by Penny Jordan
‘I’ll see to the fire while you unpack,’ he told her, getting down on his knees, his back to her. She was sure he had done it deliberately, sensing the panic that had been building up inside her at the thought of going up those narrow stairs with him behind her. The cottage only possessed one bedroom, prettily decorated by someone with a liking for Laura Ashley, and the bathroom adjacent was decorated to match. The room felt warm and homely, so much more intimate than a hotel would have been.
The perfect place for a honeymoon, Sienna thought yearningly, then caught back the thought. She was being so silly behaving like this as though she were the victim of some seduction plan and about to be transformed into a scarlet woman! She was free to leave even now if she wanted to. She was here with Alexis because she wanted to be. She dawdled over unpacking what little she had brought with her. There was no need for her to change, the suit she had travelled down in was a soft heather tweed and was perfectly suitable for spending the evening in.
‘Fire’s lit. Do you fancy a drink?’ Alexis’ voice, so calm, calmed her frenzied nerves, his mundane question taking her to the head of the stairs to give an assent. ‘While you’re up there will you unpack for me?’
Ridiculous to feel so embarrassed about touching his clothes. How many times had she packed for Rob or her father and never given it another thought, but these things belonged to the man who would soon be her lover, and it was different. She noticed that he hadn’t packed any pyjamas, and felt her skin flush even though there was no one there to see it, or to witness the way her eyes darkened at the thought of his body against hers. She felt as though she knew him already, but she didn’t and she hurried over her task, anxious to return downstairs and reassure herself that the whole thing wasn’t just a dream.
‘Tired?’
The Beethoven had come to a close, and there was really nothing to keep them downstairs any longer. The fire had burned down and Alexis’ glass was empty. They had finished dinner three hours ago, and now as she listened to the dying crackle of the last apple log Sienna lifted her head from his shoulder.
‘Mmm… a little….’ She felt the laughter shake his body and tensed, feeling childishly hurt. He must have done this so many times before, while she….
‘Ah, no, you are wrong.’ Again he had read her mind and he turned to her in the light from the fire, cupping her face with his hands, his eyes sombre, brooding almost, reminding her of that ancient heritage she had seen in him earlier. ‘There have been other times, but none before like this… none that have meant as much to me as this does. I shall ask you again, Sienna, do you come to me willingly? Do you?’
‘Yes… yes!’ She said it fiercely, pushing back all her doubts and fears, willing him to help her to sweep them away with the magic of his touch. His mouth brushed hers, gently, slowly, his thumb probing the softness of her lips until they parted and his tongue ran lightly over the fullness of her lower one. Her breath caught in the back of her throat, the faintest sound, but he heard it and responded to it, his hand sliding along her throat, tangling in the thickness of her hair, bending her head back against his arm, the hunger building in him as his mouth closed on hers.
She was melting, dissolving, turning into something that wasn’t flesh and bone, but just feeling, under the heat of his kiss. She was drowning in her response to him, lost beneath the fiery trail of kisses that tormented her skin, shivering beneath a need so great that she was deaf, dumb and blind to anything else.
‘Sienna…. Tell me you love me…. You do love me, don’t you?’ The words were punctuated with kisses that turned her mindless with frenzied hunger, the feel of his hands on her body beneath the silk of her blouse making her arch and mutter his name.
‘Totally, completely,’ she told him breathlessly, responding to the demand of his questions, shivering beneath his touch.
‘Ah, I do not think you have done even this many times before, have you?’ His fingers stroked the racing pulses under her skin, his mouth suddenly gentle.
‘Never,’ Sienna told him.
‘Never?’ His eyes darkened with openly perceptible arousal. ‘How innocently you say the word, not knowing that you are offering me the most potent form of temptation I have ever endured! Do you really not know what it does to me to know that I shall be the first to teach you the meaning of desire, to see passion blaze in your eyes….’
‘You have already taught me,’ Sienna told him shakily, and she was lost amidst billowing clouds of pleasure as he laughed and said softly, ‘You think this is pleasure? You have much to learn, and suddenly I am in a very great hurry to teach you.’
