by Anne Weale
His voice held the promise of other intimacies that quickened her pulse and brought a flush to her cheeks. She wanted to say, I can’t wait, but it was only half true.
It had gone so badly wrong before…not just once but many, many times. Would it go right this time? Or had part of the fault been hers? Was there something wrong with her?
Would tonight be a new beginning, or another disaster?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Tanto es amar sin ser amado como responder sin ser preguntado
To love without being loved is like answering without being asked
IT WAS a two-hour drive from Madrid’s airport at nearby Barajas to the thirteenth-century castle where they were going to stay.
‘I’m glad to be back in Spain,’ said Liz, when they had skirted the outskirts of the capital and the landscape was becoming increasingly rural. ‘Even though this part of the country is different from our provincia, it still feels more like home than London. I don’t mean I didn’t enjoy staying at your apartment—’
‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Cam cut in.
Like her, he was still in his wedding clothes but had removed his jacket, taken off his tie and unfastened the collar of his shirt.
‘London is fine for short spells, but it isn’t what I define as “real life”. No big city is—at any rate not for me. I guess, at heart, I’m a country bumpkin.’
‘Anyone less like a bumpkin is impossible to imagine,’ Liz said, laughing. ‘A grandee of Spain is what I should take you for, if you were a stranger. You look the way I imagine Spanish grandees…though the ones I’ve seen in the papers have been disappointingly short and ordinary-looking. The only one who came up to my expectations was the Duke who married the Infanta Elena…and even he isn’t as good-looking as you are.’
He shot her an amused look. Then, the autopista being clear, he reached for her hand and lifted it to his lips. The car being left-hand drive, it was her left hand, the third finger now adorned by the beautiful and unusual combination engagement and wedding ring he had chosen for her. A wide band of matt gold set at intervals with lozenge-shaped sapphires and aquamarines, it looked modern but also reminiscent of the jewels worn by merchant princes’ wives and mistresses during the Renaissance.
‘Thank you, Mrs Fielding. I think you allow partiality to colour your judgement, but why not? It is our wedding day. If we don’t see each other through rose-coloured glasses today, we’re unlikely to do so in twenty years’ time.’ He returned her hand to her lap.
Although, on the flight, he had confined himself to a glass of champagne before lunch and another with it, Liz had drunk several glasses, which perhaps accounted for her outspokenness and her relaxed mood as the car Cam had rented cruised smoothly along the motorway taking them south.
But after they branched off the main highway, and once they were more than halfway to their destination, her misgivings kicked in again. Outwardly this trip had all the makings of an idyllic honeymoon. But, beneath the surface, the problem had not gone away. It was still there, like an antipersonnel mine embedded in a seemingly peaceful field. And like a mine it was capable, if detonated, of causing horrendous emotional damage from which their marriage might never recover.
When the parador came into view, it looked like an illustration in a fairy tale, a fortress built on the crest of a hill, its towers and battlements outlined against the blue sky. The approach road wound its way up by a series of hairpin bends until it bridged a ravine and they entered the castle by way of an arch and found themselves in a large courtyard now converted to the parador’s car park.
‘Not many people here,’ said Cam, parking alongside a car with a ‘D’ badge indicating German ownership, and another with the Swiss ‘CH’ badge. ‘But perhaps some people staying here have gone out for the day, and I expect there’ll be night-stoppers turning up later.’
Their arrival must have been noticed by someone inside the castle. As he was unlocking the boot, a young man still in his teens came out to help with the luggage.
The interior of the castle had a baronial atmosphere combined with the ambiente of a luxurious hotel. Cam signed the register and handed over his passport. Then they were taken by lift to a higher floor, along a corridor and up a stone staircase to their suite.
This had a spacious lobby leading into a sitting room which in turn led into a bedroom, dominated by a massive four-poster bed, with a bathroom leading off it. While Cam was talking to the porter, her attention was caught by the views from the sitting room windows.
