by Penny Jordan
The noise woke Rick, who had learned to sleep lightly in case Michael called out during the night and disturbed Kate. At first he couldn’t place the alien sound, and then he realised that it came from Kate’s room, not Michael’s, and he was on his feet, tugging a robe over his nude body. He hadn’t worn pyjamas since he was a child, and although he had attempted to do so to soothe Kate’s outrage, he had found them so constricting that he had soon abandoned them.
The sight of Kate huddled on her bedroom floor, clutching her quilt, her face streaked with tears, made him think that she had had an accident. He rushed over to her, demanding quickly, ‘Kate, what is it? What’s wrong? Is it your ankle?’
Her ankle had healed, the bruised swelling disappearing, but it was still liable to give way at odd moments.
Before she could say a word, he was touching her, his long fingers investigating the delicate bone, one hand supporting the slimness of her calf while the other probed delicately around the ankle itself.
Heat radiated upwards from where his hand touched her skin. Her heart was pounding unevenly, her body gripped by a wanton, urgent need, crying out to her so loudly for satisfaction of that need that it drowned out everything else, including the warning voice that begged her to remember her dignity and her pride.
Rick’s head was bent over her ankle as he frowned his concern. Unable to stop herself she reached out and touched him, her fingers trembling as they rested, fluttering against the hard angle of his jaw.
He looked at her.
‘I want you to make love to me.’
Too late now to recall the betraying words. Her whole body burned with humiliation and despair. What on earth had made her say them?
‘Kate…’
He said her name softly, reaching out to take hold of both her wrists and gently push her away from him. She could see the rejection in his eyes and she flinched from it and from herself, burning with self-mortification. No matter how kindly he rejected her, they would both know that he had done so. Why hadn’t she held her tongue? Why had she…?
‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what made me say that. It must have been the wine,’ she gabbled, desperate to ease the tension filling the room. She saw that Rick was about to speak, and, unable to endure hearing his denial of her, rushed on frantically, ‘I didn’t mean it, Rick. I know how you feel about female employers who come on to you. Please forget what I said. I…’
‘Forget it? I can’t do that, Kate.’
Something had changed; the deep timbre of his voice told her that. Where he had been about to gently reject her, where he had been firmly pushing her away from him, his fingers were now slowly caressing the thudding pulses in her wrists, and the dark glow in his eyes was not that of an unaroused man.
The wine had gone right to her head and she barely knew what she was saying or doing, he knew that. By rights he ought to put her to bed and leave her there, but he had seen in her eyes her belief that he was rejecting her, and he cursed the ill fortune that had decreed that the man whose place he had usurped had left his previous employment because of the sexual harassment of the woman of the house.
He was caught in a double trap and he knew it. If he left Kate now, she would think he was rejecting her, and he knew her well enough to know that once she was completely herself again, she would make sure that there would never be another opportunity for him to break through her defences. Her pride would ensure that.
And if he stayed then she would probably accuse him of taking advantage of her when she was too ill to know what she was doing. He was damned either way; and if he was going to be damned, he knew which of the two memories he would rather take with him.
For too many nights now he had lain in that too narrow and almost too short single bed, on fire for the feel of her in his arms, aching with a torment he could remember experiencing even during his teens, his body pulsing hungrily with its need for her.
A more sexually experienced woman would have recognised that need and probably exploited it, but Kate seemed to have no awareness of her effect on him. Hence the look of anguished rejection in her eyes right now. A look he would give his soul to extinguish. A look he could wipe away simply by taking her in his arms and letting her feel how very wrong she was when she assumed he didn’t want her.
‘You should be in bed,’ he told her huskily.
He stood up, taking her with him, and holding her against his body, securing her there with one arm, while he picked up the quilt with the other. The movement hardened the muscles of his belly, and Kate was pressed so closely to him that she could feel it, her own stomach quivering in arousal at being so close to his strength. Still holding her, he tugged the quilt back on to the bed. Kate found that her head seemed to nestle of its own accord in the curve of his shoulder.
