Stronger than Yearning

by Penny Jordan

  ‘Watch the new Indiana Jones video,’ Lucy told her with relish, ‘and then play our new tapes. That’s one good thing about living here, we can play our records just as loud as we like!’

  ‘You’ll end up deaf by the time you’re forty,’ Jenna told her wryly, standing up and opening her wardrobe doors.

  She had decided to wear a misty, lavender-hued floral dress in finely pleated cotton muslin, with a matching short-sleeved casual jacket that fastened at the waist with knotted ties.

  She put it on, feeling the cool, silky slide of the fragile fabric against her legs.

  ‘Wow! That looks great,’ Lucy told her admiringly. ‘When did you buy it?’

  James had bought it for her—he had handed it to her one evening after he had been in London. Jenna had never worn it before, and it gave her a heady feeling of recklessness tinged spicily with guilt to wear it now.

  ‘James bought it for me,’ she told her niece, glancing at her watch. ‘Look, I’m going to be late, if I don’t go now. Make sure that you and Sarah have a proper supper, there’s plenty of food in the fridge.’

  As Jenna picked up her bag and slipped on delicate white mules Lucy bent to kiss her cheek.

  She had changed so much in the last couple of months, no longer a resentful moody enemy, but a teasing, happy teenager slowly blossoming into womanhood. If for no other reason she ought to be grateful to James for what he had done for Lucy, Jenna told herself, and then quickly checked the thought. She wasn’t going to weaken now. She was determined that James was going to learn that he could not lay down the law and tell her who she could and could not see.

  She had arranged to meet Graham at his home. He had a small flat above his antique shop, and as she walked round to the rear entrance that led to it, a stormcloud of butterflies fluttered painfully in her stomach.

  ‘On time as usual.’ Graham had the door open before she even knocked. He had obviously just showered, and his hair was still damp, his white shirt open at the throat revealing a muscular chest. The butterflies in Jenna’s stomach fluttered harder, and she carefully averted her gaze. ‘Your husband didn’t mind your dining with me tonight then?’

  Avoiding his eyes, Jenna shrugged. ‘James does not have the right to dictate to me how I run my life,’ she told him coolly. ‘I’m a grown woman, not a child.’

  ‘I’m very glad to hear you say it.’ He was standing behind her now and she could feel the heat of his breath against her nape.

  Instinct told her that in another moment he would kiss her, and she moved away, saying quickly, ‘You’ll see that I’ve got my car back. They managed to locate the problem and put it right almost straight away. Where are we dining?’

  If Graham was disappointed by her reaction he did not betray it. ‘A new place that’s been recommended to me. I don’t know what it’s like, but apparently they serve an excellent nouvelle cuisine menu.’

  Nouvelle cuisine! Jenna’s heart leapt and twisted inside her like a stranded fish. Against her will she was forced to remember the meals she and James had eaten in their honeymoon suite. Those too had been nouvelle cuisine…delicate, light morsels designed to tempt even the most flagging appetite.

  ‘Jenna?’

  The sharp query in Graham’s voice brought her back to the present. ‘Sorry…I was thinking about something else. It sounds lovely,’ she added, giving him a smile.

  ‘But nowhere near as lovely as you look.’

  There was a deepening, husky timbre to his voice that warned Jenna to tread carefully.

  ‘That’s very complimentary of you, kind sir,’ she responded lightly. ‘You look rather dashing yourself.’

  Once again, Graham responded to the light warning in her voice. ‘I’ll just get my jacket,’ he told her, ‘and then we can be on our way.’

  While he was gone, Jenna glanced round his small sitting-room. It was pleasantly furnished, and had a masculine, bookish air about it; very much the room of a man who was a bachelor. It made her wonder slightly why Graham was still unmarried. He must be well into his thirties…Had he been married at some time perhaps? It struck her how little she knew about him and how incurious she was. Too incurious perhaps to be genuinely emotionally involved enough with him to contemplate an affair?

  ‘Autumn’s on the way,’ Graham commented as they drove out of York. ‘Some of the leaves are already turning.’

