by Penny Jordan
The figure on the bed stirred, and he waited with impassively folded arms, leaning back against the closed door.
Diana's throat was dreadfully dry, and her eyes hurt. She opened and then closed them again rapidly as the too bright light stunned her.
God, where was she? She felt totally disorientated. She moved, rolling over, and tried to pierce the drug-induced mists befuddling her.
She opened her eyes again, more slowly this time, and then they widened in shock, the mists dispersing rapidly as she saw the man watching her. Instantly she was pierced with fear. She scrambled to sit up, clutching the robe to her, as she looked frantically for the telephone. It was on the opposite side of the bed, and he was closer to it than she was.
Who on earth was he, and how had he got into her room? Was he some kind of maniac? He didn't look like it, logic pointed out to her.
Summoning her voice, she demanded huskily, 'Who… who are you and what are you doing in my room?'
There was a moment's silence and then he said drily, 'Odd, but I thought that was my line.'
It took several minutes for the meaning of what he was saying to sink in, but once it had a surge of relief flooded over her.
He wasn't an intruder at all, but someone who had strayed into the wrong room by mistake. She smiled at him, completely unaware of the effect her golden-eyed sleepy warmth was having on him.
Whoever she was, she had style, Marcus thought grimly. This was no ordinary lady of the night, that was for sure. How had she got into his room? Perhaps she had some arrangement with one of the staff—it wasn't entirely unknown, or perhaps she had just got the wrong man…
'This can't be your room,' Diana told him. 'I booked it myself this afternoon. Look.' She got off the bed, and picked up her handbag, showing him her registration card.
For a moment he was almost convinced, but then he remembered something. Walking over to the built-in cupboard, he opened one of them and showed her the clothes hanging up inside.
'If this is your room, how come you didn't notice my stuff hanging here when you unpacked?'
Too late, Diana recalled the used glass, and the opened mini-bar. She should have guessed then, but she had been too wrought up to do anything other than seek the oblivion of sleep just as soon as she could. Even now her head still felt woolly, and her thoughts were confused.
'By the way… where is your stuff…?'
'I didn't bring any luggage.' She could feel the colour rising up under her skin as he looked at her, his thoughts quite plain to read in his mocking grey eyes.
Dear God, he thought she was a prostitute!
'Look, it isn't what you think. I… I… booked in on impulse.' She turned her head away from his and said huskily, 'Today… today I lost someone I loved very much. After… after the funeral I couldn't go back to our flat, so I booked in here instead…'
She was speaking the truth, he could see it in her face, hear it in her voice, and he was shocked by his own sudden surge of disappointment. For Christ's sake; had he wanted her to be available? She wasn't even his type. He liked small, curvaceous brunettes, not thin leggy creatures with clouds of amber hair and tiger eyes.
She had lost someone she loved, she had said. Her lover, no doubt. He was surprised by the fierce thrust of jealousy that pierced through him. It must be some sort of hang-up from what he had felt over dinner. It wasn't her he wanted, it was just a woman… any woman, he told himself derisively.
'Look, lady,' he told her tersely. 'This is my room, and right now I want to go to bed.'
Diana stared at him, nonplussed, and then remembered the desk clerk telling her that she was lucky to get their last empty room.
'Look, you've obviously got a home you can go to,' Marcus pointed out. 'I haven't—at least not locally, so why don't I call you a taxi…?'
Spend the night alone in the flat? Diana shivered. No, she couldn't, not this night.
'No, please… I…'
Please. His eyes had darkened over her whimpered plea, and he was looking at her with an expression she had no difficulty in interpreting. He wanted her. This tall, dark-haired man, a complete stranger, wanted her.
This was the point where she normally turned on her heel, and ran. She was used to male desire, and at twenty-five had had more than her fair share of potential lovers, but after discovering how callous and cruel men could be, she had rebuffed them all, keeping them at a distance. So why was her body turning all soft and molten inside, simply because this man was mentally stripping the towelling robe from her body, and caressing it with his eyes? Why did she feel this almost savage urge to go to him and lose herself in the maelstrom of desire?
She felt an uncontrollable need to experience the resurgence of life that only sexual communion could bring, she did want it, she realised fatalistically, she wanted… no, needed that communion, that renewal of life; she needed it if only to prove to herself that death can be conquered, that life does ultimately triumph.
In this stranger's arms, she could forget the trauma of these last weeks; she could celebrate the reality of life; she could renew herself and feel really alive again for the first time in months.
At any other time Diana would have been shocked by her own thoughts, but now they seemed natural and normal.
The way she was staring at him made him feel almost as though she was looking through him, Marcus thought. He looked at her mouth, her lips half parted and quivering slightly. The bathrobe concealed the shape of her body and he suddenly longed to wrench it from her and to take all the feminine sweetness of her in his arms.
He fought to control himself, his voice grating slightly as he warned her, 'Stay here and there's no way I'm going to be able to stop myself from taking you to bed with me—you know that, don't you?'
Diana hesitated briefly, knowing she was teetering on the edge of a chasm, but unable to do the sensible thing and pull herself back.
