by Penny Jordan
The fear she had felt earlier in the evening, the sense of shock and panic, had given way to an excitement that was almost euphoric. Her dream lover wasn’t just a dream. He was real. He was…Ecstatically Annie closed her eyes, hugging her thoughts, her love, to her heart just as tightly as she yearned for him to hug and hold her.
It was a long time before she finally got back to sleep, and when she did finally succumb her exalted state had convinced her that the evening’s meeting with the real-life physical embodiment of her dream man had been an act of fate for which her dreams had been preparing her.
‘Annie, how are you feeling this morning, my love?’
A little groggily Annie focused on Helena as she walked into the bedroom carrying a fragrant mug of coffee.
‘I’m not sure,’ Annie admitted. ‘Those pills you gave me really knocked me out.
‘Helena,’ she demanded, her voice changing as she sat up in her bed and looked at her friend and mentor with fixed determination. ‘Helena, do you believe in…fate?’ she asked solemnly.
‘I’m not sure just what you mean,’ Helena responded cautiously.
‘The man—the one I saw in the restaurant last night,’ Annie told her in a low voice. ‘At first I thought I must be imagining it, that he couldn’t possibly be the same man I’ve been dreaming about…But then, last night, I dreamed about him again, and I knew…’
She took a deep breath and told Helena huskily, ‘I think that we must have been destined to meet somehow, Helena, and that he and I…’ She paused and shook her head, responding to her friend’s silence with a wry, ‘Oh, I know how far-fetched this must sound, but what other explanation can there be? I don’t pretend to know why I should have dreamed about him or why I should feel as though I already know him. I just do. Please don’t tell me that you think I’m being silly,’ she pleaded.
‘I won’t,’ Helena promised her quietly, pausing to sit on the bed and stroke the soft tumbled hair back off Annie’s face with one hand as she placed the mug of coffee on the bedside table with the other.
Annie was so very dear to her, very precious, so much the daughter, the child she herself had never had, but she was also, in Helena’s opinion, a very vulnerable young woman. The gravity of her accident and her injuries had meant that the energy that other young women of her age would naturally give to the process of maturing had in Annie’s case had to be given to her physical recovery, recuperating her health.
It wasn’t that Annie in any way lacked intelligence—far from it. She had obtained her degree and she had a concern for the world and the people in it which made her, in many ways, older and wiser than her peers. But it was a fact that because of the length of time she had spent recovering from the accident Annie had not had the opportunity to mature as a woman, to experiment sexually, to make mistakes, errors of judgement, to indulge in all the youthful follies that people normally did on their journey through the turbulent years that led from one’s late teens to one’s mid-twenties.
Now it seemed that she preferred the fantasy of her dream lover rather than dating a real live man, that she was stubbornly determined to believe in fate rather than reality.
‘You do think I’m being silly, don’t you?’ Annie accused Helena flatly as she saw the hesitation in her friend’s eyes.
‘Not silly,’ Helena corrected quietly. ‘But perhaps…’ She stopped speaking, and then smiled ruefully at Annie before asking her gently, ‘Has it occurred to you that this man may have been so familiar to you simply because he is familiar?’
‘From my dreams, you mean?’ Annie checked, nonplussed.
‘No. Not from your dreams,’ Helena stopped, and then said quietly, ‘Annie, he may have been familiar to you because you do actually know him.’
‘Know him?’ Annie looked perplexed. ‘No, that’s impossible.’
Helena waited before reminding her softly, ‘There are still some gaps in your memory, my dear. The weeks leading up to the accident as well as the event itself, and those weeks after, when you were in a coma.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Annie’s forehead creased in a small frown of distress. ‘But I couldn’t have known him…not the way I feel about him…the way we are…If I had he would have…’ She stopped, shaking her head. ‘No. It isn’t possible,’ she told Helena immediately and positively. ‘I would have known if he…If I…If we…No,’ she reaffirmed.