She wasn’t sure if Rick was simply remaking the bed for her benefit, or…
‘I don’t think I’m going to need this, do you?’ he whispered against her hair, releasing her briefly to shrug off his robe.
‘I forgot my pyjamas again,’ he added throatily, sliding her own robe away from her body, and then bending his head to nuzzle the scented skin of her throat as he eased down the shoulder straps of her nightdress.
‘Rick,’ she protested huskily.
His mouth had reached the curve of her jaw.
‘Shush… Don’t talk now. Kiss me instead,’ he murmured against the corner of her mouth, and the movement of his lips sent wild vibrations of sensation coiling through her.
‘Rick—’ she protested again, but more weakly this time, wild panic seizing her as his lips slid between her own, parting them and then caressing them with ever-increasing passion.
She didn’t know when she started to kiss him back, or when he released her arms from the straps of her nightdress to allow it to slide to the floor so that he could gather her body into his arms and slowly caress the length of her spine as he urged her into the waiting heat of his own flesh. It was all so new, this sensation of flesh against flesh, this closeness, this intimacy, and yet it was also as though part of her had known it since the beginning of time.
She stopped kissing him, drawing back in his embrace to search his face with a fevered gaze. ‘Rick, I’ve never done this before. I don’t want to disappoint you…’
‘You couldn’t,’ he told her gently, drawing her back against him and tracing the outline of her mouth with his tongue, distracting her from what she knew she ought to say.
Beneath his breath he muttered rawly, ‘If anyone’s going to be disappointed, it could be you. I want you too much right now. Feel,’ he whispered softly, his hands moving down her spine to hold her against him. ‘Feel how much you arouse me, and promise me that no matter what the future holds, you’ll never doubt how much I want you…’
Kate hesitated uncertainly, sensing the tension in his words, groping towards understanding what might lie behind them, but Rick demanded urgently, ‘Promise me, Kate. Promise me that no matter what happens, you won’t allow anything to destroy these memories.’
His fingers dug into the tender softness of her bottom, and she sensed that he wasn’t even aware of the pressure he was exerting. He breathed deeply and his body moved against her own, sending sharp spirals of desire coiling through her.
‘I promise,’ she told him unsteadily, marvelling at the darkness of his eyes and the faint tremor of his hand as he brushed her hair off her face. Then, holding her shoulder, he kissed his way along her throat and down over her body until she was arched willingly and wantonly over his arm, as instinct and arousal demanded that she focus his attention, both mental and physical, on the feminine perfection of her breasts and their dark crowns of yearning flesh.
She trembled as his mouth moved moistly on her, caressing the soft swell of pale skin, his hand cupping her other breast. Then his fingers began caressing its taut peak, until she quivered and shook and wondered with agonised impatience why he didn’t know how tormenting it was to have his mouth moving so delicatel
y on her smooth, pale skin, when what she wanted…what she needed…
‘Rick,’ she protested huskily, and immediately he stopped caressing her, lifting his head so that he could look into her eyes.
‘What is it? Don’t you like that?’
‘Yes. No. Rick, I want…’ Her heart thundered and pounded within her chest, the words locking in her throat, her eyes darkening with her need to have his mouth against her flesh.
And then, as though he knew that she could not endure the torment any longer, his gaze dropped to the dark peaks of her breasts, and she felt his breath graze tormentingly against them as he said fiercely, ‘Is it this that you want, Kate? Is it?’
And he drew the sensitive nub of flesh into his mouth, caressing it with his tongue, and then, when she cried out, he suckled fiercely first on one and then on the other nipple. As though the soft cries of pleasure muted in her throat drove him beyond the edge of his self-control, his palms cupped the outer curves of both breasts, gently pushing them together, so that his mouth could move swiftly from one pulsing pleasure point to the other with a rhythmic urgency that seemed to flow from his body to her own, so that she was not quite sure when the thrusting hardness of his body’s possession was no longer merely her fevered mind’s hungry fantasy but actual reality.
