by Kim Lawrence
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘I BELIEVED THAT you believed.’
Lily huffed out a tiny laugh, her lips twisting into a reflective, sad half-smile. ‘I had to believe. The alternative... I couldn’t have borne it.’ She shook her head and looked around, wondering who would sell a home with all their possessions. ‘I don’t know what to say—you did all this? It’s too much.’
He gave a shrug. Her gratitude made him uncomfortable. He might not have chosen to be an absent parent but the fact remained that she had been alone in bringing up his child and, though the past few weeks had not been normal, he was beginning to understand just how much of a responsibility that was. Or maybe that wasn’t the discovery after all. It was a responsibility that he had been avoiding all his adult life. What he hadn’t known then was the joy of seeing through a child’s eyes, how something mundane could become a marvel.
‘It’s nothing.’
She gave a cracked laugh and did a three-sixty-degree turn that made her head spin. ‘This is not nothing.’
He grabbed her arm to steady her. ‘Compared to seeing Emmy smile, it is nothing.’ His grandfather’s words during that last argument came back to him.
‘Your problem is you think it’s all about profit, but it isn’t. It’s about people... You know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.’
Even though he’d mended bridges, Ben’s jaw hardened at the memory, just as it had back then as he had watched his grandfather feed the proposal he had sweated over for months—the one that was to drag the estate into the twenty-first century—into the fire.
But maybe the old man had had a point. And if he’d not reacted to his hurt pride and instead of storming off had stayed and made him see that it wasn’t all about the figures, there would have been no bridges to build. An image of his grandfather’s lined face—it was the frailty that had shocked him—rose up, leaving a taste of regret in his mouth.
Clearing his throat, he didn’t quite meet Lily’s eyes as he shrugged his shoulders. ‘We won’t be out of pocket the way the market is. We could sell the place tomorrow and make money and it isn’t totally altruistic—this is a big house.’
Her eyelashes fluttered as the comment sank in. She thought of the kiss and her insides quivered. Reading between the lines was an inexact science, especially when you were this exhausted. ‘You plan to live here?’
He looked as if he was about to say something, then to her intense frustration shook his head decisively. ‘Look, we can talk about this later. Right now what you need is sleep. I’ll show you where the room is.’
She looked at the sweeping staircase and felt a surge of panic. ‘You’ll wake me if there is any news?’
‘I promise.’
‘And you won’t let me sleep too long?’
In his view, a week would not be long enough for her, but he agreed.
* * *
He left her at the door of the room that was on the first floor, which was just as well because she was virtually asleep on her feet.
Lily barely registered the room as she headed for the bed, a modern limed-oak four-poster. With a sigh she closed her eyes and fell headlong onto it.
Bliss, she was asleep in seconds.
Coming to check on her fifteen minutes later, Ben tapped on the door that was still half open. When there was no reply he pushed it gently inwards; he could hear the sound of her soft breathing.
He crossed the room and, keeping one watchful eye on the sleeping figure, carefully lowered the Roman blinds on the window. The light dimmed but not significantly; the blinds were unlined. The heavy drapes would have provided a blackout, but, suspended by brass rings on a pole of the same material, would have made one hell of a racket so he left them alone.
As he passed the bed she sighed.
He had reached the door when he found himself walking back. He stood for a moment looking down at her. She lay on her stomach, one arm curved above her head, the other dangling over the edge of the bed. Her face half hidden by the pillow and her mane of glorious hair lightly flushed, she looked like a sleeping angel.
He unfolded a tartan throw that was neatly folded at the bottom of the bed and spread it carefully over her before easing off one calf-length boot and then the other.
‘Marry her!’ his grandfather had said, and of course, being the man he was, he had made it sound like an order, not a suggestion.
He had listened—not because the idea was anything less than ludicrous but because he knew that the old man, misguided and terminally old-fashioned as he was, had his best interests at heart.
‘Compromise is not a dirty word. Life doesn’t have to be a head-on collision.’
As he’d listened Ben had reluctantly acknowledged that his grandfather was not saying much he hadn’t secretly thought himself.
He had not planned a family, but now he had one wouldn’t it make sense to formalise things? The idea took hold and grew. He’d thought of it as a marriage of convenience because he’d been too much of a coward to face the truth. Today had changed that; he had been given a glimpse of what it would feel like to lose someone he loved.
How much worse would it feel to lose someone you loved and know you’d never had the guts to admit even to yourself that you loved her?
Not that anything was going to happen to Lily, his beautiful, marvellous Lily, not on his watch. He wanted to wake her up now and tell her; it took all his willpower not to.
There was no escaping the fact that his timing was disastrously out. Her focus was solely on Emily Rose and rightly so. Ben was pretty sure, considering he’d made no secret of the fact that he thought marriage was for mugs, that any proposal he made that included the word love would be treated with intense suspicion—she’d laugh him out of the room.
His jaw firmed as he turned and walked out of the room. He needed to think about the long game; he needed to prove that he could be the man she wanted, the man she needed. And not just in her bed—though that, he admitted to himself, was not such a bad place to start, though obviously not now when she was so emotionally vulnerable.
