by Penny Jordan
Passionately in love with her? That wasn’t what she wanted at all. Was it?
Wasn’t there hidden away inside her the kernel of her sixteen-year-old self, with all the dreams and romantic illusions—delusions—she had then possessed? And wasn’t the truth that the intimacy they had shared had left her in great danger of that kernel splitting open, so that the seed inside it could grow into new life?
Fliss buried her face in her hands, her whole body shaking as she tried to tell herself that it was all right; she was safe and she did not love Vidal.
In his own room Vidal stood motionless and silent. He should really take a shower, but Felicity’s scent still clung to his skin, and since that was all he would ever know of her now, apart from what was captured within his memory and his senses, he might as well indulge himself and cling to it for as long as he could. Like an adolescent overwhelmed by his first real love.
Or a man knowing his only love.
He couldn’t hide from the truth any longer. He had never stopped loving Felicity.
This was the place to which his jealousy and passion had brought him. This barren place of self-loathing and regret—a true desert of the heart in which he would be for ever tormented by the mirage of what might have been. It gave him no comfort or satisfaction to know that Fliss had wanted him, or that her desire—the desire he had aroused in her—had ultimately overtaken whatever ideas of retribution and punishment she might claim, had kept her in his arms. He knew enough about the power of true desire to recognise it—in himself and in her. He could, had he had the stomach for it, have forced her to admit her desire for him—but what satisfaction would that have given him?
He had done her a terrible wrong in misjudging her, and there were no excuses he could plead in mitigation of that wrong, no way back to change it. He would have to live with that for the rest of his life. A second intolerable burden to add to the one he already carried, had carried for the past seven years. The burden of loving her without reason or logic and so completely that there could never ever be room in his life for another woman. There. He had admitted it now. He had loved her then and he still loved her now—had never stopped loving her, in fact, and never would.
It was the burden that Felicity herself carried, though, that weighed most heavily on his conscience and on his heart. Out of his pride and jealousy had come the belief that by guarding her innocence until she was mature enough to receive his courtship he could eventually win the heart of the girl with whom he had fallen in love. As that young man, that arrogant and selfish man, he had not been able to bear the thought of another man taking what he had wanted and denied himself. He had been furious with Felicity for choosing another man above him, and he had misjudged and punished her for that.
CHAPTER NINE
‘I SHALL leave you here to complete your examination of the house. My meeting with the water engineer should not take too long. As soon as it’s finished I shall come back for you, and then we can return to Granada.’
Fliss nodded her head. Her throat felt too raw with pent-up emotion as she stood with Vidal in the hallway to her father’s house. She had barely slept, and disturbingly her body, as though totally divorced from the reality of the situation between them, had reacted to his proximity in the car this morning as though they were real lovers, aching to be close to him. Several times she had felt herself being drawn to move nearer to him, her senses craving the intimacy of just being close.
Was it always like this after having sex? Was there always this need for continued closeness? This desire to touch and be touched? To be held and to know that that other person shared your thoughts and feelings? Somehow Fliss did not think so—which meant.
‘This morning I couldn’t find my mother’s locket.’ She rushed into speech in an attempt to block from her thoughts memories of their intimacy, but simply referring to the initial cause of it was enough to have her whole body burning—and not just burning but aching as well.
‘I have it. The catch is faulty. I shall get it repaired for you in Granada.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Before I leave you, there’s something I must say.’
Fliss had never seen Vidal look more grimly stern, never heard his voice contain such harshness—not even on that dreadful evening when he had looked down at her with such cruel contempt as she lay trapped in Rory’s hold.
Automatically she tensed, as though waiting for a blow to fall, so Vidal’s next words came as an unexpected shock.
‘I owe you an apology—and an explanation. I realise that there are no words that can undo what has been done. No amount of explanation or acknowledgement of blame on my part can give you back the years you have lost when you should have been free to … to enjoy your womanhood. All I can do is hope that whatever satisfaction you took from last night is sufficient to free you from the pain I inflicted on you in the past.’
Although Fliss had flinched over that word satisfaction, not really sure if he was trying to subtly taunt her by referring to the sexual delight he had given her, she managed not to betray herself in any other way.
‘The accusation I made against you that evening was born of my … my pride and not your behaviour. You had looked at me with an innocent desire and …’
‘And because of that you thought I was promiscuous?’ Fliss finished for him. Her face was burning over his reference to her ‘innocent desire’, but much as she wanted to refute it she knew that she couldn’t. That was definitely not a subject she wanted him to dwell on, so she told him fiercely, ‘There’s no need for you to say any more. I know what motivated you, Vidal. You disliked and disapproved of me even before you met me.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Yes, it is. You wanted to stop me from writing to my father, remember?’
‘That was—’
‘That was how you felt about me. I wasn’t good enough to write to my father—just as my mother hadn’t been good enough to marry him. Well, at least my father had second thoughts about our relationship, even if you still wish it didn’t exist.’