‘Well, I must admit it does seem unlikely,’ Helena acknowledged slowly. ‘But I felt I ought to mention the possibility to you.’
‘I understand,’ Annie assured her, giving her a warm hug. ‘But if he had known me he would have come forward when you advertised, wouldn’t he? And besides…’ A small secret smile curled her mouth, her eyes suddenly glowing with private happiness. ‘I know that if he…if we…’ She stopped and shook her head again. ‘No. I would have known,’ she told Helena calmly. ‘I’m sorry I gave you such a shock by fainting like that last night,’ she added more prosaically. ‘I think it must have been the effect of seeing him so unexpectedly on top of the champagne.’
‘Well, it was a very emotional evening,’ Helena responded.
‘You’ve been so good to me,’ Annie told her, lovingly reaching out to cover the older woman’s hands with her own.
‘Everything I’ve given to you you’ve given me back a thousandfold, Annie,’ Helena told her lovingly. ‘And you are going to give Bob and me our grandchildren,’ Helena teased her, deliberately lightening the atmosphere before giving a small exclamation. ‘Heavens! Bob! I promised I’d help him with our packing for this conference we’re flying out to attend tomorrow. Never mind,’ she added with a naughty grin. ‘He’s so much better at it than I am!’
Annie laughed. ‘Four days in Rio de Janeiro…How wonderful.’
‘Not as wonderful as you’d think,’ Helena countered ruefully. ‘The conference goes on for three days, and when you’ve taken time out for recovering from jet lag and for being dragged all over the place by Bob to see the local ruins…’
‘Stop complaining,’ Annie teased. ‘You know you love it. When the three of us went to Rome last year I was the one who had to go back to the hotel for a rest!’
‘Yes, that was wonderful, wasn’t it?’ Helena agreed, getting up off the bed as she told Annie tenderly, ‘Don’t rush to get up. You might feel fine but your body’s still in shock.’
‘It was just a faint, Helena, that’s all,’ Annie assured her friend, but she wasn’t totally surprised when, later in the day, Helena insisted on driving her to the hospital so that she could be checked over.
‘Mothers!’ the junior house doctor wisecracked after he had given Annie the all-clear. ‘They do love to fuss.’
‘Don’t they just?’ Annie said with a grin, then blushed a little at the admiring looks the young man was giving her.
CHAPTER THREE
‘NOW, you’re sure you’re feeling all right?’ Helena checked as Annie dropped her and Bob off at the airport.
‘I’m fine. Stop fussing,’ Annie told her with a good-natured smile as she hugged them both and kissed them goodbye. ‘And to prove it I’m going to go home and make a start on that gardening I’ve been threatening to do for months.’
The garden of her small house was long and narrow, and enclosed at the back by a high brick wall which ensured her privacy but gave the garden a rather closed-in feel.
For Christmas, amongst the other gifts they had given her, Bob and Helena had given her a gardening book with some wonderful ideas plus a very generous gift voucher for a local garden centre, and Annie, who had been studying the book intently, had now come up with her own design for the garden based on the principles in the book.
The first thing she needed, she had decided, was some pretty coloured trellising to place against the walls, and so, after she had watched Bob and Helena’s plane take off, she headed back to her car and drove towards the garden centre.
Several happy and productive hours later Annie climbed back into her car
again. She had chosen and ordered her trellising, and made arrangements for it to be delivered, as well as getting from the man in charge of the fencing department the telephone number of someone who would come out and fix it in place for her.
As she started her car engine Annie was humming happily to herself. It was a bright sunny day, a brisk breeze sending fluffy white clouds scudding across the sky, and on impulse, instead of taking the direct route back to her own home, Annie opted instead to head towards the river.
The prettily wooded countryside on the outskirts of the town was criss-crossed with narrow country lanes, confusingly so at times—especially when one descended down through the trees and lost sight of the river, as she had just done, Annie recognised as she came to an unmarked fork in the road and paused, not quite sure which road to take.
