by Penny Jordan
* * *
Neither of them spoke on the way back to Joss’s house. She would have enjoyed living here, taking up the challenge of restoring and loving the old house and its garden, she acknowledged wearily, and she could have remained independent of Joss financially even without working. Her house would have brought her in a comfortable capital sum, enough to make her feel that she was not totally dependent on her husband.
It was too late for second thoughts now, she told herself sternly, knowing that she was weakening and knowing that the cause of that weakness was sitting next to her here in the car, tormenting her senses with his presence. She only had to turn her head to see Joss’s strong profile…to look at his mouth to immediately remember how it felt against her own; to look at his hands as they controlled the powerful car to remember how she felt when they stroked and caressed her flesh. Beneath her skin, blood thudded into vulnerable pulse points. She moved restlessly in her seat, feeling the taut pull, the drag of silk against her breasts, an urgent, unwanted need coiling in her stomach.
She thought of everything she was giving up, turning her back on and she shuddered, racked with regret.
‘Cold?’ Joss asked briefly, flicking on the heater. ‘Soon be home.’
Home. If only it were. And it could be…if she allowed herself to give in to temptation. Did Joss realise how tempted she was? Did he know perhaps how vulnerable she was to him? Odd, that he had asked her to marry him without trying to coerce her by using the most powerful strength he had. He must know that physically she desired him, even if he hadn’t put two and two together and realised anything else…and yet he hadn’t touched her…
What had she expected? she derided herself. Passionate kisses the moment they were alone in the car…urgent pleas for her to change her mind?
She closed her eyes, willing her unruly thoughts to subside, forcing herself to remain still and silent until the car pulled up in front of the house.
‘I think I’ll go straight up,’ she said quietly, once they were inside. What was the point of prolonging things? Joss had proposed, she had refused, and now he was so uncommunicative that she knew he wanted to be on his own.
‘Not just yet,’ he said abruptly. ‘There’s something I’d like you to have. I had hoped to be giving it to you under different circumstances, but since it was bought for you… I won’t be a moment,’ he told her curtly, leaving her standing in the cool, shadowy hall as he disappeared into the room that was eventually to be his study.
When he emerged he looked tense and weary. He handed her a small jeweller’s box which so plainly could only hold a ring that she stared rigidly at it, unable to open it…unable even to move.
‘Open it, Kate,’ Joss told her grimly. ‘I bought it over twenty years ago for you. When I went back to Cornwall after my father’s death I took it with me, intending to ask you then to be my wife. When I discovered what I thought was the truth, I was tempted to throw it away, but I couldn’t.’
‘You’ve kept it all these years,’ Kate murmured, dazed by what he was saying, unable to take her eyes off the small leather box.
‘Sentimental of me, I know, but I couldn’t bring myself to part with it. I had hoped that tonight I would have been able to place it on your finger.’
Tears rushed into her eyes, making them burn. Now, when it was too late, here was the evidence of emotion she had longed for when he had made that cool, common-sense proposal. If only he had said this then… All right, so maybe he didn’t love her, but this ring…to have kept this ring… To have wanted all those years ago to marry her… It was only the tiniest, frailest tendril of hope, but it was enough; it might grow.
The tears were threatening to overflow. If she stayed where she was any longer, she’d disgrace herself completely. She needed time to think…to be alone. With a small, inarticulate cry, she closed her fingers round the box and fled upstairs.
Joss didn’t follow her, and it was only when she had dried her eyes that she felt ready to open the box.
She did so with fingers that trembled. The ring inside was small and delicate…a young girl’s ring, and she loved it instantly…loved the richness of the central sapphire which she had once told Joss was her favourite stone…loved the tiny encircling diamonds that sparkled so happily…loved the narrow, plain band of gold. She picked it up, and slid it on to her finger. It fitted perfectly. Fresh tears welled…tears of regret…of pain…of self-pity. She let them fall, needing their cleansing astringency, and then she took off the ring and put it back in its box. Such a small thing, and yet it changed everything. Tomorrow she would talk to Joss…tell him honestly and openly why she had refused him…explain to him that she loved him, and then, if with that knowledge he still wanted to marry her, she would do so.
