A Bewitching Compulsion

by Susan Napier

  'What are you trying to hide, Clare?'

  'Nothing.' Her flush mounted at the lie. David's eyes sank to the loving yellow silk.

  'The hell you aren't! Did you bring your lover here, to flaunt in my face? Let me in.' It was the merest of courtesies, because they both knew she couldn't stop him.

  He stood in the middle of the small room, taking in the comfortable furnishings in a predatory sweep. 'Where is he, Clare?'

  'You have no right—'

  'I told you the rules. No visitors.'

  'You're visiting,' she pointed out, edging towards the bed as he moved, carefully keeping between David and the lump under the covers.

  He looked at her, flushed and nervous, backing away from him, not realising that the lamp behind her was revealing the sheerness of the French silk. His smile was a slow threat. 'I make the rules, so I get to police them. In the closet?' He matched the sudden demand with an equally sudden movement, and flung open the door of the built-in wardrobe. If Clare hadn't been so angry and offended, she would have laughed.

  'You're making a complete fool of yourself, David.' She perched on the edge of the bed and felt behind her to pull up the sheet she had turned down earlier, but she had forgotten the mirror on the wall by the closet. David turned and in two strides was towering over her, reaching past her to rip the sheet back down.

  He stared at the bright, enquiring brown eyes, as dark as his own, looking up at him from the pillow. For a full thirty seconds he stared in silencer Then he looked at Clare, whose pretended nonchalance was ruined by her hectic colour and quivering mouth.

  He sat down beside her on the bed and placed the teddy bear on to his knees. The bear was wearing striped pyjamas with a very enlightening monogram embroidered on the jacket.

  'J.' David traced the thread. 'Now what could that stand for I wonder? John? Jake? Joseph?'

  Clare averted her face. David's voice was very soft, very controlled. Dangerously so. She sensed that to laugh or to taunt him now with his folly would push him over the edge. And he was waiting, wanting to be pushed…

  'Or… could it be… Julian?' The softness congealed into a thin sheet of ice. 'Aren't you going to introduce me to your… friend, Clare?'

  Clare risked a tiny step on to the slick surface. 'It's not really mine. It's Tim's. But he… he gave it to me.'

  'To keep you company?'

  'S-somethdng like that.' All her desire to laugh was gone. David was stroking the bear's soft hand, and the way his fingers slid through the silky fur was unnervingly evocative.

  'So this is Uncle Julian whom you sleep with?'

  'Y-yes.' She didn't trust that mildness, not in conjunction with the fierce tension in the big body. 'You…you were the one who jumped to conclusions…'

  'Forgivable in the circumstances, wouldn't you say?' David seemed absorbed in his stroking of the bear. Clare felt a ridiculously possessive surge of resentment. She wanted to snatch the bear out of those magic hands lest Uncle Julian, too, find himself seduced.

  'You could have asked...'

  David turned his head and she forgot to breathe. Oh, there was anger there, and resentment, but a smouldering excitement, too.

  'I did ask,' he pointed out.

  'You deliberately embarrassed me in front of everyone. You… you made me angry.'

  'That's nothing to what you made me. You told me there was no one besides Lee, and suddenly your son is chattering on about some mysterious man with whom you seemed to be deeply and secretly involved. I was jealous. I was afraid I'd explode if it turned out to be the truth.'

  'You did,' pointed out Clare recklessly.

  'Oh, that wasn't an explosion, Clare, That was just a minor eruption. The explosion is yet to come. Did you wear that beautiful piece of silk for me?'

  'No,' she said weakly. 'All my nightwear is… is…'

  'Sexy? It's wasted on Uncle Julian. He strikes me as very much of a bear's bear.' David, arranged the furry limbs to his liking. 'You need someone who can not only listen but respond. A woman like you could never be fulfilled by a platonic relationship that's all give and no take. Uncle Julian is all very well for a cuddle or two, but he has a fatal flaw.'

  'Oh?' The word stuck in her throat.

  David sat the bear on the bedside-table.

  'He's not Russian.'

