by Penny Jordan
A statement of fact, or a subtle warning that he had guessed that her own adolescent feelings for him had been reactivated?
Her hand was still resting on his arm and she started to remove it, but Joss stopped her, taking hold of it and gripping it tightly.
‘I haven’t thanked you yet for everything you’ve done, Kate. Nor apologised for last night. I over-reacted… I was worried about you. I’m sorry.’
He bent his head, and she thought he was going to kiss her cheek lightly in a gesture of apology and friendship, but his free hand cupped her face and turned it.
‘Can I kiss you?’ he whispered against her mouth. ‘For good luck.’
If it had been anyone else but Joss she would have refused, with a smile to soften the refusal, but because it was Joss, and because when she was with him she seemed unable to behave in her normal mature, sensible fashion, she nodded briefly, her lips parting on a soft sigh as his mouth moved gently against them.
The need to be close to him was so overwhelming that she obeyed it instinctively, closing the small gap between their bodies, making a soft sound of pleasure deep in her throat as she felt the warmth and strength of his body against her own.
His arms were round her, holding her so tightly that she could hardly breathe, his hands shaping her back, her waist and then the curves of her hips as the kiss deepened into urgent desire.
Her own hands lifted to his shoulders, then found the thick darkness of his hair and gloried in the soft silky feel of it. Her breasts swelled and ached, and she could feel a familiar sensation uncurling in her belly. She moved restlessly against him, a feminine provocation she wasn’t even aware of making until she caught the smothered groan that convulsed his throat and felt him manoeuvre her so that her legs parted to admit the hard, muscled length of one of his, while his hands moved restlessly against her hips, urging her to repeat that tiny provocative movement.
It was the knowledge that he was aroused and that she was the cause of that arousal that shocked her into pulling away, her eyes betraying her shocked confusion as she looked up into his face and then away again, her own skin burning with hot colour as she saw the dark tide of arousal sweep his skin.
‘You looked at me like that the first time I touched you here,’ he told her thickly, his hand gently brushing the curve of her breast as he allowed her to step back from him. ‘Do you remember that day, Kate?’
Did she? Of course she did. They had had nowhere to go where they could be alone other than the lonely clifftops, free of walkers in that cold summer, and it had been there, in a protected hollow where the wind seemed not to reach them, that Joss had lain her down and gently and tenderly shown her the mystery of her own body. He hadn’t rushed her, caressing her breasts with his hands, his eyes glowing with a response that was like heady wine to her when he saw how she reacted to his touch. She had literally trembled like an aspen in his arms at the shock of discovering how she felt when he touched her like that. He had soothed her with gentle kisses and soft words of love, and then later, when she was calmer, he had touched her again, and more… She shivered, remembering how he had first removed her sweater and then had unfastened her woollen blouse.
The sensation of his hands on her bare breasts for the first time had made her cry out with pleasure. He had unfastened his own shirt and pulled her into the warmth of his body.
It had been during that afternoon, when she was half delirious with pleasure and love, that she had experienced for the first time the almost unbearable pleasure of his mouth tugging on her taut nipples.
A wave of heat broke over her. She couldn’t move…speak…say or do anything as her body relived just how she had felt.
‘Kate…’
She heard the anxiety in Joss’s voice, as though it came from a long way away. She saw his head lift as he reached out to touch her arm, concern furrowing his forehead. Instinctively she moved back, not wanting any physical contact between them, but her movements were jerky and uncoordinated, and instead of avoiding his touch completely she caused his hand to brush the swollen peak of her breast.
‘Kate.’
‘Sophy and John will be here soon… Shall I make some coffee? They’ll want a drink. It will help to break the ice…’
She was gabbling inanities, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything other than putting a safe distance between them. If Joss said anything about her reaction to him she would die of embarrassment.
