by Penny Jordan
Talking about Charles reminded her of her reluctance to accept his supper invitation, and that in turn made her angry and resentful of Jake, as though in some way it was his fault that she couldn’t will her emotions to allow her to do what she knew must be done.
‘Speaking of which,’ Jake intervened, ‘how come you aren’t with him now?’
Suspecting that he was in some way taunting her, Silver retaliated quickly.
‘I could have been… He wanted me to have supper with him…’
‘And you refused… Why?’
Silver tensed. ‘Why not? It won’t do any harm to keep him guessing a little…’
‘No… if that’s why you refused him.’ And then, suddenly and brutally, Jake came over to her, grasping hold of her wrists. Not amorously, as Charles had done, but grimly, as though he was about to shake her. And yet there was something about the cool, sure touch of his fingers against her skin that set her pulses racing in a way that Charles’s touch had not achieved.
‘Face it, Silver, you didn’t accept his invitation because you’re scared… scared of discovering that you’re not as indifferent to him as you’d like to think. You’re scared of wanting him… of loving him…’
The accusation, so very different from what she had expected and dreaded, stunned her. She almost laughed with the relief of it, but just in time she stopped herself.
‘And the reason you didn’t tell me about his involvement with the drugs scene wasn’t because you didn’t think it mattered, but because you wanted to protect him.’
He was wrong, more wrong than he knew, and it amazed her that a man she knew to be so intelligent should make such an erroneous judgement.
The reason she hadn’t told him had been because she had been afraid, all right… afraid that if Charles was by some mischance one of his targets, he would snatch away her own chance of retribution before she was able to fulfil her self-imposed task.
She wasn’t going to tell him that, though… let him think what he wished. He already knew far too much about her. That he should have discovered who she was…
He released her wrists and she stepped back from him, rubbing them not because they ached but because the sensation of his fingers circling them still lingered there, imprinted on her flesh, causing unwanted frissons of sensation, unwanted memories to flood her body.
She turned towards the door, and said huskily, ‘Well, now that you’ve said what you came to say, will you please leave?’
He was looking at her again, the odd, direct look that always had the power to unnerve her.
She ignored it and walked past him towards the door that led to the bedroom, saying curtly, ‘I’m tired, Jake. I’m going to bed.’
As she walked through the door away from him she heard the outer one closing. He had gone… she expelled a shaky sigh of relief.
The shock of coming back and discovering him here, and, worse, the shock of her own unwanted and dangerous reaction to the sight of him…
She made up her mind that when next Charles asked her out she would accept, and that moreover she would actively encourage whatever advances he chose to make to her.
Discarding the Lacroix dress as though it was something she had picked up from a car-boot sale, she went into her bathroom.
She was desperately tired physically; her body ached for sleep while her mind ran round and round in tiny, tormented circles. She had to punish Charles. She had to make him suffer… for her father’s sake if nothing else… and if, in the course of doing so, she herself suffered… She hardened her emotions against herself. She wasn’t important, not in this.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
JAKE waited ten minutes before letting himself back into the apartment, wondering as he did so why he was doing it. He already had the information he had come to get. Silver was not involved with her cousin in the drugs scene.
But she was concealing something from him, suppressing something.
His mouth hardened as he remembered her reaction to his accusation that she still desired Charles Fitzcarlton, and still loved him.
Did she really think he wouldn’t have guessed? By rights he ought to be in his own flat working out how best to infiltrate Charles Fitzcarlton’s life. He smiled grimly to himself; there was little point in asking for Silver’s help there.
He found his way to the sofa and sat down on it… Why was he doing this? There was no point.
The shower stopped running. A door opened and then closed. Silver had gone to bed.
To dream about her dear cousin Charles.
Silver was dreaming, but not about Charles. She was dreaming about her father… a dream she had had over and over again since his death and since her own realisation that Charles had probably killed him. The dream was always the same.
The three of them were alone on horseback, the landscape around them barren, bare, hostile almost. As they rode, her father and his horse started to draw away from Charles and herself, and as she watched him a terrible presentiment came over her… a feeling of tremendous fear for her father.
She tried to call out to him to warn him, but could make no sound; the terror was all around her, pressing down on her like a thick grey cloud. She turned to Charles to beg for his help, but he too was riding away from her and towards her father.
At first she was pleased, relieved, and the pressure of her fear lifted. Charles would reach her father and then he would be safe from the unknown danger she could sense plaguing him.
But when Charles started to catch up with her father her relief suddenly evaporated; the landscape grew dark as though stained with her own growing horror; fear and pain mingled inside her; she spurred on her own horse, hatred staring at her from his eyes.
She saw his arm lift, the blade of a knife glittering malevolently in his hand.
She heard herself scream, but the sound didn’t reach her father; Charles drew abreast of him and as she watched, helpless to stop him, Charles plunged his knife deep into her father’s heart.
