Stronger than Yearning

by Penny Jordan

  This time when his mouth brushed hers, she clung fiercely to him winding her fingers into his hair, holding his mouth against her own, kissing him with an intensity she couldn’t begin to hide. Beneath his palm her heart thudded erratically, and she ached to be rid of the constraining layers of clothes.

  This time the command he repeated against her mouth acted upon her as though it was something she had been programmed to obey. Like a sleepwalker she reached out to unfasten the buttons on his shirt, shuddering in mute pleasure as her fingertips touched his skin. A surge of heat flooded over her skin and she felt her tenuous self-control slip. Against the screaming command of her brain she pressed her lips to the male flesh exposed by her hands. Propping his head up on one hand James watched her, but Jenna was barely aware of his scrutiny. She reached the final button on his shirt and pushed the fabric off his shoulders an aching mixture of pleasure and pain swelling inside her body. She found the buckle of his belt and unfastened it, her fingers trembling slightly as she slid down his zip. His body hardened immediately beneath her hand, distracting her from her task, making her long to stop and caress him, her own flesh aching in acknowledgement of his desire.

  He waited until she had removed the rest of his clothes and then reached for her, tumbling her on to the bed, impatiently pulling off her nightdress to expose her body to his ardent gaze. Jenna trembled beneath the look he gave her, her breathing shallow and rapid.

  ‘You want me.’ He murmured the words against her mouth, adding, ‘Tell me, Jenna…tell me you want me…’

  She didn’t want to obey him. Her body quivered and tensed as she fought to keep the admission locked up inside her, but James was trailing his fingers down over her treacherous skin, stroking the full swollenness of her breasts, teasing their erect crests until she was dizzy, almost mindless with the white hot burning ocean of need pulsing madly inside her.

  She reached blindly towards him, trapping his hand against her breast pressing her mouth eagerly to the brown flesh of his throat, revelling in the sensation of his muscles contracting beneath her touch, in the knowledge that the sound he smothered deep in his throat was an admission of a need nearly as great as her own. Her body seemed to melt against him, at once soothed and stimulated by the hot pressure of his flesh against hers; by the urgency of his muttered command that she tell him she wanted him.

  Suddenly her frail self-control splintered completely; it no longer seemed important that he was once again intent on dominating her, on humiliating her, all that did matter was the glorious, mysterious height they could and would reach together.

  ‘I want you…I want you, James…’ She whispered the husky admission against his skin, teasing it with hot, brief kisses, letting her hand stoke downwards over the taut plane of his stomach, feeling his muscles clench beneath her stroking fingers. Her breasts were heavy, aching with desire.

  ‘Show me…show me how much you want me.’ James muttered the words into her throat, his mouth burning into her skin, his hand covering hers on its downward trail against his body and placing it against the pulsing heat of his manhood. She felt the shudder convulse his body as she caressed him; sweat springing up on his skin, his tortured groan of pleasure reverberating against her own throat as his mouth touched it.

  She arched against him, shivering as her breasts brushed against his chest, sighing her pleasure when his hands closed round them and he slowly lowered himself so that his head rested against their fullness.

  Her heart thudding with tormented anticipation Jenna closed her eyes and shivered in agonised delight as his mouth searched for and then found the aching crest of her breast. The deliberately erotic drag of his teeth against her too sensitive flesh made her cry out and arch pleadingly against him, driven to incite and then welcome the faintly savage movement of his mouth and hands against her skin.

  This was complete ravishment, she thought hazily, complete abandonment to the lure and spell of the senses. This was heaven and it was also hell: this tight, coiling ache inside her that made her cry out in hungry relief as James’s hand slipped between her thighs, his fingers skilled and knowing as they stroked and caressed, making her writhe and twist in an agony of delight.

  ‘You want me?’

  The persistent whisper seemed to fill her body, rendering her weightless and mindless, leaving her only with the savage gnawing hunger of her flesh.