The house had a panelled study. Of all the rooms it showed the most sign of the removal of personal items. The bookshelves that lined one wall from floor to ceiling were empty except for a row of ancient encyclopaedias and a few dog-eared paperbacks. The wall over the heavy desk had several paler patches where paintings or maybe photos had been removed.
He opened his laptop on the desk and tried out the chair as a file popped onto his screen. For once it was a struggle to empty his head and focus, but in the end he managed an hour’s work before he took a break. He must have dozed in the chair because the sun was no longer shining through the leaded French doors when he jolted awake with a start, the force of which made him surge out of his chair.
The high-pitched keening sound was nothing short of feral; it made the hairs on his neck stand on end. For a second he froze and then, as the second peal of screams rang out, he hit the ground running. Heart thudding, arms pumping, he flew up the stairs. The door hit the wall with a dull thud that made pictures on the opposite wall shudder.
The shadowed room was silent and empty but for the figure who was sitting bolt upright on the bed. Her eyes were wide and unfocused, staring straight ahead.
After all the nightmare images that had flickered horror-movie style through his head, the relief to find her in one piece and not lying in a pool of blood or something equally dire made him feel light-headed.
He was across the room in seconds, kneeling on the bed beside her. He caught her arms; her skin was cool and damp with a layer of perspiration.
‘What is it?’ She looked at him with a total lack of recognition. He could feel the fine tremors running through her body. ‘Lily, talk to me,’ he roughed out huskily. ‘What’s wrong, baby?’
Her
response was slow. A pucker appeared between her brows as she frowned at him and blinked like an owl.
‘What’s wrong, Lily? Say something.’
‘I... I was asleep...was I...? Ben...what are you doing here?’ And where was here? She felt slightly confused but not alarmed. His shirt was partly unbuttoned and his hair mussed as though he’d just tumbled out of bed, but he was still wearing jeans—Ben did things for denim that ought to carry a health warning. The erotic thought was only half formed when Lily stiffened. ‘Emmy!’
Even before he had made suitably soothing noises and reassured her that Emmy was fine and would be fine, her brain had got there and the fear receded.
‘You screamed.’ He closed his eyes momentarily, trying to blank out the replay of the sound in his head; the surface of his skin was still raised with goose bumps.
She frowned. ‘Did I?’
He stroked down her bare arms with his hands, pushing her gently back down. ‘Go to sleep, angel. You were dreaming.’
Her nose wrinkled in confusion. ‘I don’t remember.’
He huffed out a laugh. He would not forget—the sound would stay with him for ever.
‘That’s all right, and normal with night terrors,’ he was able to explain with confidence. It was years since he’d thought of the boy at school who used to have them regularly and he never remembered anything. He pressed a light kiss to her forehead, whispering softly, ‘Go to sleep.’
Like a fairy-tale princess woken by a kiss, the fog cleared from her mind. Ben had begun to lever himself from the bed when she grabbed his arm.
He paused and covered the hand on his arm with his own. ‘It’s all right. You had a bad dream. Close your eyes. You’re still asleep.’
She shook her head and, still holding his arm, her fingers digging hard into the muscles, she pulled herself upright again. Her eyes were burning, not with confusion, but a smouldering determination.
‘You’re not going to remember a thing about this tomorrow.’
Her green eyes wide and languid, she stroked his cheek, her fingers trailing slowly over the skin of his jaw. His jaw clenched as his self-control trembled, but stayed by some miracle intact.
‘You’re—’
She pressed a finger to his lips. ‘I’m not asleep or sleepwalking. I’m totally lucid, see.’ She directed a finger towards her own face. ‘Awake.’
‘I see,’ he said thickly, looking into the beautiful heart-shaped face turned up to his. The dark shadows under her incredible eyes and her bare, natural face didn’t alter the fact she was the most incredible-looking woman and he loved her.
* * *
‘Stay, Ben,’ she whispered urgently. ‘Please, I don’t want you to go. I don’t want to be alone.’
He let out a long low groan; he could feel his self-control slipping through his fingers. ‘You’re killing me, Lily. I wish I could, I really do.’ He brushed a tendril of hair from her face and found a spot of cold dampness on her cheek. ‘You’re crying,’ he husked, framing her face between his big hands.
‘Am I?’
She reached up and stroked his cheek. ‘I want to be held.’
His blue eyes were almost black as their eyes locked. ‘I wish I could.’ A man had to know his limitations. And Ben had already gone beyond his. He wanted to comfort her but he knew that if he touched her he wouldn’t stop there—he couldn’t stop there.
‘In the car you kissed me...’
He caught her hand and held it just away from his face.
Her long lashes fluttered downwards and then lifted as she said throatily, ‘I liked it. Could you kiss me again?’
His glance slid to her full lips. Oh, he could kiss her again but it wouldn’t stop there. So what’s so wrong with that? asked the voice in his head.
She wanted, he wanted, they were both consenting adults, so what was holding him back? Precious little, came the answer. When she declared—
‘Ben, please. I want you to make love to me!’
