by Penny Jordan
‘She is,’ Giselle agreed absently.
‘You’ve seen her?’ Saul queried.
‘She came to see me. She wanted to warn me that you would never commit to me or allow me to have your child. She said you couldn’t bear the thought of your son taking second place to Aldo’s.’
‘It’s true that I never intend to have children, but that decision doesn’t have anything to do with them not inheriting the dukedom. Let me put this on for you—the catch is a bit awkward,’ he told Giselle placing the diamond necklace round her neck before she could stop him.
In the mirror she could see the diamonds sparkling, and Saul standing behind her, his hands on the necklace’s clasp. She didn’t need to see him, though, to be aware of his presence. She could feel it with every cell of her body. She could feel too his breath on her skin, making her nerve-endings tingle, making her want to turn round and beg him to hold her and kiss her, making her ache to be back where they had been before Aldo’s phone call had interrupted them.
Just thinking such thoughts was enough to have the female pulse buried deep inside her quickening into an aching urgency, her senses craving a renewal of that intimacy with him.
‘So, if it isn’t because they won’t inherit the dukedom, then why don’t you want children?’ she asked, in an attempt to distract herself from her physical awareness of his proximity.
‘It isn’t a matter of not wanting them so much as a matter of knowing myself and knowing that my work means they would have to take second place in my life—just as my mother’s work meant that I had to take second place in hers.’
Saul had finished fastening the necklace, but he didn’t move away from her. He was opening up to her in a way she had not expected, and his words touched her own emotions in a way that both made her ache with longing to comfort him and at the same time filled her with fear because she felt that way.
Giselle’s silence, as opposed to more questions or a demand for further explanation, had Saul continuing grimly, ‘What I learned from that experience taught me that a child deserves to be number one on its parents’ list of priorities. My commitments and lifestyle mean that I can’t guarantee I’ll always be there for my child when he or she needs me. In my opinion it’s kinder not to have children at all than to inflict that on them. And as for coveting the dukedom, if that is what Natasha tried to imply, Aldo’s title and the responsibilities that go with it—such as the duty to provide an heir, as he must—are the very last thing I would want.’
He paused and then, as though the words were being dragged from him without him being able to control them, he told her, ‘My parents could not be there for me when I needed them to be. I will not inflict that on a new generation. My mother used to say to me that I was very fortunate, and that I should not begrudge the time she gave to the children she was trying to help because I had so much. And I didn’t begrudge it—I’m very proud of the work she did for those children who had nothing. But she couldn’t understand that sometimes a child needs its parents, and I craved to see more of her. I will not father children who will—’
‘Be hurt as you were hurt, because they have to come second?’ Giselle finished for him.
She ached so much to hold him and be held by him as she told him that she too knew that pain, that feeling of being pushed to one side, even if in her case it had been by only one child—her baby brother.
‘Yes.’ Saul’s voice was terse. He had said too much, given away too much, and instinctively he wanted to pull back and distance himself both from his vulnerability and from Giselle herself
As a result he was short and sharp. ‘Can you manage the earrings yourself?’
Giselle nodded her head.
She could sense that Saul was withdrawing from her, and she understood why. What he had told her had given her much to think about, though. She knew that Saul meant what he had said. She had heard it in his voice and seen it in his expression—and she, of course, understood why he felt the way he did as another woman might not have done. Because of her own experience. It formed a bond between them. But it was a bond that she suspected Saul did not want. And she did? How could she answer that question honestly when she knew the answer she ought to give was not the one that was in her heart.
‘Ready?’ Saul asked, after she had finished securing the earrings.
‘Yes,’ Giselle answered him.
‘Ah, there you are, you two.’
Aldo might have his height, and something of his looks, but looking at Aldo was like comparing a pale shadow to the reality of all that Saul was, Giselle recognised as Saul introduced her to his cousin.
They were served pre-dinner drinks in the red drawing room, its decor a perfect backdrop for Natasha’s gown and jewels, and then dinner in an even more formal dining room.
Giselle witnessed the genuine affection Saul felt for his cousin, and Aldo’s reciprocal love and respect for Saul.
Eventually they were seated in the white drawing room, and Natasha, who had been drinking steadily all evening, became truculent as she complained about the lack of social life in Arezzio.
It was gone midnight, but Giselle wasn’t tired. Instead she was strung up with nervous tension. All evening there had been only one thing on her mind. One thing. One end result. But oh, so many sensual diversions she might take to reach that end result if only Saul would let her.
She had made up her mind to stop fighting what she felt, to stop trying to deny herself the satisfaction she craved. Why shouldn’t she for once taste the pleasures that other women her age took for granted? There could never be a more perfect man or a more perfect situation than there was here and now with Saul, who rejected the idea of commitment and children every bit as fiercely as she did herself—albeit for different reasons. If Saul wanted to satisfy the desire he had already aroused in her there was no reason for her to want to stop him. Maybe this was even meant to be. Her one chance to know what it truly meant to be a woman. Fate taking pity on her and giving her what she had denied herself. If Saul wanted it to happen.