He picked her up, carrying her as lightly as though she weighed nothing, her face buried against the warmth of his shoulder, the scent of his skin filling her senses.
He placed her on the bed, leaning over her, smiling down at her. ‘How you tremble in my arms—with willingness or with fear, my sweet virgin?’
‘Both,’ Sienna admitted honestly, ‘but willingness overrides fear….’
‘As desire shall override both,’ he promised her. ‘I do not want you as a sacrifice, not matter how willing, but as an eager participant, as a woman who wants a man—the man! How you tremble still,’ he muttered, feeling her response to his words, and bent his head to place his lips against the warm hollow between her breasts, his fingers deft on the remaining buttons of her blouse. Against the fine silk of her camisole the burgeoning arousal of her nipples was clearly discernible. ‘But there is nothing to fear but fear, and for the brave the ultimate reward is unquantifiable; there is no price, no limit, no standard that can be placed on the pleasure of giving and receiving love’.
Through the thin silk his thumb probed the thrusting outline of her nipple and fierce pleasure throbbed through her, burning in a hot tide as he slid the silk away and brushed the dark aureole of flesh with his tongue, circling and stroking until she clutched mindlessly at his shoulders, gasping his name and shivering with the awareness of all that passion could be and the paucity of her ability to imagine what it might have been beforehand.
Hours, or was it only minutes later, she really didn’t know because time seemed to be suspended, Alexis was guiding her hands against his body, smiling at her wide-eyed awe at its beauty, as unembarrassed at his nudity as she was shy of hers, his mouth slightly skimming her skin, teasing, tantalising, arousing until she forgot all her anxiety about what she did not know and remembered only that he was the man she loved and that his skin tasted warm and salt against her lips and that her touch had the power to make him tense and shudder as vulnerable to her as she was to him.
His hands framed her face, his mouth hot on hers, compelling her response, sweeping her into the fierce surge of pleasure swirling through her body, the full powerful weight of him against her, the tension uncoiling from her body and a deep aching need taking its place.
She needed no urging to return his caresses when his hands and mouth roved over her body, inciting it to arch and echo the soft pleas mixed with the kisses she scattered against his skin. A voice inside her cried out that this was what she had been made for, and not even the powerful thrust of his body against hers had the power to frighten her.
‘Do you love me?’ He murmured the words against her mouth, moulding her hips with his hands, and then sliding them beneath her as he felt her body’s rhythmic response, and her moaned ‘Yes… Yes….’
His mouth brushed hers again as he lifted her towards him, parting her thighs with his, rasping the softness of her flesh. ‘Then give yourself to me,’ he demanded hoarsely. ‘All of you, Sienna… I want it all.’
The words echoed and resounded through her body and it responded elementally to them, welcoming his penetration, and then recoiling from the pain of it, more intense than she had dreamed possible. Alexis’ curse reaching her from far away, the surging pressure of his possession of her now something alien and to be feared rather than welcomed.
She lay beneath him, still trembling, trying valiantly to re
member how much she had wanted him and trying equally valiantly to squash her pain and disillusionment and her fear that after all she had been right and she was not a woman who was ever going to experience great physical pleasure.
‘Did I hurt you?’ He sounded cold, distant, angry almost, and something inside her tensed as he moved away from her. Had she disappointed him? She must have done after all the women he had known….
‘A little,’ she lied, ‘but it will be better… next time….’ Her eyes pleaded with him for confirmation, for the words of reassurance and love to bring balm to her aching body, but he was standing up, shrugging the broad shoulders she had so recently worshipped with her lips, his expression bored and cynical.
‘No doubt it will,’ he agreed, ‘but not with me, Sienna. You will have to find another lover to teach you pleasure.’
She couldn’t take it in at first. She simply stared at him while the words played over and over in her numbed brain. ‘You mean….’
She tried to formulate her thoughts, but he cut across her husky, whisper and said curtly, ‘What I mean is that I have achieved what I set out to do, and I have taken your viginity just as your brother took my sister’s, but with a little more grace. She was brutally raped!’