She woke up, her body slick with sweat, her heart pounding. She ought to be used to the nightmare by now, she had dreamed it so often, but each time the fear and horror was as fresh as though she had never experienced it before. She shivered in the darkness as her skin grew chilled. The sound of her own screams still seemed to echo round the room. She had been awake only seconds, and when her bedroom door opened abruptly she said the first name that came into her mind, whispering it through a throat scraped raw.
‘No, not Charles,’ a familiar male voice told her, and as she stared into the darkness she saw Jake walk cautiously into the room.
Habit made her reach for the bedside light and snap it on. Jake was fully dressed, his hair tousled and untidy.
The draining intensity of her nightmare left her no resources to react to him, and all she could manage was a weak, ‘Jake… I thought you’d gone.’
‘Why did you scream?’ he asked her, ignoring the question in her voice. He had found his way over to the bed and was standing over her, staring down at her.
Oddly, in some confusing way she found his presence comforting; where she should have felt outrage and resentment, what she actually did feel was a sense of relief and security.
‘A nightmare,’ she told him unsteadily. ‘I’ve had it before…’
Although Jake couldn’t see her, he could hear the fear in her voice, and with it the dread and pain. Whatever she had been dreaming about had been no ordinary nightmare.
He sat down on the edge of her bed. He had been deeply asleep himself when he’d heard her scream. He hadn’t intended to fall asleep. But, somewhere between mulling over what she had told him and wondering if it was worthwhile staying and trying to make her see the danger she could be in if she persisted in what she was doing, the exhaustion he had been fighting off for days had overcome him.
As he sat down, Silver automatically drew up her knees and sat up, wrapping her arms around them.
The hours of wakefulness and angui
sh that normally followed her nightmare were even worse than the nightmare itself; the guilt of feeling somehow through her dreams that she had been the one responsible for her father’s death was almost impossible to bear. The long, dark hours of fruitless heart-searching were nonproductive and painful. Finding Jake here was like finding the safety of a solid barrier between her and that hopeless heart-searching. She didn’t stop to question why he was still in her apartment, nor what he might want from her, but said huskily, ‘Stay with me, Jake.’
Stay with her? He felt his muscles tighten against the shock of it. She smelled of the perfume he had bought for her; it clung to her skin as though it loved it.
Stay with her… the words had been those of a frightened child; for an instant she had reminded him almost unbearably of Justin… of Beth… of all those people who were vulnerable and in need.
This woman in need? He must be going soft in the head. He got up abruptly, clumsily almost, and Silver, her mind still clouded by the horror of her dreams, reached out to him almost desperately, her fingers clutching at his arm as she scrambled to the edge of the bed.
Her silk nightdress, the nightdress she had chosen for the woman she had decided she must be, did little to conceal her body; her hair, normally so elegantly restrained, tumbled wildly around her face on to her shoulders; but she felt no constraint, no awareness of any particular intimacy. After all, Jake couldn’t see her.
But he could smell her, taste her almost in the warmth of the scented air stirred up by their movements; and he could feel her, her body pressed up hard against his own as she shook his arm pleadingly.
Without doubt there was nothing in her anxiety that could be remotely described as provocative or sensual; and equally without doubt she was arousing him to the point where if he touched her now… He dared not even raise his arms to fend her off.
Instead all he could do was to use his voice, the voice she had heard issuing so many cool, dry, controlled commands over the days and nights she had spent with him.
‘Let me go, Silver…’
It froze her immediately, and then she started to tremble, panic overwhelming her. If Jake walked away from her now… left her with her fears, with the memory of that dream… with the knowledge that Charles had killed her father… that he might possibly also have tried to kill her… that he would certainly have destroyed her emotionally and mentally…
Her fear was like a dam threatening to burst its banks, a wild panic she couldn’t control, stronger than logic, than sanity, stronger even than pride; it carried her with it in the full force of its dangerous tide.
She shook so violently that Jake could feel the air between them vibrate with her tremors.
Logic fought with compassion and compassion won.
‘What is it?’ he asked softly. ‘What is it that makes you so afraid?’
So he recognised her fear. Silver breathed more easily, not questioning where she had gained the knowledge that the fear would ensure that he wouldn’t desert her.
‘Is it Charles?’ Jake pressed her angrily, waiting bitterly for her denial, but instead her body shook as though it were gripped by a deathly fever. He could even hear her teeth chattering together as she fought to control her reaction.
Unable to stop himself, Jake reached for her hand, monitoring the frantic pulse in her wrist.
‘If you fear him, why pursue this vendetta against him?’ he asked her. ‘He’s a dangerous man…’
Silver jerked back from him. She didn’t want to discuss Charles… she didn’t want Jake to start analysing her motivation all over again. If he did… she felt so vulnerable that she was terrified she might actually tell him the truth. Only she herself knew how great the temptation was to let him know… to let him lift the burden of responsibility from her shoulders… to let him tell her and convince her that it was not her fault that her father was dead… that it was not necessary for her to avenge that death.