How did a woman let a man know that she wanted him without risking humiliating herself if he did not want her? She had spent so long deliberately making sure that she did not encourage male advances that she did not know how to encourage them. Previously Saul had kissed her in anger. Did that mean that if she made him angry again it would lead to a resurgence of the passion he had shown her earlier?
Saul glanced discreetly at his watch.
‘I think it’s time Giselle and I called it a night,’ he informed Aldo and Natasha, standing up and looking enquiringly at Giselle as he did so.
Obediently Giselle stood up as well, exchanging goodnights with her host and hostess before walking with Saul to the corridor that led to his apartment.
When they reached her bedroom door, Saul told her brusquely, ‘I’ll say goodnight here.’
Immediately Giselle’s heart sank.
‘But what about the necklace and the earrings?’ she protested.
‘You can give them to me in the morning.’
‘I don’t think I’ll be able to unfasten the necklace.’
‘Then sleep with it on.’
Saul’s voice was sharp now as he stepped back from her. Another few seconds and he would be gone. Desperation filled her.
‘I’d rather…’ I’d rather sleep with you. She had been about to say it, driven to boldness by her need, but Saul didn’t let her finish.
Shaking his head, he told her thickly, ‘Giselle, just leave it, will you? Because if you don’t…’ He paused and then said grimly, ‘If I go into that room with you, if I touch you, then I warn you that I won’t stop touching you until you are lying naked underneath me and I’ve got you crying out to me in need.’
His voice became muffled as Giselle moved shakily towards him and put her hands on his shoulders. ‘And in ecstasy,’ he said, and Giselle shuddered wildly as he finished, ‘And in the small death that comes from fulfilment.’
‘Do
n’t tell me,’ she whispered boldly against his mouth. ‘Show me.’
Opening the door, Saul swept her up into his arms, kissing her fiercely as he kicked the door shut behind them and carried her over to the bed.
Before he had placed her on it Giselle had slid her hands inside his jacket and started to unfasten his shirt, greedy for the sight and the scent and the feel of him.
As he kissed her, his tongue probing the soft welcome of her mouth, feeling her own tongue twining with his, Saul unzipped her dress, tugging it free of her body, deepening his kiss, passion surging through him as he cupped her breasts.
‘The necklace,’ Giselle reminded him, reaching behind her neck for the fastening.
‘Leave it,’ he answered her. ‘It suits you.’
The glitter of the diamonds against her naked skin gave her a look of almost pagan sensuality, and made him feel—What? That he had claimed her and set his mark on her? Made her his just as she had made him a prisoner of his desire for her?
He sat up in the bed, intending to remove his jacket and shirt, but Giselle shook her head to stop him, insisting, ‘No, let me. I want to do it.’
Saul supposed he must have been undressed by a woman before, but if so he couldn’t remember it, and he certainly couldn’t remember anything ever being as intoxicatingly erotic as the absorbed concentration of Giselle’s gaze on his body, the increasingly rapid, shallow sounds of her breathing, which lifted her breasts as she removed his jacket and her fingers found the buttons on his shirt and unfastened them.
‘I want you to lie down.’
Obediently he did as she commanded, caught on a savagely sweet surge of sensual delight when she straddled his hips, leaning over him as she placed her hands on his shoulders, cupping the ball joints of his shoulders, stroking her hands over them and then back again, and then down his arms, closing her eyes and shuddering in a mute delight that he could see reflected in her own flesh as her nipples flared into even more swollen arousal.
Automatically he gripped her hips and then slid his own hands up over her body, but she stopped him, her expression determined and serious as she told him, ‘I can’t concentrate if you do that, and I want to know every bit of you—how you feel, how you smell, how you taste. I want to know it all.’
There had never been a woman like this one, nor a feeling like the one she was arousing within him, a need like the need raging through him. He slid his hands up and reached for her.
When she bent over him to taste the flesh of his throat Saul wrapped her hair round his hand. He wanted all of her, right here, right now. He wanted to spread her legs and lift her over him and onto him and feel her taking him into her.
Her tongue flicked against his Adam’s apple. Saul groaned and arched up against her mouth, begging, ‘Stop tormenting me.’
‘You’re the one tormenting me.’
Her admission was no sooner made than Saul was drawing her down against him, sweeping the dress from her hips, holding her and kissing her and inflaming her senses so much that she didn’t even realise that he had undressed himself until he brought her down against himself and she discovered that where there had been fabric there was now hard, bare male flesh.
Spread out on top of him, Giselle could feel the thick hardness of his erection pressing against her thigh. Saul’s hands reached down to caress the inside of her parted legs, causing wet heat to explode inside her. His hands moved up and around, cupping her buttocks, then lifting her hips as he slid her up his torso until he could take the eager peak of her nipple into his mouth.
Was this pleasure or was it torture?
She was so wet and eager. Saul could feel her juices dampening his own flesh. His tongue flicked against her nipple, her sharp cry of longing feeding his own arousal. He rolled her over onto her back, his desire fed by her helpless arch towards him as she offered herself to him. He kissed her mouth, cupping her face so that he could take his fill of the sweet pleasure of kissing her, and feeling her body tremble helplessly beneath the lash of her need. Her sex was swollen, opening to the stroke of his hand and his fingers like a rare flower, spreading its petals for him, swelling and trembling wildly beneath his touch. Inside his head he could already taste her sweetness against his tongue, the softly musky scent of her invading his senses.