For her sake maybe it was better to allow her to believe what she was saying, Vidal decided. It could not undo the harm that had been done, of course. Nothing could do that. But he could not and would not burden her with his love—a love she did not want. She desired him, though. Perhaps he was late in recognising that loving her meant putting her happiness first, but now that he had recognised that it would be shameful and wrong of him to use her first taste of adult desire as a means of trying to persuade her that she could grow to love him. He couldn’t do that. Not even if it meant watching whilst she walked away from him.
The empty house, as though its silence had been disturbed by her arrival, had ultimately settled and sighed around her in the way old houses do, reminding her of the similar sighs and creaks she had experienced from her old family home when she had walked round it one last time before saying her final goodbye to it. Fliss had thought of her mother and her father as she’d walked from room to room, her sadness for them and for all that they had never had filling her emotions and her thoughts. Two gentle people who had simply not been strong enough to fight against those who had not wanted them to be together.
But she was the living proof that their love had once existed, she reminded herself as she stood in the doorway of the house’s master bedroom. Not her father’s bedroom. According to Vidal, her father had preferred to sleep in a smaller room, almost cell-like in its simplicity, further down the corridor. A room that in its starkness told her nothing about the man responsible for her existence.
Now, with her exploration of the house complete, she had nothing to do other than wait for Vidal to return. Nothing to do, that was, other than try not to think about the intimacy they had shared. As a sixteen-year-old she had spent many private hours in fevered imaginings of Vidal making love to her. Now that he had. Now that he had she wanted him to do it again—and again. She wanted the pleasure he had given her to be hers exclus
ively, wanted Vidal himself to be hers exclusively.
What had she done to herself? Fliss wondered bitterly. In proving to Vidal that he had misjudged her she had simply exchanged one emotional burden for another. Now she had no anger with which to conceal her real feelings for Vidal. Her real feelings? Could one fall in love for life at sixteen? Could one really know that the possession of one’s first lover, was the only possession one would ever want? Her heart and her senses gave her their answer immediately and forcefully. She loved Vidal, and her anger against him for misjudging her was entangled with her pain because he did not love her back.
She loved Vidal.
From the window of the master bedroom she could see a car coming down the rutted driveway and heading for the house. Vidal’s car. He had come to collect her, as he had told her he would, and soon they would be on their way back to Granada. Soon she would be on her way back to London and her own life there. A life without Vidal. Could she bear that? She would have to.
Fliss reached the hallway just as Vidal opened the front door. His, ‘Have you seen everything you wanted to see?’ elicited a nod of her head.
She didn’t trust herself to actually speak to him—not right now, with her heart aching for him and for his love.
Later that day, driving away from the castillo and the estate, Fliss knew that from now on whenever she smelled the scent of citrus fruit she would think of the Lecrin Valley, of the touch of Vidal’s hands on her skin, the passion of his kiss on her mouth, and the possession of her body by his. Bittersweet pleasure, indeed.
CHAPTER TEN
THE Granada townhouse contained an air of impatient bustle—due, Fliss knew, to the fact that its lord and master was about to fly to Chile for a business meeting with his business partner there later in the week.
‘It’s foolish, I know, but I can’t help feeling a little anxious whenever I know that Vidal is about to fly to South America. It always reminds me of the death of his father, and makes me worry for Vidal’s safety—although I can never say that to Vidal himself, of course. He would think me overprotective,’ the Duchess confided to Fliss as they had their morning coffee together out on the courtyard terrace, two days after Fliss’s return from the castillo. ‘You will be returning to England soon, I expect,’ she added, ‘but you must keep in touch with us, Fliss. You are part of the family, after all.’
Part of the family? Vidal certainly didn’t want her to be part of the family.
As though her thoughts had somehow conjured him up, Vidal himself walked out of the house and came over to join them, bending swiftly to kiss his mother’s cheek and smile at her. His look for Fliss was notably cold and dismissive.
‘I’ve arranged for you to see Señor Gonzales tomorrow morning, so that the paperwork with regard to the sale of your father’s house to me can be set in motion,’ he told her.
‘I’m not going to sell it.’
The words were out of their own volition, spoken as though Fliss had no control over them, shocking her as much as they obviously infuriated Vidal. Until that moment it had never occurred to Fliss to even think of keeping her father’s house, but now that she had told Vidal that she wasn’t going to sell it, defying what she knew were his expectations, she suddenly realised how right it felt that she should keep it.
Almost as though they had physically reached out and touched her, she felt as though somehow she could sense her parents’ approval and delight. They wanted her to keep the house. She felt that more surely than she had ever felt anything before in the whole of her life. In a rush of aching emotion Fliss knew that no matter how much Vidal tried to bend her to his will and make her sell the house to him she wouldn’t—because quite simply she couldn’t.