  Taking a shuddering breath she admitted hopelessly, ‘I want you, James…I want you so much…and now…’

  The feel of him inside her made her groan in tormented pleasure her head falling back against the pillows as his hands slid beneath her hips lifting her, cradling her as her legs wrapped around him and she welcomed each pulsing thrust of his body within her own.

  As always the climax was explosive and destructive, leaving her completely drained…too exhausted even to think of moving. And as always the physical satisfaction he had given her was tainted by the knowledge of how it had been gained. As always, she hated herself for wanting him to such an extent that in his arms she was prepared to barter everything just to gain it.

  As he withdrew from her she curled up into a defensive ball, willing him to go to his own room, but instead of leaving, he leaned over her, grasping her face in his hand and demanded savagely, ‘Now tell me that you wanted Wilde, Jenna.’

  All at once her control shattered. Tears spurted weakly from her eyes and she pulled away from him. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ she demanded huskily. ‘Why?’

  She heard him laugh harshly as he moved away from her. ‘If you’re not woman enough to know, there isn’t much point in my telling you.’

  He meant that he was motivated simply by physical desire, she thought dully. And, no doubt, male-like he resented her refusal to admit that his desire kindled her own. Now at last she knew why she had always been on edge with him, so determined to hold him at bay…It was because all along she had sensed how attracted she was to him; how dangerously ready to fall in love with him. That antagonism that had prickled within her at their first meeting had held more than a sharp edge of desire, but she had not wanted to admit it. Her dream, if she was honest with herself, had not been about the man in the portrait, but about James. Pure fantasy stuff. Her sleeping mind’s way of trying to show her what she really wanted. She was just on the point of sliding into an exhausted sleep when she felt James move.

  No doubt he was going back to his own bed. She closed her eyes determined not to watch him go, and then gasped as she felt him lift her.

  Cradled against his chest she glowered furiously at him. ‘Just what do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded.

  ‘Taking you to where you belong,’ he told her softly. ‘My bed…’

  A terrible weakness assailed her. There was nothing she wanted more right now than to go to sleep in James’s arms. More tears stormed the back of her throat but she suppressed them. Why weep for what she could not have? Surely she had learned the futility of that long ago? James would never love her.

  The enormity of what she had committed herself to tormented her dreams. She saw the years ahead of her, loveless, empty years when she would have James’s love-making for just as long as it took him to grow bored with her and then what? What would happen when the girls were grown and he had no further use for her? But of course, she was forgetting the main reason he had married her. She was forgetting the old Hall. And then Jenna knew that as much as the house meant to her it was not all-important. She would give it up, and willingly, to escape from the torture of being James’s unwanted wife. In her sleep she turned away from him and curled up into a tight defensive ball, completely unaware of the fact that he was awake and watching her, a brooding bitterness darkening his eyes as his gaze slid over her hunched shoulders.

  He reached out and touched her, caressing the exposed curve of her shoulder, his voice wryly bitter as he murmured, ‘So, even in sleep you reject me, Jenna. I wonder what it would take to make you turn gladly into my arms for once.’ His mou
th compressed and he moved away from her, lying on his back with his hands locked behind his head, lost in the pain of his own thoughts.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ‘JENNA, Lucy tells me that you’ve forbidden her to go to a friend’s party this weekend.’

  Jenna looked away from James and into the fire. They had started lighting it in the evenings only a week ago when September drifted out into a cold October. Or did she simply feel so cold because of the empty wasteland that was her life, Jenna wondered soberly.

  James seemed to be spending more and more time in London, coming home only at weekends. Sarah and Lucy were both busy with their own lives, Lucy at her new day school, and Sarah with the promise of art school to lure her to spend most of her spare time poring over either her books or at her easel.

  ‘Jenna?’