  They made desultory conversation as he drove them to their destination—a renovated barn by a quiet millpond.

  The restaurant was well patronised, and the food every bit as excellent as Graham had been told, but throughout the meal Jenna was conscious of an increasing tension emanating not just from her but from Graham as well.

  It was gone eleven when they finally finished their liqueurs and paid the bill.

  Jenna had dawdled deliberately over her meal, knowing that by now James would have guessed just what she had done. She tried to picture his reaction and found disturbingly that she could not.

  The tension between them increased as Graham drove them back to York.

  As he parked his car at the back of his shop next to Jenna’s he turned to her and said huskily, ‘Jenna, will you come up and have a nightcap before you go?’

  This was the moment. Jenna knew it as surely as though he had spelled it out for her. If she said yes now she was saying yes to far more than a mere nightcap. The choice was still hers. She knew that Graham would not press or force her in any way. Part of her urged her to refuse, to leave now before any real damage was done, but another part of her, unbearably goaded by James and everything that he had done to her, pushed her on into reckless responsiveness.

  ‘Yes…yes, I will…’

  The soft, breathy words seemed to fall into a pool of thick silence. For a moment neither of them spoke and then Graham was galvanised into action, unclipping his seat-belt and getting out of the car, helping Jenna from her seat as he opened her door, taking her arm possessively through his own as he led her up the flight of stairs to his door.

  The moment they were inside the door he took her in his arms, kissing her with a passionate abandon she found instantly stifling and offensive. Unbelievably, all those sensations she had expected to feel in James’s embrace and had not done so, surfaced now, as Graham’s mouth continued to savage her own.

  She was filled with a mindless, clawing panic, a terrifying fear that obliterated all reason and logic. She began to fight wildly against his constraining arms, blind to everything but her need to be free. He released her immediately, and with her release came a return to sanity. She didn’t know which of them was shaking the most, Jenna thought guiltily. In the half-light of the room she could see Graham’s pale face, and shaking body. She bit her lip torn between anguish and despair. She had hurt him and that was the last thing she had intended to do, but she had been so blindly, so selfishly intent on punishing James that she had not spared a thought for anything else.

  She reached out and touched his arm tentatively and winced when she saw the anger laced with bitterness darken his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised huskily, knowing there was no way she could explain away her terrified lack of response to him with mere social phrases. It must have been as blindingly obvious to him as it had been to her that she was not able to respond to him, and hate herself though she might for hurting him, there was no way she could wipe away from either of their memories what had happened.

  ‘I think you’d better go.’ He sounded angry and terse and Jenna could not blame him. Although she had not actually led him on she had certainly, tonight at least, encouraged him to think that she would welcome his love-making.

  As she turned towards the door he added bitterly, ‘If that’s the way you treat your husband, I’m surprised that he’s so desperate to keep you.’

  Jenna turned and hesitated. James? Desperate to keep her? Her mouth compressed. If he was, it was not for the reason that Graham so obviously supposed.

  ‘I was not aware that he was,’ her voi
ce sounded more defeated than she realised and she caught Graham’s responsive sigh as he said tightly,

  ‘Well, let’s just say he was desperate enough to come round here the other day and tell me to keep away from you.’

  Jenna was stunned, left wordless and totally bemused. James had called round to see Graham and told him that! She could hardly believe it.

  ‘But you never said,’ she protested weakly. ‘You…’

  ‘I didn’t what?’ Graham sounded angry and bitter. ‘Tell you that your precious husband threatened me with physical violence if I so much as laid a finger on you? What would you have done if I had? I wanted you, Jenna,’ he told her fiercely ‘… and tonight you let me think you wanted me too. There was no room in the things I wanted to say to you to talk about your husband.’

  Slowly, Jenna opened the door and walked down the steps. James had actually threatened Graham. She could hardly believe it. She let herself into her car and started the engine, dismayed to see that already it was gone twelve.

