by Penny Jordan
He kissed her gently, as though savouring the texture of her lips, their softness, their warmth; their responsiveness to him.
It was a slow, unhurried exploration, and yet for all that she felt an almost violent urge to press herself close against him, to open her mouth beneath his and invite the deep penetrating invasion of his tongue, to wind her arms around him and…
A frantic sob of terror built up inside her chest as she realised what was happening to her. She drew back from him as though his touch were corrosive, causing the tenderness in his eyes to give way to cool withdrawal.
‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised. ‘I thought—’
‘It was my fault,’ Miranda interrupted him, her face flaming. She could well imagine what he had thought. After all, hadn’t she by her own action virtually invited…incited…encouraged him to respond to her own desire for him? ‘I must go in. I’ve delayed you long enough.’ She was starting to gabble frantically, guilt and embarrassment sharpened by the pangs of longing and love tearing her apart inside.
She didn’t look at him as he carried the cases inside for her, nor did she suggest that he might like to stay for a cup of coffee.
When he had finally driven off, she told herself that she was glad he hadn’t repeated his invitation to have dinner with him, but long after he had gone, when she really ought to have been doing half a dozen far more practical and essential things, she found that she was standing motionless in her kitchen, remembering how it had felt to have his mouth tenderly caressing her own, and how the sensation that that gentle touch had evoked had made her quiver inside with longing and need. She was even doing it now, the ache in her body intensifying and spreading to such an extent that she almost groaned out aloud. Her fingers touched her mouth and she closed her eyes, torn between helpless despair and frustrated self-anger.
What was she doing to herself, torturing herself like this?
* * *
THE FACT THAT her father was away and that in his absence she was so very busy should have made it not just easy, but also very necessary for Miranda to shut Ben and her love for him out of her mind completely, but unfortunately this did not prove to be the case.
Three days after the wedding, exhausted by repeated dreams about him—in which her treacherous imagination allowed him access to the kind of intimate fantasies which were doing absolutely nothing to reinforce her need to face reality and to accept that, while just like any other man, though he might respond sexually to the wanton provocation of her own desire, he did not and never would share the love she had for him—she finally gave in. After returning from the office, instead of concentrating on the work she had brought home for herself, she picked up the book she had bought on the interpretation of dreams, and started to study it.
What she read in its pages didn’t tell her anything she had not already known, although it did have some helpful tips on how to redirect the course of nightmares or unpleasant dreams so that they became non-threatening. Maybe that would work for her: if she mentally tried to substitute another man for Ben, or found some way to redirect their dream encounters so that they became harmless and non-sexual.
It was worth a try at least. She certainly could not go on like this, afraid to go to sleep in case she dreamed about him, growing more and more tired, and with less and less resistance to her dreams when she could no longer force herself to stay awake.
She hadn’t seen or heard anything of Ben, and she told herself that she was glad, and yet, when she arrived at work four days after the wedding to discover that the keys had arrived for the property Ben wanted to view, her immediate feeling was one of joy that she now had a legitimate reason to get in touch with him.
However, when several telephone calls and a hesitant lunchtime visit to the house on the High Street had not brought her in contact with him, she confided to Liz that she suspected he must be in London.
As she nibbled tentatively on her bottom lip, she told her, ‘The problem is that Dad was most insistent that Ben—Mr Frobisher wanted the keys as soon as they arrived.’
‘Well, you could always drive over there and post them through his letter-box if he isn’t in,’ Liz commented reasonably.
‘Mm.’ That solution had occurred to Miranda as well, and yet, for all her yearning need to see him, perhaps in fact because of it, she was reluctant to do so. In case he wasn’t there, or in case he was?
She was becoming tired of her own irrational behaviour, she acknowledged later that day, when she had stayed at her desk until gone seven to catch up on the backlog of paperwork her father’s absence had inevitably caused.
She looked at the phone and then picked up the receiver, but when she dialled Ben’s number, once again there was no response.
Closing her eyes, she asked herself what she would have done if he had simply been another client and not one—she swallowed painfully, forcing herself to frame the words that felt as though they were written in fire inside her—not one with whom she was quite desperately in love.
She already knew the answer, of course. She would have driven over to the client’s house and dropped the keys along with an explanatory note through his or her letter-box.
Make sure Ben gets the keys as soon as they arrive, her father had said.
Sighing faintly to herself, she scribbled a hasty covering letter and sealed it, together with the keys, in an envelope, and then, having collected her jacket, she picked up her bag, locked up the office and headed for her car.
All the way over to the cottage Ben was renting, she told herself that he wasn’t going to be there; that there was no reason for her heartbeat to pick up, nor her pulse to race so frantically; that there was no reason for her to feel this sick coiling excitement tightening her stomach; this guilt, this anger against herself for her own weakness.
When she reached the cottage, she stopped her car, and before getting out forced herself to take several deep, supposedly calming breaths, but all they did was make her in danger of hyperventilating, increasing the flutter of nerves gripping her stomach and making her shake with tension when she finally managed to get out of the car and walk towards the door.