The knowledge of her own weakness hit her like a sledgehammer, stunning her, terrifying her. It was a knowledge she didn’t want… it weakened her too much.
‘Put the past behind you, Silver. Let it die.’
The roughness in his voice startled her, it was unfamiliar, cloaking something that was almost tenderness.
‘I can’t,’ she told him in despair. ‘I can’t… He…’
‘He what?’ Jake demanded angrily. ‘Hurt you… betrayed you? Forget that—there’ll be other men… other loves…’
‘No…’
Both of them tensed.
‘I don’t want that,’ she told him thickly, and her body slumped slightly as she withdrew from him. She had been a fool to think even for a moment that Jake might offer her comfort… compassion… caring. He was here for only one purpose, and that was to find out how much she knew about Charles’s involvement with drugs… And, unlike her, Jake was able to remain aloof, withdrawn and remote… Unlike her, he could concentrate fully on his own goals.
‘Go, then, if you must,’ she told him tiredly. The fear was still there, lying in wait for her, and the moment he was gone it would rear up and threaten her, but she hadn’t the spirit tonight to argue with him, to hold him at bay.
Something in her weary air of defeat reached out to him. If he had any sense at all, he would go right now, but illogically he heard himself saying, ‘For what’s left of the night it hardly seems worth it. I might as well stay here.’
Not for the first time, Silver was glad he couldn’t see her face. She knew it must mirror her shock… and her relief.
He stared to move towards the door.
‘I’ll sleep in your spare room, though, if you don’t mind; those settees of yours aren’t long enough.’
‘No… No, not there. I want you to stay here with me.’
The shock of it jolted through him. He tried to measure the silence to guess if it was all simply some fantastic, childish game of revenge, but her voice had held only fear and sincerity.
Even so…
‘What as?’ he questioned her coolly. ‘A barrier against your nightmares or a substitute for your nightmare lover?’
So he had guessed her dreams had been about Charles. She shivered a little and then realised what he was saying.
‘I don’t want you to make love to me, Jake,’ she told him angrily, and then, when he remained silent, she tilted her chin and added fiercely, ‘And if I did, I’d tell you… not pretend to be afraid so that—–’
‘All right, you’ve made your point.’ He sounded almost weary, and the tension eased out of her. ‘Move over, then,’ he told her laconically, when he reached the side of the bed.
Automatically she moved away from the side she knew he preferred, turning on to her side so that she wouldn’t be facing him, but she couldn’t relax totally until she heard him undress and felt the bed dip under his weight and knew that he was beside her.
As she snapped off the light, the feeling inside her was one of relief. Now that Jake was here she could go to sleep in safety, knowing that she wouldn’t dream.
Only she couldn’t. And not because her thoughts were full of Charles, either.
It was Jake himself who made it impossible for her to sleep. When she had told him that she didn’t want his services as a lover she had meant it, but now, with the hard, warm weight of him lying against her back, with the knowledge imprinting itself on her body that he was naked, with the awareness of him which she seemed to have absorbed along with everything else he had taught her, she found it impossible to stop thinking about him. And her thoughts were not the ones she might have expected to have had either.
They were rebellious, erotic, and dangerous. And, while she knew that all she had to do was to move away from him to cease being so tormentingly aware of him, she didn’t do it.
She had thought she was alone in her self-induced torment, until Jake said quietly, ‘I’ll acquit you of doing it deliberately, Silver, but will you please stop moving against me like that? I’m not made of stone, you k
now.’
She tensed immediately, her body absorbing what he was telling her with a curious and highly explosive pleasure. She wanted Jake to desire her. The knowledge shocked her, confused her and, once admitted, would not go away.
Heedlessly, wantonly, she turned over, absorbing the pleasurable heat of him against her breasts and belly as she pressed against his back, her hand on his arm as she said quickly, before she could lose her courage, ‘Jake, I’ve changed my mind. I do want you to make love to me.’
He turned round, not to reach out to her, but to grip her arms and push her away, but she was being driven by a recklessness that refused to accept any check or rejection, as though once she had admitted to her own physical desire for him there was no longer any point in concealing either from him or from herself exactly how intense that desire was.
Before he could move away from her, her hands splayed out against his chest, her mouth open and hot as it eagerly caressed the hard column of his throat.
Ignoring the grim pressure on the fingers he had tightened round her skin, she closed the gap between them, her body against his at once both a caress and an invitation, her mouth inciting and cajoling.
It was as though all the skills he had fought so hard to teach her had suddenly taken on a life-force of their own, so that every muscle moved in liquid song to the ancient rhythm his own body recognised.
‘Make love to me, Jake.’
She whispered the words into his mouth, biting into his bottom lip, letting the straps of her nightdress slide down her arms so that they brushed against his knuckles, just as her nearly exposed breasts brushed against his chest.
She felt no hesitation… no doubts… no shame.
If she was wanton, sensual and eager, well, then, she was only what he himself had taught her to be; the pleasure craved by her flesh was only the pleasure he had taught it to need.