  She drove all the way home in a tense, numb state of shock. Her mouth she discovered when she touched her tongue to its aching contours was bruised from the violence of Graham’s kiss. She shuddered faintly at the memory of it. Well, she had had more than one shock tonight. If nothing else she had learned that what she felt about James, what he was able to arouse inside her, wasn’t something that could be magically conjured up by just any man.

  She stopped the car outside the house and started to tremble wildly as the truth burst upon her. She loved him. She loved James. No…She denied the thought even as it was born, but it refused to die. How could she love him? How could she not? a tiny derisive voice whispered. How could she not know that she loved him? Why else did she fight so hard and fiercely against him, if she was not motivated by fear, a fear that sprang from the deep inner knowledge that he threatened her indifference to his sex, that he made her feel all the things she had sworn she would never…ever feel?

  ‘Jenna!’

  The cool crispness of James’s voice as he strolled out of the house and towards the car acted on her sensitive nerve endings like a cruel lash. She recoiled from the sound of it almost visibly and in the light streaming out of the open door she saw his eyes narrow and harden as he observed first her recoil and then the swollen fullness of her lips.

  ‘So, the wanderer returns. Are you going to stay there all night or do you intend to come in?’

  His derisive tones lacerated her aching heart, unleashing a healing flood of anger. On shaking legs, she got out of the car and walked towards him. How dare he treat her like a child incapable of running her own life? How dare he tell Graham he wasn’t to see her again? And most of all how dare he make her fall in love with him?

  ‘I’m not a child, James,’ she told him curtly. ‘I am perfectly capable of running my own life. There was no need for you to wait up for me.’

  ‘I quite agree,’ came his bland reply. ‘I was just on my way back from an evening stroll.’ He stood aside to allow her to precede him into the house, and then Jenna headed straight for the stairs. She knew that he would have to stop to lock the front door and she fully intended that by the time he came upstairs, she would be fast asleep—in her own bed. She still had her own room, although James insisted on her sleeping with him. Well, tonight…

  In her heart of hearts, Jenna knew her actions were motivated more by cowardice than defiance. How could she sleep next to him and not betray to him how she felt about him? It would be an unbearable form of torture to be anywhere near him. And if he should…Her whole body shuddered at the mere thought of his touching her.

  Cursing the fact that there was no lock on her bedroom door, Jenna undressed rapidly, not bothering to hang up her dress, or take another shower. Quickly pulling her nightdress over her head, she slid beneath the sheets, switching off the bedside lamp as she did so. It was torture to lie there feigning sleep, trying to slow down the frantic thud of her heart, her ears listening for the slightest indication that James had come upstairs.

  When he did arrive, he was so quiet that she didn’t hear a sound until he pushed open the communicating door between their rooms. Lying tensely beneath the covers, she monitored his progress towards the bed. As he leaned over her to snap on the light, she could smell the male heat of his body. He was angry, she realised intuitively despite the calm indifference he was manifesting outwardly.

  ‘Did you have a pleasant evening?’

  Jenna swallowed nervously. So there was going to be no fiction allowed that she might be asleep. Without looking at him, she shrugged and said huskily, ‘It was okay…’

  ‘Only “okay”? Dear me, I shall have to see if I can improve on that, won’t I?’

  There was a wealth of menace in his voice as he reached for her, and Jenna tensed, trying to buy time by saying hoarsely, ‘I will not have you telling me who I may and may not have as friends, James, nor will I have you threatening those people who are my friends.’

  ‘So…’ He sounded more indifferent than perturbed. ‘He told you that, did he?’

  His hands wrenched away the bedclothes with a muted violence that made her nerve endings ache, and then fastened on her shoulders, lifting her round so that he could look at her.

  His eyes rested briefly on hers and then lingered on her mouth. It felt sore and tender and Jenna had to fight the impulse to touch her tongue to its bruised contours.

  She heard James make a savage sound beneath his breath and then his mouth was on hers, grinding her sore lips back against her teeth, savaging, brutalising, punishing, she recognised wildly, as she struggled to push him away from her, knowing as she did so that despite what he was doing to her, she was experiencing none of the terror she had felt in Graham’s arms. She felt humiliation and pain, yes…anger too…but strangely, no fear.