She willed him not to speak, but, if somewhere inside she was still a girl of sixteen, he was no longer a boy of twenty-one. Ignoring the imploring appeal darkening her eyes, he asked quietly, ‘What’s wrong? You’re not embarrassed about this, are you?’
As he asked the question his hand brushed lightly over her pulsing breast, his eyes holding her own.
Oh, what was he trying to do to her? He must know she was embarrassed.
She gave him an agonised look, her skin uncomfortably hot and tight.
‘You shouldn’t be,’ he continued easily. ‘I consider it a very great compliment. It is, after all, a perfectly natural thing,’ he told her, still watching her, ‘and a completely instinctive one. Something over which we have virtually no control. I was just as aroused as you.’
Kate made an inarticulate sound in her throat. She wasn’t used to conversations of this intimacy. It was bad enough that Joss had realised what had happened to her, but to talk about it… If he had any tact at all he could have pretended he hadn’t noticed, just as she’d pretended she hadn’t noticed his arousal.
‘As a matter of fact, I still am,’ he added ruefully, a smile curving the corners of his mouth, as though he was inviting her to share a moment of intimate amusement. ‘And quite honestly there’s nothing I’d like more right now than to take you to bed and discover if your breasts are still as beautiful as they were when…’
It had gone on long enough. Too long. She wasn’t an adolescent, constrained by convention and rules any more; she was an adult.
Taking a deep breath, Kate told him shortly, ‘Well, they’re not. That was over twenty years ago, Joss. Since then I’ve had a child and…’
She wasn’t prepared for the way his whole face darkened as hot colour stormed it.
‘My child,’ he reminded her rawly. ‘Oh, Kate…’
The doorbell rang, causing them both to tense.
‘That will be Sophy and John,’ Kate said huskily, smoothing her damp palms surreptitiously on her skirt as she fought to dismiss the sensations he had conjured up inside her. ‘I…You’d better let them in.’
* * *
‘I still don’t think I can believe it.’ Joss shook his head tiredly and dropped down into a chair. ‘What do you honestly think, Kate? You know her—I don’t. She seemed to want to get to know me.’
‘She did,’ Kate assured him quietly.
Sophy and John had only just gone, and it was ten o’clock at night. In the end, rather than go out for a meal as Sophy and John had planned, leaving Joss alone, when Kate realised that father and daughter were completely absorbed in one another, in exchanging facts and information about their separate lives, she had slipped into the kitchen and prepared a light meal of salad and omelettes, sensing that it would be wrong to risk damaging the rapport that was already building between Joss and Sophy by reminding them that it was well into the evening and that none of them had eaten.
John, who had followed her into the kitchen, had helped her. Kate had already liked Sophy’s husband, but now she discovered that she was also going to love him as he told her quietly, ‘You’re being wonderful about this. I don’t know if I could have been so generous in your shoes…’
‘It’s hard not to feel a little jealous,’ Kate admitted openly, ‘but they have a right to know and love one another. I’m feeling partly to blame for the fact that I allowed myself to be deceived about him. Perhaps if I’d tried harder to contact him…’
‘You mustn’t feel guilty,’ John had told her firmly. ‘And don
’t start thinking that Sophy blames you in any way. Only today on the way here she said that, if and when we have children, if she could be half the mother you were to her she’d be satisfied.’
‘A mother, yes…but she had no father.’
‘She had a marvellous grandfather,’ John reminded her briskly, ‘and she’s one of the most secure, well-adjusted people I’ve ever met. No hang-ups at all. She also has the wisdom not to judge people too harshly or too quickly…to always look for the good in the blackest of souls; and I know she’s learned that from you.’
It had brought a brief sting of tears to Kate’s eyes, when, as they left, Sophy after a moment’s hesitation had hugged and kissed Joss with a warmth that had plainly brought him dangerously close to tears.
Then she had taken hold of Kate’s arm, and whisked her out into the corridor to say lovingly, ‘Ma, you’re wonderful. I love you heaps and heaps, and I can’t thank you enough for letting this happen.’