He was right. They could build a good life together, but only if she was honest. She wouldn’t burden him with her love without him knowing that it existed…and she wouldn’t refuse him, knowing that the ring he had given her tonight symbolised everything she had thought absent from his proposal.
She undressed and showered, but once she was in bed she found it impossible to sleep. She was as tense as a small child alternating between anticipation and dread. She heard a distant church clock tolling mournfully. One o’clock and then two, and she was still as far away from sleep as ever.
And then, knowing that it was going to be impossible for her to sleep, she got up and pulled on her robe.
She knew which was Joss’s room. The door was ajar, and a lamp was on inside. She crossed her fingers behind her back. If he was awake she would tell him. If he wasn’t…
She pushed open the door and went in.
Joss was awake, lying propped up against his pillow, hands linked behind his head, his torso dark and tanned against the whiteness of the linen.
He turned his head as she walked in. A muscle twitched in his jaw and Kate fastened on that tiny human weakness. It gave her courage.
‘Can we talk?’ she asked quietly.
He eyed her gravely and then nodded, shifting to one side of the bed, and patting the space next to him.
‘Come and sit down. You’ll freeze if you stand there. Central heating’s installed now, but it’s not working yet.’
As she obeyed him, he said heavily, ‘If you’re worried that I’ll try to pressure you through Sophy…’
Kate stopped him, reaching out to lay her fingers on his arm. His skin felt warm and firm, the dark hairs slightly abrasive to her fingertips. She felt her body responding to the stimulus of touching him and removed her hand hastily.
‘It’s not that.’ She raised her head and looked at him. ‘If it isn’t too late, I’d like to change my mind and accept your proposal.’
A look of astonishment crossed his face, and for one lowering moment she thought frantically that perhaps he had never meant it at all, and that he had been relieved at her refusal, but then he sat up abruptly, dislodging the pillows, and causing the bedding to slide down past his waist. Kate realised to her confusion that in trying to avoid looking directly into his eyes her gaze had somehow or other become fixed on his body, and that moreover she was seeing rather more of that body than was safe, and that her senses were already reacting to the sight of the dark arrowing of hair bisecting his flat belly.
‘Am I permitted to ask why?’
The question was curt, so much so that she couldn’t bring herself to look directly at him. Her courage was faltering, and would have left her completely if he hadn’t suddenly reached out and taken hold of her wrist, saying surprisingly huskily, ‘Kate, if you don’t stop looking at me like that, I’m afraid I’m liable to ignore all the preliminaries and make love to you right here and now, and since I suspect that you aren’t equipped to safeguard yourself against the results of our lovemaking and I know damned well that I’m not…’
All the cautious, carefully prepared phrases left her and, almost stammering with tension and emotion, she opened her palm and showed him the small box she had broug
ht with her.
‘It’s this,’ she tried to explain. ‘The ring.’
‘The ring?’ He looked perplexed and baffled. ‘That made you change your mind. But why? It’s not particularly valuable. I had planned on buying you another…’
‘It’s valuable to me,’ Kate told him fiercely. ‘It’s valuable to me because…’ She shook her head, unable to go on. ‘Do you still want to marry me?’
‘Since I’ve wanted to marry you for the last twenty-odd years, I’m hardly likely to have changed my mind in two short hours, am I?’ he said derisively, and then, as she raised her head and gave him a swift, startled look of dawning realisation, he said gruffly, ‘Come here.’
The ring and its box dropped to the floor as he caught hold of her, pulling her into the curve of his body as he silenced her questions with the warm pressure of his mouth.
