Paul reached out with his hand and cupped the curve between hip and waistline. She was astonished to feel his hand trembling. But the expression on his face was one she was long familiar with. He was lost in the enchantment that was peculiarly his, as he explored a detail of her body that had caught his attention.
Vivien relaxed, reassured by this ritual, only to feel her breath catch again, as his hand swept up the curve and across her torso to cup her breast and his thumb caressed the taut nipple. “Perfect,” he breathed. He released her for a bare moment to shed his clothes. He then laid her gently on the sand and spent endless minutes reacquainting himself with every curve and hollow of her body. Vivien put a stop to that by following her own curiosity and exploring every inch of Paul’s olive skin. She found the scar on his thigh, just as she had suspected and she touched the patch of scarring on the back of his shoulder, pale against the tan of his skin. “Burns,” he whispered. “From waiting too long to bail out.”
“I remember,” she replied softly.
Vivien didn’t want to rush but her body kept trying to overrule her mind, kept trying to drag her down into the maelstrom of uncontrolled desire. Her breath was ragged and every touch on her body was tortuous delight, sweet agony. There was an ache at the core of her that cried out to be filled and its throbbing demand grew harder and harder to deny.
Finally, Paul reached for a condom, and applied it, leaving her seething with frustration over the tiny delay. He turned to her with a molten look in his eyes, curved his hand under her thigh and looked deep into her eyes. Vivien nodded. “Yes,” she said, her voice bodiless.
He thrust his hot silken length into her, his hands holding her hips. Vivien found her hips arching and her throat strained with a silent cry of fulfillment. Paul paused, holding them both suspended in the moment, letting her feel it with every fiber of her soul. He kissed her jaw, his lips burning a tattoo on her glowing skin. “Yes, it’s been far too long,” he growled. “This is as it should be.”
He clenched her hand in his, her fingers twining with his long large brown ones and thrust again, making her gasp at the intimate contact.
She had lost the naïveté she used to bring to their lovemaking but in its place was a far more satisfying sense of participation. The joy and enthusiasm they shared hadn’t changed...only now she found herself striving along with Paul to reach the exquisite peak together. The familiar rhythm caught at them both, picking them up and carrying them along into the place where time and all its subsidiary concerns were lost in the long tantalizing climb to the heady top.
* * * * *
After, as her body lay trembling against his, Paul gathered her up in his arms and simply held her until the trembling passed, keeping her safe within the protective circle of his arms.
He kissed her cheek. “Memories are supposed to fade but the memories I have of you and me....” He sighed. “You are as exquisite as I remembered you. My memory has not played tricks on me there.”
The sweetness of the compliment was an echo of the first time they had ever made love, when he had made her feel like a queen bestowing upon him a gift of inestimable price and all the other times since then, when he never failed to make her feel like a woman to her very core.
“There has never been anyone else who comes close to comparison with you,” Paul added softly, the words rumbling deep in his chest, with the characteristic burr that told her he was speaking truth that moved him deeply.
Vivien tried to keep her voice light but failed. “There has never been anyone else but you,” she said and turned to hide her face against his chest, unsure of the wisdom of confessing that particular truth to Paul right now. It made her feel vulnerable. Would he see it as a sign that despite her protestation of the opposite, she had spent the last seven years pining away for him?
Paul’s fingers lifted her chin, forcing her to look at him again. “All this time, you haven’t made love to another man?”
Vivien bit her lip, then reluctantly shook her head.
He stared at her. “Seven years of utter loneliness and it was entirely my fault,” he said, his face drawn. He turned on his side, resting over her and smoothed her cheek with his fingers. “I will make it up to you, Vivien.”
“I wasn’t always lonely.”
“You were in the most important way. The give and take, the talking—like we are now, the private laughter. You’ve missed out on that.”
“I had five glorious years before that. They got me through.”
Paul rested his forehead against hers. “How can I make it up?”
“Just hold me,” she whispered. “For now.”