‘Raped!’ Sienna struggled valiantly to make sense out of what he was saying, unable to comprehend what was happening; where the man she had believed to be her lover had gone, and who this stranger who had taken his place was. ‘But you said you loved me… you….’
‘So naïve! Didn’t your mother ever warn you that that’s what all men tell you when they want you go to bed with them? You were so easy to deceive,’ he told her cruelly. ‘Almost too easy.’
Sienna stole a glance at his dark, taunting face, her eyes drawn with a compulsion it was impossible for her to master to the cold clear outline of his mouth. Sickness and self-contempt welled up inside her. Dear God, what a fool she had been! He was right, she had made it easy for him, easy to steal her heart and destroy her precious daydreams with his words of love which had been nothing more than cruel lies.
‘Drink this.’ A glass of water was thrust in front of her, the liquid faintly cloudy. ‘You should be thankful that I didn’t take you as your brother did my sister; brutally, despoiling her….’
‘Rob wouldn’t do that—I know he wouldn’t! I think I hate you!’ she added vehemently, her voice low and shaken.
‘Hate me?’ His mouth was wry ‘Not half an hour ago you were telling me how much you loved me, that I and I alone held your heart. Sleep now. In the morning….’
In the morning? Did he honestly expect her to stay here with him after what he had just said to her? Shock had robbed her of the ability to feel real pain, but she knew it was there waiting for her and when it began she wanted to be alone. She loved him, and he had just been using her, callously and completely without regard for her feelings. She had loved in ideal, she told herself fiercely, a dream image of a man who didn’t exist. She must not love him, she must force herself to face the truth.
‘I want to leave now,’ she said curtly. ‘I’ll ring for a taxi.’ She saw the surprise he couldn’t quite conceal and said bitterly, ‘What did you expect? That I would plead with you? Break down and beg you to love me? I’ve already made a fool of myself once tonight!’
‘Sienna.’ Incredibly he dared to touch her, frowning when she froze beneath the touch of his fingers on her arm. ‘You must understand that I meant you no personal harm….’
‘No, I was just the means by which you accomplished your revenge,’ she agreed tightly. ‘What would you have done if Rob hadn’t had a sister? If I hadn’t been a virgin? How would you have played God then?’
She had the satisfaction of seeing his face darken in suppressed anger. ‘I made it my business to find out everything I could about your brother and his family. Had you not existed I would have found another way, but this was the most fitting.’
‘An eye for an eye,’ Sienna agreed curtly. Was she really having this conversation? She felt as though she had strayed into some horrendous nightmare and only the terrible fear that she might break down and cry out her pain and anguish in front of this man—her enemy, enabled her to maintain control of her emotions.
‘Where are you going?’ he demanded as she reached for a robe—his, she noticed idly, and swung her feet to the floor.
‘To ring for a taxi.’
His mouth compressed. ‘We will leave in the morning. You needn’t worry that I shall….’
‘Make love to me?’ she threw back. ‘I’m not. After all you achieved your purpose, didn’t you, although I suppose as you’ve paid for the cottage for the weekend you might feel you want to get your money’s worth. Well, I’m sure it won’t be too difficult for you to find someone else to share your bed; a man of your wealth and talent….’ Her mouth curled in bitter cynicism over the last words and she saw the dark colour stain his high cheekbones.
‘Not difficult at all,’ he agreed, taunting her, ‘although they might not quite match you for willingness. You wanted me to make love to you.’
‘I wanted the man I stupidly thought you to be to make love to me,’ Sienna corrected, pulling on his robe and walking towards the door. When he made to follow her she turned on him, her eyes blazing in the pale triangle of her face.
‘Don’t touch me! Don’t come anywhere near me. I can’t stand the thought of you near me. Just to be in the same room with you makes me feel physically sick!’ It wasn’t a lie. She did feel sick, but it didn’t stop him coming towards her, gripping her forearms and shaking her quite hard.
‘Stop this! If you must leave now I’ll drive you.’
‘No!’
