by Penny Jordan
As the thought formed, she frowned suddenly, remembering an incident from their first meeting, from that summer when her aunt had first introduced him to the family. She had rejected all his overtures of friendship, she remembered; she had felt as though he was patronising her and she had resented it—resented him—resented the fact that her parents had treated him as an adult while they were still treating her as a child, and that had been like gall to her fourteen-year-old emergent pride. Then too she had considered him an outsider—only then she had vocalised her resentment, and had received a lecture from her parents for her pains.
‘Pretty basic, I’m afraid,’ she heard Carter saying cheerfully as he brought a bowl of crisp lettuce over to the table, ‘but I doubt you’d find anything that tastes as good in any of your fancy London restaurants.’
Elspeth suspected he was probably right, but instead of agreeing with him she said contrarily, ‘You’d be surprised. All good restaurants these days are conscious of their clientele’s desire for healthier eating.’
Carter shrugged as though the subject no longer interested him, indicating the table with its clean cloth and her mother’s blue and white china. ‘Come and sit down,’ he instructed her.
Elspeth saw that in addition to the lettuce and other home-grown salad ingredients, including some deliciously mouthwatering-smelling tomatoes, there was some of her mother’s home-cured ham, the bread which she baked every week and a large bowl of fresh fruit.
‘Your parents don’t have the space for much fruit,’ Carter told her, seeing her eyeing the fruit, ‘but if I succeed at auction I’m hoping to experiment with fruit under glass.’
‘Won’t that be very expensive?’ Elspeth challenged.
‘Mmm. But when I left the institute they gave me a generous pay-off. Banks are much more lenient these days about lending money to small businesses. With the vegetable side to carry me, I can afford to take a small risk.’
Especially if he already had the benefit of her parents’ business, Elspeth thought bitterly, as he pulled out a chair for her. For a moment she was tempted to ignore it and walk round to the other side of the table, but to do so would be churlish and non-productive. If she really wanted to find out what he was planning, it would be far easier if he didn’t realise how suspicious of him she was.
He was so different from Peter, she reflected as she sat down. Peter would never have prepared a meal like this, nor taken it as a matter of course that he should do so, and Peter would certainly never have sat down to eat wearing only a pair of worn jeans.
She was sitting so close to him that it was impossible for her not to be aware of the fresh, clean scent of his skin. She recognised the distinctive smell of the Pears soap her mother always used, but mingled with it was the elusive and very disturbing fragrance that was his alone. It took on an erotic and dangerous allure that made her wish that she was sitting further away from him.
Unlike her, Carter seemed totally undisturbed by any such awareness. He might just as well have been fully dressed rather than virtually naked, she reflected angrily, wishing she had the courage to put a little more distance between them. It was totally ridiculous, but the harder she tried to ignore her awareness of him, the more intense it became, until her shoulders and back were tight with tension, and she was fighting not to look at him…
What was it about this particular man that made it such a wanton pleasure merely to absorb visually the physical reality of him? But she didn’t merely want to look at him, she recognised on a tiny shiver. She wanted to reach out and touch him. She wanted…
What on earth was happening to her? she wondered miserably, doggedly trying to concentrate on the food on her plate.
She was so deeply engrossed in her own bewildering emotions that it was doubly unnerving to hear Jasper suddenly say mournfully, in a very creditable impersonation of her father’s slow tones, ‘Pity about Elspeth… She needs a good man.’
Horrified, Elspeth stared transfixed at the wretched bird, clenching her hands so that she couldn’t give in to the unbearable temptation to get up and wring its neck. At the same time, she was conscious of the slow burn of colour heating her skin as anger and embarrassment filled her with equal intensity.
It was one thing to know in her most secret heart that her parents, while accepting her choice of Peter, could quite genuinely not understand what attracted her to him—it was quite another to have that appalling parrot voice their doubts in front of Carter.