He held her, his arms and body silently reassuring her that she was once again desired and needed.
Vivien found herself drifting toward sleep. Sleep had been a wanted companion for the last few nights and now, with the release of tension, it claimed her company, despite her best efforts to stay awake and alert.
Paul kissed her temple. “Sleep,” he whispered, lowering her head onto his shoulder and covering her with his shirt for a little extra warmth.
She slept.
* * * * *
It may have been hours, or simply minutes later, when Vivien slowly emerged from her sleep. The full moon had climbed high enough to shed its light into their hollow, turning everything silvery-gray and creating soft shadows. Paul still held her. Her cheek was pillowed against the soft muscles of his shoulder and upper arm. She could feel his fingers tangling in her hair, playing with the riotous curls that she found the bane of her life but had never quite got around to cutting off. They had often lain like this, after love.
Vivien sighed and it was a contented one.
“Warm enough?” Paul whispered.
She nodded. “I don’t want to leave yet,” she said.
“Neither do I.”
Vivien let the silence grow for a while, wondering what the time was and thinking about the day and all that had happened in it. It reminded her of something. “Paul, have you spoken to Jenny?”
“No.” She could feel him let his breath out. It wasn’t quite a sigh. “I will, though.” He hesitated, then lifted her up, turning her around to face him. He looked strangely uncomfortable. “I’m taking her to the Sunshine Ball tomorrow night.” Then he hurriedly added, “I asked her weeks ago. She’s been looking forward to it. Rattling on about dresses and hairstyles whenever the subject comes up. I couldn’t cry off now.”
Vivien bit her lip, trying to contain her smile. “That’s all right,” she said. “I’m going with Jack.”
Paul’s brow rose. “Jack? What do you see in him?”
Vivien shrugged. “I suppose it’s because he makes me laugh, like you used to.”
Paul considered this for a moment. “Mmmm... Well, I’ll be watching you two. If he so much as twitches a finger at you, I’ll tear his heart out.” The expression on his face was so comically exaggerated, that Vivien threw her head back and laughed loudly, drawing on the re-found happiness bubbling deep inside her.
She felt Paul’s lips on her exposed throat, trailing up to her jaw. “You laughed,” he murmured against her jaw. “Just like you used to.”
Vivien smiled again. “So I did.”
Paul pulled away from her enough to watch her face. “So you don’t mind about Jenny?”
Vivien shook her head. “Just be kind, Paul. I know the heartache she is going to experience. I know you don’t believe me, that you don’t believe she feels anything much for you but she does and when you tell her about us, you’ll hurt her. You can’t diminish that at all but you can avoid adding to her misery.”
He nodded. “I’ll be gentle,” he promised.
“After that, we can be together. Properly, in public.”
“After that,” he murmured and hugged her tightly. “I wish ‘after that’ was here now.”
“It’ll be here soon enough,” she assured him, familiar with this intolerance for delays. “Then we’ll have all the time in the world.”
/> Chapter Fourteen
Every year, the first official day of the Sunshine Festival was given over to the Sunshine Parade, which wound around the streets of Geraldton in the early afternoon. That same night was reserved for the Sunshine Ball, one of the few formal events of the Festival and eagerly attended by most of the dignitaries and high-profile personalities of Geraldton and the surrounding regions.
Jack was keen to go, having heard about the occasion soon after his arrival. He’d managed to get two tickets and had asked Vivien to go with him. She hadn’t hesitated long before agreeing to go. Jack had behaved impeccably when he had taken her to dinner. He had, in fact, managed to lift her spirits in spite of herself. So keeping company with him at the ball wouldn’t be a chore at all.
Now, knowing Paul would definitely be there, Vivien found her enthusiasm growing even more. She had her hair done at the salon she had gone to when she had lived there. The salon’s owner knew how to handle her hair after years of dealing with it and Vivien emerged from the salon in the late afternoon glowing with sleek happiness and satisfaction at the result the hairdresser had achieved.
