by Penny Jordan
‘I’m not sleeping in this room with you!’ Lisa protested fiercely, her eyes going to the bed. His clothes had been removed. Where had he put them? Back into the wardrobe? ‘There was nothing in our arrangement about this, Rorke.’
‘Oh, come on,’ he drawled cynically. ‘Think what you’re getting out of all this, Lisa. Is it so much to ask? That you simply allow my father to believe we’re idyllically happy together? Just think of what you’re getting in return. Security for you and for Robbie. It’s a damn sight more than either of you got from his father!’
The sound of her open palm against his face shocked her. She hadn’t meant to hit him, but somehow it had been the only way to alleviate the rage boiling up inside her.
‘Bitch!’ Rorke muttered thickly, touching the place where her hand had left a scarlet imprint against his skin. ‘What’s the matter, Lisa, don’t you like being reminded of Peters? I should have thought his son was a constant reminder.’
‘Robbie is your son!’ Lisa hurled at him. ‘Are you blind? Can’t you see that he’s the image of you? Everyone else can.’
‘Everyone else sees what they want to see, but I know the truth. And don’t tell me again that I made love to you on board Lady…’
‘Why not?’ Lisa demanded bitterly. ‘It’s the truth,’ suddenly too enraged to want to protect him any longer.
‘It can’t be. I promised myself I wouldn’t touch you until we were married, I…’
‘You were suffering from concussion, although I didn’t realise it properly, and you did make love to me, Rorke.’
‘No!’ He was breathing heavily, his eyes glittering with a mixture of emotions, and not for the first time Lisa realised how bitterly he would have fought against possessing her before they were married. Although she hadn’t realised it at the time, he had kept a tight rein on his feelings. That night in St Lucia had been the first time she had realised he wanted her. He had had no intentions of making love to her; they had even had separate cabins, but somehow his accident had caused him to push aside his self-imposed restraint and he had possessed her—fiercely and intensely, Lisa remembered, almost frightening her with the depth of his passion. Was that why he refused to remember what had happened between them? Wouldn’t his mind allow him to acknowledge that he had weakened; had done what he had sworn not to? She sighed.
‘Admit it, Lisa,’ he said huskily. ‘Admit that I never touched you that night.’
‘Why?’ she demanded tautly. ‘Why should I?’
‘Because every time you throw it at me, it’s a physical torment. I can’t believe that I could touch you and not remember… I can’t believe that…’
‘That’s your problem, not mine, Rorke,’ Lisa taunted him. She was enjoying getting under his skin, enjoying the tension building up inside him. Was he actually beginning to doubt himself? If so she was glad. Let him suffer as she had suffered!
‘And anyway, if you really believe you never touched me why did you let Leigh acknowledge Robbie as his grandson?’
‘Just what the hell are you trying to imply?’
His fingers dug into her shoulders and she cried out in protest, but he refused to set her free. ‘Robbie isn’t my child, Lisa, but perhaps I’d be a fool not to take what I can from this damnable situation and make sure the next one is.’
‘No!’
The denial was torn from a dry throat. Lisa tried to pull away from him, but his fingers bit cruelly into her tender skin. ‘No, Rorke,’ she protested, reading the intent in his eyes. ‘You said you wouldn’t touch me…’
‘Ah, but you want me too, Lisa.’
It was said so dulcetly that at first she thought she must have misheard him, but his fingers were already sliding under the straps of her dress, easing it from her shoulders. The single lamp cast mellow shadows across her skin, and Lisa felt Rorke expel his breath slowly, as he bent his head and touched his lips to the smooth skin of her shoulder.
Her pulses raced frantically, the effort of containing her breathing to even calmness torturing her aching lungs. Whatever happened she mustn’t let Rorke see how he affected her. She kept perfectly still as his lips moved tormentingly across her skin. She felt him reach behind her, the musky, male scent of his body enveloping her as he found her zipper and slid it down. She wasn’t going to plead with him. That was what he wanted. He wanted her to beg him to stop, but she wasn’t going to. Her stomach muscles ached with the effort of fighting down the sensations spreading through her. Her arms were rigid at her sides, and she could feel her dress slipping downwards. Rorke’s fingers caressed her spine, tracing the vertebrae and sending shivers of pleasure coursing through her. She could feel the silkiness of his shirt against her breasts and felt a primitive longing for the intimate caress of flesh against flesh.
‘You’re a very desirable woman, Lisa,’ Rorke murmured into her throat, ‘far more desirable now than you were at seventeen. There’s an allure about you, curiously at odds with your maternal state, an almost virginal aloofness. It must drive your lovers wild to possess you, to make you ache with the need that consumes them.’