  At last he released her throbbing mouth, his eyes glinting fiercely blue as he stared at her.

  ‘You hurt me…’ Her fingers touched her sore mouth.

  ‘Damn you, do you think I don’t know that?’ His fingers cupped her face, forcing her to look at him. ‘Did you let him make love to you, Jenna? Did you? Or was this…’ his thumb touched her bruised mouth, ‘as far as he got?’

  ‘We didn’t make love.’ She stared back at him defiantly, loathing him for his dominance of her, for his ability to make her ache for his possession even when he was ill-treating her. She hated him for all the things he made her realise about herself that she had never previously known, for making her aware of woman’s infinite capacity to respond to man in all his many moods, both cruel and kind, and she hated herself even more. And because of that she lied to him, adding huskily, ‘But I wanted to.’

  The words seemed to drop into a bottomless abyss and hang there echoing into the taut silence.

  ‘Well, then, so you shall.’

  She shivered beneath the silvered menace of his voice, wanting to call back the lie, but forbidden by her pride to do so. ‘And this time, Jenna,’ he added with soft surety, ‘I promise you, you will know who I am.’

  He hadn’t forgiven her for telling him about her dream lover. Jenna knew that. She wished now she hadn’t been so stupid as to come to bed. She would have been safer downstairs. Now…she gulped nervously.

  There wasn’t any way she could avoid the grip he had on her waist. Instinctively she wanted to fight him, but just as instinctively she sensed that was exactly what he wanted her to do and that if she did he would take great pleasure in physically subduing her. As though he read her mind, he laughed savagely, and whispered tauntingly, ‘Yes, struggle if you want to, Jenna! I can’t tell you what it does to me to hear those delicious panting cries you make when you try to pretend that I don’t arouse you.’

  He didn’t have to tell her, Jenna already knew, and she was instantly horrified by the way her body responded to the mental pictures he was drawing. She loved him and she hated herself for it. How could she love a man who treated her in this way? Who used her as a sexual
convenience, who derived pleasure from tantalising her?

  She felt one of his hands move from her waist to the strap of her nightdress and forced herself to lie still as he slid it from her shoulder. The fragile fabric fell away to reveal the creamy curve of her breast. A feverish, nerve-racking tension possessed her. She wanted to lie still to remain outwardly, at least, completely unmoved by his sadistic torture, but as always her body betrayed her and as she felt him move she twisted desperately away, hating the soft laughter she could see lifting his chest.

  ‘Ah, that’s more like my firebrand of a wife.’

  ‘I don’t want you. Go away!’

  Jenna was not really surprised when he laughed, but what did surprise her was the harshness of that sound, where she had expected to hear either amusement or contempt. He must know how pathetically defiant a lie it was but instead of deriding her he only said softly, ‘But you will, Jenna, I promise you that. You will want me…and when you do, then you can tell me to go away.’

  He bent his head, his mouth caressing not, as she had expected, the tip of her exposed breast but the sensitive skin of her throat, her shoulders, the tender flesh on the inside of her arm, the valley between her breasts. Each delicately light movement of his mouth was a delicious form of torment which very quickly became less delicious and more of a refined form of torture. Her body throbbed and ached with the need that only he seemed to be able to conjure up in it.

  When he stopped kissing her and raised his head to look into her eyes and demand, ‘Undress me, Jenna,’ her pride revolted and she turned her head away in mute denial of his command. Only she knew just how much she longed to reach out and embrace him, desperately trying to deny the fiery need swiftly consuming her. It was like trying to hold back the tide and even her teeth seemed to ache with the tension she was imposing upon her body.

  James’s mouth was caressing her throat again now; the delicate skin beneath her ear, her cheek, the eyelids, and then when she thought she would die from the agony of his slow torment, his mouth brushed her own. Pleasure surged through her only to be arrested as the brief contact was broken almost before she had been able to enjoy it. Again and again his mouth tormented her in the same way, until she was frantic, mindless with a need that blotted out everything else.