When Jack arrived that night to pick her up, Vivien knew she looked good. Jack’s sandy eyebrows rose as she opened the door and he began to smile. “You look gorgeous,” he said.
Vivien resisted the temptation to smooth the sea-green silk satin over her hip in case her fingers marked the material. She had found the dress at Wrights’, one of the oldest dress shops in town. The gown had been sandwiched between a beaded ball gown and a black jersey and on the hanger it had looked like a limp rag. But the material had glimmered and felt wonderful against her hand and a mere instinct had made Vivien take the dress to the change-rooms, despite it being the wrong size. It had fitted perfectly. Cut on the cross, it hugged the curves of her body, with shoestring straps over her shoulders. The back of the dress hung in draped folds, revealing most of her back. The skirt stretched to the floor and the back hem extended into a short train. Vivien had stared at herself in the dress shop mirror, astonished at her appearance. She knew she had to buy it. She didn’t know the price, or care what it cost.
Now, with her hair loosely pulled to the back of her head and allowed to fall down in a long waterfall of curls and ringlets to the center of her back, where it was framed by the complementary sea-green folds of the dress and with long gold earrings as her only jewelry, Vivien felt wonderful. She smiled at Jack. “Thank you,” she told him, reaching for her purse.
The evening had promise. Vivien found she knew a lot of the people at the ball and at first was busy catching up with them. Nearly everyone who had known her when she had lived in Geraldton would do a classic double-take, smile and greet her hello and nearly everyone would glance at Jack with a speculative look in their eyes. Vivien would introduce Jack and they would politely chat to him and all the while she knew they were suppressing the strong urge to ask about Paul. Their curiosity became even more apparent when Paul arrived, with Jenny on his arm.
He made a grand entrance. Vivien instinctively knew it was quite unconscious on his behalf but that Jenny was fully aware of the impact that their appearance made upon the occupants of the ballroom. They were late and they paused in the wide double doorway to take their bearings. Paul was busy looking around the room, possibly trying to locate her, Vivien. Jenny, on the other hand, paused solely for effect.
Vivien had to admit that the effect was worth it. Paul was dressed not just in the minimally acceptable black tie and dinner suit but in tails. He wasn’t the only one there wearing the formally correct attire but he was, without question, the most handsome one there. His dark hair and olive skin were highlighted by the snowy white, crisp wing-collared shirt and a white bow tie. The black jacket stretched across his wide shoulders, making him look lean and strong.
Vivien stared, astonished. Paul had always been an eccentric dresser, aiming to please no one but himself. He had always managed to inject a touch of the exotic, a hint of his extravagant taste. Tonight he looked formally correct and proper. There wasn’t a hint of rebellion about him anywhere—until he swiveled to look about the room, spreading the fronts of his jacket and revealed a bright multicolored cummerbund that bespoke the Cuban love of color and spice.
Jenny was holding his arm and looking like the cat who’d stolen the cream. And well she might. She knew all eyes were drawn to him and many of them were envious ones that traveled up and down her figure too.
She looked fresh, young and pretty, in a startlingly bright cerise dress with frills and puffs and layers of lace peeping from beneath. It was a color that appealed to Vivien’s own nature but because of her coloring she had never been able to wear it. Jenny looked terrific, she admitted with her own small touch of envy.
But the envy was leavened by the knowledge that Paul was looking around the room to find her and that Jenny was on his arm simply because he had asked her first and was too kind to withdraw the invitation.
Paul’s gaze located her and Vivien felt her mouth pulling into a smile that was bereft of anything except simple joy in seeing him again. She ached to go to him but restricted herself to a simple nod in his direction.
His eyes raked up and down her figure and his expression was intense. And then, before he could telegraph any sort of greeting to her, Jenny had claimed his attention. He lowered his head to listen to something the girl said under the level of the music and nodded and they moved away, toward another group of people waving for them to approach.