The suite, she realised, was in one of the castle’s square towers with one window overlooking a formal Spanish garden and the other looking down on a large swimming-pool that shimmered invitingly in the afternoon sun.
‘Great for cooling off in the summer, but too cold for comfort now, I should think,’ said Cam, looking over her shoulder.
The porter had gone. They were alone.
‘I’ve asked them to send up some tea. Meanwhile…’
He turned her to face him, took her face between his hands, and bent his head to kiss her, first on one side of her mouth, then on the other, and then with his lips matched to hers. But it was a gentle rather than passionate kiss and, after a moment he straightened to smile at her before pulling her into his arms and holding her close in a bear hug.
‘This is one of life’s perfect moments,’ he said. ‘The right place…the right person…nothing to do but relax and enjoy ourselves.’ She felt him kissing her hair. Then he gave a soft laugh and added, ‘But I suppose, being a woman, you want to unpack your case and get all those drop-dead outfits hung up.’
In fact Liz was disappointed when he slackened his hold. Her clothes were the last thing on her mind.
She leaned back in his arms and said, ‘The new things I bought are all rather simple. I didn’t expect there to be much dressing up.’
‘The foreigners probably won’t cut much of a dash, but if Spanish people from the nearest town come to eat here they will dress up. If they’re spending money, they like to make an occasion of it. Whatever you wear will be right. You have excellent taste. Come on: let’s get our kit sorted, then we can really relax.’
‘This bathroom is gorgeous,’ said Liz, a few minutes later, when she was putting her toilet bag on the marble counter surrounding the twin basins.
He came to stand in the doorway and look at the peach and white decor she was admiring. Then a buzzer sounded and he went to answer it. Moments later, Liz heard a young female voice speaking Spanish and Cam replying. Somehow the language accentuated the sexiness of his voice.
She returned to the sitting room to find a plump girl in a black skirt and white blouse arranging tea things on the low table in front of the sofa. ‘Buenas tardes, señora.’
Liz smiled at her. ‘Buenas tardes.’
There were sandwiches and Spanish pastries to sustain them until the dining room opened at nine.
When the girl had gone, Cam said, ‘The tea will be far too strong. Let’s fish out some of the tea bags.’ He extracted a couple from the pot.
They sat on the feather-cushioned sofa and had afternoon tea and discussed the appointments of the room until Cam said, ‘It’s a long time till dinner. Why don’t we have a bath and then a siesta?’
By siesta did he mean a sleep? Liz wondered. Or the other kind of siesta?
‘That sounds a good idea.’
‘We can bath together. There’s plenty of room. It’s a large tub. I’ll go and run the water.’ He rose and disappeared.
A bath together! Liz remained where she was, paralysed with shyness. On her previous honeymoon, they had reached the hotel late, had dinner almost immediately and then gone for a walk along the promenade before going upstairs to their room. Everything had happened with the lights out. Now, all these years later, with her body no longer as taut as it had been at nineteen, she was going to have to climb into a tub with a man who, in terms of physical contact, was almost a stranger.
Sh
e heard the water starting to run and wondered if she ought to go into the bedroom and start undressing. The trouble was she had no idea how she was supposed to behave in this situation. It seemed best to sit tight and wait for Cam to call her or come for her.
The water seemed to run for a long time, but then, as he had said, it was an extra-large bath designed to accommodate Texans and Scandinavians and other men of Cam’s height and build.
When he appeared in the doorway, he was naked except for a towel wrapped round his hips. Liz rose to her feet, trying to look less uncertain than she felt. They met at the halfway point between the sofa and the bedroom door. He took her hand in his and led her to the bathroom where he closed he door behind them. Then he started to undress her.
‘I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time,’ he told her, unfastening the buttons of her blue jacket. She had removed the scarf on the aeroplane.
Tongue-tied, she kept her eyes fixed on his hard brown chest. She had never in her life felt more self-conscious and awkward…or more tense. Her insides were in knots.
