by Penny Jordan
She was drifting off on a hazy cloud when he returned. He had changed into a towelling robe, belted round the waist, but for once she felt no shock or curl of nervous excitement at the sight of his body, merely an apathetic acceptance of his presence and her need of it.
‘Laurel.’
She wanted to tell him that she wanted to sleep, but he wouldn’t let her. He picked her up, shaking her so hard that she was forced to open her eyes. His were black with anger, so much anger that the haze started to clear.
‘Don’t go passing out on me again,’ he warned her as he made her walk across the landing and into the bathroom.
‘Get in,’ he instructed, testing the water, ‘and no, I’m not going. It’s as easy to drown in a bath as it is in a pool when you’re on the verge of losing consciousness.’
For some strange reason she felt merely apathetic acceptance of his commands. She even stayed listlessly passive as he removed her bikini, shivering slightly with cold, goosebumps raised on her skin.
‘Laurel.’ There was a curious tightness in the way he said her name; an inflection she couldn’t understand, and which quickly changed to anger when she tried to focus on him.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she heard him mutter under his breath as he bundled her into the water, and its life-giving warmth started to melt the frozen ice in her veins.
She could have stayed there all night, but Oliver seemed to have other ideas. He whisked her out before she could protest, enveloping her in a huge towel and briskly towelling her body, until her skin stung with pain.
‘That’s better,’ he drawled acidly, as she cried out in protest. ‘That’s more like the Laurel I know and.…’
‘Hate,’ she supplied for him through chattering teeth.
‘Stay here,’ he told her, ‘and I’ll go downstairs and get you some brandy. What on earth possessed you?’ he added, watching her with anger darkened eyes. ‘Was drowning really preferable to being touched by me?’
‘It wasn’t that. It was what you said,’ she admitted, too shaken to care about what she might be revealing.
‘What did I say?’ he probed, wrapping her in a thick bathrobe which she idly recognised as one of his.
‘You said I could drive a man to rape.’
‘And because of that you fling yourself headfirst into the pool?’
‘It was what he said,’ she told him in a low voice. ‘My stepfather. He said it was my fault, and that—that.…’ She couldn’t go on. Her throat was tense with anguished pain. Oliver had been rubbing her hair dry, but he released the towel and stepped back as though she were made from the most brittle china, a tiny muscle pulsing under his skin, the lean jaw taut.
‘Oh God, Laurel, and you thought.… Oh, Laurel, I.… Stay here,’ he told her huskily. ‘I won’t be long.’
Now he was being kind to her again, she thought dispassionately. He was always kind to her after he had been particularly hurtful. It was all part of his experiment, of course, but somehow she hadn’t got the energy to care. All she wanted to do was curl up in his arms and.… She stiffened as she realised the direction of her thoughts. She wanted to be in Oliver’s arms! But.…
Before she could delve any deeper into her feelings he was back, his expression grimly withdrawn, a small glass of dark amber liquid in one hand.
‘Drink this,’ he told her expressionlessly, ‘and then I’d better do something about those shoulders, otherwise you won’t be able to move in the morning.’
The brandy burned its way down her throat, inducing a delicious warmth in her stomach and a heady sensation that suddenly seemed to free her from all the restrictions she had always placed on herself. She slid her arms round Oliver’s neck when he picked her up, smiling at him when he tensed and looked down into her face.
‘Dutch courage, little girl,’ he told her sardonically, ‘but don’t press your luck too far—I am only flesh and blood, remember!’
And she was still trying to decipher that remark when he placed her on her bed.
‘Where’s your nightdress?’ he asked her shortly, as she lay watching him. She told him and he got it, grimacing as he saw the voluminous folds of cotton and the prim high-buttoned neck. ‘You can’t wear this,’ he told her curtly, ‘the cotton will rub those shoulders raw. Have you nothing else?’
She shook her haad, amazed that she should feel so little embarrassment.
‘Well, I’m afraid I have nothing you can borrow. The only thing I like against my skin in bed is… skin,’ he told her lightly. ‘You should try it some time.’