The feel of him inside her went beyond any pleasure she could imagine there could be; even the brief locking of her muscles as they felt the thrust that broke the final barrier was in some odd way a painful pleasure, willingly endured for the delights that came after it.
‘I’m sorry, my love, but this time I can’t be temperate,’ she felt Rick whisper against her mouth as the tempo of his possession increased.
He groaned against her mouth and savaged it with biting kisses as passion overcame him. Kate felt the tiny, beginning ripples of it, but as she reached out to capture the sensation Rick cried out and she felt the hot pulse of his climax.
‘I’m sorry. It was too soon,’ he told her, still holding her in his arms, but strangely she felt no disappointment, only a vague ache and an intense feeling of tiredness. She badly wanted to go to sleep and she curled up against Rick, burrowing into the warmth of his body.
By rights, he ought to go back to his own bed. What had happened already was bad enough, but if he stayed here with her there could be only one outcome to the enticement of her soft, naked flesh against his own.
He was right. Towards dawn Kate was woken by the most delicious of sensations she had ever experienced washing slowly through her body, and by the time she was awake enough to realise that it was caused by the soft caress of Rick’s mouth against first her stomach and then her inner thigh, she was too aroused to do anything more than cry out in a torment of shocked pleasure that convulsed her body and turned her weak with sensation as Rick’s tongue gently traced the most secret intimacy of her sex. Then his mouth caressed her until she was mindless…lost…adrift in an ocean of pleasure, no longer caring if she sank or swam.
Nothing in her life had prepared her for the explosion of pleasure that shook her, nor for the astounding speed with which Rick was able to make her reach out for that same pinnacle of pleasure again as he told her thickly, ‘That was for you. This is for both of us. Something for both of us to cherish.’
In the false dawn she saw a muscle beat in his jaw, and wondered at the bleakness in his eyes. He was as grim as though he was a condemned man, but her body, awash with delight, refused to allow her mind to concentrate on anything other than the physical delight he was giving her.
The quivers of her first climax had barely died away before she felt his mouth on her breasts, teasing the hard nipples into aching points of desire. She felt the arousal of his body, moving urgently against her and then within her so strongly that she felt she would die from the pleasure she was experiencing.
This time the pleasure was stronger, fiercer, the convulsive grip of her muscles locking on Rick’s body making him groan and shake with arousal, and then for a few fleeting heartbeats they were no longer human, but immortal, spinning dizzily into space together, and the music of the universe rang in Kate’s ears as they heard Rick’s harsh cry of fulfilment and she knew that it was her body that had given it to him. The sensation she felt at the knowledge was so primitive, so female, that the force of it shocked her.
CHAPTER TEN
‘THERE’S a phone call for you. A Camilla Lancing.’
‘Camilla? Oh, lovely, I’ll speak to her.’ Carefully avoiding looking directly at Rick, Kate picked up the receiver.
It had been three hours now since she had woken up to the realisation that she and Rick had been lovers; three hours, during which she had battled frantically against her panic that he might guess that for her last night had not just been the emotional whim of the moment, but a lifetime commitment.
In the cold light of the dark November day, she was all too aware of how irrationally and idiotically she had behaved. She didn’t regret that she and Rick had been lovers; how could she? But what she both dreaded and feared was what she might have betrayed to him through her actions.
Discreetly he left the room while she spoke to her friend.
‘Who on earth was that?’ Camilla asked her, obviously intrigued, once Kate had asked after her father-in-law and been assured that he was now well on the way to recovery.
‘You should know,’ Kate responded as lightheartedly as she could. ‘You were the one who recommended him. He’s Michael’s nanny.’
There was a small silence, and then Camilla said, ‘Kate, are you well enough to have visitors? I’d like to come round and see you.’