They had kissed before, with passion, with tenderness…with fierce, elemental desire and with shy, youthful ardour, but this was the first time she had recognised in the meeting of their lips a mutual acknowledgement of commitment.
Kate trembled beneath the powerful force of the kiss. Now there was no going back…now she was committed, but she still hadn’t told him how she felt.
She started to pull away from him, but he was reluctant to release her. She tried to speak, but the words were silenced by the pressure of his mouth, but at last, when she pushed against his chest, he let her go.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her softly, reaching up to push the tumbled curls back off her face. ‘Am I taking too much for granted? I want to make love with you, Kate, but if you’d prefer to wait…’
She shook her head quickly, too desperate to unburden herself to notice the quick flare of desire darkening his eyes.
‘There’s something I have to tell you—’ she began, but Joss interrupted her.
‘Later. We can talk later,’ he said thickly. ‘Right now, all I want to do is what I’ve been aching to do since this morning.’
Kate shuddered as she felt him lift her hair away from her throat and subject the tender skin to tiny, biting kisses that gradually became more intense, lingering, teasing, tasting, until her whole body was a mass of jangled nerve-endings.
‘Do you know what I wanted to do this morning?’ Joss muttered into her skin between kisses. ‘I wanted to do this…and this…’
His hands pushed aside her robe and caressed her breasts through the fine cotton of her nightdress.
‘And this…’ he moaned thickly, dropping his head and nuzzling the hard peak of her breast through the cotton.
Kate couldn’t help it. She gave a sharp cry of anguished need, her hands falling to his shoulders and then lifting to hold his head, while her body, possessed of a will of its own, arched in soft provocation.
‘Kate, Kate…it’s been so long…’ Sharp teeth ravaged her tender flesh, sending delicious spirals of excitement coiling through her. She hated the barrier of her nightdress coming between them, aching for the sensation of his mouth against her bare flesh. Her hands released him and lifted impatiently to her shoulder straps, every movement instinctive and blind as she was caught up in the furious flood of emotion-spawned desire.
‘Yes…yes, I know…’ The warm male voice whispering against her skin made soft pockets of pleasure explode inside her. She was whimpering deep in her throat, stifled, tormented sounds she couldn’t even hear, but which Joss could.
His hands trembled as he removed her nightdress.
‘Is it this you want, Kate?’ he whispered thickly against her breast, circling its rigid peak with his tongue. ‘This…’ His mouth opened over the hard, pulsing flesh and drew slowly on it until she almost screamed with pleasure.
Heat burst from her pores, her skin gleaming in the light of the lamp. When Joss stroked his hands over her, her body was slick and moist.
‘This morning you didn’t want me to touch you because you were like this,’ he reminded her roughly. She tried to focus on him, to control the rapid rise and fall of her breathing, the shudders that racked her body…the need that coiled so fiercely through her belly.
‘You’re a woman, Kate, not a doll,’ he whispered caressingly. ‘And I love the scent, the feel, the taste of you…’
It was his use of the verb love that did it, smashing down every barrier she could have erected against him, breaking down the reserve she had built up over the years, sending her achingly, wantonly into his arms, the caution of years swept away as she touched him, kissed him, loved him without caution or restraint.
Once before they had loved, but not like this. Then she had been too shy, too immature to give pleasure as well as receive it. Now everything that she had always known by instinct but never allowed expression welled up inside her.
It was only when he felt the sensual rake of her teeth against the hard flesh of his outer thigh that Joss stopped her, his hand sliding tensely into her hair and lifting her head.
‘Generous Kate, but there’s no need,’ he said hoarsely. In the shadows of the room hazel eyes searched grey.
‘Yes, there is,’ Kate told him huskily. ‘I have the need.’ Her hand rested possessively against his inner thigh, her nails unconsciously digging into his flesh.
‘Please,’ she begged unsteadily.