For what seemed like an endless stretch of time she waited with pent-up breath and feelings for him to make some mocking comment, and then, when she realised that he wasn’t going to do so, that he was diplomatically going to pretend that Jasper had never uttered those betraying words, instead of being relieved, grateful to him for his tact, all she felt was a growing, choking rage, which exploded forcefully inside her, making her stand up abruptly, pushing her chair back with a rough, scraping sound, her voice shaking with temper and pain as she said bitterly, ‘Why don’t you go ahead and laugh? I’m sure you want to—but I happen to love Peter and he loves me.’
She stopped abruptly, knowing that if she said any more she was liable to burst into tears. What was the matter with her, why did she feel this need to justify herself, her relationship with Peter, and to this man who meant nothing to her, had no place in her life? Had he been there while her parents were discussing Peter? Had he been privy to their doubts and concern? It hurt her more than she could bear to think that he had. It was almost as though it was a kind of betrayal.
‘Look, Elspeth…’
Was that pity she could hear in his voice? Her body stiffened as she rejected the hand he was placing on her arm. ‘Don’t touch me,’ she demanded chokily. ‘And in future perhaps you’d be good enough to refrain from wandering around half naked.’
She saw his face change, his eyebrows lifting, something almost approaching amusement lightening his eyes. ‘Oh, come on. You aren’t trying to tell me that you aren’t used to the sight of a bare male chest. After all, you and Peter are virtually engaged.’
‘That’s different,’ Elspeth told him fiercely, ‘and besides, contrary to what you seem to imagine, Peter and I are not—’ She stopped abruptly, her face suddenly bright with colour.
‘Go on,’ Carter encouraged, marvellously self-assured where she suddenly felt as gauche and miserable as a child. ‘You and Peter aren’t what?’
‘Nothing,’ Elspeth said stubbornly.
‘You aren’t lovers, is that what you were going to say?’ he pressed, ignoring her.
Suddenly it was all too much for her. She had never experienced so many contradictory and see-sawing emotions in such a short space of time. Never had her ideals, her beliefs, her feelings been challenged so thoroughly nor so frighteningly, never had she felt them slip away so far out of her own control.
‘There’s no need to sound so amused,’ she told him bitterly. ‘Not all men are obsessed with sex. There are other equally important aspects to relationships.’
‘I agree that sex on its own is never a good basis on which to form a good relationship, but there is a difference between being obsessed with sex and not having any interest in it at all. If I were a woman I think I should be a little concerned at the thought of committing myself to life with a man who seemed not to find me sexually desirable.’
Elspeth felt the breath leak out of her lungs on a painful sob. How dared he say that? How dared he suggest that Peter didn’t want her? And yet—and yet—wasn’t it what she had sometimes said to herself alone and awake at night, wondering a little uncomfortably why it was that Peter should be so content to say good-night with nothing more than a chaste and hasty kiss, and why she herself should feel something almost approaching relief that he should be? She had thought then that it was because she herself must only have a low sex-drive, that she and Peter were both victims of the modern disease of overwork. And yet when Carter had kissed her in that brief, illuminating space of time, she had recognised
and felt all those things, all those emotions, all those needs and desires, which she had been telling herself it was impossible for her to feel. Too late now to wish she had never gained that knowledge, that she had remained safe in her illusion that she was incapable of feeling such desire.
Now she went white with pain as she lied desperately, ‘Peter does want me. He’s… He’s just too much of a gentleman to—to force me into—into something I’m not ready for.’
Carter gave her a brief, hard look. ‘So you’re the one who doesn’t want him. And you still intend to marry him. Why?’
Elspeth was literally trembling now, not just with anger, but with anguish as well. How dared he challenge her like this, talk to her like this, hurt her like this?
‘I don’t think that’s any of your business,’ she told him fiercely, ‘and now, if you don’t mind…’
She started to turn away, but he caught hold of her, stopping her, swinging her back round to face him.
