Unwilling Surrender

by Cathy Williams

  His breathing was shallow and irregular and she looked at him in alarm.

  ‘Are you sure that this isn’t more serious than you’re telling me?’ she asked worriedly. ‘You look awful. Should I get in touch with Fiona? She’d never forgive me if...if...’

  ‘If something happened to me out here?’ He looked at her through his lashes. ‘I’m not about to die. So don’t you dare phone my sister. You know what she’s like. She’ll fly over here at the speed of sound and drive me to a premature grave with her worrying.’

  Every little burst of speech seemed to weaken him.

  ‘Don’t talk,’ Christina said soothingly. ‘I won’t phone her.’ She paused, trying to think of how she could tell him that she just couldn’t stay and look after him. When he was in perfect health she could hide her love by arguing with him, by stirring herself to feel resentment at his arrogance. Now that he was in this debilitated state, she felt captive to her emotions, without the defences of anger normally open to her.

  ‘Does Frances know about this?’ she asked after a while, and he nodded. ‘Then,’ Christina suggested, looking away, ‘perhaps she might like to stay here and take care of you herself.’

  ‘If you can’t bring yourself to do this, then fine,’ he said angrily, attempting to sit up and then falling back on to the pillows with a groan of frustration, ‘but leave Frances out of it. I don’t want my life complicated with her fussing around.’

  Christina greeted this outburst with coolness. She knew what he was getting at. It was all right for her to look after him because to him she was as sexless as a baked potato, despite his temporary flare of curious interest earlier on. But with Frances it would be different. There would be too much intimacy in that situation, and he wouldn’t want that. Not when he was ill.

  He was beginning to look flushed and drowsy. He pointed to a bottle of pain-killers on the side-table and she fetched two for him, handing them over with a glass of water.

  He swallowed them and she watched him, her heart constricting. She had only ever seen him in command. When, growing up, she and Fiona had succumbed to flu, he had shrugged it off, as though his life was too busy, too full to be inconvenienced by such little things as ill health.

  ‘I’ll look after you, Adam,’ she heard herself saying. ‘I shall have to make a few calls, try and get some of my clients re-scheduled. When are you due to leave here and how?’

  ‘Tomorrow—by taxi,’ he said succinctly. ‘The hotel can easily arrange a taxi to take me—us—there.’ He drew a deep breath and she frowned. ‘I suppose Sam’s told you that Clive isn’t going to be around. He was, in fact, supposed to have left the island last week, but he postponed his duties so that we could meet up.’ He looked at her and there was a spark of his old energy in his eyes. ‘You don’t have to tell me how inconvenient this all is. I never get ill. This is the first time for as long as I can remember and it’s bloody frustrating.’

  She wanted to smile at that. It was such a typical reaction.

  ‘I must go and see about my packing,’ she murmured, pausing by the door before she left. ‘Is there someone...?’

  ‘Sam. He’s going to stay on the sofa tonight. I feel like a damned invalid,’ he muttered with resentment.

  ‘You are a damned invalid,’ Christina said drily. ‘There’s not much point in fighting that.’

  He looked as though he heartily disagreed with every word of that pronouncement, but before he could tire himself out with arguing she let herself out of the room and headed back to her own bedroom.

  It was only as she was packing her bags that the reality of the situation struck her. For the second time in little more than a month she would find herself cloistered with Adam and out of her depth. It was as if fate was conspiring against her.

  She had an early meal with the rest of the crew, who spent the entire time bemoaning their imminent departure and speculating on the weather conditions in England. Frances, she noticed, hardly said a word throughout the meal. She picked at her food, her mouth downturned. After her venomous attack earlier on, Christina half expected her to follow it up with another tirade, but nothing, although those glances, thrown her way ever so often, left her in no doubt that Adam was classified as unfinished business.

  But there would be no opportunity to find herself in a position of self-defence. They would all be gone by the time she emerged the following morning, and for that she was heartily grateful.