He had no control over his physical response but he could still have walked away; a better man would.
His eyes had darkened to navy; she could feel the tension in his body as the muscle under her fingers tightened and bulged. Her stomach tensed, the muscles clamping in an anticipation that bordered on pain.
‘Actually, I need you to make love to me.’ After all the pretending, even to herself—especially to herself—it was a relief to say it. The depth of the emotions she was experiencing fed into her voice, making it husky as she rushed headlong into an explanation that fell short of actually explaining how she was feeling. ‘I’ve been scared for so long. I just want to feel warm and safe and...’ She paused. Even in the midst of her recklessness, she retained enough caution to conceal some things. ‘Not alone,’ she whispered. ‘Do you know what I mean?’
He nodded slowly, the restraint he held himself under making his hand shake as his fingers touched her face. He intended to just brush her cheek, offering the safest version of the comfort she was asking for. Only once his fingers had made contact it was addictive, the texture of her skin, the thought of her warmth and softness, of sliding into it, into her, losing himself.
His fingers were framing one side of her face when his voice, made abrupt by the internal struggle, made a last-ditch effort to retain control. ‘You’re emotionally and physically whacked. You don’t know what you’re saying.’
She stared at him, disbelief mingling with the sting of utter mortification. ‘Don’t you dare tell me what I know and don’t know!’ she flung back furiously. ‘And don’t pretend you’re being noble and chivalrous—just tell the truth. You don’t fancy me? I can take it. I’ve been rejected by better men than you, you total bastard!’
He caught her hand before it connected with his cheek and he dragged her backwards so that she ended up sideways across the bed, lying full length on top of him, her softness slotting into his angles as though they were a designed fit. But there was nothing designed about this. This was more a collision fuelled by raw instinct and driving, aching need.
‘I only deal in the possible and it is not possible that any man has ever rejected you,’ he slurred, his eyes following the line of her throat down to where her breasts pressed against the cotton top she wore.
Lily, breathless, squirmed, managing to lever herself into a sitting position astride him as she shrilled back, ‘Let me go!’ She felt him shudder and leaned in close again to catch his low words.
‘I’m not the one holding on.’
The fight drained out of her as she shook her head in denial. The bonds of his hot, hungry stare were invisible but held her as firmly as steel chains.
Their eyes remained locked as the intense moment stretched, filled with emotions too complex for her to name. They formed in a deep knot of nameless yearning in her aching pelvis.
He flicked his wrists and caught hers, reversing the role of captor and captured as he jerked her down hard. Lily lost her grip on his shoulders and her elbows gave way. With a soft cry she lay there, her breasts crushed against him, her hair a flaming curtain that fell forward, brushing his chest and face, their own shadowed silken tent cutting out the outside world.
Holding her eyes, he tipped her over, bringing them to lie side by side.
‘You want this?’
She nodded and shivered as he slid his hand to her breast, the breath hissing through her nostrils as she hitched in a sharp breath of pleasure and closed her eyes.
‘I’m going to touch you.’ His words trickled over her like warm honey.
‘Where?’ she whispered back.
He smiled and flicked his tongue across her earlobe. ‘All over.’
‘Truly?’
‘Cross my heart.’ He took her hand and placed it on his chest. Only a thin rim of green remained as her dilated
pupils expanded some more.
‘What will you do then?’
‘I’ll taste you.’
Her insides melted. ‘I love looking at you.’
The confession drew a throaty growl as he hauled her hard up against him and fitted his mouth to hers. His lips moved with sensuous skill across her parted lips. By the time his tongue plunged deep she was floating on a sensual sea of pleasure and longing.
He kissed as though he’d drain her. She ought to have been feeling empty, but she felt more alive than she ever had in her life. As she kissed him back, winding her slim arms tight around his neck, she revelled in the feel of his male strength and his hard body.
The kiss was deepened, her small cry lost in his mouth as it went on and on. He was drinking her all and she wanted to just keep giving.
When they broke apart, both breathing hard, he looked as shaken as she felt.
‘You sure?’
‘Totally.’
The room was quiet as they undressed each other. There were many pauses along the way to touch and caress, to explore and admire, and when there were no longer clothes they lay down side by side on the bed.
His hand moved down her flank, drawing her leg across his hip as he cupped one perfect breast, stroking the tight, sensitised centre before he bent his head and fitted his mouth to it.
She sighed deeply and sank her fingers into his hair, stroking his scalp through the thick dark pelt. The drift of hair on his body was just as dark. He had a man’s body. As he lifted his head she held his eyes while she ran a finger down the centre of his chest, following the thin dark demarcation line of his body hair over the flat belly and lower.
He groaned as she cupped him, curling her fingers around his erection before she slid slowly down his body, tracing the line her finger had made with her tongue.
He endured her ministrations for as long as he could until with a deep groan he grasped her shoulders. She lifted her head, her passion-filled eyes hot as she responded to his urging and slithered up along his body until they lay face to face, noses almost touching, sealed as close as bodies could get without penetration.