She knocked on it hesitantly, and then, when there was no answer, a little more forcefully.
She was just about to open the letter-box and push the envelope into it when she heard Ben call out from behind the closed door, ‘Hang on, I shan’t be a sec.’
And then there was the sound of a bolt being drawn back, and a lock being unfastened, and Ben was opening the door.
When she saw him standing there in the hallway, for a moment she was too overwrought to even speak. He was wearing a bathrobe, and his hair was damp—his body too, she realised as her glance slid helplessly down over his robe-clad body and focused on the beads of water tangling damply in the dark hair that furred his legs.
Her own legs had abruptly and disconcertingly turned to jelly, so that she was helpless to do anything other than stand there trembling as he came towards her, practically thrusting the small package containing her note and the keys at him just as soon as he came within reach of her.
‘I’ve brought you the keys for the property you wanted to see,’ she told him quickly, so unnerved by the sight of him, by the realisation that he was probably completely naked beneath his robe and that she must have disturbed him while he was having his shower, that her voice became high and strained, her words falling over one another in her haste to have them said and be free to take her leave of him. ‘Dad said to get them to you as soon as they arrived. I did try to telephone…’
‘I’ve been in London today,’ he told her calmly. ‘Thanks for going to so much trouble.’
As he took the packet from her, for some reason he caught hold of her wrist as well, circling it with fingers that were damp and cool. She could feel her pulse accelerate into frantic betrayal as she tensed herself against her awareness of him. His thumb was pressed against her pulse. She knew he must be able to measure its desperate race. Unwittin
gly she made a small choking sound of distress in her throat as his thumb rubbed contemplatively against her pulse in an action which she had no doubt was meant to be soothing, but which in reality…
She tried to take a deep, relaxing breath and found that she couldn’t because her muscles were clenched so tight, and while she fought for breath and composure he tugged firmly on her wrist, saying easily, ‘Come inside. I was just going to make myself a cup of coffee. If you’ve got time to have one with me, you could help me unravel this untranslatable estate agent’s jargon.’
Several different emotions clamoured for supremacy inside her, all of them so powerful and so distracting that he had practically dragged her into the hall and closed the door behind her before she knew what was happening.
She opened her mouth to tell him firmly and professionally that she was quite sure a man of his intelligence was capable of interpreting an estate agent’s brochure without her assistance, but at that moment he chose to turn towards her, standing so close to her that she inadvertently breathed in the clean soapy smell of his skin. Her heart felt as though it was literally bouncing around inside her ribcage, even though she knew such an occurrence was physically impossible, and, instead of speaking to him as she had intended, she found that she was rimming the dry outline of her parted lips with betraying nervous darts of her tongue-tip.
‘Mm. You smell good.’
The intimate compliment, so unexpected, so closely mirrored her own shocked, private awareness of how much the clean damp scent of his skin made her want to reach out and touch him, to run her fingertips along the edges and open lapels of his robe, to slide her hands inside it and to press her palms flat against his chest, to touch her mouth to the strong column of his throat and let her tongue lap delicately at the tiny beads of moisture clinging there.
This was madness…complete insanity. She took a deep, shuddering breath and then another, ignoring his compliment, wondering a little bitterly if he had any idea at all of what he was doing to her, or the havoc he was wreaking on her emotions, her desires…her whole life.
It was abnormal…immoral…obscene almost, surely, for a woman to have such erotic and intimate thoughts about a man who was little more than an acquaintance…a man, moreover, who had done nothing at all to encourage or give rise to such thoughts. Well, very little, she amended, trying not to think about how he had kissed her.
‘I… I don’t really want any coffee,’ she started to tell him, making a desperate bid to assert herself and banish the wildness of her private thoughts.
‘No,’ he agreed thoughtfully, his thumb resting deliberately against her frantic pulse. ‘Perhaps you have already received more than enough stimulation for one day.’
For a moment she thought he had actually guessed what was happening to her; had even perhaps looked into her mind and seen the desires…the need…the love she was trying so desperately to control.
The horror of it held her motionless and silent.
‘Not had another run-in with Charlesworth, have you?’
She almost shook with relief, and told him huskily, ‘No…nothing like that… I suppose it’s just the strain of Dad being away.’
She blinked suddenly as Ben pushed open the kitchen door. She hadn’t realised they had moved, but they must have done, and now, as he ushered her inside, he released her wrist.
‘I’m sure you don’t really need my help—’ she began, but Ben interrupted her, telling her softly, ‘I wanted to show you the details, talk over with you some of my plans for the house if I manage to get it. It’s very old, Tudor, with a later Queen Anne façade and frontage. I found it quite by chance and fell in love with it.’
Miranda had in fact already seen the details, unable to resist taking a peek at them, and the potential of the house had made her envy his ability to buy it.
‘It…it sounds lovely,’ she told him, her voice even more husky than his. ‘But I shouldn’t really stay.’
He had had his back to her, but now he turned round and saw the way her colour rose and fell as she gestured helplessly towards him.
