by Susan Napier
‘For goodness’ sake—’
‘Say it.’ He took off his glasses and threw them away in a gesture of reckless intent that made her heart pound.
‘All right, damn it—Ben!’ she retorted wildly. ‘There, I’ve said it. Ben, Ben, Ben—’
Her provocative chant was suddenly smothered. There was no tentativeness, none of the explorative gentleness that had characterised his last kiss. This time he was all aggressive, dominating male. The kiss was hot and hard, swallowing her anger and feeding it back to her piece by defiant piece. In the first few savage moments of contact he didn’t even allow her the luxury of a response—biting, licking and sucking at her mouth as if he were a starving man driven to extract every scrap of nourishment from the sensual feast before it could be snatched away from him.
But even as her mouth parted helplessly under the greedy onslaught Vanessa knew that she wasn’t going to deny him anything. Only Benedict could make her feel like this, so furious, so frustrated, so wildly aroused that she no longer cared about the rules and petty restrictions that she had carefully worked out to build and govern her peaceful life.
‘Say it again,’ his husky voice growled into her moist depths. His tongue caressed hers, stroking his name along her trembling taste-buds, teasing it out of her in an aching sigh of pleasure.
‘Ben...’
He gave a low grunt of triumph and the kiss changed, hardening even further as he came heavily down on her, his lithe body crushing her into the cushioning grasses with a powerful surging movement that dislodged her feverish grip on his sweater. Her hands slid up over his shoulders and curved down over his straining back as he settled his full length intimately against her, pushing insistently at her knees until he had nudged them far enough apart to insinuate himself between them.
‘God, I love the way you say my name...’ He cupped her head in one hand, pulling at her scarf with the other until her hair fluffed out across the blanket, and then he nuzzled at it before returning to her mouth, this time paying thorough attention to her every response.
As his tongue licked at her senses his free hand smoothed down the side of her soft cardigan and over her denim flank to hook behind her knee, bending it up to rest alongside his hip, increasing the intimacy of the undulating pressure between her thighs in a way that made her moan.
‘Am I hurting you?’ he whispered harshly, lifting his mouth from hers to study her dazed expression.
‘Yes...’ Her eyes were closed, her face stiff with an agony of bliss that he couldn’t fail to misread.
‘Then let me help you, heal you...’ He shifted his torso sideways and her eyes fluttered open as she felt a pearlised button between her breasts suddenly give way.
‘Why is it you always wear clothes with so many damned tiny buttons?’ he growled, so intent on his task that he didn’t notice her watching him through wondering eyes. His face was flushed, the tip of his tongue tracing his swollen lower lip as he concentrated.
She looked down at what he was doing, shocked to discover that he wasn’t bothering to undo the buttons in a proper sequence but was merely exposing her breasts as quickly as he could. Somehow it seemed more indecent that way. Instinctively she put a hand to the top button only to have it impatiently brushed away.
‘No. I want to do it. I want to see.’ He looked up then and his eyes were hot and dark and at least as indecent as her thoughts. He deliberately held her gaze as he undid another button and then paused, splaying his hands possessively over the twin swells of soft angora and contracting them just enough to make her gasp.
‘Someone might come,’ she whispered threadily, arching helplessly as his hands contracted again.
‘No one can see us here. We’re safely tucked up in our little nest,’ he murmured, not taking his eyes off her vulnerable face as he undid the rest of the buttons by touch and slowly began to draw the loose edges of her cardigan aside, stroking the downy wool across her sensitive skin. ‘You want me to look at you, don’t you, Nessa, to stop this ache we both have...?’
She stopped breathing, wondering whether he would be disappointed when he finally saw the plain white bra she was wearing, serviceable rather than seductive.
He looked down and stilled, a tiny smile sizzling at the corner of his mouth at the sight of the smooth, seamless cups and the intriguing shadowy outline of her areolae traced against the silky fine fabric. ‘Where does it fasten?’
