moved away from her, sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to her as he bent to retrieve his jeans.
‘Does it matter whether or not Clive has made love to me?’ she managed at last, feeling exposed and vulnerable, lying on the bed beside him. ‘Does it make any difference?’
‘All the difference in the world,’ Drew told her tersely without looking at her. ‘God, surely I don’t need to tell you that!’ He turned and she flinched from the look of bitter loathing in his eyes, scorched with the humiliation of knowing that he was rejecting her.
He had wanted her—he had told her so; but now, suddenly, he didn’t. Because he had discovered that she was after all still a virgin. What difference did that make? All the difference in the world, Kirsty acknowledged. Drew wouldn’t want the responsibility of taking her virginity—or the possible consequences. He loved Beverley Travers; she already knew that. All he had felt for Kirsty had been desire—and now that desire was g
one.
She refused to look at him as he dressed, tensing as she felt him stand up and then bend over her.
‘Kirsty…’
‘Please go,’ she begged in a curt little voice. She couldn’t bear his pity. It was bad enough that she had been on the point of giving herself to him without love, without her having to endure his pity. ‘We’ve nothing left to say to one another, Drew.’
She hadn’t realised she had been holding her breath until she heard the sound of the front door closing behind him. He was gone. She lay on her bed for several seconds, simply staring at the door, and then the tears came, a mingling of reaction and pain.
She loved him, and she had given him the most precious gift she had to give. He had rejected that gift, and the knowledge brought a searing pain, so intense that it overrode everything else.
* * *
The moment Kirsty opened her eyes in the morning she remembered what had happened. She was trembling when she left the house to go to rehearsal. How on earth was she going to face Drew? By the time she reached the theatre she was a tense bundle of nerves. She parked her car without her normal care, forcing a smile to her lips as she walked on to the stage to join those who were already gathered there.
Rachel and David were deep in conversation, Pete, the lighting technician, was busily engaged working on some of the footlights. There was no sign of Cherry, and Kirsty drifted over to a group which included Meg and Chris. She had already seen Clive and was sure that he had seen her, although he had pretended not to.
‘It came as quite a shock to Simon, I can tell you,’ Meg was saying, ‘and poor Helen is terribly disappointed—but then of course he really had no choice.’
‘He’s gone, then?’
‘Oh yes,’ Meg agreed. ‘First thing this morning. Poor you,’ she sympathised with Kirsty. ‘Have you any idea when he’ll be back?’
Kirsty tried not to look too baffled, heaving a quick sigh of relief as Simon suddenly walked in, greeting them with a rather preoccupied smile.