Giselle wanted to touch Saul as intimately as he was touching her. She wanted to know him and feel him and taste him. She wanted to caress the length and breadth of him with her hands and her lips.
She only knew that she had voiced those desires out loud in a sobbed litany of longing when she heard Saul groan that she was tormenting him beyond reason. And then her plea was answered, so that she could breathe in the most intimate scent of him and answer the aching female need within herself to know his scent and taste whilst he stroked and caressed her so intimately that she could scarcely bear the pleasure of it.
She was hot and wet, and the touch of her hand and her mouth against his sex was driving him to a frenzy of longing that demanded the ultimate satisfaction.
Momentarily bereft of Saul’s touch and her contact with his body, Giselle cried out in protest. But it was a very different kind of cry that burst from her lips when he filled her with the firm, deliberate thrust of his body. Her legs wrapped round him, and she gasped out her pleasure in a delirious rush of breath.
Never had any woman held and caressed him so shockingly seductively, making him ache helplessly for the sweet, passionate movement of her muscles as she moved with him.
And then Saul felt it—the unfamiliar but instantly recognisable tightness, the swift tension in her body, the intake of breath. All of them relaying to him the unimaginable and unwanted truth of her virginity.
Saul knew. Giselle could tell. She could feel his attempt to withdraw from her but her body fought it, fiercely defending its need for the pleasure it had been promised. Her muscles wrapped protestingly around him as she gripped his shoulders and rose with him.
‘No,’ she told him. ‘I can’t bear it if you stop now. Please don’t.’
It was her honesty that undermined him. That and the ache of her open need for him, the first and the only man to whom she had given herself. The full power of his own answering need for her was reignited within him. He hadn’t expected or been prepared for the almost atavistic sense of male superiority that filled his body because he knew that hers had singled him out amongst all men to share this pleasure.
He hadn’t intended to give in on a logical basis, even if she had told him so firmly, ‘It’s all right, I am on the pill.’ There were still questions he needed and wanted to ask, after all. But she was moving against him, opening herself to him, Saul recognised on a shock of fiercely male arousal, taking him deeper, and his body took over from her, filling her, driving her pleasure and his own until they were moving as one, locked together, two bodies, maybe, but with one single goal that they were climbing towards together.
Giselle reached it first, crying out. He felt her body tighten and then expand around him in a succession of explosive movements that brought his own release in a series of hot, pulsing expulsions.
It had happened, Giselle thought gratefully, held in Saul’s arms, her head resting on his still damp, thudding chest in weak post-orgasm euphoria and relief. She now knew all there was to know—had experienced the increasing intensity of each individual caress and pleasure there was to experience. She had crossed the barrier into true womanhood and was now complete, fulfilled, replete with the rich satisfaction to which Saul had taken her and then shared with her.
‘I wanted it to happen.’
Saul could feel and hear her soft words, reverberating against his flesh, feel their echo striking into his heart and his emotions.
‘I wanted it to happen and I wanted you.’
Giselle had no idea why she felt so impelled to say such words. They were not a defence, or even a justification, she needed neither of those. They were more a statement of reaffirmation, a proud simple declaration o
f her joy, and her belief in the rightness of what had happened. She had touched the heights and she would have that knowledge, that memory for ever to warm her through the cold darkness of the road that lay ahead. Somehow she had found the courage to take the gift fate had handed her in the shape of Saul a man who did not want either commitment from her or children. Yes she had touched the heights and now there was nowhere left for her to go other than to fall from them, but she must not think about that now.
It was later whilst they were showering together, Saul’s knowing sensual touch on her body like hearing echoes of music from the most magnificent composer played by the world’s best orchestra, singing in the most heavenly way inside her head, that Giselle touched him too. Quickly she lost herself in the delicious pleasure the freedom to touch him so intimately gave her, her concentration so absolute and intent, her gaze so filled with awed delight—like a child discovering that Father Christmas had appeared magically in the night and not only left every gift they could have wanted but also gifts they had never imagined wanting but which they now discovered were exactly what they would have wanted had they been able to think of them.
No woman had looked at him, touched him, wanted him as Giselle did, and watching her filled Saul with a sensation inside as if something hard and implacable in his chest had become a heavy, unwanted weight that was now cracking apart and dissolving, so that where there had been grimness and steel casing there was now lightness and the most ridiculous effervescent fountaining of happiness.
Hugging the towel which Saul had wrapped tenderly around her, Giselle sat on a stool in the ultra-modern grey, black and white kitchen of his royal apartment whilst Saul cooked Eggs Benedict for her. He had ruefully agreed to make her tea when she had shaken her head to the champagne he had originally offered her.
It was gone two o’clock in the morning, but Giselle had never felt more wide awake or more alive.
Sitting with Saul whilst he fed her forkfuls of delicious food, relishing every second of the equally delicious intimacy she was sharing with him, when he asked her the question she had been expecting she was ready for it, and relaxed enough to answer.