by Penny Jordan
When they reached the farm Holly was still asleep. Her handbag was on the floor at her feet, and, acting on an impulse which he knew to be dangerous, he picked it up, hesitating before opening it. If he couldn’t see her keys immediately, then he would wake her up. If he... But as soon as he opened her bag, he could see the dull gleam of a bunch of keys.
A sense of fatefulness pulsed through him, an absurd feeling that he wasn’t acting wholly under his own control any more. A cop-out, he derided himself, as he removed the keys and closed Holly’s handbag.
When he got out of the car and walked up the path to her front door, he could hear the frantic pulse of his own blood as it surged through his veins, dangerously laced with the adrenalin of excitement and danger.
He unlocked the front door, refusing to allow himself to dwell on what was running through his mind, on the thoughts that lay beneath the surface, like so many jagged rocks just below the waterline. Outwardly he was all calm control, his physical movements controlled and easy; inwardly...inwardly...Robert gave a small shudder, refusing to allow himself time to think, to reason. There was after all still time for Holly to wake up—still time for her to look at him with those huge eyes, which had once glowed with love...with adoration almost for him, but which now studied him with cool disdain, with contempt sometimes. That was a hard thing for a man to bear, especially when he...
When he what? When he had realised far, far too late that he loved her and he always would love her.
He opened the passenger door of the car, holding his breath as the light came on, but Holly didn’t even move. He bent down, sliding one arm beneath her knees and the other around her back, as he eased her out of the car.
She weighed even less than he had expected. He remembered how fragile she had always felt; how small and feminine. Now her body was more mature, her waist narrower, her breasts and her hips rounder, her legs more slender.
Where she had been a girl, now she was a woman, and as he stood in the dark outside his car, holding her in his arms, he was excruciatingly aware of that fact.
The clouds which had previously obscured it rolled away from the face of the moon so that unexpectedly Holly’s face was bathed in its light.
Robert held his breath as she tensed and frowned, half of him wanting her to wake up, to stop what was happening now before events went totally out of his control; the other half...
She made a small sound, her lips parting. Her hand moved, clutching at the front of his shirt, her frown deepened, her eyelashes quivering as though she were about to open her eyes, and then unbelievably she turned her face into his body. He heard the soft, pleased sound she made as her breath touched his skin. The physical reaction that stormed through him brought him out in a rash of goosebumps and made him tremble.
Once, long ago, a lifetime ago, he could remember her shyly kissing his throat, caressing his skin with lips so hesitant and tentative that his ache of need had made him grit his teeth and will himself not to take hold of her and...
Now that need was just as intense, but now he was less selfish, more aware, more concerned with the pleasure he wanted to give her than the pleasure he wanted for himself. Now his pleasure would be not so much in feeling her touch his skin, his flesh, but in being able to touch hers, in knowing that she welcomed his touch—that she wanted it...that she wanted him...and that she welcomed that wanting.
He could feel the painful burn of the emotion that choked his throat and stung his eyes. Holly, Holly; he fought back a mad impulse to wake her up and tell her how much he loved her, how much he had missed her.
Shuddering a little, he turned round and walked towards the front door.
The farmhouse felt warm and welcoming. The square hallway was flagged, its stones worn and polished. A heavy damask curtain covered the back of the front door, its fabric rich and worn. A polished table held a pewter jug of garden flowers. Pewter wall-lights illuminated the plastered walls. Several doors opened off the hallway, but Robert’s glance was drawn upwards to the stairs, their wooden treads, like the stone floor, were worn and polished, a strip of carpet fastened by old-fashioned stair-rods covered their centre, its faded reds, creams and blues soft and easy on the eye.
He started up the stairs, his arms tensing now under Holly’s weight.
He was only doing the sensible thing, he assured himself. Better for her to wake up lying comfortably on top of her bed than cramped upright in a chair.
Only one of the bedroom doors was open. He took a chance and carried her into that room.
There was a neat pile of clean laundry on the wooden chest at the bottom of the bed, and a towelling robe had been discarded on the bed, its whiteness a sharp blur of light on the muted colours of the patchwork quilt.
Instinct made him pull back the quilt before depositing Holly on the bed. It was old and, he suspected, valuable. As he released her from the captivity of his arms, Holly frowned and then moved seekingly on the bed, her frown deepening. She shivered as though suddenly cold.
The bedroom window was open. Robert moved across to close it and with it the curtains. The room was decorated in soft shades of peach, grey and blue, the furniture was old and well polished, a huge salt-glazed jug of bleached-out dried seed-heads and flowers stood on one of the chests.
On the table beside the bed was a heavy, very battered and ancient-looking book. Robert picked it up, a deep, smiling curve indenting his mouth as he read the title. Culpeper’s Complete Herbal.
Of course...what else? Holly was still asleep. By rights he ought to go and leave her in peace. His responsibility, his duty to her was now finished. There was nothing to keep him here. No reason for him to stay. And yet somehow he couldn’t leave. He walked towards the door, and then hesitated, before walking back again to stand looking down at her. He reached out and touched her face, tracing the fragile bone-structure, smooth-ing his fingertip along her eyebrows.