  'Oh…' It came out in a sighing rush as she met the promise of his eyes.

  'Russian bears have bad tempers, but they make up for it in other ways.'

  'W…what ways?'

  The sullen, sensuous beauty of his features blurred as he bent towards her to demonstrate. His mouth wasn't gentle, but she didn't want it to be. There was too much dammed-up passion intermingled with the vestiges of their anger to waste time in the tender preliminaries. For a long time they kissed, falling back to entwine on the bed, David shrugging out of his dinner-jacket and white shirt, removing Clare's robe so that he could murmur foreign phrases of delight at the loveliness beneath.

  'Speak English,' Clare whispered, holding out her arms to welcome him back.

  David held back, sitting beside her outstretched body, enjoying the agony of anticipation which had racked him for days and which was now whipped to its peak. 'If you understood what I was saying, what I want to do to you and how,, you'd blush for a week.'

  Clare's eyes were a smoky grey. 'Tell me…show me…' she invited huskily, more uninhibited than she had ever been in her life. Her body throbbed languorously under his hungry, desiring gaze. 'Please, I don't want to wait any more…'

  The thick muscles of his chest and flat belly clenched. David leant over and turned the love-worn brown teddy bear's face to the wall.

  'There are some things ordinary bears shouldn't know. It might make them discontented with their lot.' The low, sensuous words shivered over Clare's skin, and she gave a tiny cry as she felt the warm hand slide caressingly up her thighs.

  'Beautiful legs…' He made her lie there while he admired them, worshipped them with hands and eyes and mouth, from the sensitive inner curve of her ankle to the palest, silky-soft skin at the top of her thighs where the loose ruffle of yellow lace could be coaxed to reveal its secrets.

  He seemed to sense the moment when she couldn't bear any more, and reluctantly returned to her mouth, her breasts gleaming against the parted silk of the thin bodice, cupped in the darkness of his exquisitely knowledgeable hands. Clare felt the heaviness of him, knew the taste of his desire, and wanted him more than she had wanted anything in her life, with an urgency that was as exhilarating as it was frightening. He seemed to know her body better than she did herself, and she ached to gain that intimate knowledge of him. She revelled in the freedom to tease him as she eluded his caresses so that she could take off the rest of his clothes. After she had knelt on the bed to remove his shoes and socks, she laughingly restrained him from kissing and stroking her aching breasts while she attacked his trousers.

  'You must let me take some of the initiative, David,' she told him, deliciously arousing in her innocent haste, 'otherwise I shall feel like a puppet, with you pulling the strings.'

  'I rather had in mind a glove puppet,' said David wickedly, taking advantage of her vulnerable position to run his hand up the rounded curve of her buttock under the leg of her now considerably dishevelled teddy.

  'I mean it, David,' said Clare, slapping his hand away, half-serious in her attempt to have him realise that she wanted to share the act of love, not just be a passive participant. Her tongue curled out of the corner of her mouth and she concentrated on fathoming the mystery of his fashionable cummerbund. Suddenly, with her smooth, silky skin and freckles and slightly awed eagerness, she seemed very young. Just so did Tim use his tongue to help concentrate when he was struggling with a new practice piece. David stilled beneath her slender hands. He had set out to seduce her and he had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. She was like a pale, searing flame in his arms. He had wanted her like this… had imagined how it would be. But imagination was different fr
om reality. In reality one had responsibilities, to oneself and to others.

  'Clare.' It caused a physical pain to draw her hands away from his hardness. He kissed the tender tips, holding her when she would have pulled away still smiling, teasing…

  'Clare, we can't do this,' he sighed.

  She thought he was joking, teasing her, heightening the pleasure in what was to come. He closed his eyes to shut out her sinfully sweet pout. He must be mad to do this… to give her the rope to hang him. He had never considered himself the self-sacrificing type before!

  'Clare, have you made up your mind about Tim and the school?' He opened his eyes. He was mad! 'Clare, don't look at me like that. I want you, heaven knows there's not much chance of me hiding that. But I don't want you to claim afterwards that I was trying to influence you unfairly—'

  Clare's heart began to beat again, the stinging humiliation fading as quickly as it had come. 'I wouldn't think that! I'm quite capable of separating sex from… from the rest of our lives.'