‘Perhaps I will.’
He couldn’t have looked more astounded if she’d hurled a bomb at him. Giggles welled up inside her, tickling her throat. All at once she felt totally carefree and uninhibited.
‘I’ll have to take that robe off to do your shoulders,’ he warned her, frowning a little as though he still couldn’t quite believe his ears.
‘I don’t mind.’ It wasn’t quite true, little spirals of excitement were dancing through her, strangely elusive sensations that alternated between pleasure and fear. ‘After all, you’re not my stepfather, are you?’ she added bravely, quivering under the look he shot her from suddenly darkened eyes.
‘No, I’m not,’ he agreed shortly. ‘Stay there and I’ll go and get the stuff.
‘Solarcaine,’ he told her several minutes later when he came back. ‘I always keep some down here. My sister’s kids tend to forget about sunburn until it’s time to go to bed.’
‘You’ve got a sister?’
‘What did you expect? That I sprang fully formed from the Gorgon’s head?’ he taunted cynically. ‘Yes, I have a sister; she’s quite a lot older than me and is happily married to a G.P. They have four children ranging from twelve to twenty.’
‘It was the first time he had mentioned his family to her, and Laurel felt a quiver of anguish that so much of his life was a closed book to her. And yet why should she feel that way?
‘Sit up, Laurel, and I’ll just slide the robe from your shoulders.’
‘She did as he instructed, amazed to discover how lightheaded she felt. Her head flopped heavily against his shoulder. He seemed to tense for a moment before easing the towelling away from her skin—skin which she admitted was beginning to sting painfully.
She closed her eyes as he started to smooth the cream into her shoulders. His touch soothed the pain, replacing it with… with what? she wondered nervously as tiny tendrils of pleasure curled through her. Her hand which had been pressed flat against his robe seemed to find its way inside it to the warmth of his chest, her fingers curling hesitantly against its smoothness.
‘Laurel?’
She barely caught the constraint in his voice, her soft ‘mmm’ making him demand roughly, ‘You aren’t going to sleep on me, are you?’
She opened her eyes drowsily, focusing on the tanned column of his throat. Her hand lay against his collarbone and she touched it tentatively, exploring the shape and feel of it.
‘Does it matter if I do?’ she asked him, yawning a little, still under the influence of the brandy he had given her.
‘Only if you don’t mind waking up in my arms—in my bed,’ he told her bluntly. ‘Is that what you want?’
Was it? Of course it wasn’t! And yet as he recapped the lotion he had been spreading into her shoulders and started to move away she clung to him, burying her face against his shoulder.
‘Laurel!’
He said her name warily, grasping her chin and forcing it up so that she had to look at him. Her robe had come loose and revealed the upper curves of her breasts, but Laurel wasn’t aware of it. What she was aware of was that for a moment in Oliver’s arms she had experienced a comfort and sense of wellbeing dimly remembered from her childhood, and she didn’t want to lose it.
‘Don’t leave me, Oliver,’ she murmured softly. ‘I want you to stay with me.’
‘Do you?’ His face was completely blank. ‘I don’t think you know what you’re saying; w
hat you’re asking for—or do you, Laurel? Do you know very well what you’re inviting? Very well.…’
His voice and expression had changed, alarm started to flutter inside her. She pulled away, but he was holding her arms and all her impotent little struggle did was to cause her robe to slide even further down her body.
She heard Oliver’s indrawn breath, followed the direction of his gaze and saw that it was fastened on the exposed curves of her breasts, and fear drowned out any desire she had felt to remain with him.
‘Oliver.…’
‘No, Laurel,’ he told her thickly. ‘No, please.… Not this time.’ His voice came thickly, his eyes hot as they roamed her body.
And numbly, as he lowered her back on the bed, keeping her there with his hands, Laurel fought to ignore the tremulous response shivering through her.
‘I shall hate you.…’ she began, but he merely shook his head.