‘I doubt I could have stopped it,’ Kate had responded wryly, and to her surprise Sophy had shaken her head.
‘Yes, you could. Joss…Dad told me that if you’d refused to give him permission to do so he wouldn’t have approached me. He felt in the circumstances that he didn’t have the right. He’s asked John and me to spend a weekend with him at his country house. I’ve accepted. He’s going to invite you as well. You will go, won’t you, Ma? I need you to be there…’
Her plea, so similar to Joss’s earlier, weakened her defences, and she found that she was nodding before she had even thought properly about it.
Now Sophy and John had gone, Sophy almost floating on a cloud of euphoric delight—and why not? It wasn’t every day that a girl found her father…and, moreover, found a father who was like Joss.
Kate herself felt tired and drained, but Joss was plainly exhausted. She offered to make some supper for him, but he shook his head. ‘I don’t think I’m capable of eating,’ he told her wryly. ‘I think that was the second most traumatic event in my life.’
She wanted to ask him what the first had been, suspecting that it was probably his divorce, but to her surprise he added softly, ‘And in case you’re wondering, the first was losing you.’ He reached out for her hand, clasping it between his own.
His eyes were closed, his body lean and relaxed. Dressed casually as he was today, in many ways he seemed no different than he had done at twenty-one; his chest was broader, his face and body tougher, but apart from that…
‘Come here, Kate,’ he said roughly, without opening his eyes, the grip of his hands on hers suddenly tensing as she tried to pull away.
‘Joss,’ she protested, ‘I…’
‘I just want to hold you,’ he told her emotionally. ‘I just need to feel close to someone, Kate. Today highlighted for me how empty my life is…if I needed it highlighting.’
It was the bitterness in the words that undermined her; that, and the pain she could sense he was trying to control.
Seeing Sophy, being with her, could only have reinforced all that he had missed during the years she was growing up. That was not her fault, but it was not Joss’s either, and so she went to him, and allowed him to pull her down into his arms so that she was practically lying full-length against him as he stretched out his legs to support her and wrapped his arms around her, tucking her head into his shoulder.
‘It feels so good to hold you like this, Kate.’
It felt good to her, too… Too good. Every time she breathed she was conscious of the sheer male allure of him, the scent and heat of him, the knowledge that his flesh and hers had once been joined to produce the miracle of a child. That knowledge was a very erotic and dangerous stimulant to a body that was already over-stimulated, Kate acknowledged uncomfortably.
She couldn’t move without touching Joss; she was already virtually pressed to him from shoulder to thigh, but one arm was stuck uncomfortably beneath her, and the other… The other seemed to have nowhere to go that didn’t involve physical contact with one part or another of him.
Joss seemed oblivious to her tension. His eyes were closed, and his breathing had become slow and even, almost as though he was asleep.
Asleep… Cautiously Kate raised her head and looked at him.
He was asleep.
A tiny curl of chagrin-cum-amusement fluttered through her stomach. There she was, terrified of betraying how she felt about him, and all the time he was asleep. Chagrin and amusement battled it out and amusement won. Smiling to herself, she started to pull away from him, but his arms were locked round her and refused to release her.
As she frowned and looked into his sleeping face, he muttered her name and tightened his hold on her. There was obviously no way she was going to escape without waking him, and he looked so peaceful that she simply didn’t have the heart.
Cautiously removing her numb arm, Kate positioned herself so that she was more comfortable, curling her arms around Joss as his were curled around her. After all, what did it matter what she did when he was asleep?
It seemed to matter a great deal. Her body responded to the stimulation of being close to his in a way that made her grind her teeth and question her own sanity, but she was tired too, and the steady rise and fall of Joss’s chest had a soporific effect on her.
She felt her eyes close as though her eyelids were too heavy to stay open.