  It was not a very diplomatic lie, face-saving though it might have been. David put her quite firmly from him and began to dress. 'But I'm not. It isn't going to be that easy, for either of us. I demand more than just neatly compartmentalised sex, so you'd better be very sure before you blithely throw yourself into my arms. And I want this other business with Tim sorted out so that we can concentrate purely on us.'

  Clare was in no mood for his exquisite reason. Now she was aching with unrequited desire as well as love! 'It must be very convenient to be able to switch on and off the way you obviously do—'

  He scooped her up against his broad chest, and before she had time to get excited again pulled back the bedclothes and dumped her on the sheet, tucking her in with ruthless efficiency. 'Clare, darling, right now I'm very tempted to lock those gorgeous legs around me and throw away the key. Here!' He thrust Uncle Julian in beside her, and gave the teddy bear a sullen, jealous glare that eased the hard lump in Clare's hollow breast. He actually resented a stuffed toy—the Martyred Maestro!

  'Enjoy her while you can, furball; your days are seriously numbered!' he growled. The look he turned on Clare melted her to the pillow. 'Decide soon, Clare. My heart isn't strong enough to stand this kind of strain.'

  Neither is mine, thought Clare sadly as she tried to will herself to sleep. She had already decided about Tim… it was her own plans that were up in the air. She couldn't stay at Moonlight while Tim lived in Auckland, and she didn't want to move in with Virginia, who would probably expect it. Still, she had heard one or two things today that might help. Tomorrow…tomorrow she would tell David that Tim would be joining his select band of pupils. Tomorrow morning. That would give she and David the rest of the day to concentrate on 'us'.

  Like many a best-laid plan, it was not to be. For Clare was woken the next morning by a pale-faced, distracted David. Tamara had walked into the bush last night from the lodge and not walked out again. Miles had called out Search and Rescue, and the helicopter was fuelled-up and ready to go…

  CHAPTER NINE

  It wasn't raining any more, but the air was still thick with moisture and the ground near the jetty had been churned into a muddy mess by a clutch of four-wheel-drive vehicles and the heavy, tramping boots of the searchers.

  An air of uneasy relief hung over the site as the team of Search and Rescue workers began to withdraw. They had gone out at first light, but hadn't found Tamara until late afternoon. She had been warmly dressed, but she hadn't banked on the rain which had accompanied the plunge in night temperature, or the rustling of nocturnal animals that had had her stumbling around in the impenetrable dark instead of being comfortably curled up in her carefully planned 'hidey-hole', waiting to be rescued.

  For Tamara had deliberately 'lost' herself, and in doing so had underestimated the bush. She had thought that she could walk out as easily as she had walked in, once she had sufficiently frightened everyone. She was showing the first signs of exposure by the time she was found, and in her distraught state had sobbed out the truth, earning herself an angry lecture from the police officer in charge of the search. Tamara had taken it on the chin, stiff and proud, although she had apologised in a choked voice that was sincere in its shame and fright.

  Clare had expected her to throw herself at her father then, since after all the object of the exercise had been to get his full attention, but Tamara had taken one look at his weary face, full of shock, sadness and disappointment, and launched herself instead at a startled Clare. When her father had touched her she had actually flinched, and Clare had instinctively cradled her protectively closer. David went white under his olive skin and his eyes revealed a chilling pain that was swiftly superseded by a resentful resignation that Clare had no difficulty in interpreting. Ironically, with this last gesture of futility, Tamara had achieved her aim. She had rendered her father powerless. He was jealous. Whatever the difficulties between them, he was her father, and it should have been to David that she turned in time of greatest woe.

  It took Clare an hour to calm Tamara down, while David reluctantly made himself scarce. Tamara couldn't stop talking. It all poured out, how ashamed David was of her, how he must despise and hate her for screwing up his life. Her wild, thoughtless scheme to bring him rushing to her side had backfired horribly. She destroyed everything she touched. Her father would never love her the way he used to. He couldn't. She had humiliated him once too often, failed him too many times.