Jack whistled. “What a knockout,” he said reverently and Vivien looked to see what he was referring to. It didn’t surprise her when she traced his gaze to Jenny as she laughed and chatted with the group of people.
“She has youth on her side,” Vivien said softly, trying to be charitable but unable to agree wholeheartedly with him because of the small stab of illogical jealous his admiration sprouted inside her.
Jack nodded. “Exactly. Much too young for Master Jack. I prefer women who have developed a personality and a bit of character.” He turned to look at her with a smile. “Stop talking like you’re going to retire tomorrow, Vivien. You’re not over the hill, yet.”
Vivien laughed, trying to shrug off the mood and abruptly they were confronted with more people from Vivien’s past and the moment was gone. From then on, everyone she introduced to Jack would cut their gaze away and glance at Paul and Jenny where they were working their flamboyant way around the room and the puzzlement in their eyes would grow.
Jack found them a small, empty table after a while and sat her down to relax for a moment. He went in search of a drink and came back with a filled ice-bucket and champagne flutes. “The occasion seems to demand champagne,” he said, opening the bottle with a subdued pop and pouring with dexterous ease.
“Well, only one for me,” Vivien replied cautiously. “I don’t like losing control of my wits.”
Jack nodded and handed her a glass. “Cheers.” He drank deeply and put his glass down. “I find it curious the way everyone looks at me and then looks over to Paul whenever we’re introduced. Do I detect a romantic history between you two, Vivien?”
Vivien nodded. “When I lived here, seven years ago, Paul and I were...”
“Lovers?” Jack supplied.
Vivien nodded. “Yes, that would describe us.”
“But you left,” Jack said. “Yet everyone acts as if Paul should be sitting here and not me.”
Vivien grimaced. “I left very abruptly and without explanations, as far as they are concerned.” She smiled. “I’m surprised you haven’t heard anything about it before now. There are a lot of tall stories around about Paul and me. Geraldton is a gossipy old town.”
“I rarely encourage gossip. So they are expecting some sort of confrontation?” he concluded.
They were interrupted then by friends asking Vivien to dance. The evening was well and truly underway. Vivien was kept on the dance floor. Most of the men asking her for a dance knew her and Vivien found herself
repeating her reasons for returning to Geraldton over and over again, along with constant reassurances that she hadn’t planned on returning to stay but “who knows what the future may bring?”
It was a little galling to her that she had to maintain the coy and reserved façade, especially when the man she most wanted to dance with hadn’t asked her yet. She had caught glimpses of Paul as she had been whirled about the dance floor and he appeared to be fully occupied with Jenny and the other people at his table—talking, drinking, and laughing. If he would only dance with her, then she could relax for a moment and not have to worry about guarding her tongue.
After one dance had ended and Vivien was being returned to her seat, she found herself unexpectedly facing Paul, two or three paces from the edge of the dance floor. He smiled, a slow lazy smile.
Vivien felt her heart thud at his unexpectedly close appearance and she found herself running her gaze over his face and body, noting details, enjoying the way the breadth of his shoulders made her feel just a little bit weak and very feminine. “Hello,” she said and the word came out low.
Paul picked up her hand in both of his and lifted it toward his lips. He was going to greet her hello in the way he used to. It was the first time he had done so since she had returned and Vivien found herself drawing in her breath in anticipation of the touch of his lips on her skin and the impact of his eyes as he lifted his gaze to look at her over the back of her hand. His lips seared a tattoo on her skin.
“Hello,” he said, his black eyes with their thick fringe of lashes lowered a little.
Vivien licked her lips. “Are you having a nice time?” she asked, totally uninterested in the answer.
He stepped a little closer to her. “No. I want you with me,” he said flatly, his voice reverberating as it always did when his feelings ran strong. “I want to be making love to you right now, in my bed. I want to stroke your body through that silk dress you’re wearing, stroke it until you beg me to take the dress off.”
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