‘The dower house is part of the ducal estate,’ Vidal told her grimly. ‘When it was given to Felipe—’
‘When my father left it to me,’ Fliss interrupted him, ‘he did it because he wanted me to have it. If he had wanted it returned to the estate then that’s what he would have done. It’s mine, and I intend to keep it.’
‘To spite me?’ Vidal suggested coldly.
‘No,’ Fliss denied. ‘I intend to keep the house for myself … for … for my children. So that they at least can know something of their Spanish ancestry.’
What children? An inner voice mocked her. The only children she wanted were Vidal’s children—children she would never be allowed to have. But her words seemed to have been enough to infuriate Vidal further. Fliss could see that.
His eyes burned molten gold with anger as he challenged her, ‘And these children—you will bring them here to Spain, will you? With the man who has given them to you?’
‘Yes!’ Fliss told him, refusing to be intimidated. ‘Why shouldn’t I? My father left the house to me because he wanted me to have something of him to cherish. Of course I will want to share that with my own children.’ Overwhelmed by what she was feeling, she accused him emotionally, ‘You might have been able to stop me making contact with my father, but you couldn’t prevent him from leaving his house to me—although no doubt you tried.’
Fliss couldn’t say any more. She simply couldn’t trust herself to speak. Shaking her head, she got up from the table and almost ran into the house in her desperation to escape from Vidal’s presence before she broke down completely.
Only when she had reached the safety and privacy of her bedroom did she let her feelings get the better of her.
And then her bedroom door opened, and she froze with disbelief as Vidal strode in.
This time he hadn’t bothered knocking. This time he’d simply flung the door open and marched in, slamming the door behind him.
He was angry—furiously, savagely, passionately angry. Fliss could see it and something within her leapt to match those feelings—a wild, tempestuous intensity of emotion that had her facing him defiantly.
‘I don’t know what you want, Vidal—’
He didn’t let her get any further. ‘Don’t you? Then let me show you.’
He had closed the distance between them before she knew it, reaching for her, with a man’s passion, a man’s need, she recognised dizzily.
‘This is what I want, Felicity, and you want it too. So don’t even bother trying to pretend that you don’t. I felt it, saw it, tasted it in you, and it’s still there now. Didn’t it ever occur to you that in giving yourself to me you might have unleashed something that neither of us can control? Something for which we will both have to pay a price? No, of course it didn’t. Just as it obviously never occurred to you that a man who is aroused to possessive jealousy at the sight of the sixteen-year-old girl he wants but has denied himself, out of the moral belief that she is too young, might just leap to the wrong judgement when he finds her in bed with someone else.’
What was he doing? He shouldn’t be in here, saying things like this. He should be keeping as much distance between Felicity and himself as he could. It had been those words she had thrown at him about wanting to keep her father’s house for her children that had done it—the anguish of the thought of her with another man’s child, conceiving that child, bearing it, loving it as she loved the man who had given it to her, had been more than he could bear. The voice within him that was urging him to stop, to leave now whilst he still could, was being drowned out by the pain of his longing for her.
‘I wasn’t in bed with Rory,’ was the only protest Fliss could manage to make, and even that was a whispered flurry of words whilst her mind, her body, her senses grappled with exactly what Vidal had just said to her.
Vidal wanted her, desired her? Had been jealous at the thought of her with someone else?
‘I promised myself I wouldn’t do this,’ Vidal was saying angrily. ‘I told myself that it demeans me as a man to use the sexual desire we feel for one another for such a purpose. But you leave me with no other choice.’
‘I leave you with no other choice?’
She wasn’t going to let herself think about what he had just said—abou
t them sharing a sexual desire for one another—and she certainly wasn’t going to think about the effervescent surge of joyous delight his words had given her. Instead she would focus on the practical and the logical, on the sheer arrogance of his belief that he could walk in here and expect. What exactly did he expect?
Her body had started to overheat, and her thoughts were spinning out of control, wild, sensual, erotic and very dangerous thoughts that wanted to send her into his arms, into his possession.
‘Not when you throw in my face your plans for the future. A future that includes taking a lover who will give you his children. He may give you that, but first I shall give you this, and you will give me the passion you promised all those years ago. Don’t bother trying to deny it. You have already shown that you want me.’
‘Any woman worth her salt can fake an org … sexual pleasure,’ Fliss corrected herself frantically.
‘Anyone male or female can say the words and act out a fiction of sexual delight, but the human body does not lie. And your body wanted me. It welcomed me, it ached and yearned for me, and when the moment came it showed me that I had given it pleasure. As I shall do again now. And you will not stop me, because you will not wish to stop me, even though you might try to tell yourself that you do.’
Fliss made a small mewling sound in her throat, but it was too late to protest more strongly because Vidal was kissing her, fiercely and passionately, and she was kissing him back with equal hunger and need.
Vidal’s hand cupped her breast, his fingers finding her already erect nipple.
This was the last thing she had expected—and yet the first thing she had wanted. She couldn’t deny it. She still tried to, though, but the words didn’t come. Her body, her senses, her emotions were already saying yes.