Lisa shivered with the intimacy of his words; the pictures unwillingly conjured up by her feverish mind. Rorke had been her only lover and already she yearned for his touch.
‘Why aren’t you touching me, Lisa?’ he murmured against her skin. ‘I know you want to.’
‘I don’t,’ she protested, forced to make the curt denial, but his hands were already cupping her breasts, his thumbs stroking tauntingly over the aroused nipples. Her flesh seemed to swell at his touch, wantonly seeking his possession, no matter how much she tried to shrink away.
‘Liar,’ he drawled sardonically, looking down into her eyes. ‘Perhaps the most effective punishment for your crimes would be for me to arouse in you the need you once aroused in me, Lisa. For you to endure the agonising ache of wanting that eats into you, never allowing you a moment’s peace. Have you ever wanted anyone like that?’
She said nothing. He was the only man she had ever wanted, but it had been an adolescent’s wanting. After Robbie’s birth she had closed her heart and mind against physical desire. She had Robbie to worry about, and he filled her life. She wanted to plead with Rorke to set her free, not to subject her to such humiliation, but deep down inside her she recognised that there was a need in him to punish her as he had described. Perhaps he had never stopped resenting the fact that he wanted her; even though it was now in the past. Perhaps the very fact that he had once done so was a permanent scar on his pride.
He moved and her dress slithered to the floor, leaving her dressed only in black silk French knickers and her silk stockings and suspender belt. Her embarrassment was as unfeigned as Rorke’s very obvious and totally masculine appreciation.
‘You have changed, Lisa,’ he remarked softly. ‘At seventeen you wouldn’t have had anything like that in your wardrobe, never mind worn it. Once I thought I was going to be the man who taught you how to give and take pleasure, but obviously I was wrong. However, someone has taught you, and I’m most appreciative.’
Tension locked her throat. He might say he was appreciative, but he certainly didn’t sound it, nor after that one illuminating glance did he look it. In fact he looked furiously angry, and Lisa was angry too. It was an insult to suggest that she had dressed with deliberate sensuality. She had simply worn the underclothes she always wore under that particular dress. At home she might have worn tights, here she had worn stockings simply because they were cooler; but something told her that even if she explained to him Rorke wouldn’t believe her.
His hands moved to her hips and she stiffened as she felt the warmth of his fingers against her skin, deftly removing her stockings. He picked her up as easily as he might have done Robbie, carrying her over to the bed and placing her on it, trapping her against the coverlet with his arms either side of her body. She knew that he was going to kiss her and she told herself that she could resist him, but the kisses she remembered had been tempered
She strained upwards automatically to meet the pressure of his kiss, barely aware of the fact that he was slowly drawing away from her, forcing her to cling urgently to him to prolong the kiss.
She felt the bed give way as he joined her on it, quivering under the sensual stroke of his fingers over her hips and across her stomach before he untied the silk ribbon fastening of her French knickers. Lisa stared at him helplessly as he removed the last barrier of her clothing, shivering as his fingers curled round her ankle, to stroke slowly upwards, caressing the long curve of her thigh. An explosive tension built up inside her, sensations she could barely remember springing to life. Had she felt like this that first time? Had she experienced that same wanton need to touch his body as he was touching hers? This was what he wanted, she acknowledged as a hot tide of desire flooded through her. He wanted her to feel like this, to want him. His lips caressed her throat and she moaned softly with pleasure, the last tautly straining vestiges of control snapping under his skilled assault on her senses. No longer caring what he might think, she buried her hot face against his skin, letting her lips taste the warm saltiness of his flesh, barely aware of the fact that he was shrugging out of his shirt with muttered impatience, until she felt the burning warmth of his chest against the aroused sensitivity of her breasts.
His lips stroked slowly over her throat, encouraged on their downward path by the instinctive arching of her body. Her heartbeat thudded like jungle drums as Rorke lifted her towards him, his tongue and lips teasing first one erect nipple and then the other, as Lisa pressed herself against him in a frenzy of need, brief, inarticulate murmurs of pleasure escaping her lips, her fingers locking in his hair, trying to prolong the pleasure he was giving her. It no longer mattered that she was betraying to him how much she wanted him; she was past caring what she betrayed. Her entire world was encapsulated in the sensations centred deep inside her, the age-old primitive need for possession; Rorke’s possession.
Her overheated flesh seemed to burn with longing for his touch. Lisa was barely aware of scattering wild kisses against his shoulders and throat as she clung to him, rapidly becoming aware that her desire wasn’t all one-sided. Rorke wanted her too, and no matter how much he might try to deny it his body betrayed him as hers did her.
She moaned softly, enjoying the pleasure of feeling the weight of his body on hers; the tautness of his thighs and his very evident desire.