‘Oh, but I do mind,’ he told her grittily. ‘And I want to know why, when you become all woman in my arms, when you respond so passionately to my kiss, you’re going to marry a man who you’ve just admitted can’t turn you on.’
Elspeth went rigid with shock at the brutality of his verbal attack, totally unable to hide her reaction nor to silence the immediate denial that choked from her throat. ‘I thought you were Peter,’ she lied desperately. ‘I didn’t want you at all.’
‘Is that a fact?’
Suddenly he seemed very intimidating, very male and alien, and suddenly she wished desperately that she were a million miles away from him, and safe from the dark intent she could read in his eyes.
‘Let me go, Carter.’
She tried to keep her voice steady, to inject a note of cool lightness into it, to prove to him that she was completely unaffected by what was happening, but her voice shook a little, and she knew quite well he must have felt the tiny tremor that burned through her.
For a moment she actually thought she saw compassion soften his mouth, actually felt that he might out of pity let her go—but suddenly his grasp tightened, his mouth hardening as he looked down at her and said softly, ‘Not yet.’
She knew already that he was going to kiss her.
She had a handful of seconds, maybe less, in which to tell herself frantically that this time it would be different, this time she would be prepared, this time there would be no terrifying, unbelievable awareness that under this man’s hands, under this man’s mouth, every single one of her senses, every smallest nerve-ending flowered and blossomed, and that with them the tightly close-furled bud of sensuality she had never known she possessed burst into life inside her.
A handful of seconds. Such a small space of time, so why instead of using it did she simply stand within his arms, trembling not with apprehension, nor even with anger, but with a sensation which she dimly recognised as being born of the quick, wanton heat that filled her whole body? The traitor within, she recognised dizzily as her lips parted in instinctive response to the hard heat of his.
And yet it wasn’t a violent kiss, nor yet even an angry kiss—not a punishment at all really, despite the volcanic threat of his words.
She protested once as she fought against his sensual domination of her body, and instantly his mouth lifted, but when she attempted to turn her head aside he checked the movement, not aggressively, but with the gentle strength of his open palm cupping her jaw, stroking the softness of her skin, so that she looked at him with unknowingly tormented and bewildered eyes, shivering beneath the explosion of emotions he was generating, her senses obedient to the silent demand of his, so that this time when he kissed her she automatically moved closer to him, instinctively and unknowingly slid her arms around his neck, and sighed tremulously beneath the pressure of his mouth, inviting the male possession of it in a dozen subtle and unintended ways.
People didn’t kiss like this; not grown-up, adult people, she thought hazily at some point. This kind of kissing was for impossibly romantic films and besotted teenagers.
Adults were intimate, made love, had sex, their kisses a brief tactical opening-stage towards that goal; but this kiss…this kiss was a whole world of sensation and delight complete unto itself.
She couldn’t remember that she hadn’t wanted him to touch her, only that now she couldn’t bear him to stop; that each time he left her mouth to nibble the soft flesh of her ear, each time he bit gently at her bottom lip and teased her with the soft stroke of his tongue, she grew more hungry, more desirous, more shockingly eager for the return of his mouth to hers, clinging urgently to its possession.
When he finally set her free it was the sound of her own incoherent denial of that freedom that shocked her back to awareness, her eyes opening into his in bewildered pain, her body trembling and so weak that she felt as though she had no physical strength at all.
From a distance she heard Carter saying in a strained voice, ‘I’m sorry. I never intended…’
And brutally she came back to reality and realised what she had done.
She felt quite sick with mortification. No wonder Carter sounded so embarrassed. No wonder he was keeping his back to her.
Valiantly she struggled for something to say, for some light, insouciant words that would somehow or other return everything to normal. She tried to imagine herself saying airily something or other about missing Peter and apologising for getting a little carried away, and knew helplessly that she could never make that kind of lie sound anything like believable.