Kate was dressed and sitting in her room. ‘Lovely. I’ve rather a lot to talk to you about.’
Too proud to ask for any direct help, she would nevertheless be grateful for the opportunity to talk over her fears for her business with her friend.
Camilla arrived half an hour later. Rick let her in on his way to the park with Michael. Kate heard them exchanging ‘hellos’ as they passed in the hall.
Kate greeted her friend with a smile, but there was no answering smile on Camilla’s face as she walked into the room.
‘Kate, what’s going on?’ she demanded without preamble. ‘And please, no more fairytales. The day Garrick Evans needs to hire himself out as anyone’s anything is the day the business world turns topsy-turvy… What on earth is he doing here?’
Kate stared at her in shock.
Rick Evans. Garrick Evans. Why on earth hadn’t she made the connection? Why on earth hadn’t she guessed? Garrick Evans, Alan’s remote second cousin. Garrick Evans, who had announced to her via her solicitor that he wanted nothing to do with his second cousin’s child.
She sat numbly while Camilla’s rueful expressions of remorse went past her unregarded. A feeling of terrified panic, not unlike that experienced during the most traumatising of nightmares, possessed her; she felt as though she had strayed into an unknown world without any signposts to guide her. A feeling of physical sickness engulfed her, and she started to shake as she tried to understand why Garrick Evans was living in her home, pretending to be Michael’s nanny.
Michael. Suddenly all her fears coalesced and focused on one thing…Michael. Michael was the key to this. He had to be. Michael was the reason that Garrick Evans was here, that he had lied to her, that he had played a cruel charade with her, that he had inveigled his way into her home, her bed…her life, under totally false pretences.
‘You didn’t know, did you?’ Camilla apologised. ‘Oh, Kate, I’m so sorry.’
‘Where did he go?’ Kate demanded tersely, ignoring her apology. ‘I’ve got to get up. He’s got Michael with him. Oh, God, how could I have been so stupid? I’ve got to find him.’
‘Kate, no. You’re in no fit state to do anything. Please tell me. What’s going on? What’s he doing here? How can I help?’
‘You can’t,’ Kate told her dully. ‘No one can…’
They both heard the front door open and then close
again. Michael’s laughter floated upstairs, accompanied by the deep tones of Garrick’s voice.
‘Do you want me to stay with you?’ Camilla asked, sensing that Kate intended to confront him with the truth.
‘No!’ She shook her head. ‘No, thanks.’
What was going to happen would be painful in the extreme, and she wanted no witnesses to it, no matter how sympathetic and kind. It was bad enough that she had betrayed herself so stupidly, without others witnessing her humiliation.
God, how he must have laughed at her! Garrick Evans…superstud par excellence. No wonder he had known exactly how to… Her mind cut off then, refusing to go any further down such a hurtful path.
‘I’ll go, then,’ Camilla said awkwardly, seeing that Kate was hardly even aware that she was still there. ‘I’m sorry, Kate. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything, but I knew that the man who was supposed to come for the interview had taken another job, and I was worried.’
‘No…no. You did the right thing,’ Kate told her slowly. ‘It’s better this way…’
And, seeing the look in her eyes, Camilla did not ask her what it was exactly that was better.
She passed Garrick on the stairs. He had Michael in his arms and stood back to let her pass. He noticed her set face, and the way she avoided his eyes, and the vague feeling that he had met her somewhere before became certainty.
He swore softly under his breath. He had planned to tell Kate the truth today, knowing that he could not allow himself to go on deceiving her now that they had been lovers.
He put Michael in his playpen and then opened Kate’s bedroom door. The moment he saw her face, his suspicions were confirmed.
‘You know, then,’ he asked calmly.
‘That you’re Garrick Evans?’ She gave him a tight, hard smile. ‘Yes, I do. I suppose Michael’s at the root of this whole charade.’
He had known she was intelligent and keen-witted, but even so her percipience startled him. It deserved the only honest reply he could give her.