  The sharp note of disapproval in James’s voice hurt her, but she wasn’t going to let him see it. She had not been quite certain what to do when Lucy came home and told her that she had been invited to a party at a schoolfriend’s home, especially when she had learned that the girl’s parents would be away from home that weekend. The spectre of what had happened to Rachel still haunted her, and while she knew that she could not keep Lucy a girl for ever, she wanted to protect her for as long as she could.

  It pained her that Lucy had not accepted her embargo on the party but had gone to James instead. She had been getting on so much better with Lucy recently, and now it seemed she had spoiled it all. An irrational surge of jealousy against James prompted her to say bitterly, ‘Yes, I heard you, James, but you seem to forget that you are not Lucy’s father.’

  She got up from the dinner table as she spoke and went over to the fire, bending to put another log on it. It had been raining all day and outside the trees dripped monotonously. It was also windy and cold, the weather echoing her own inner despair. James had only been home a matter of hours, having arrived just in time for dinner. How long would it be before he started making excuses not to come home at all, but stayed in London over the weekend as well? Before they were married he had stated his intention of doing most of his work from the Hall, but now he seemed to have changed his mind. He took so little interest in the house that Jenna sometimes wondered why he had ever wanted it.

  But she knew the answer to that of course. Did owning the property that had once belonged to the man who had so wronged his mother ease any of his anguish? It was not a question she could ask him. They were like two strangers forced to live in close proximity to one another, and Jenna did not know how she could bear it for much longer. James no longer even seemed to desire her. The last time he had made love to her had been the night she had been out with Graham.

  She hadn’t seen Graham since that night, nor did she want to. She paced restlessly round the room, wishing she could find the courage to tell James that she wanted their marriage to come to an end. She could not endure the slow torment of living with him, of loving him and of knowing that he felt nothing for her in return. It was slowly destroying her. Now that she no longer had her resentment of him to buoy her up she sometimes felt as though her life had totally disintegrated.

  She heard his chair scrape back as he stood up, but didn’t bother to turn to look at him, and was therefore startled when he drawled bitingly, ‘No, Jenna, I am not Lucy’s father, but by the same token you are not her mother.’

  For one disbelieving moment Jenna thought she must be imagining things. She stared at James, forgetting her resolution not to look at him, her mouth opening slightly. In those early days of their marriage she had tensed herself against a remark of this kind, sure that he must know that he was her first and only lover, and then when no such remark had ever been forthcoming, she had surmised that James must not, after all, have been aware of her virginity and that her belief that he was had sprung only from her own fear of discovery. Therefore, it came as a double shock now to discover that he had known all along, and, moreover, that he had kept that knowledge to himself.

  ‘I…You…’

  He let her struggle for a few seconds and then said sardonically, ‘I shouldn’t bother trying to lie about it if I were you, Jenna. Surely you can’t really believe I don’t know a virgin when I make love to one?’

  All the breath seemed to have been squeezed out of her lungs. It was actually physically painful to try to drag air into them. A roaring sense of despair engulfed her, followed by an intense surge of anger. ‘If you knew, then why didn’t you say something before now? Or were you keeping it in reserve, as an alternative means of torture once the novelty of making me submit to your love-making had waned?’ she demanded savagely.

  She saw his mouth compress and knew instantly she had pushed him too far.

  ‘Submit?’ He said the word slowly as though tasting it. ‘What a very odd memory you have, my dear. Or perhaps it’s your understanding of the English language that is at fault?’ His voice was liquid soft with menace and contempt, and Jenna felt herself go hot all over as she remembered her wanton response to him the last time they had made love.

  ‘Quite so.’ His mouth was twisted and for a second it seemed as though there was something more than mere bitterness in his eyes as they met hers, but before Jenna could define his expression he had looked away and then at last he answered her original question, his voice stripped of all emotion as he said coolly, ‘As to why I said nothing, I could well ask you that same question, couldn’t I?’