* * *
She woke up in the cool, clear light of the summer dawn shining through the uncurtained window, blinking and stretching, or at least trying to and then finding that she couldn’t because she was still wrapped in Joss’s arms.
Joss… She tried to ease away from him, but his arms tightened until she stopped moving, and then he nuzzled her throat sleepily, his eyes opening.
‘Kate?’
His voice held surprise.
‘Let me go, Joss,’ she demanded. ‘We both fell asleep.’
‘We certainly did,’ he agreed, sitting up but not releasing her. He looked at his watch.
‘Four o’clock in the morning.’ He gave a soft groan.
Heaven alone knew what she must look like, Kate thought acidly, ducking her head instinctively.
He saw the movement and eyed her gravely, and then reached out and very deliberately scooped her hair off her face and looked at her.
‘Come to bed with me, Kate,’ he suggested softly.
Perhaps she ought not to have been stunned, but she was. All right, she had aroused him to desire, but she hadn’t thought that that desire had anything personal in it.
She looked wildly away from him, colour fluctuating under her skin. This was no light-hearted teasing. The question had been put seriously to her, and she prayed no one bar herself would ever know just how tempted she was to say yes.
But that wasn’t the way she lived. She couldn’t make love with Joss now and then casually put him out of her mind.
‘Come to bed with me,’ he repeated against her ear, sending fine shivers of sensation racing over her skin. ‘I want you, Kate…’
‘No. You don’t,’ she told him flatly, pushing away from him. ‘Not really. You think you do because…because of the emotional trauma of everything that’s happened. It wouldn’t be sensible. We’d both regret it…’
She didn’t want to look at him, but she had to.
‘Would we?’ he asked her bleakly, and then added, ‘Perhaps you’re right. Sensible Kate. The Kate I knew wasn’t sensible at all, was she?’
‘No,’ Kate agreed shortly, as she pulled away from him and was set free. ‘And look what happened to her…’
It was an unfair gibe, but it had hurt that he should call her sensible in such a derisive way, reminding her of all the things she had striven to remember these last few weeks. Reminding her that she was a woman and not a girl…that she had gone beyond the age where she could carelessly make love for no better reason than that she desired to.
And there was another complication. One that she hesitated to mention to Joss, which was surely idio
tic in the circumstances. She used no method of birth control, never having had the necessity.
It was still possible for her to conceive…and not just possible at this particular time of the month but probable, she acknowledged, especially given her past record.
She tried to imagine telling Sophy that she was having Joss’s child, and was stunned by the sudden spasmodic sensation inside her, as though a wanton, intimate part of her actually wanted to conceive that child.
The sensation was unfamiliar to her. At sixteen she had not really thought beyond the pleasure of the moment, and certainly not as far as actually wanting to conceive a child.
There was a silence, and then Joss said abruptly, ‘I don’t know about you, but it hardly seems worth while going to sleep now. I’m a member of a health club a short walk from here. I think a swim and an hour in the gym is what’s called for right now. Fancy coming with me?’
Kate shook her head.
‘No…I might as well pack and catch an earlier train home,’ she told him.
His expression hardened.
‘If that’s what you want to do…’
No, it wasn’t what she wanted to do at all. What she wanted to do was to hold out her arms to him…to make love with him…to be with him because she loved him, and, knowing that, she couldn’t allow herself to take the risk of burdening him with feelings and responsibilities that he couldn’t possibly want.
‘I think it would be best,’ she told him carefully.
‘Best…safest… How cautious you’ve become, Kate.’
‘I’ve had to be,’ she retorted, stung by the hardness in his words.
She put her hand to her temple, realising that they were on the verge of a quarrel.
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ Joss said quietly. ‘Perhaps we do need to distance ourselves from one another a little… But you will join Sophy and John the weekend after next when they come down to my place, won’t you?’
‘Sophy wants me to,’ she said uncertainly. ‘But if you’d rather I didn’t…’
‘Why do you always assume I don’t want your company, Kate?’