Cam opened the jacket and slipped it off her shoulders so that it slid down her arms. He hung it on one of the hooks on the back of the door, which was within his reach.
‘This is pretty.’ He was looking at her pale blue silk camisole edged and strapped with white satin.
He reached round behind her to unbutton the waistband of her skirt and pull down the zipper. He slid it down over her hips and let it drop to the floor so that she could step out of it. Then he picked it up and hung it with the jacket. The skirt being lined, this left Liz in her tights and panties. Quickly, she slipped off her shoes, reducing her height by two inches.
Though it seemly unlikely he knew the silk camisole was cut on the cross and therefore more elastic than straight-cut fabric, Cam took hold of the hem and drew it upwards so that she had to raise her arms to allow him to draw it over her head. She thought he would reach for the clip of her white embroidered net bra, but instead he put his fingers inside the waistband of her tights and drew them downwards over her hips and thighs. Then he put his hand behind her right knee and raised her leg in order to peel the nylon away from her calf and foot. Seconds later her tights were lying on the floor in a diaphanous swirl like the snake’s sloughed-off skin she had seen on one of her rambles in the mountains.
Cam put his hands on either side of her bare waist, drew her towards him and gave her a lingering kiss. Now there was only the fragile texture of net between her breasts and his chest. Surely he must feel or hear the wild beating of her heart?
He reached behind her and she felt the band of her bra slacken. He pushed the straps off the ends of her shoulders and, his mouth still locked with hers, disposed of the bra, leaving no barrier between her soft yielding flesh and the warm solidity of his torso.
Slowly, caressingly, he eased the elastic at the top of her panties over the swell of her behind and pushed them downwards until she had only to part her knees for them to slither to her ankles.
Finally, he ended the kiss and drew back, taking in her nakedness with a look that felt like a sudden rush of hot air on her bare skin.
‘You’re even more beautiful without your clothes on,’ he said huskily.
And then he shed his towel and, briefly, she had a glimpse of his own magnificent, aroused body before he turned away, stepped into the bath and sat down in it.
‘Come on in. The water’s great,’ he said, smiling and holding out his arms in an invitation to join him.
There was no option but to obey. Turning her back to him, Liz stepped over the rim of the bath with one foot then the other. Conscious that he would be getting a head-on view of her backside— ‘in your face’ took on a new meaning here—she bent to put her hands on the bath’s sides while lowering herself to sit between his long brown thighs.
Cam’s hands on her hips helped her, sliding round to her midriff as he sank back against the bath’s sloping end and drew her against him. For the first time in her life she experienced the luxury of leaning against a man’s body instead of the unyielding surface of enamelled steel.
It felt wonderful: the difference between the metal type of park bench and the comfort of a feather-cushioned armchair.
‘This is where it begins to get really good, don’t you think?’ he murmured close to her ear.
Not trusting her voice to work normally, Liz nodded her head.
‘And it gets better…much better.’ One of his hands slid downwards to stroke her stomach and the other moved higher to gently explore her right breast, sending a lightning-flash of exquisite sensation through her.
Then he took the upper hand away. ‘I forgot something…’
She felt his stomach muscles contract and harden as he used them to pull himself upwards, lifting her with him to reach for the water controls set in the centre of the long inner side of the bath.
It was only when the water began to bubble and swirl that she realised the bath was equipped with jets that now were sending gentle currents in several directions.
Behind her, Cam relaxed and resumed the gentle exploration of her breast, moving his palm lightly over the part that was reacting to his touch. His other thumb was caressing her navel which suddenly seemed to have become a previously undiscovered erogenous zone.
She heard herself give a long shuddering sigh and, seemingly of their own volition, her hands, which had been lying at the tops of her legs, moved to rest on his longer legs, her fingers spread on the tanned thighs raised at an angle on either side of her.