  As promised, the taxi had been arranged, and after a solitary breakfast Christina ventured to Adam’s bedroom to see whether he was ready. He was. Just.

  His face looked drawn and haggard and there was rough stubble on his cheeks. He looked at her ill-humouredly as she entered the room, and she returned his gaze with sympathy. He hated being ill. If he hadn’t already informed her of the fact, she would have guessed it easily enough from the expression on his face.

  ‘Stop feeling sorry for me, dammit,’ he muttered, trying to heave himself out of the chair by the window and barely succeeding.

  Christina went across to him and offered him her shoulder, which he accepted in bad grace.

  ‘I’m not feeling sorry for you,’ she lied, and he gave her a disbelieving glare which she met with equanimity. ‘Have you taken any antibiotics? Did the doctor prescribe anything?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. Apart, that is, from pain-killers, which I’ve taken. Liberally.’

  She looked at him in alarm. ‘I hope not.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, don’t start subjecting me to your worry.’

  He was leaning heavily against her as they made their way out to the reception area. And he was, she knew, resenting every moment of it all.

  A porter was dispatched to the bedrooms to fetch their various bits of luggage, and then began the journey to Adam’s friend’s house.

  It wasn’t a long journey. Christina allowed her thoughts to drift as she stared out of the window of the air-conditioned car. The crisp, clear blue of the skies, the dazzling reflection of the sun on the foliage, the exuberance of flowers and colour, still hadn’t lost its impact for her. She looked with interest at the fruit and vegetable stalls scattered at the side of the road, at the vivid yellows and reds and oranges of the flowers and the different shades of green of the trees, and before she knew it the car was turning left, into what was obviously a well-to-do neighbourhood.

  They drove past massive houses, sprawling, imaginatively designed affairs surrounded by immaculately tended gardens. Then, through a security gate, to a row of three-tiered townhouses.

  Next to her, Adam had fallen asleep. She looked at him briefly. Despite his illness he was still devilishly handsome, with that dark, tousled hair and the aristocratic set of his features. She had to drag her eyes away before she shook him gently to inform him that they had arrived.

  He woke immediately. For a minute she was tempted to believe, to hope, that he had picked up some of his strength, but once they were inside the house he became weary, and looked at her with an expression of angry frustration.

  ‘Don’t fight it,’ she said gently, helping him up the stairs and into one of the two bedrooms on the first floor. Then she lugged his suitcase into the room and deposited it.

  He was sitting on the bed, his elbows resting on his knees. He looked up as she entered and said, ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, what?’

  ‘You’ll have to give me a hand changing,’ he said bluntly, and she felt herself go bright red.

  ‘Surely not,’ she stammered. ‘Can’t you manage?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake. I wish I could. But I can’t, so don’t start going coy on me.’ He lay down on the bed and she looked at him helplessly. He was right, of course. He was still weak beyond belief and in no state to undress himself.

  She walked across and tentatively unbuckled his belt, then began fiddling with the buttons on his shirt, and all the time she could feel her fingers, gauche and trembling.

  ‘I’m not contagious,’ he muttered irrit
ably, misreading her expression, and she didn’t correct him. Let him think that that was the reason for her appalling state of nerves.

  She finally managed to remove his shirt and then she tugged down his trousers, revealing a pair of dark boxer shorts underneath.

  No less than she would have seen on a beach, she told herself, but somehow this was different and she was shamelessly fascinated by the length of his muscular legs, the dark hairs on them, the whipcord slimness of his waist and hips.

  On their way to the bedroom he had briefly pointed out the air-conditioning system to her, and she went there now to switch it on, feeling instant relief as cool air flooded the place. She needed it. She felt as though she was burning up, on fire.

  She returned to the bedroom and was rummaging around in his suitcase for some pyjamas when he said with a trace of amusement in his voice, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Trying,’ Christina said calmly, ‘to locate a pair of pyjamas.’

  ‘How solicitous, but don’t bother. I never wear the things.’

  She dismissed the image that that remark conjured up, and stood next to the bed, her arms folded.