His hand trembled; he should not be doing this. It was an intrusion of the worst kind...a voyeurism...a theft of her privacy. He repeated to himself all the reasons why he should leave, but none of them made any sense, not when he wanted to be with her so much, not when this room, with its ancient warmth, its awareness of the frailties of human nature, its silent holding of the secrets of all the lovers who had shared its privacy and solitude, seemed to murmur to him that there was no reason for him to go and every reason for him to stay, that his place was here with this woman, and that it always had been and always would be.
He removed his shoes and jacket. All he wanted to do was to lie beside her, to deceive himself if only for a little while that it was possible to go back...that it was possible for her to forget, to forgive...that his love would be enough to reactivate hers.
He lay down on the bed beside her, facing her, but not touching her.
For a long time he simply watched her, letting his senses absorb the reality of her. He yawned once, twice, a third time, his eyes closing.
The last thing he did before he fell asleep was to reach out and curl his arm protectively and possessively around her waist.
Holly woke up first, deliciously aware of a feeling of warmth and pleasure, a sensation of being held, protected...of being loved almost.
She lay where she was, happily absorbing the sensation that filled her body with such pleasure and her mind with such happiness, letting herself relax, letting herself move closer to that wonderful source of warmth and comfort, that male body that lay so tantalisingly close to her own.
Abruptly she opened her eyes. No, her brain wasn’t playing tricks on her. She was actually lying against the bulk of another body—of Robert’s body, she recognised on a sudden body-stiffening surge of shocked awareness.
For a moment she was totally confused, unable to understand what on earth she was doing lying on her bed with Robert, both of them apparently fully dressed, their bodies entwined like those of the closest and most passionate of lovers.
She started to tremble, too bemused to even thi
nk of moving away from him. At her side Robert woke up, his eyes opening just as she was studying him.
Her breath caught in her throat, a reactionary surge of sensation gripping her body.
‘Holly.’
Her name on his lips sounded like the breath of life itself. Her own heartbeat ceased and then rocked dangerously against her chest wall.
She had moved, must have moved, because suddenly she was closer to him, much, much closer.
‘Holly.’
He said her name again, breathing against her lips so that she trembled.
She already knew the taste of his mouth, its shape and its texture, just as she knew her own response to his kiss, and yet still she wasn’t prepared for it...wasn’t ready for the frighteningly intense kick-back of emotion and need that burst through her, so that without even having to think about it she was clinging to him, wanting him, needing him, loving him, all the years apart dissolving in the heat that burned so strongly inside her.
Almost as though she were still asleep and wrapped in the protected delusion of a longed-for and familiar dream, Holly allowed herself to be carried by the floodtide of her emotions.
This was Robert who held her, who touched her, who kissed her. This was Robert’s skin beneath her own trembling fingertips, Robert’s mouth caress-ing her own with tenderness and hunger, Robert’s voice that told her brokenly and achingly how much he wanted her, how much he had longed for this moment, how much he still ached for her.
Holly herself said nothing, too enraptured by the unbelievable wonder of what was happening to be able to speak.
Robert’s lips caressed her throat, finding the familiarly vulnerable spot just where her neck ran into her shoulder, the pressure of his mouth hardening as he felt the shudder that tormented her body and heard her husky moan of pleasure.
As she twisted up against him, clinging to him, trembling with arousal and need, Holly was aware of the irritating barrier of their clothes, of her need to feel against her the satin hardness of his body, the slightly rough abrasion of his body hair, the familiar caress of his hands.
She made a husky, importunate sound beneath her breath, its message so subtle that if Robert hadn’t recognised it he would not have known what it meant. His heart seemed to leap inside his chest, his hands trembling as he complied with her unspoken demand.
It had been a long time since he had done anything like this...since he had wanted to do anything like this, he admitted, hating the sour memory of the disastrous attempts he had made to drown out the memory of her body with someone else. After a while he had acknowledged that what he was doing was as damaging to himself as it was to his unfortunate partners and had accepted the unexpected celibacy of his life with a certain grim self-mockery.
Holly, of course, would not have been so chaste, but then why should she be? This was an age when her sex was unfettered by the unfair bondage once imposed on it by his, and, knowing there must have been other men had lessened neither his love for her, nor his respect, even though he was bitterly jealous and envious of the gifts she had given them. Gifts which once he himself had so easily and so immaturely spurned.
Now, though, he was here with her and he would show her just how much he had changed, just how much he appreciated all that she was...all that she had once given him.
As she finally managed to unfasten and push away her shirt, he promised himself that he would make for her such a feast of adoration and loving that his own desire would be totally unimportant to him and that all his pleasure would be in giving her, showing her just how much she meant to him, and then she moved and he saw through the fragile silk of her bra the dark areolae of her nipples and their taut, swollen thrust.
He moved, without knowing what he was doing, an uncoordinated, jerky movement that brought his hand briefly into contact with her body.