‘I promise you you won’t,’ he told her huskily. ‘You won’t, Laurel.’
He bent his head and his lips moved slowly over hers while his fingers eased the stiff tension from her neck.
‘Put your arms round me,’ he told her softly, and like someone under the influence of a hypnotic power she did so. He had shrugged off his robe, and his skin felt like rough satin beneath her palms. She wanted to touch it. Tentatively she explored his shoulders, shuddering delicately as his tongue traced the outline of her mouth. His arms which had been either side of her on the bed curled round her and on a shock wave of realisation she felt the abrasive pressure of his body hair against her skin.
‘Laurel, Laurel, you don’t know what you do to me,’ she heard him mutter as he covered her mouth with his, plunging her into a wild vortex of sensation, her fingers curled achingly into his skin as his mouth lifted from hers and then moved seductively along her jaw, her throat, the sensitive hollow beneath her ear, each touch sending fierce tremors of pleasure through her body. Was this being frigid? She couldn’t understand what was happening to her; the emotion Oliver’s touch was arousing. Her robe was gone completely and now his fingers trailed strokingly across her stomach, his eyes watching her, gauging her response.
‘Nice, isn’t it?’ he asked her throatily.
Her muscles tensed, but she couldn’t deny what he was doing to her, how he was making her feel. Something flickered in his eyes, an emotion she couldn’t name. She moaned faintly, and then his mouth closed over hers, damming her protests, stealing away her breath, carrying her with him to a place where only sensation existed, draining her of everything but the need to respond to the sorcery of his touch.
When his mouth left hers to trail seductively along her throat, she pressed her burning lips against his shoulder, gasping in shock as his fingers cupped her breast, stroking the sensitive flesh, his thumb moving arousingly over the nipple until it throbbed and ached with needs Laurel could barely understand. Without warning she had been flung into a vast alien ocean of unknown sensations; sensations she had never in her wildest dreams imagined existed; sensations that made her body ache and yearn to be closer to Oliver’s. And it seemed that he sensed her need, because he drew her against his body, letting her feel the aroused heat of his thighs, making her tremble with an awareness of his maleness. And then he was holding her away from him, his face and body rigid with a tension that seemed to coil through her too, his expression oddly taut and tense.
What was he looking for? she wondered hesitantly.
‘You aren’t frigid, Laurel,’ he told her softly, ‘and you damned well know it!’
It was like a douche of icy water, ‘No!’ she cried bitterly. ‘I.…’
‘You responded to me,’ he told her grittily,
‘I.…’ Slowly the mists were clearing; she remembered how she had fled from him; how he had threatened to turn her into a woman; just as he was doing now. She struggled to get away from him, loathing herself for the way she had reacted to his touch, but his fingers tightened in her hair, holding her beneath him.
‘Stop fighting yourself, Laurel,’ he told her softly. His mouth drifted kisses over each eyelid in turn and then trailed down to her mouth, playing tormentingly with the sensitive skin there until she was on fire with a need for his kiss. Everything else was forgotten, a slow agonising ache spreading upwards from her stomach, a deep groan wrenched from her throat as Oliver’s mouth finally closed over hers.
His kisses were a potent, heady drug, depriving her of everything but the ability to respond to the emotion he aroused within her. There was no thought of stopping him in her mind when his hands slid slowly down her body to cup her breasts, and then he lowered his head, placing delicate butterfly kisses in the valley between her breasts.
He paused to look up at her and Laurel felt a tension in him that communicated itself to her. As though some unspoken message had passed between them, he groaned huskily and lowered his head, touching the aching tip of one breast with his tongue briefly before possessing it hungrily with his mouth in a caress that shattered all her preconceived conceptions of lovemaking.
Piercing sweet pleasure stormed through her, her fingers curled into his hair, holding him against her body; a body which arched in wilful complicity beneath him mutely pleading for the possession of his.
Floundering on a tidal flood of emotion, Laurel didn’t grasp what was happening when Oliver suddenly stiffened, tensing his body as he lifted his head.