She needed the security of knowing he would allow her this intimacy; not just because it was a physical expression of her love, but because it would prove to her that, even if he couldn’t love, he cared enough for her not to reject her…enough to permit the freedom of his body.
‘Please!’ His voice broke into rough disbelief as he repeated her plea. ‘Oh, Kate, if you only knew how many times during the years I’ve ached for…longed for your touch…your hands…your mouth…’
He gave a deep shudder as she stared at him in silence. ‘How many times I’ve tried to drown out that need, that ache with someone else and found that there was no pleasure in the act; only a soul-destroying self-contempt. I should be the one begging you,’ he told her rawly. ‘But I felt…I thought…I dared not let myself believe you’d want such intimacies, never mind initiate them.’
‘You’ve wanted me…’ Kate breathed uncertainly, her eyes rounding with surprise and disbelief.
‘Wanted you?’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘What a very small, mundane word to use to describe my feelings, but yes, I suppose you could say I’ve wanted you.’
‘And you still…want me?’ She plucked nervously at the sheet with her free hand.
His eyebrows rose. ‘Do you really need to ask?’ he mocked. Kate flushed, dipping her head, because the evidence of his wanting pulsed fiercely and strongly in front of her eyes. Unable to stop herself, she reached out and touched him lightly.
‘Kate…’
A rough warning note deepened his voice, and when she raised her head she saw that his eyes were almost black with emotion.
As she looked at him, it was as though a burden was suddenly lifted from her shoulders. She bent her head and pressed her mouth tenderly against his belly and then his thighs, and then said quietly, ‘I love you.’
For a moment it was as though he was frozen, and then, suddenly and illuminatingly, he started to tremble. He closed his eyes, and then opened them again and demanded blankly, ‘Say that again.’
‘I love you,’ Kate repeated shakily.
He sat up abruptly and pushed his hand into his hair.
‘Kate, what are you trying to do to me?’ he protested rawly. ‘First you arouse me to the point where I’m out of my mind with need…where I’ve just about reached the point where I’m willing to take anything…anything you’re prepared to give me, despite the fact that I’ve already told myself that unless I have your love nothing else is worth while, and then, when you’ve destroyed every shred of self-resolve I’ve got, you calmly tell me that you love me.’
Kate’s mouth had fallen open. This was the very last response she had expected to receive.
‘You don’t mind, then?’ she faltered
uncertainly.
‘Mind?’ He almost roared the word at her. ‘Are you mad? Oh, Kate!’
He took hold of her and kissed her so passionately, so ruthlessly, that she could hardly breathe, and then, as the first insistent storm of emotion softened, he kept on kissing her, touching her, stroking her, his fingers moving against her throat as he felt the reverberations of the small impatient sounds she was stifling.
It had been such a long time since she had last made love, and as he moved her, positioned her, she had a momentary qualm of self-doubt. What if she should disappoint him? He was an experienced man, after all, while she… It was so shaming to acknowledge that her experience was limited to what she had learned from him, but as he felt her constraint he asked her what was wrong, and she had to tell him, ‘Mind?’ he said softly. ‘Mind knowing that every smallest response, every tiny reaction belongs only to me? Mind knowing that no one else can make you feel like this?’ He spread her hair out on the pillow and twined his fingers into it, holding her prisoner.
‘Oh, Kate. Let me show you how much I mind.’
Her body remembered much that her brain had forgotten. It shivered tempestuously, anticipating the pleasure of that first thrust, softening, opening, welcoming the raw male power of him inside it; pulses, rhythms, pleasures she remembered only as dim pastel shadows suddenly leapt to brilliant flaring life.
How could she have forgotten this, and this…and this? she wondered as she moved eagerly with him, wrapping herself around him, calling out to him to pleasure her, to fulfil her, to make her flesh quicken.
And even afterwards, when the tight, coiling need had exploded into a delight beyond words, she was reluctant to let him go, tightening her muscles around him as he moved, whispering drowsily, ‘No, stay…’