  ‘You can’t sleep like that,’ she pointed out. ‘You’ve been running a high fever. You need to be clothed.’

  ‘True,’ he agreed readily. ‘How sensible of you. I suppose that common sense extends to your own wardrobe, or are you going to surprise me by telling me that you sometimes sleep with nothing on?’

  ‘I’m not going to tell you anything at all,’ she replied, wondering how it was that he managed to find the strength from somewhere to be mocking.

  ‘Shame,’ he murmured, ‘the image would have been a wonderful one to fall asleep with.’

  Christina ignored that because, if she rose to the bait, then she would start on a round of arguments in which he was in no fit state to indulge.

  ‘Would your friend have some?’ she asked, and he nodded drowsily, pointing up to indicate the bedroom on the top floor.

  Christina hurried up and managed to locate some. Maybe, she thought, running back down the stairs, he would be asleep on her return to the bedroom. That way he might be a dead weight to manoeuvre into a pair of pyjamas, but then, on the other hand, she would not have to cope with his taunting little remarks.

  He was. She breathed a sigh of relief and eased him into the top, hearing his soft, irritated grunts with a mixture of tenderness and impatience. Then she began slipping on the loose-fitting bottoms. She could feel the sexy, abrasive rub of his legs against her hands, and as she pulled the trousers up to his waist a faint hardening beneath her fingers indicated that he was not as deeply asleep as she would have liked.

  He had felt the pressure of her hands brushing over his groin, and his body had responded automatically.

  Christina averted her eyes, scarlet, and as she did so his blue eyes clashed with hers. He didn’t say a word, though. In fact, he looked so utterly serious that she wondered whether he was really aware of what his body had just betrayed, because he promptly shut his eyes and was snoring gently by the time she left the room a few minutes later.

  The little incident had shaken her up, though. As she had felt him stirring beneath her, her own body had involuntarily responded by becoming hot and damp, in ready longing for the accidental touch to turn into something deeper.

  She began investigating the kitchen, wandering around the small downstairs lounge, staring through the closed patio doors to the small square of land at the back, laid with large terracotta tiles which gave it a charming Italian appearance.

  This wasn’t going to be easy. She wasn’t some kind of nurse, trained to sublimate her emotions underneath a veneer of cold professionalism. By nature, she was not given to outbursts, but her face, she knew, could still betray her. And he knew her too well. He would be able to read behind the slightest glimmer of expression to what lay beneath.

  The next three days passed in an agony of trying to disguise her feelings. She hoped that he was too ill to notice the way her hands trembled every time they came into contact with his body, the way her eyes would flit compulsively to his face, drinking in the strong lines, the way that any sudden move or remark from him could make her mouth go dry.

  She was so absorbed in her efforts to hide all this that she was hardly aware of his gradual recovery. It registered somewhere that he was on his feet a bit more, that his need for pain-killers was abating, that his colour was returning to normal—all signs that his illness was passing.

  She was carrying up a tray of food for him, her usual habit over the past few days, when she was startled to see him emerging from the bathroom, his hair wet from recent washing, a towel casually and, from where she was standing, precariously draped around his waist.

  ‘No need to look like a goldfish,’ he commented drily. ‘I’m feeling much better this morning.’ He followed her into the bedroom and she continued looking at him in alarm.

  ‘Should you be out of bed?’ she stammered, depositing the tray on the table next to the bed and hovering indecisively next to it.

  ‘Well, I can’t stay there forever.’ He turned around and began rooting around for some clothes in the wardrobe. ‘I thought that today we might get some fresh air. You must be feeling nearly as claustrophobic as I am.’ He extracted a shirt and a pair of trousers from the wardrobe and tossed them past her on to the bed.

  ‘Quite,’ Christina said incoherently. ‘I mean, now that you’re back on your feet, perhaps we should be thinking of the return flight to England?’

  He moved towards her and she eyed his damp torso with mounting panic.

