by Penny Jordan
'Would you want to... to share that kind of intimacy with a man, Miranda? To feel his hands and his mouth caressing you so intimately? Would you want to caress him as intimately, to let him feel the silken softness of your lips against his flesh, soothing its heat and ardour at the same time as they incited it?'
The kitchen suddenly seemed to have become far too hot, Miranda discovered, and the top button of her shirt too tight, constricting her breath. She was aware that the spreading ache inside her body had become an almost frighteningly urgent pulse.
She licked her too-dry lips and said huskily, 'I...I...don't want to talk about it any more. I...'
'You what?' Ben demanded rawly. 'You want to run away and hide yourself from the truth?'
Her eyelids flickered, her. face going pale. What did he mean by the truth? Had he guessed that she loved him? Had he...?
'Do you think it's just possible that our mutual subconsciouses are waging a war against us, Miranda, and trying to tell our conscious minds something they seem to want to ignore?'
Her heart was thudding so heavily it was practically a physical pain. She focused numbly on him, her eyes huge and haunted. He looked tired, drawn, as though what he had said to her had drained him emotionally and physically; it could not have been easy for him, she recognised. No man liked admitting he was vulnerable, especially not to a woman, especially not to the woman who was the cause of that vulnerability.
She wetted her dry lips again, heat burning her skin as she caught the way he was watching her; felt the smouldering burn of his concentration on her face...on her mouth. Without being able to do a thing about it, she felt her lips soften and swell slightly. She tried to compress them together, horrifiedly realising that they were almost forming a pout, almost willing him to respond to their provocation by...
She tried frantically to redirect her thoughts but found them sliding helplessly into even more dangerous channels...her hands against his skin, her lips. She closed her eyes and realised at once that it was a mistake. In the darkness behind her shuttered lids, she was far too vulnerable to the erotic images of her rebellious thoughts.
'What is it, Miranda?'
Ben's breath against her ear was pure torment, as dangerous to her self-control as though he had taken her in his arms and destroyed it with the fierce stamp of his kiss. 'Does the intimacy of your dreams disturb you as much as mine do me? Does it haunt and beguile your waking hours? Do you find yourself caught between your logical waking need to suppress such thoughts, such needs, such dreams, and your sleeping desire to allow yourself the freedom you could never permit your waking self?
'You speak of there being two kinds of women, but those are your thoughts, not mine. Perhaps you are the one who believes that for some reason you cannot allow yourself--'
'No. No, that's not true. You're the one who said you couldn't.'
'Not because I categorise you into a certain preset mould, but because I felt you had every right to be both offended and angry that in my dreams I had virtually compelled you into an act of intimacy which should only be shared, given and taken with mutual wanting and respect.'
Respect. Miranda savoured the word shakily. It seemed an odd choice for him to have made, especially when the intimacy they were discussing... She felt her skin burn, not just her whole face, but her body as well, and heard Ben saying curtly. 'You see? Even talking about it embarrasses you, so how the hell do you think I feel? And not just because of the way my dream self made love to you...not just because of the intimacies we shared. How the hell do you think it's been for me? Looking at you, and remembering; looking at your mouth and thinking... aching... helpless to do a damned thing about it, even while I'm cursing myself for my lack of self-control?'
'It's been the same for me.'
She had blurted out the admission before she could stop herself, torn between shame and relief; shame at what she was admitting and relief that she was not alone; that there was after all someone who shared and understood the appalling nature of this self-inflicted torture.
'You know why all this is happening, don't you?' Ben demanded grimly. She held her breath, her body tensing. Was he going to say that it was her fault... that it was somehow caused by the fact that she had fallen so deeply in love with him, that she was in some indirect and unfathomable way giving his body some kind of message which translated into the dreams they were both suffering?
Without waiting for her to reply, he continued angrily, 'I know you won't like hearing this and I'm damned sure you're not going to admit it, but I submit that the reason we're both suffering these dreams is because, despite all the evidence to the contrary, physically at least we're very much attracted to one another.'
Miranda's brain flinched from what he was saying; from the fact that, while he spoke of need and desire, he made no mention of love, and yet at the same time she was relieved: relieved that he hadn't after all guessed her secret. Attracted to one another, he had said... physically, at least.
'Nothing to say?' His voice jarred, hurting something soft and vulnerable inside her.
'What am I supposed to say?' she asked him tightly. 'Yes, you're right, let's jump into bed and have sex with one another? Who knows, perhaps the reality will be so very different from our dreams, so disappointing that it will cure us of them for good?'
There was a long pause. Miranda looked doggedly into space, angry with both him and with herself. She was over-reacting, behaving like a child, but she couldn't help it, she was afraid—afraid of the helpless longing beating inside her, a longing which told her that once he touched her, held her, loved her, even if that loving was only physical, only sex, she would never ever be able to return to the person she had been before; that a part of her would be destroyed, held in bondage forever; that she would never again be completely whole.. .completely her own person. She was afraid of the intimacy of loving him, of the awesome power of it, of the commitment she knew she would be helpless to stop herself from giving him, and yet hadn't she already made a far deeper, and far more dangerous commitment in allowing herself to fall in love with him in the first place? Allowing herself... She bit down hard on her bottom lip.