Instinctively she wanted to take the right-hand fork, even though logic told her the left must lead down towards the river. With a small mental shrug Annie gave in to instinct and then wondered just what she had done as the road she had chosen narrowed virtually to a single track, winding up a sharp steep hillside banked with hedges so thick and high it was impossible for her to gauge just where she was. And yet even though she knew she had never driven up it before Annie felt that the road was somehow familiar.
She gave a small gasp as she rounded a particularly sharp bend and saw in front of her the entrance to a large Victorian house. On the top of each brick gatepost was an odd metal sculpture. The sculptures were made from the harpoons used on the ships of the man who had built this house from the money he had made from his whaling fleet. And how had she known that? Annie wondered in bemusement as she stopped her car just inside the drive to the house and switched off the engine. She must have read it somewhere, she acknowledged. She had read avidly in the long months of her recovery, books on every subject under the sun, including some on the local history of the area.
And yet…Unsteadily she got out of her car, her heart starting to beat very fast as she walked towards the house. The rhododendrons flanking the drive obscured the sunlight, throwing out dark shadows so that when she actually stepped back into its full beam it dazzled and dizzied her, making her rock slightly on her feet and close her eyes, only to open them again as she felt something coming between her and the warmth of the sun.
‘You!’ she whispered, her whole body shivering in a mixture of shock and delight as she saw who was standing in front of her. ‘It’s you,’ she whispered a second time, her eyes glowing with bemusement and happiness as she stepped towards the man who had come out of the house to stand in front of her.
Close to and in the daylight he was so exactly the man from her dreams that the awesome nature of the impulse that had brought her here to him held Annie motionless in an invisible bubble of iridescent joy.
It was true. She had been right. There was something fateful, fated about him…about them…
Her eyes focused on him, eagerly absorbing every detail of him and mentally checking them off against her own private blueprint. His eyes were exactly the same dark dramatic blue she had dreamed of, his skin the same taut sheeny tan, his hair the same inky almost blue-black. Everything about him was just as she had dreamed—everything. Even his mouth. Especially his mouth!
His mouth. Annie shivered in sensual delight as she looked at the hard male curve of his upper lip, the sensual promise of his much fuller lower one. If she closed her eyes she would be able to recreate the sensation of it closing over her own, hungrily coaxing her lips to part whilst he caressed them, filling her with his life’s breath whilst she…
‘So you came.’
His voice reverberated through her, its tone unexpectedly harsh, even a little terse, but wholly recognisable and familiar.
The intensity of her emotions made her shudder as violent spasms of recognition racked her. She had travelled such a long way to reach this moment, this heartbeat out of infinity.
‘Yes,’ she whispered in response, her voice cracking against the dryness of her throat. ‘You…you knew that I would?’ she asked, her emotions so heightened that she felt as though she had suddenly entered an extra dimension of awareness.
Behind him she could see the open door to the house. Beyond it, she knew, lay a large hallway, with a table on which would be a bronze of the man who had originally commissioned the house, and into the stairway that curled upwards from it would be carved all manner of sea creatures, both real and mythical; leaping dolphins, graceful whales, octopuses, sea horses and mermaids.
‘I…’ His voice sounded terse and strained, as though he too was aware of the enormity of what was happening, and as she looked at him and saw the way his gaze suddenly shifted, as though he couldn’t quite meet her eyes, she was overwhelmed by a sudden flood of fiercely protective love.
Instinctively she moved towards him, her hand resting lightly on his arm as she whispered protectively, ‘It’s all right…everything’s all right. I’m here. We’re…’
Beneath her fingertips she could feel his muscles bunching, clenching, and as she looked up into his face she could see the tight white line of his mouth. Her own body registered the aftershock of what he was feeling in the rush of almost seismic shudders that jolted his body.
‘Can we…can we go inside?’ she asked him hesitantly.
The house drew her, compelling her to walk towards it. It was almost as though she knew it already, its shape, its rooms, its history, even its scent…Just as she knew him…
Now it was her turn to shudder and to tense, but she was already inside the hallway and he was right behind her, blocking out the light from the doorway.