She heard him say, ‘Close your eyes…don’t think about anything but how good this is…for both of us.’
She did as he told her, discovering that it intensified her response to his touch. But her inhibitions revived when the hand on her belly suddenly moved down, his long fingers invading the tangle of wet curls at the apex of her thighs, startling her into an instinctive recoil.
‘Relax…it’s all right…it’s fine.’
With that low, calm voice he might have been reassuring a nervous animal; and in a sense she was, she acknowledged. Though it wasn’t him she was nervous of, but rather herself, of her own inability to—
The thought was cut short by a wave of intense sensation as his fingers began to explore.
The minutes passed. There was silence except for the murmurous sound of the churning water and her own increasingly laboured breathing. Soon she was lost, her neck arched, her hands gripping his legs, her body convulsed by spasm after delicious spasm against which there was no possible resistance.
When it was over, when his hands were no longer touching her most sensitive places but were merely fondling her shoulders, she became aware of what, overwhelmed by ecstasy, she had temporarily forgotten: the hard ridge of engorged male flesh she could feel pressing against the base of her spine. While she was relaxed, all her tensions released, he was not, or that part of him was not. Yet, despite his palpable lust for her, he wasn’t sending out any signals of impatience. How strange! Her experience was that male urges had to be satisfied quickly, not kept waiting. Not that Cam’s could be satisfied in a tub that, large though it was, was not that large. But he showed no inclination to bring their time in it to an end. He must have exceptional self-control, she thought.
‘If you want to nod off, don’t mind me,’ he said. ‘It’s been a long action-packed day. Have a mini-siesta…do you good.’
She did feel extraordinarily drowsy. As he said, it must be the combined after-effect of this morning’s wedding, the flight, the drive from Madrid, the apprehension about their first time in bed together followed by the soothing warmth of the water and the physical release he had given her.
‘But what about you?’ she murmured.
‘Don’t worry about me. My turn will come later. This is your time for unwinding…the more unwound you are, the better it will be for us both.’
It was tempting to do as he suggested and slip into a doze, and perhaps she did for a few minutes
. Afterwards she wasn’t sure whether she had been sleeping when he started caressing her again.
‘Oh, Cam…no…please,’ she protested.
But he ignored her. The slow build-up of pleasure began again and she let it happen, helpless against those skilful, commanding hands that understood exactly how to undermine her resistance. There was a part of her mind that didn’t approve of her capitulation, but her mind wasn’t in control, only her senses.
This time the pleasure grew even more intense. Her body tingled and throbbed and she could not stop herself making small ecstatic noises and, at the final moment, a louder sound that she tried to muffle with her hand.
‘Anyone listening outside the bathroom door would think I was torturing you,’ he said, with amusement in his voice.
In a way he was. She had kept her emotions under wraps for so long that now to abandon all control felt as horrendous as betraying secrets to the enemy.
‘Nice as this is, I think we’d better transfer ourselves,’ he said. ‘If we stay in the bath too long, you’ll be getting washerwoman’s fingers.’
Pulling himself into a sitting position, and her with him, he gave her a swift kiss on the back of the neck before climbing out. A moment later he was holding a large bath sheet, ready to wrap it round her when she rose from the water and stepped onto the bath mat.
As soon as she was enveloped in the thick soft white pile of the towel, Cam leaned over the bath to turn off the jets and pull out the plug. He was obviously completely at ease with his own body and she envied him his freedom from self-consciousness. But how many other women had seen him like this? she wondered, with a pang, averting her eyes from the sight of his arousal. But not quickly enough to avoid being caught out as he turned and intercepted the direction of her gaze.
After shrugging on his bathrobe, he said, ‘Let’s go and try out the bed.’
‘Shouldn’t we dry our feet first?’
His response to this was to put his hands on her shoulders and steer her into a sitting position on the edge of the bath. Then, taking one of the smaller towels, he began to dry her feet for her.