In a dream she heard herself saying huskily, 'Yes.' And then there was no going back. She took a step towards him, and heard him groan. Fired with a wild determination that pulsed through her, she unfastened the tie of her robe and let it slide from her body.
What was she doing? She had never acted like this in her life—she must be mad. But it was too late. She was in his arms, his hands shaping and moulding her flesh, his mouth hotly demanding as it fastened on hers.
He wrenched it away to mutter briefly, in her ear, 'I don't know who you are, or where the hell you've come from. What I'm doing now goes against every principle I've ever had but, God knows, I can't stop myself. I know I'm going to regret this like hell in the morning, but all that matters now is the way you're making me feel.'
He wasn't telling her anything she didn't feel herself. She couldn't explain to him what was driving her, what she was feeling; and why should she? They were strangers; they each had a need—after tonight they would never meet again.
He picked her up and carried her over to the bed, laying her down gently, his eyes never once leaving hers as he quickly stripped.
His body was well muscled, sleek and hard, dark hair shadowing down over his chest and his flat belly. Diana looked at him in awe and fierce pleasure. Her previous sexual experience had been limited to clumsy caresses shared with fellow university students; the sensual side of her nature had been slow to blossom; and then before it could flower it had been cruelly destroyed by Randolph Hewitt's cynical cruelty.
The shock of learning that he had simply been using her had withered away her youthful urge to share her heart and her body with anyone. There had been no one since Randolph, but that scarcely impinged on her consciousness now.
Now she felt, deep within her, nature's remorseless drive towards the re-creation of life. She knew even as she looked into Marcus's eyes that the need that drove her was in some way linked to Leslie's death and the long, achingly unhappy months that had led up to it.
She was like a moth shedding its chrysalis; a phoenix having been destroyed in the flames and no
w being renewed.
She needed this… this sensation of flesh against flesh, this fierce clamouring of her blood. She needed this man, here and now, she admitted, as Marcus returned her look, studying the naked length of her, making her skin burn with febrile excitement as his glance lingered intimately, like a caress against her flesh.
'I must be mad doing this!'
His thoughts only echoed her own, but they didn't stop the intimate melding of their mouths, his, hot and demanding, hers, meltingly enticing.
He kissed her with a hunger she hadn't expected. Somehow she had imagined that for him sex must be a regular and frequent part of his life, but the touch of his mouth against her own, the fierceness of his hands against her skin told her that she was wrong.
Neither had she expected the sudden spiral of excitement and anticipation running over her nerve-endings as he kissed her. Her need to purge herself of the horror and pain of Leslie's death in the act of procreation was something she could accept and understand—just about—but the desire she felt for this particular man wasn't.
She pulled back, tensing slightly, and heard him growl deep in his throat, 'No, damn you, you aren't changing your mind now. -You've already made me want you too much.'
But despite his words, the silken glide of his hands over her ribcage and against her breasts was almost hesitant, as though he was waiting for her to tell him to stop. His thumb brushed against her nipple sending a savage surge of desire stabbing through her. She saw the gleam of triumph glittering in his eyes as he caught the betraying sound.
'You liked that?'
She shuddered finely as he repeated the caress and then bent his head to roughly brush the aroused areola with his tongue.
Flames—spears of sensation pierced her, making her cry out and cling despairingly to him, her nails etching sharp crescents in the flesh of his shoulders. His mouth absorbed the whole swollen bud, bathing it in moist heat, drowning her in awesome pleasure.
She cried out, her body arching like a bow. Tiny droplets of sweat dampened her skin and made it glisten beneath the soft illumination of the bedside lamp.
'Beautiful… you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, do you know that?'
He was slurring his words faintly, like a man under the influence of drink or drugs, his breath quivering over her sensitised flesh as his lips continued to caress her breasts, tormenting them with brief kisses and tiny delicate bites, frustrating her growing desire to have her flesh taken deep inside the hot cavern of his mouth.
His touch was unleashing a wildness within her that she had never known existed. She wanted to scratch and bite, to cling and demand; she wanted…
Her hands slid over his sweat-slick back; her fingers drawing his head down to her breasts, a sharp cry of pleasure breaking the thick silence as he correctly interpreted her silent demand.
When the pleasure he was giving her became almost too sharp to endure she bit frantically into his skin, and felt his body shudder in open response.
His hands shaped her waist and hips, and then moulded her against his aroused male form.
The heat of him was dangerously exciting, firing her own blood, making her ache for the culmination of her driven need. His hand touched her intimately, caressing and enticing her to abandon herself to him, his softly murmured words of praise singing in her ears.
Under his guidance she caressed him in turn, but both of them were too impatient to linger over the preliminaries, no matter how pleasurable. After all, they weren't lovers, content to simply adore one another's bodies, but two people driven by different emotions but similar needs, to find together an elemental completeness.
At the first surge of his body within her own Diana was filled with a wild exultation. She moved instinctively beneath him, hearing the savagery of his indrawn breath, and glorying in the fierceness of his possession.