  'Funny, that's just what he said—that he had failed you,' Clare told the sobbing girl as she guided her into a hot bath. 'He's not perfect, you know, just because he's an adult. He feels the same kind of hurt and confusion that you do. And you're both wrong, anyway. You can't talk about love in terms of success or failure. It's not an examination subject. You just do the best you can as you go along. And you certainly don't try to use it to control those you love. The only person you can really control is yourself, and you did pretty well out there, Tamara. You'd done something stupid but you faced up to it; you didn't try to run away. People respect that. Maybe you've learnt that running away only presents you with a new set of problems to face. And maybe you'll soon realise that your father isn't some superhuman being who can solve all those problems for you. He's as much a victim of circumstance as you are. Think about it.'

  She left Tamara to soak and brood, meeting David coming into the newly redecorated suite that they had moved into a few days before Miles's return.

  'She's in the bath,' said Clare huskily. 'I've ordered her some soup and a hot drink—'

  'So have I. I am capable of looking after her physical needs, at least,' he said curtly. He hadn't even stopped to shave that morning, and the dark growth added aggression to his tense features. Clare forgave him his touchiness, for she had been with him during those long, grey hours of nail-biting anxiety and heard him lash himself with guilt: for leaving Tamara when he knew she was upset, for his impatience in brushing aside her needs, for not making enough concessions to her youth and vulnerability. Clare hadn't dared to offer any easy platitudes, silently accepting his raging self-contempt as a way to keep his worst fears at bay. Like a wounded bear in a trap, he would blindly lash out at any attempt to help. Now anger at the needlessness of his suffering was probably compounding his guilt. He needed to vent it before he faced his daughter.

  'Of course you are,' said Clare carefully. She wanted to ease the burden, to tell him it was instinctive to seek sympathy from one's own sex. 'But—'

  'But you don't trust me any more than Tamara does to understand. I can imagine what's going through your mind. That I had it coming to me. So much for my theories on juvenile independence. I bet you're congratulating yourself that you didn't let me seduce you into parting you and Tim. Tamara almost died because she felt that I had abandoned her,' he said jerkily.

  'David, about Tim…' Amid the tense excitement of the day, she had found time to take Tim aside and gently break the news. Although he was still dubious about living with stranger
s, his mind had been eased when Clare explained that, naturally, she would be moving to Auckland, too, if the school accepted Tim. She didn't want to hint how close until she had investigated the possibility further. The if had been a clincher. Tim's stubbornness reared its head. It became a matter of Malcolm pride that he not suffer the mortification of rejection.

  'Forget it, Clare. Forget everything I ever said. Now, if you'll excuse me, my daughter and I need some time alone together. I want her to relate to me, not hide behind a stranger's sympathy. And you can tell your boss that we'll be leaving tomorrow.'

  Forget everything! Clare was still choking on that the next morning as she jogged towards the lodge along the lake edge. Did he mean Tim, or literally everything! And to call her a stranger, in that casual, dismissive voice. That was a lethal blow. Twice she had offered him her body and twice he had made excuses not to take it— good excuses at the time, but maybe they were just a way to avoid the embarrassment of turning her down flat!

  'Clare?' She shied. David was hovering on the steps to the lodge. His wary expression changed to shock as he saw the damp patches on her track-suit, her wet hair, and the towel in her hand. 'Did you fall in the lake?'

  As if he cared if she drowned! 'I've been swimming.'

  'In the lake? In the middle of winter? You must be crazy!'

  'No, just fit. Are you all packed?' she forced herself to ask.

  'All the commercial flights are full, so we're staying another day.' So he had meant it, every word! Clare fought to appear calm. 'Aren't you scared of hypothermia and cramp?' David continued.

  'I don't go out of my depth and I don't stay in for long. But I wouldn't recommend it for someone like you.' Her anger at her stupidity for falling in love with him came out like scorn.