She breathed deeply and quickly, the movement pushing her breasts against the fine silk, so that it seemed as though her flesh was silently begging for his touch.
As he bent his head, Holly felt the heat of his breath against her breast-bone. She tensed, looking down on the dark thickness of his hair. She could feel the heat coming off his skin, sense his tension and his arousal.
When his mouth touched the satin slope of her breast, she shuddered a little, unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to do anything other than close her eyes and whisper his name as if it were a litany of prayer for fulfilment as she felt his mouth moving hungrily against her skin, pushing at the silky barrier that kept him from his goal, and then, as though he was too impatient or too aroused to be able to remove it, sliding over it, taking the fabric into his mouth along with the hard peak of her breast.
Once, long ago, he had caressed her like this and then as now she had cried out as the tiny needle-sharp darts of sensation pierced her body and convulsed her womb. Then Holly had been half afraid, half shocked by the intensity of what she was experiencing. Now...
She gave a long shudder of delicious pleasure, arching her back, sliding her hands over Robert’s shoulder and into his nape, holding him against her body as she gasped his name and felt his own body shudder in response to what was happening to her.
After that everything was like a dream, time flowing like an ever-increasing river, carrying her with it, so that there was only the touch of his hands, the sound of their breathing and always, always the endless unbearable pleasure stretching her on a rack of exquisite sensation so that she turned and twisted against him, calling out his name, sometimes in a plea, sometimes in an unmeant denial.
Beneath her hands his back felt hard and smooth. She felt his muscles compress beneath the invol-untary tightening drag of her nails.
He kissed her belly and then her thighs, the deliberately tender touch of his mouth slowing down time so that every tiny degree of each second seemed to hang in space, every touch holding a lifetime of sensation and desire.
Once, as a girl, she had trembled on the brink of the intimacy they were sharing now, and had withdrawn from it, afraid both of it and of her own response to it. Although she hesitated, it was the merest hesitation, and was soon swept away, over-whelmed by her body’s instinctive awareness of all that such intimacy meant, her senses drowning under the slow lap of his tongue, her body turning fluid and weightless, wanting, needing him with so much intensity that that wanting became a confused string of husky words punctuated by the fevered tension of her writhing body. Her release when it came was almost too intense to be borne, so sharply pleasurable that it made her cry out to him...for him, knowing with some deeply atavistic instinct that she wanted him almost more than she had wanted that selflessly given release.
For a moment Robert hesitated. She heard him mutter something—a protest, a question, her bemused senses could not define the words, only his hesitation.
She touched his body and felt him tremble.
‘I want you, Robert. I want you,’ she told him, and as she said the words they became the truth, her body sleek and unexpectedly seductive, as she touched him, held him and almost wantonly incited him to abandon his self-control and move against her and then at last within her.
The unexpected sensation of tightness, of newness shocked them both, causing a stillness, a tension between them.
‘Holly...’
Robert was looking at her, studying her. She wanted to close her eyes, to evade that seeking, almost puzzled scrutiny.
‘You feel so small...so—so much like the first time...’
The words were too probing, too painful, bringing back into sharp focus the reality of what was happening, and reality was the last thing Holly wanted right now. Facing reality meant admitting to herself just what she was doing and why. Facing reality meant...
‘I...I don’t want to hurt you.’
He had said that the first time, she remembered achingly, and even though she had wanted him she had still been a little afraid. But he hadn’t hurt her—far from it—and he wouldn’t hurt her now either.
She let her body relax, and moved against him, feeling the shudder of arousal he couldn’t control, and suddenly welcoming it, welcoming him, abandoning herself to the sensation of her body moving softly and sweetly to embrace his.
Less had changed than he had thought, his love for her making a mockery of his maturity and imagined self-control, Robert acknowledged shakily as he was caught up in the maelstrom of his own desire.
Knowing he was no longer in control, he called out to her, his voice raw with anguish and pain. He thought he heard her own voice speak back in response, its timbre soft with love, but he was far too caught up in his own climax to do much more than distantly register it with tormented wonder, as he tried to tell her how much he had wanted there to be more time, more pleasure, more control so that he could have shown her, told her, convinced her of how much he had always loved her and always would.
CHAPTER NINE
‘HOLLY.’
Crossly Holly rolled over, trying to ignore the lure of the male voice speaking her name. She didn’t want to wake up; something nagged at the corner of her mind, some reason...some unpleasantness, some thing that was warning her that it would be better to stay asleep, but the voice was repeating her name. She could feel a warm breath brushing her skin, a hand gently shaking her shoulder.
Sighing, she opened her eyes and then froze, shock, disbelief, and then finally the haunting agony of awareness and remembrance rolling over her.
‘It’s gone nine and I really ought to leave, but I wanted to speak to you first...to...’
She could hear the hesitation, the reluctance—the regret?—in Robert’s voice and sickeningly she became aware of everything that had happened during the night. Even without moving, she was explicitly and intensely aware of the difference within her own body, the betrayal it had caused her to suffer.