‘I can hear a car,’ he told her briefly. ‘God knows who it is.’ He looked down into her wildly flushed face and languorous eyes and said lightly, ‘Perhaps it’s just as well that we were interrupted when we were… for both our sakes!’ He slid off the bed and retrieved his robe, pulling it on casually while Laurel blushed harder and averted her eyes from the sleek masculinity of his body—a body which had been pressed intimately to every contour of hers!
After he had gone she simply lay there for several seconds, listening to the sound of the car drawing nearer, and then she started to tremble with reaction, hands pressed against her burning hot face. What on earth had she done? She felt hot and cold shudders tear at her, shame a sickness lodged in her stomach. What on earth had possessed her? What would Oliver think of her? Did he in fact think of her as a person at all, or was she simply an experiment? A cold dreadful recognition seeped through her veins. Was this how he intended to turn her into a woman—by making love to her? Could any man be so coldblooded?
She heard the car pull up outside and disgorge several chattering passengers.
‘Laurel, it’s my sister and her family! ‘You needn’t bother coming down if you don’t feel up to it, they’re only making an overnight stop,’ Oliver called up to her. Which roughly translated meant that it was a strictly family gathering and he would prefer her to absent herself from it, Laurel decided miserably, thumping her pillow and trying to forget how her wanton body had clung to and welcomed his.
She had come here for revenge, and yet instead.… Instead what? If she had responded to Oliver, couldn’t that response have been fuelled by anger as much as desire? Anger such as she felt towards him was a powerful emotion, capable of playing odd tricks. Relief flooded through her. Of course, that was it: anger against him had triggered off her response to him. That was the explanation. That had to be the explanation.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LAUREL was awake and dressed early in the morning. Not because she was at all curious about Oliver’s family, she assured herself as she set about making coffee and warming croissants in the oven.
The back door opened and she gave a start at finding herself confronted by two young men who were quite obviously as surprised to see her as she was them.
‘Hi,’ the younger of the two said with a grin. ‘So you’re Uncle Oliver’s secretary. Wish I was a writer!’
So this was one of Oliver’s nephews. The twenty-year-old, without doubt. His companion, who looked a couple of years older, smiled slowly at Laurel in a way which would have had her scuttling into her shell four short weeks ago
, but now merely made her flush slightly.
‘Stop it, Chas, you’re embarrassing the poor girl. Don’t mind my friend here—you’d think he’d never seen a pretty girl before. Look, we’d better introduce ourselves. I’m Richard, Oliver’s nephew, and this is a friend of mine, Charles Hawley. We’ve taken on a summer job—helping Ma look after the kids and a free holiday thrown in for us as a bonus. We’re on our way down to Spain and decided to stop off here for the night. Ma gets all broody when her precious brother’s been out of sight for too long. She worries that some fortune-hunting harpy is going to get her claws into him. A sucker for a hard-luck story, is Uncle O.’
Was he? That wasn’t the impression Laurel had of him.
‘Can we help at all?’
When Laurel shook her head, he grinned engagingly. ‘In that case, Chas, I think we might just about have time for a swim before breakfast!’
Four children, Oliver had said his sister had, so that made eight of them altogether, Laurel decided, counting mentally as she got the table ready, unless of course as Oliver’s secretary his sister might object if she ate with them. She gnawed her lip, frowning as she tried to decide what to do, and then shrugged. She would just have to play it by ear. She could always eat her breakfast later if it looked as though she wasn’t welcome.
Half an hour later, Oliver on one side of her and his sister on the other, she admitted that she couldn’t have been more wrong. Physically incredibly like her brother, Elizabeth Turner was a placid, cheerful woman in her mid-forties, who Laurel suspected it would take a great deal to stir to anger.
‘So Graham can’t make it this trip,’ Oliver was saying to her. ‘That’s a pity.’
‘Umm,’ Elizabeth agreed. ‘He could really do with the rest, but at least I’ve got the boys to help me.’