It was her willingness he was requesting, not operating instructions, Vanessa realised and she responded breathlessly. ‘H-here.’ She pulled her arms from his neck to touch herself nervously between her breasts, her voice nearly as thick as his.
‘No.’ He stopped her tentative movement, catching first one wrist and then the other and pressing them down against the rug on either side of her head. She lay quiescent as his fingers trailed slowly away to deftly unclip the tiny catch and delicately ease her breasts free from their aching confinement. His eyes blazed like blue fire.
‘Oh, yes...oh, darling, just look at you...’ He leaned forward and his forefinger drifted across her bare nipple in a whisper-light caress. She flinched and he touched her again, and again, until she was arching into the maddeningly light caresses, needing more than this exquisite teasing.
‘So soft and smooth...’ he murmured, absorbed in his erotic entrancement. ‘And such beautiful, velvety pink rosebuds...look how they darken and furl so sweet and tight when they’re plucked...’ His thumb and forefinger moved skilfully, sending sharp splinters of abandoned pleasure streaking to the core of her being. He let her experience the thrill over and over again before he finally gathered her into his cupped palms, admiring the frame his masculine fingers created around her overflowing ripeness, lifting her, praising her with his eyes and words and finally, to her unbearable delight, his mouth.
Her fists opened and closed helplessly beside her mindlessly tossing head as he suckled his way up the warm, creamy slopes, seeking the peaks that he had meticulously teased to rigid excitement, nuzzling them hotly, licking and sucking at each swollen bud in turn, at first with extreme delicacy and then with a ravishingly raw hunger, working on her with his teeth and tongue until her whole body pulsed with the same powerfully driving rhythm that rode him between her raised legs, stroking her with his growing hardness until she was aware of nothing else but a terrifying pressure building up inside her.
A wave of primitive fear increased the pressure as her body jolted with the impact of another bunching male thrust. He was ready for her but she wasn’t ready at all—she would never be! She couldn’t see him but she could feel how big he was—much bigger than Julian had been and that meant that when he lost control the pain would also be worse and the pleasure that he had given her would be nothing in comparison. She was mad, insane to think she had wanted this...
She wasn’t aware of the frightened little sounds and hectic movements she was making until he reluctantly abandoned her glistening flesh to soothe her frantic cries with his mouth.
‘It’s all right, darling, it’s all right.’
‘No, no...’ She was almost sobbing as she writhed beneath his thighs, torn by the devastating conflict of desire against doubt. ‘It hurts—’
‘I know.’ He kissed her, misunderstanding, holding her tightly and groaning as his body was racked by a long shudder. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for us to go so far... Here, let me at least do this for you...’
She felt his hand on her bare belly, the tug on the snap of her jeans, the metallic slide of her zip, and then the long, skilful fingers were brushing through the soft thicket between her legs, finding her secret source, touching her where she was hot and damp, sliding inside with a shocking ease that sent a piercingly erotic thrill of terror shafting to her brain. She wanted it all in that instant—the pleasure, the ramming pain, the brutal, bleeding emptiness...
‘No!’ She went rigid and blackness came swirling in on her, the way it had that other time when the agony had been so intense that s
he had momentarily passed out, but this time she fought it, determined not to give in, not to be completely helpless. The darkness swirled hot and suffocating, clinging around her eyes and nose and mouth until suddenly it dissolved with an icy shock.
Her eyes flew wide and she found herself staring up at Benedict, who was kneeling over her on the rug, bathing her face and neck with a napkin dripping with champagne.
‘What a dreadful waste,’ she croaked automatically as she saw him clumsily slop another splash of vintage bubbly into the napkin and she gasped as he applied its wet chill to her throat.
‘It’s not going to be wasted, believe me.’ He lifted the napkin and shocked her by applying his mouth to her foaming skin, lapping it dry with delicate, rasping strokes of his tongue. ‘There. Happy? Now tell me who the hell Julian is!’
‘Julian...?’ The colour that had leached from her face flooded back.
‘The man you seem to have got me mixed up with just now. The bastard whom you begged not to hurt you.’