'Is that what you think—that the reality is bound to be disappointing... to fall so far short of our dreams that it will make us both wish we had left things as they were?
'Is that your previous experience of loving someone intimately, Miranda?'
There was such a quiet sadness in his voice that it made her eyes sting with painful tears.
'My previous experience of sex,' she told him fiercely, stressing the word
'sex', refusing the anodyne of his soft-voiced 'loving someone intimately', 'is restricted to the extremely humiliating and rather less than pleasant half-hour I spent with the boy to whom I lost my virginity. I was twenty. He was twenty-three. We met on holiday. I'd grown tired of wondering what it was all about, of wanting to know and knowing that there was no way I could find out, not living here... not with anyone I knew... not unless I was prepared to take the same route my girlfriends were taking—going steady, getting engaged, married.. .having children. I didn't want that... and, as I quickly and probably very well deservedly, rather painfully found out, I didn't want the kind of cheap encounter I'd invited by encouraging Ricky.'
'Did you love him?'
The harsh question almost seemed accusatory. She flinched from it but shook her head, glaring at him as she demanded, 'Did you love the first girl you had sex with? Can you even remember her?'
'I was seventeen. She was twenty. I found out later she had seduced me for a bet,' he told her drily. 'Does that answer your question? After that I was extremely selective about allowing myself to get involved in any intimate relationships. If I can't honestly say that, yes, I loved the few women I've been intimate with, then at least I can say that at the outset, when the relationship was new, I believed I could love them and that that love could be returned. I suspect I was rather too intense for them. It took me a long time to
realise that modern women relished their independence and did not, as my mother had done, believe that true fulfillment came from falling in love with a man and having his babies. As I said, I was rather too intense and certainly very immature. I know better now, and fully appreciate that a woman needs her independence, her career... that she has a right to direct her own life, and that it is possible to combine marriage, a career and motherhood, provided both partners are willing to share the responsibilities and burdens that go with that kind of commitment.'
'You consider children to be a burden?' Miranda challenged. He looked at her for a long time and then said steadily, 'No, I don't. Just as 1 would never carelessly or without thought cause a woman to conceive my child. Unless...' He stopped, looking at her with such an unfathomable expression, with such heat... with such intensity that she had to clench her body against the reaction to : instinctively and deeply into her bottom lip. For God's sake, don't do that.'
The harsh command confused her. She looked at him uncertainly.
'Don't you know what it makes a man want to do when he sees a woman he already desires... aches for, doing that? Don't you know how it makes him want to soothe the soft swelling caused by that small sharp pressure with his tongue, with his mouth, that need driving him to such a pitch that he becomes the one savaging that softness, using its sensitivity to make her cry out with passion and need of her own, and invite him to penetrate the sweet depths of her mouth, to hold her body against his, to let her feel all that she's making him feel... how she's making him ache? Just the way you're making me ache right now, Miranda.'
'No.' Her own senses recognised that it was more a moan of acquiescence than a denial, but it stopped him. Momentarily at least, long enough for her to get stumblingly to her feet, and to attempt to step past him. This had gone on long enough. She had to leave, now, while she still had the will-power to do so, but, as she made to move past him, her feet became unusually clumsy. She hesitated, stumbled, and fell awkwardly against him, clutching instinctively at the open lapels of his robe, while he moved forward just as instinctively to catch her, both of them unaware that her instinctive grab for his robe had caused the slack knot in its belt to unravel, leaving only the thinness of her own clothes as a barrier between them as he caught her up against him, not out of desire or lust, but simply out of an automatic and wholly male chivalric response to her plight, her weakness, she recognised as she clung dizzily to his robe and allowed herself to savour her intimacy with him. Just for a second... a minute. It could, after all, do no harm. She would soon be gone, and never again...
As though in defiance of what she was thinking, her body willfully pressed closer and then trembled at its own audacity.
In her ear, Ben muttered sharply, warningly, 'Miranda, don't.'
She turned her head to retaliate untruthfully that she had done nothing, at the same moment that he turned his. Her eyes were almost level with his mouth. She watched it helplessly, seeing it frame something she could no longer hear, no longer wanted to hear.
When she touched it with her fingertips he trembled, and so did she. She could have withdrawn from him then, should have done so, but she didn't. She told herself later that the reason she had pressed her fingertips so briefly to his mouth had been because she wanted to stop them from trembling and not because—as he seemed to believe— she had wanted him to open his mouth and to slowly and shockingly draw her fingers inside it, sucking on them, licking them so slowly and lingeringly that, long before he had gripped her wrist and removed her damp fingers from his mouth so that his lips could caress her palm and then her wrist, she had forgotten why she had got to her feet in the first place.. .that she had ever intended to leave, that she had ever intended to do anything other than stand here with her body pressed against him, trembling and shaking as though she had a fever, small mewing sounds clogging her throat as he showed her just how pale and shadowed were her dreams when compared with reality.