She didn't experience any pain, contrary to everything she had ever anticipated; her virginity might never have existed, so joyfully did her body welcome his.
Together they strove to reach the shimmering pinnacle of human experience; together they shared the awesome reality of the apex of human desire, Marcus's deep-throated cry of release mingling with her own husky sob of delight.
It was over. Diana lay, trying to steady her breathing, while the world righted itself around her. In the wake of physical satisfaction came exhaustion, so complete and so numbing that she was deeply asleep within seconds.
Marcus looked down at her broodingly. He had just experienced the most physically intense pleasure he had ever known with any woman, and she had fallen asleep!
Now for the first time, reality hit him. She had used him as a substitute for her dead lover. It was like being tipped into a pool of iced water. When he surfaced he felt totally disorientated. Man was the predator, the hunter, the user and abuser of the female sex, so why did he feel as though he was the one who had been used? Why did he have this disquieting fear that his life was never going to be the same again?
They had had sex, that was all. He didn't even know her name… She had simply been a body—a very beautiful and sexy body—but a body nonetheless. He must be crazy to be lying here in this emotional stupor. He ought to be worrying about far more mundane things. He reached out, unable to stop himself from tucking a stray lock of amber hair behind her ear. In sleep she looked like a little girl.
She mumbled something and moved in her sleep. The sheet slipped and revealed one creamy, rose-tipped breast, still swollen and flushed from his caresses.
Suppressing a fierce shudder, Marcus covered her again, and then swung himself out of the bed. He never wore pyjamas, but there was a spare robe in the bathroom. He put it on, and then eyed the bedroom's one easy chair in grim determination.
He had behaved foolishly enough for one night—he would spend the rest of it alone in that chair, otherwise God alone knew what might happen. He had been stupid enough as it was—insanely so. He ought to have thrown her out when he had had the opportunity. Against his will he remembered the look of aching desolation he had glimpsed in her eyes earlier. It must be hell to lose someone you loved to death. Who could blame her for wanting to hang on to life in the most basic way possible?
Neither of them were to blame for what had happened; another time, and things would have been different. They had come together as strangers, he thought broodingly, and that was the way they must part—for both their sakes. He had enough problems on his plate with the farm, without involving himself with a woman who was grieving for another man.
He would be gone before she woke up. They would never meet again. He knew his decision was the right one, but some part of him was reluctant to let her go. Some part of him wanted to hold on to her and…
And what?
And nothing, he told himself firmly.
CHAPTER TWO
'Well, Diana, you know your own mind best, but I must admit that I'm surprised. You've always fitted in well here at Southern Television, and somehow I can't see you living in a small country village, running a bookshop.'
'I trained as a librarian before I came here, Don,' Diana reminded her boss, 'and my parents lived in the country.'
'Oh, I see.'
She was surprised to see that he looked a little nonplussed. 'You want to be closer to them, is that it?'
Diana shook her head. Her parents had emigrated to Australia six months ago to be close to her elder brother and his children, and her decision to sell the London flat and start a new life for herself in a small and fairly remote Herefordshire town had nothing to do with them.
'No, not really, I just thought it was time I had a change.' As she spoke, she glanced instinctively into the mirror on the opposite wall. Her stomach was still quite flat, her body as reed-slim as ever; no one looking at her could possibly guess that she was three months pregnant.
A guilty twinge flared through her, and she bit nervously at her bottom lip. By rights she ought to feel horrified at the thought of her impendi
ng motherhood, but she didn't—she couldn't. Ridiculously, she felt as though she had been given a most precious and wonderful gift.
To go to bed with a stranger, and then to conceive his child, was so removed from the way she lived her life that even now she could hardly believe it had actually happened.
Indeed, when she had woken up that morning in her hotel room and found all trace of the man and his possessions gone, her first thought was that it had been a dream; only there had been that tiny betraying stain on the sheet, and the invisible, but unmistakable knowledge that her body had changed; that she had changed.
It had never occurred to her that she might have conceived, and for a while she had put her nausea and tiredness down to the after-effects of Leslie's death. It had been Dr Copeland who had somewhat diffidently suggested there might be another cause.
Diana knew that the doctor had expected her to be disturbed and displeased by her pregnancy; after all, she was a single woman, a career woman living alone; but what she had felt had been a thrill of pleasure so great that nothing else had seemed important.
Oddly, until now she had never even contemplated the possibility of having children, had never considered what role, if any, they might play in her life; but now she was as fiercely protective of this new emergent life within her as though she had lived her life with no further end in view than this act of procreation.
Her decision to give up her job and start life completely afresh had been an easy one to reach. She could not bring up her child the way she would wish in London. Leslie's legacy made her independent; wealthy enough, in fact, not to need to work.
However, it was one thing to decide to have a completely fresh start, it was another to achieve it. On impulse she went to see Mr Soames to ask for his advice.
He listened to her whilst she explained what she wanted to do.
'Him. I would not advocate complete seclusion from the rest of the world,' he commented when she had finished. 'Perhaps a small business that you could run by yourself…'