She tried to struggle upright, pulling her cardigan over her bare breasts. ‘I’m sorry—’
He pushed her flat again with an implacable hand. ‘So am I. I want to know what he did to you. Did he rape you?’
‘I...n-no.’
His mouth thinned at her uncertainty, his blue eyes glowing with ruthless intent. ‘We’re not leaving here until you tell me, Vanessa. I’m not going to be made to pay for someone else’s crimes. Who is bloody Julian?’
She held his gaze, just. ‘A man I used to know. In England.’
‘Were you in love with him?’
Her eyes fluttered away from his. ‘No! Yes—I don’t know—’
‘This isn’t multiple choice. Which was it?’
He was angry, but she had the sense to know that it wasn’t with her. She looked back at him pleadingly. ‘Please, let me do up my cardigan first...’
For an awful moment she thought he was going to refuse, his eyes growing hungry again as they roved over her flushed, well-loved breasts, but then he muttered something violent under his breath and swivelled to rake through the debris of the picnic and find his glasses. He put them on and watched broodingly as she fumbled first with the fastenings of her bra and jeans and then started on the tiny buttons of her cardigan. When it was evident that her shaking fingers were tackling a task that was temporarily beyond their capability he took over with an impatient growl, making her painfully aware that her nipples were still stiff and throbbing from his mouth. When he had finished he caught her chin in his hand.
‘Now, Vanessa. Talk.’
He was brooking no refusal and after the devastating intimacy they had just shared her resistance was wretchedly weak.
‘Julian was the son of the man I was butler for in London,’ she said wearily. ‘He liked a challenge and I was naïve and stupid enough to present him with one. It was my first really independent job and I had no family or friends in London and the whole situation was pretty nerve-racking—Egon St Clair and his wife were going through a fairly spectacular marriage break-up and their two grown-up daughters and Julian used to turn up at the house every now and then and contribute to the shouting matches.’
She pulled herself out of his grasp and sat back, trying not to notice that Benedict’s casual elegance was now sexily rumpled, the coffee-stained fabric of his trousers stretched tautly across his thighs, the sleeves of his sweater pushed up to reveal the dark hair on his arms and the steel watch glinting on his strong wrist. ‘So when Julian suddenly started plying me with attention I was grateful for his kindness, and flattered...he was thirty, rich, handsome and sophisticated—what insignificant nineteen-year-old wouldn’t have been impressed? And he presented this image of himself, you see, as a tortured romantic, a misunderstood poor little rich boy who secretly longed to have his rakish life redeemed by the love of a good, plain woman. Like an idiot I fell for it. But all he wanted was a one night stand, a chance to flex his ego...’ All her wretched humiliation was in her voice and in the bitter smile that bracketed her wide mouth as she looked unflinchingly at Benedict. ‘So you see, it wasn’t rape because I went with him willingly.’
‘But you changed your mind somewhere along the line, didn’t you?’ he said shrewdly. ‘Vanessa, if he forced you at any point, it was rape.’
Her mouth twisted in a painful attempt to be honest. ‘I told you, I wanted to... I tried to enjoy it but he—I just couldn’t seem to—’ She broke off and shrugged miserably, looking out to the white-capped sea. ‘I don’t wonder he got furious in the end.’
‘Did he hit you?’ he asked in a peculiarly clipped monotone.
‘Oh, no, nothing like that. He was very strong; he just held me down while he—he—’ She shuddered, her eyes hauntingly dark. ‘I—I was badly bruised, that’s all,’ she ended up lamely, cringing away from the memory of the clinical details. ‘And I was sick for a couple of days...’ To recover just in time for the fresh storm to break over her unsuspecting head.
Benedict was too acute an interpreter of the language to miss the glaring subtext. ‘He was your first, wasn’t he?’ he said ferociously. ‘Your first lover and the selfish bastard botched it!’
Vanessa was disturbed by his relentless intensity. ‘It happened years ago. It really has nothing to do with you—’
‘It does if you’re going to faint with fear every time you approach a climax in my arms.’