‘I never thought this could happen,’ she told him simply as she let her dreamy-eyed gaze absorb the wonderful reality of him.
He was tall, much taller than her, but she had known that, and broad too. She already knew just how he would feel and look beneath that soft checked workshirt he was wearing, without those old faded jeans that hugged the taut strength of his thighs. There would be a small scar just inside the right thigh, a tiny indentation, the relic of a boyhood accident. She would place her lips to it and he…
She was trembling wildly now, unable to stop what she was feeling, what she was wanting. A shudder of almost orgasmic sensitivity ripped through her as she watched him. She loved him so much!
‘Can we…can we go upstairs?’ she asked him huskily, her eyes never leaving his face as she waited for his response.
It seemed a lifetime, an aeon before he replied, both his mouth and his voice oddly stiff as he eventually responded, ‘If that’s what you want.’
‘Yes,’ she told him boldly. ‘Yes, it is…what I want.’ I want…I want you. I love you. She ached to tell him, but events were moving too fast to give her time to make such an emotional statement.
Instead…
She started to release his arm and turn towards the stairs, and then, impetuously, she reached up and touched his face with her fingertips, absorbing through them the longed for human warmth, the human reality of his skin, not a dream lover’s flesh any more but that of a real man, a real lover.
Although he was clean shaven she could feel the rasp of his skin where he shaved, a prickle of such intense maleness against the acute female sensitivity of her own fingertips that she almost cried out in the raw shock of it, snatching her fingers away as though they had been burned, her eyes wide and dark, almost haunted as she looked up to his.
‘You want me,’ he said rawly. But it was a statement rather than a question. Still Annie nodded her head, mute, dumb, now that the final moment, the final acknowledgement of what lay between them, of what fate had ordained for them, was actually here.
Her glance darted over his face as nervous as that of a woodland fawn. His eyes…navy blue now, and smouldering with heat; his cheekbones…taut and hard where the flesh stretched across them, his mouth…
She felt giddy, dizzy with the force of her own longing. The silence, the tension between them stretched out like t
he thinnest of ice over the deepest, coldest and most dangerous water there could be, inviting only the most reckless, only the most foolhardy, to dare its danger.
‘Come here,’ he commanded her with soft force.
Immediately she did so, closing the gap between them as she moved, almost swayed into the burning inferno of his body heat, the breath driven out of her lungs in a soft, yearning gasp of delirious pleasure as his arms finally closed around her and she turned her face up to his for his kiss, her own lips so soft, swollen, parting with moist longing.
‘Oh, yes…Yes…You want me…’
She heard him etch out the sharp, stingingly sensuous words against her mouth, his voice creamy with satisfaction and male pride as his arms made a tight, imprisoning band around her and he bent her back over them, so that the cradle of her pelvis was thrust up tight against his own body.
And then his mouth finally came down on hers in a kiss that her shocked senses registered as being so raw and branding, so determined to imprint on her his stamp of possession, so intent on taking her and breaking her in the most primitive of man to woman embraces that she almost sobbed aloud in an appeal for his awareness of her vulnerability, her lack of experience, her unknowingness. And yet in some confusing way she did know, did recognise.
‘Was that good?’ she heard him asking her in a low, satisfied voice when he finally released her kiss-bitten mouth, and then, before she could answer, before she could move, he was lowering his head again, to make the same hot, mouth-biting love assault on the erect peak of her nipple, his fingers expertly pushing her clothes out of the way of one soft sweetly pink-apexed breast whilst his lips, too hungry to wait, eagerly caressed the other through the thin fabric of her bra and shirt.
For a moment Annie felt almost as though she was going to die from the shock of pleasure that sheeted through her, its intensity such that it made her catch her breath and feel as though her life itself was momentarily held in suspension. Behind her closed eyelids she could see the same brilliant whiteness she remembered from her moment of near-death: pure, burning, intense, soul-touching…like the very best kind of love itself.