CHAPTER NINE
WHEN he kissed her, her response to him turned the caressive pressure of his mouth into a fierce driving heat that made her feel as though her bones had melted, as though her body had become soft and pliant like ivy, clinging and twining with its more solidly muscled host until the two of them grew as one.
Ben's hands were in her hair, holding her a willing captive beneath his mouth as he opened hers, incited to do so by the hungry impatient passion of her small teeth biting at his bottom lip.
As his tongue stroked into her mouth his hands spread across her scalp, his fingers flexing in the same deeply rhythmical motion as his tongue, his whole body, she recognised as she instinctively matched the fierce rotation of his hips, pressing herself closer to him, offering him the subtly complementary rhythm of her own desire, hot darts of sensation thrilling through her body when it welcomed his arousal, his need, his passion.
'If this doesn't stop right now, it won't stop until I've taken you to bed, and spent all night making love to you.'
The husky words were whispered against her ear, as Ben dragged his mouth from hers. She could feel the hard rapid thud of his heart as though it were trying to break out of his body and invade her own. She could see the slickness of sweat dampening his skin, feel the fine tremble that shook his straining muscles.
She shivered wildly, her body aching in response to the images conjured up by her mind, images of the two of them together, in the warm darkness of his bed, of their bodies joyously entwined. She could even hear the harsh labour of their breathing, knew how his flesh would taste; how his body would feel beneath her hands, within her own.
His mouth caressed the soft arch of her throat. If she didn't want this to continue, now was the time to tell him so... now was the time to let sanity take hold and direct her.
She could feel the control he was striving to exercise, sense the withdrawal he was about to make. She pressed closer to him, sliding her hands inside his robe and over his shoulders, her nails digging into his flesh as she begged,
'No.. .don't stop. Not now.'
She could feel his tension. He raised his head and looked at her, and when she would have avoided meeting his eyes he cupped her face, forcing her to confront him.
'Do you really know what you're saying?' he demanded almost roughly.
'This isn't a game, and I'm not a boy, Miranda. Once--'
'I think you're probably right,' she interrupted him huskily. 'Maybe the only way to stop these dreams is--'
'Is that why you want me—to put an end to your dreams?'
He almost sounded angry, bitter. He had moved slightly away from her and her body, which had been so warm, so overheated, now felt chilled...abandoned...rejected almost. She ached to press closer to him, to close the unwanted gap between them, but she didn't have that kind of self-confidence, that degree of sureness about her own sensuality.
'Answer me,' he demanded brusquely.
She shook her head, honesty compelling her to admit the truth. 'No. No, it isn't. I want you. I want you because you make me ache so much that...'
She broke off, shaking her head, unable to go on, unable to articulate her feelings... her needs without embarrassment, unable to trust herself to admit how much she wanted him physically without admitting also how much she loved him.
As it was, she was afraid she had said too much ... betrayed too much. It was all very well for a man to articulate his needs... his desires, but for a woman to do the same...
She needn't have been afraid. The hand cupping her face softened, his thumb stroking her skin gently as though reassuring her, his eyes dark with need and responsiveness to her as he told her, 'You make me ache as well.'
When he bent his head and kissed her, it was an almost passionless kiss, a gentle reassurance, a sealing of some unspoken pact almost, his mouth warm and reassuring, her own vulnerable, clinging softly to his as he released her and then turned her, his arm around her as he guided her towards the door, and then through it and up the stairs.
His bed
room door was open. She could see through it into the darkened room beyond, where only the moonlight showed the vague shadowy outline of his bed, large and old-fashioned with a headboard and footboard. She stepped forward hesitantly, knowing that when she crossed the threshold into his room she crossed the threshold into a totally new world, a world of which she was still a little afraid, a world which was ultimately going to give her great pain.
But she had already made her decision and it was too late to change her mind now even if she had wanted to, which she did not. Her body yearned for him too much, ached for him too much, hungered for him too much for her to deny its needs now, no matter how much her mind might warn her against what she was doing.
However, as she made to step forward, Ben stopped her, his arm across the doorway barring her progress.
She gave him a startled, nervous look, wondering bleakly if he had changed his mind, if that perception of his had somehow or other warned him that what she felt for him wasn't merely a physical need. Instinct told her that he was the kind of man who would never knowingly allow a woman to believe he cared for her more than he did; that he would never use the word 'love'
when he meant the word 'lust'; that, if he knew how she really Felt about him he would not make love to her; but it seemed she was wrong and that her secret was safe, because he simply said a little roughly, 'Forgive me if this is old-fashioned of me and unnecessarily macho. It isn't intended to be; it's just that this is something I've been fantasising about doing ever since we.. .ever since I started dreaming about you.'
His slight hesitation, his pause before correcting himself and finishing what he was saying barely impinged upon her as she watched him and waited. He removed the barrier of his arm and bent towards her, drawing her up against him, touching her mouth with his, lightly at first as though savouring a much longed-for delicacy, and then more deeply, more slowly, more compellingly, so that when he actually lifted her off her feet and into his arms she could only stare at him with bemused eyes and her lips still moist, still trembling slightly from their contact with his.