‘Yes. Do you think I wanted to do this?’ His eyes were bleak. ‘I promise you I had no alternative. Sofia was betrothed, when your brother raped her, to a cousin of ours, a young man she had known since childhood. Of course he had to be told the truth and the betrothal was broken. Can you imagine what that did to her? For a while we feared for her very sanity. For Sofia’s sake, I had to exact retribution. If you want to find someone to blame, blame your brother….’
‘No!’ Sienna looked at him with all the bitterness of her feelings in her eyes. ‘No, I blame myself for being stupid enough to believe that you were capable of caring for me. Gill warned me that you were cruel, but I thought I knew better. And you had no need to go to these elaborate lengths, you know—that very first time we met I would have walked over live coals for you.’ Her mouth curled cynically. ‘Rob was right, I was a stupid idealistic child, but not any longer—and before you say it, nothing you can say to me will convince me that my brother hurt your sister.’ Her lips twisted. ‘Women have been known to cry rape when all they’ve had is a change of heart, you know.’
For a moment she thought he was going to hit her, but he simply pushed past her and thrust open the door, turning just before it to say curtly, ‘Get dressed and then we’ll leave.’
CHAPTER THREE
SHE was in a dark labyrinth pursued by some terror that drew nearer with every breath, terrified because she could not find her way out. A door opened and a man stood there with his back to her. She felt a surge of joy and ran towards him. He turned and she started to scream and went on screaming because his face was the terror that stalked her.
The sound of her own screams woke Sienna from her nightmare. She was drenched in sweat, the bedclothes all tangled, her heart thumping uncomfortably. She glanced at her alarm. Two-thirty. She had been like this ever since that night at the cottage, suffering from this and other nightmares that prevented her from sleeping. She had lost weight too; Gill had noticed it and commented upon it, suggesting that she take some time off work, but that was the last thing she wanted to do. Work and sleep, they were the only ways she could escape from the torment of her thoughts. Two weeks had elapsed since it happened. Two weeks when only pride had kept her from pleading with Alexis, from throwing herself under the nearest bus and bringing a swift end to
her pain.
The fact that Alexis had taken her virginity was something she could have come to terms with if he hadn’t accomplished it by taking her heart; by allowing her to think herself loved, by deceiving her in the most cruel way it was possible for a man to deceive a woman. She writhed in a torment of self-mortification, of self-loathing for her folly in actually thinking he could care about her. Her naïvity, her trust, her sheer stupidity—these were the whips with which she flagellated herself mentally and from which there was no escape. She could hide her pain from the rest of the world, but she couldn’t hide it from herself. She was fiercely glad that Rob was away, that at least when she returned to the flat in the evening she didn’t have to pretend. Most nights she just sat staring into space, trying not to think or feel, while all the time her agony demanded an outlet. She was fiercely determined not to let herself grieve or mourn her own plight. She deserved it and had brought it upon herself with her own stupidity. If she hadn’t been such a fool, believing herself in love and loved in return, none of it would ever have happened. It was her fault. She wasn’t eating. The thought of food totally nauseated her, and she was glad that Alexis had left the country. She didn’t even dare to walk past the Savoy in case she weakened and went in.
There were times when she wanted to scream out loud, to cry until there were no tears left. Times when she wanted to beg and plead, when she would have done anything for the comfort of his arms, the warmth of his body. And there were also times when she wanted to see him suffer as she was doing, when she felt tainted by the dark torment of her thoughts.
She grew thin and pale, quiet and reserved—and she also grew up. Other people grew to adulthood slowly, a gradual, relatively easy progress. She had remained a foolish trusting child, mentally at least, for far too long. Rob had been right when he said living with their father blinded her to real life, but all that was over now. Now she was a full fledged adult. Sometimes she felt as though she were two completely different people—the Sienna who smiled, worked, responded as others expected her to do in a rational calm manner, and the other Sienna, the one who was so emotionally crippled that she couldn’t allow anyone to see or touch her, the one who cowered away from the slightest contact with other human beings, the one who cried out in the night a name which the other Sienna had forbidden her ever to utter.