Now, when oddly enough she hadn’t been particularly aware of it at the time, her body was shockingly telling her how much it missed its intimate contact with Carter’s. How much it longed for the sensation of that hard male flesh in intimate contact with her own. Frantically she closed her eyes, trying to banish the shocking images dancing in her head, but they refused to go away.
She heard Carter saying her name in an uncomfortable, strained voice. Instinctively she turned to look at him, and then wished she hadn’t. Heaven alone knew what he must have read in her expression to make his own change like that, to make him look at her so blankly and so grimly, as though he wanted to shut out the image of her forever.
It wasn’t all her fault—she hadn’t been the one who had initiated the kiss, even if she… She gulped painfully and bit her bottom lip to stop its wild trembling.
‘For God’s sake.’
The raw, furious male sound was like knives tearing at her flesh. Unable to endure any more, she did something she had never in her life imagined herself doing; she swung round and ran betrayingly and desperately towards the inner door, opening it before Carter could stop her and fleeing for the sanctuary of her borrowed bedroom.
In the kitchen Carter stared after her, and then into the silence the parrot, who had taken in the whole scene with avid curiosity, repeated with unnerving accuracy and emotion something which neither Elspeth herself nor Carter had even realised she had said, something so emotional and betraying that Carter blenched as the bird whispered emotively and pleadingly, ‘Carter.’
There was nothing else but that one word—his name, repeated so exactly as Elspeth had unknowingly whispered it when she had pleaded for the return of his mouth to hers that the hairs on his arms stood sharply erect and his body responded so savagely and so achingly that he took a step towards the parrot and told him bitterly, ‘Don’t you ever, ever do that again, otherwise…’
‘Nice chap, Carter,’ the parrot told him palliatively. ‘Like him very much. Pity about Elspeth,’ he added mournfully, strategically getting out of Carter’s reach. ‘Pity about Elspeth.’
Upstairs Elspeth sat with her head in her hands, trying to come to terms with what she had done, with what she had allowed to happen.
Useless to try to pretend any more. Physically Carter aroused her as a woman as she had never dreamed any man could arouse her. If there in the kitchen he had whispered to her that he wanted to make love to her… If he had caressed he
r, touched her, if he had slid the clothes from her body and then touched her naked flesh with his hands and then his mouth…
She trembled violently at the very thought. Appalled by what she was thinking, and yet at the same time knowing a helpless, sick longing for something far more tangible than the mere mental knowledge of how she would feel if Carter had made love to her.
Now, when she was completely alone, when he wasn’t touching her in any way at all, when she ought to have been safely free of whatever spell it was he cast over her, she was yearning, aching, wanting him in such an earthy and elemental way that she could hardly comprehend that she was actually having these feelings.
She wanted Carter to make love to her. She said the words silently to herself, half expecting them to be followed by a rush of mental denial—but nothing happened, apart from the fact that that dull, unfamiliar ache way down in the pit of her stomach seemed to twist fiercely and burn.
She shivered, suddenly feeling cold, shocked that she could feel like this, and for a man who didn’t desire her, didn’t love her. For a man who had done nothing to encourage her to feel like this.
No, right from the start she had been the one who had for some reason made his presence in her life take on a sensual significance. Right from the very start, when she had been so sure he had been trying to flirt with her, when she had failed to recognise him, and in so doing had—what?—sprung the trap into which she had now fallen.
It would be different once Peter got here, she told herself firmly. Once Peter was here, all this nonsense would stop. She would be her normal self again. Perhaps she might even suggest to Peter that it was time they set a formal date for the wedding. Yes, perhaps that was it. Because she could not allow herself to think of Peter in such sensual terms, her mind was playing tricks on her and transferring her burgeoning desire to Carter.
She frowned. Why couldn’t she think of Peter as her lover? They were after all going to be married. There was no reason why they should not be lovers. It was all very well being sensible, she decided forlornly, but this evening, in Carter’s arms, beneath Carter’s mouth, her senses had been awakened to such aching pleasures that the thought of being sensible, cautious and pragmatic suddenly had no appeal at all.