‘I obviously interrupted you.’
‘I was having a shower, that’s all.’ He was watching her closely, too closely, she recognised nervously. ‘I’ll put the kettle on. We’ll have tea instead of coffee. Better for us both.’
As he walked away from her, her glance followed him, hungrily, hopelessly. She could feel her eyes stinging with the intensity of her emotional pain as she was torn between her love for him, and the anger and self-contempt that the vulnerability within her always evoked. She felt so helpless, so weak…so out of control.
She watched as he filled the kettle, almost shaking with the tension of trying to deny what she was feeling.
If he were to turn to her now, to take her in his arms, to kiss her—to touch her as he had done last night in her dream, sliding the clothes from her body, praising the feminine responsiveness of it as he stroked and kissed her skin, his mouth lingering achingly on the soft curves of her breasts, on the trembling tautness of her belly, on her thighs, while her hands—She couldn’t suppress the anguished moan that tore at her throat.
Ben heard it and turned round immediately, concern furrowing his forehead.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ he asked her, coming over to her. She had to sit down. She couldn’t stand up a second longer, she felt so weak, so terrified of what was happening to her.
She dropped down into a chair, shivering from head to foot, feeling her skin overheat and then chill in reaction to her desire for him.
Ben dropped on his knees beside her, so close to her that his robe gaped slightly as he moved.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ he demanded again.
She couldn’t stand it a moment longer. Everything that she was suffering welled up inside her, and before she could stop herself she burst out frantically, ‘It’s you. It’s… Oh, for heaven’s sake, can’t you put some clothes on…?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE silence stretching between them crackled with electricity, with tension, with pain almost.
‘Put some clothes on?’ Ben repeated slowly.
He withdrew from her, standing up, watching her. She knew he was watching her, but she couldn’t bring herself to look back at him.
What on earth had she done? Why on earth had she said it?
‘Is that what’s wrong? Am I the one causing all this?’ he demanded grimly, reaching for her wrist, and trapping it before she could move, his thumb pressing down deliberately hard on the fast race of her pulse. ‘Is that the reason you tense up every time I come within a yard of you…because you find me so—’
‘Irresistible.’ The high hard-sounding word hurt her throat and twisted her mouth, but she had to say it herself before he threw it at her. She had never felt more humiliated…more vulnerable in all her life, and yet at the same time there was a curious sense of light-headedness, relief almost, in finally admitting to him just what she was going through. She felt like someone who had carefully avoided danger all their lives and yet now, confronted with it, was deliberately abandoning themselves to it.
‘Irresistible?’ There was an odd note in his voice. ‘I was going to say just the opposite.’
She flinched visibly, her shock showing clearly in the defensive movement of her body. Had he really thought that…that she found him physically repugnant…that she…?
‘Irresistible…’ He said the word softly, marvellingly almost, and yet, for all the softness of his voice, it still jarred unbearably on her too-sensitive nerves.
‘Please.’ She tried to stand up and then realised that if she did she would be standing right next to him, so she subsided back into her chair, turning her face away from him as she pleaded huskily, ‘I don’t want to talk about it. I…’
‘Oh, but I do.’ She gave him one frantic, panicky glance but he ignored it, repeating again, ‘Irresistible.’
This time it seemed as though he was savouring the word,
enjoying it, drawing it out and with it her agony.
‘How irresistible?’ he questioned her, bending towards her.
If he touched her now she would disintegrate completely, she knew it, and yet she wasn’t going to get out of here until she had answered his question—she knew that as well—and it was far, far more than she could cope with.
Hating herself for her weakness and him for his strength, she buried her face in her hands and told him in a tormented whisper, ‘How am I supposed to define that? By degrees? A little bit irresistible…sort of irresistible? Well, if you want the truth…’ She took a deep, shuddering breath and found it was of no use: nothing was going to stop the avalanche of emotion building up inside it; it was going to roll down over her and destroy her no matter what she tried to do to avoid it. She could either try and outrun it or stay and face it, confront it…accept it…admit it.
With her face still buried in her hands, she began rawly, ‘Well, if I told you that virtually ever since we met I’ve been—’ She stopped and swallowed. She couldn’t do this…couldn’t strip her soul and her heart bare for him like this…reveal her innermost and deeply private emotions and needs to him like this, and yet if she didn’t he would question and probe until he had dragged every last nugget of information from her.
‘You’ve been what?’ Ben pressed, confirming her panicky thoughts.
In a voice thick with self-loathing, she told him sickly, ‘I’ve been having these…these dreams…about…about you. About…’ She shuddered helplessly, unable to go on, unable to admit to him the full enormity of what had been happening to her.
She felt his hand touch her shoulder, his breath warm her ear. ‘Look at me, Miranda,’ he urged her, but she couldn’t…couldn’t bear to confront the pity and revulsion she knew must be in his eyes.
And yet, when he said huskily, ‘You aren’t alone, you know,’ she immediately did just what she had been determined not to do, and dropped her hands from her face, lifting it so that she could look at him.