  ‘Perhaps we should,’ he agreed. ‘I want you to know,’ he continued slowly, ‘that I appreciate what you’ve done for me. I hate saying this—maybe it’s my damned masculine pride—but I couldn’t have coped on my own.’

  She wished that he would move to another part of the room. She could smell that clean, fresh male scent and it was going to her head like incense.

  ‘It was nothing,’ she returned roughly, looking away.

  His hand moved to the side of her head, tilting it to face him.

  ‘It was a great deal,’ he said softly, ‘although it’s kind of you to play it down. But then, underneath that cool career-woman veneer you’re terribly kind, aren’t you?’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘I think so.’ His voice was low and husky and should have warned her of what was to come, but it didn’t. The impact of his lips on hers caught her totally by surprise. She tried to pull away—she had all the best intentions in the world of resisting the flood of emotions sweeping through her—but his hold tightened and she closed her eyes with a soft moan.

  She felt her hands move to his waist, then slide to stroke his back.

  He eased her on to the bed, still kissing her, and then unhurriedly unbuttoned her blouse.

  She could have stopped him. He wasn’t overpowering her. But something in her had finally broken. Maybe all those days of caring for him, of surreptitiously feeding her love on the sight of him, had caught up with her. All she knew was that she wanted him, whatever the consequences.

  He pushed aside the thin material and began caressing her breasts, playing with them in the same leisurely way that he was kissing her, as if they had all the time in the world, teasing the nipples into hard arousal.

  ‘You’re ill,’ she moaned weakly, and he said against her mouth,

  ‘I’ve never felt better, believe me.’ Then his lips burnt a path along her neck, moving to suck her breasts, first one then the other, flicking his tongue over the nipples until she wanted to cry out with desire.

  She gripped his head, her fingers tangling in his dark hair, and urged him to caress her harder, while she writhed under his exploring mouth.

  His towel had been discarded at some point, and she could feel him, hard and wanting against her body. It was unbearably erotic.

  Her shorts were disposed of quickly, followed by her underwear, and she parted her legs to his hand, s
quirming as he sought and found her most intimate areas.

  She felt as though she were going mad. She wanted him so much.

  He licked her stomach, then moved lower until she gasped with shock and pleasure as his tongue followed where his fingers had shortly before been.

  He grasped her thighs with either hand, and she writhed against him, giving soft, low moans of pure ecstasy.

  When he finally thrust into her, her whole world exploded, and she realised two things in a blinding flash.

  The first was that no man had ever, nor could ever, arouse her as this man could. And the second was that she would sleep with him for as long as he wanted her, even though deep inside the pain of being rejected was already starting to hurt.

  ‘I knew it,’ he said later, lazily, stroking her stomach with the flat of his hand. ‘I wanted to be your first lover, and I was. Greg meant nothing to you, did he?’

  Christina turned away and shrugged. He made it sound so casual; he was so pleased that she had not slept with anyone before him. In a way she hated him for that and hated herself for putting the final nail in her coffin. Now there was nothing left of her; she had given it all to him, every last piece of her, including her virginity. It was a frightening thought and one which she viewed dispassionately. No point moaning and groaning and regretting. He already had her love, so what was the small addition of her body?

  He was talking to her, softly, stroking her until her body quivered under his touch and she parted her legs, opening herself up to him, and as she closed her eyes she saw the pleasure on his face. Not love, but pleasure, and she tried not to remember that pleasure was short-lived.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘I‘M PREGNANT.’

  There was a look of triumph on her face as she said this. Outside it was raining, a bleak grey persistent drizzle, one of those wintry downpours that made you want to curl up underneath a blanket and hibernate for a couple of months.

  Christina heard the soft patter like a sudden thunderstorm, drumming in her head until she wanted to faint. She wanted badly to say something, but her mouth felt as dry as ashes. She looked at Frances, framed in the doorway, thin as a reed in an ivory-coloured coat that swept down almost to her ankles and was tightly belted at the waist, and couldn’t find a thing to say.