‘Benedict!’ She folded her arms protectively across her breasts as they surged back to aching life. Tiny cramps of treacherous pleasure ripped through her body, causing an immediate panic. ‘I can’t let it happen again,’ she said desperately. ‘I can’t afford to get involved with you—’
‘Why? I’m free, I won’t cost you anything.’
His attempted lightness caught her on the raw, lancing another festering boil. ‘That’s what he said, and in the end it cost me everything I had!’
‘What are you talking about?’
It was time he knew. Perhaps then this awful agony of indecision and apprehension would be over. He would reject her finally and completely before it was too late. He would fire her and she could crawl away with her pride in tatters but her fragile heart still intact.
‘I’m talking about why I left England when I did,’ she said in a hard voice that matched the shellac shine in her eyes.
‘I had to. You see it wasn’t just Julian I slept with. Oh, no. I had sex with his father, too, even though he was fat and ugly and old enough to be my grandfather. I didn’t care because I knew he was rich.’ The words began to pour from her in a brittle avalanche, gathering an icy momentum of their own. ‘I had it all perfectly planned, you see. I insinuated myself into Egon’s household and then I seduced him in the marital bed and persuaded him to kick his wife out into the street. I made sure he alienated the rest of his family and then I convinced him to write a new will that disinherited them all and left his entire fortune to me. Then he conveniently died of a heart-attack, probably because I injected an air bubble into his veins one night when we were having sex. Only the autopsy never proved it, so I got away scot-free.’
‘What in the hell are you talking about?’
Behind the mask of his bewildered shock she knew what was happening. His fastidious mind was already beginning to recoil from the muck-racking lies. Mud sticks. That was what the St Clairs had relied on when they had started their sordid rumour campaign—Julian included. He had robbed her almost simultaneously of her virginity and her virtue. By the time the furore had died down she had been a social and professional pariah, clean only in the eyes of her father and Judge Seaton, who had been a personal friend of Egon St Clair and knew the greed and viciousness of which Belinda St Clair and her offspring were capable. The judge had been as shocked and angry as Vanessa that Egon had chosen to make her an unwitting accomplice to his posthumous revenge on his estranged wife by naming her as his heir, thereby setting her up as the sole target of her furious malice. He had suggested that she sue the St C
lairs for slander and the papers for libel, but Vanessa had just wanted to put the whole horrible nightmare behind her. She couldn’t face more prying publicity; the snickers and the pointing and the leering curiosity had sickened and sapped her spirit almost to the point of breaking.
‘Oh, don’t worry. I didn’t prosper from all my sordid crimes,’ she flung at Benedict in wretched defiance, hating him for sitting there so silent, so still, unquestioning, accepting. ‘The fortune turned out to be wildly inflated and I had to sign away my claim to avoid financial litigation. I’m surprised you don’t recall the juicy details; it made the tabloids all over the world. It was a story with everything—kinky sex, blackmail, fraud and murder. You should ask to see my scrapbook some time! Nothing ever came to court, of course, but that’s only because I was too clever for the cops—the police couldn’t dig up enough solid evidence to bring charges. But this is probably no surpirse to you, right?’ she goaded, at the end of her tether. ‘You always thought there was something suspicious about me and the judge. Maybe you were right. A woman with my back-ground—’
She broke off. His head was bent, his shoulders were shaking. He was erupting with rage, with outrage; he was going to slice her heart out of her chest with a few brutal words and sling her into an exile far worse than the oblivion she had already endured. But then he threw his head back and she saw that he was laughing—laughing...
For a moment she thought she was going to vomit with the pain. She leapt to her feet, black dots dancing nauseatingly in front of her stinging eyes. ‘Oh, so you think it’s funny, do you?’ she choked. ‘My life being ruined is just a big joke to you—’
She whirled to run but he was up, catching her by the elbow, still laughing. ‘No, Vanessa! Listen—’
‘Listen? You—’ She tried to hit him and he twisted her arm behind her back.
‘I wasn’t laughing—’
The blatant untruth made her twist violently. ‘Let me go, you filthy liar—’