  When she remained stubbornly silent, he added bitingly, ‘I know exactly whose child Lucy is, Jenna. She’s your sister’s. It was all there in the records, Lucy is registered as your sister’s child, father unknown…’

  He turned his back on her, his voice suddenly savage with anger and something else she couldn’t name as he demanded bitingly, ‘Did you really think I would not know she could not possibly be yours?’

  ‘But you said nothing,’ Jenna said stupidly, hating him suddenly for the torment she had endured in the early days of their marriage, waiting for him to denounce her, and then her feeling of relief when she thought he must not know. How she had deluded herself!

  He swung round, his eyes dark, glittering with an anger almost as intense as her own. ‘Perhaps I was waiting for you to tell me!’

  Her eyes betrayed her shock, and he laughed harshly. ‘But no, of course, that would never occur to you would it? I would be the last person you would confide in, even though a simpleton could have realised the truth. Or do you really think me so crass a lover that I did not know? Is that it, Jenna?’

  He had wanted her to tell him about Lucy? Jenna could not understand why. Surely it was enough that he knew the truth. And how had he intended to use that truth? As a weapon to force her to give up her claim to the Hall.

  ‘I have known whose child Lucy is almost from the moment we returned from the Caribbean,’ he told her softly, ‘and all that time, my dear wife, I have waited for you to tell me the truth yourself.’ This time there was no mistaking the irony in his voice. ‘I have waited…and still continue to wait.’

  ‘But why?’

  The words burst from her before she could check them, and it seemed so incredible that she should actually see pain and bitterness reflected in his eyes that she was sure she must have imagined them.

  ‘Perhaps as a gesture of trust?’ His lips twisted slightly.

  Her mouth had gone completely dry, a nagging, haunting pain making her chest ache for something elusive and lost. Concealing her expression from him, she asked thickly, ‘Why should you want my trust?’

  She thought she heard him sigh as he murmured softly, ‘Why indeed?’ and then his voice hardened as he said in a more normal tone, ‘But if I can’t have your trust, then at least I shall have the truth.’

  His cool control, the purposeful determination she read in his eyes, and the hard grimness of his mouth combined to arouse inside Jenna an even deeper fear. She wanted to run from the room and hide herself from him. She felt as though she were being forced to face ever
y menacing, hideous monster that had ever lurked in her nightmares, as though she were standing in the path of some primeval force of destruction from which she could not escape.

  Goaded beyond endurance her self-control snapped and she cried out, ‘What is it you want to know? How my sister was raped by Charles Deveril? Is that what you want me to tell you? How she was abused and humiliated by the same man who humiliated your own mother? Is that what you want me to tell you, James? She was eighteen, that was all…only a girl, but because of that family she died. We came here to see Sir Alan…’ Her voice was high and tight with hysteria now, James really forgotten, as she was sucked back into the past, reliving the terror and pain of those months before Rachel’s death.

  ‘Everyone liked her, you know. She wasn’t like me, she was soft and gentle. I came here with her, but Sir Alan virtually threw us out. He threatened Rachel, told her that no one would ever believe her story, that they’d say that she had encouraged his son to abuse her, but it wasn’t like that. I know…Rachel would never…’ She caught back a bitter sob, her eyes wide and dark as they looked past the man standing watching her, not seeing him, instead seeing her sister’s pale face and swollen body.

  ‘She wouldn’t let me tell anyone. She was too frightened. I was frightened too. I was there when she went into labour…I went with her to the hospital…I could hear her screaming…’ Her voice dropped, her body shuddering with remembered agony. ‘I wanted to go to her, but they wouldn’t let me…’

  Her eyes focused abruptly and she saw that James was standing immediately in front of her, his face pale, the bones beneath the skin harshly delineated.

  ‘Do you know what it was like…?’ She was virtually screaming the words at him. ‘Can you imagine what I felt like to have to stand there and hear my sister scream in mortal agony? My sister, who never did anything to hurt anyone…who was so gentle and good…’