‘I’ve wanted this for years, dreamed of it and ached for it,’ he muttered thickly as his hands investigated the curves of her hips. Her own need was a physical ache inside her, and Lisa couldn’t believe it when he slowly released her and got off the bed, her eyes betraying the emotions that quickened her sensitive flesh.
‘It hurts, doesn’t it, Lisa?’ he mocked her, crouching down beside her, and grasping her chin so that she was forced to look into his eyes. ‘Ah, yes, I can see it does. You want me, and we both know it.’ His fingers stroked lazily down the length of her body and she shivered and trembled visibly under the languid caress.
‘Well, I’m not going to torment you as you tormented me, Lisa. All you have to do is ask, that’s all.’
He was watching her with cruelty in his eyes, and she summoned every ounce of willpower she had to defy him. She wasn’t going to give in; she wasn’t going to pander to his massive ego, and she would tell him so.
‘Rorke.’
Strange how weak and shaky her voice sounded. Not at all as she had intended it to do.
‘Lisa,’ he mocked softly.
‘Rorke…’ She looked into his face and was suddenly overwhelmed by a flood of love and need that made her very bones ache. ‘Rorke, I want you—I need you.’ She heard herself crying like a child in pain, the sound of her own anguish tormenting her, so that tears filled her eyes and rolled helplessly down her cheeks, as she turned her head aside, expecting with every breath Rorke’s rejection and scorn. She knew he had moved away from the bed, and bitterly regretted her weakness. Why had she given in so easily? Because she loved him and some deeply primitive instinct urged her to capitulate so that they met on the only common ground they still had; their mutual desire. But obviously Rorke’s desire had been satisfied by her abasement. He no longer wanted her, her humiliation had all been for nothing, he… She tensed as she felt the warm brush of his mouth against her damp skin. Fresh tears flowed, and kept on flowing in soundless agony until Rorke stopped the flood with the kisses he placed against her closed lids.
‘Don’t cry, Lisa,’ he murmured against her skin. ‘Don’t cry, everything’s going to be all right.’ His hands were gentle on her skin. There was no haste, no urgency, and it came to Lisa on a sudden rush of knowledge that this was the wedding night they had never had. Her admission that she wanted him had, temporarily at least, satisfied the devils that drove him, and he was obviously prepared to be generous in victory.
‘You’re more beautiful than I ever imagined,’ he murmured huskily against her skin. ‘More perfectly feminine than I thought possible.’
He moved, and moonlight glinted over his body, and Lisa realised that he too was naked, his body as perfectly sculptured as she remembered. His hands left her body and she trembled, thinking that he meant to leave her now when her mind and body were at their most vulnerable with wanting him, but instead she felt the warmth of his lips against her instep gradually moving upwards, his hands and lips caressing her body until she thought she could no longer bear the waves of desire pounding through her. She shuddered helplessly beneath his touch, whispering pleas he would only ignore, apparently intent only on giving her the utmost pleasure—pleasure so intense it was almost a pain. The touch of his mouth against her thigh made her cry out with the exquisite agony of wanting him, her incoherent protests suddenly smothered beneath the pressure of his lips as his own need drove out his earlier gentleness and he held her against the length of his body, hard and urgent with desire, his kisses drowning out everything but the need he was feeding with his hands and his mouth.
‘Lisa, Lisa…’ he murmured her name like an incantation between kisses, parting her thighs almost roughly, possessing her mouth in a long deep kiss as his control snapped beneath the weight of his desire, and the savage imprecation he muttered beneath his breath was lost on the rising storm that swept them both.
It was nothing like it had been the first time. Surprisingly there was pain and she felt his stilled response to it; and then pain and every other consideration was swept aside in the swirling molten force clamouring for appeasement, and she remembered nothing except crying out Rorke’s name as she plunged with him into a deep pit of golden darkness. As she lay exhausted on the fringe of sleep she thought she heard Rorke murmur her name and she fought valiantly to respond—to assure him now, when surely he would believe her, that she was his and his alone. But the words slipped away before she could utter them.
* * *
What on earth was that noise? Someone was banging on the door. Lisa opened her eyes and fought for consciousness. Robbie—something was wrong with Robbie! But no, Robbie was there standing beside her, eyeing her with round-eyed disapproval.
‘You haven’t got any clothes on,’ he pronounced at last, adding, ‘and neither have you, Daddy.’
Daddy! Lisa froze. Rorke was in bed—with her? The events of the previous evening came flooding back. She couldn’t bear to look at Rorke. What on earth must he think of her, or was he enjoying his victory too much to think about her at all?
‘I suppose I’d better go and open that door.’ She felt the bed give as he got up, pulling on a towelling robe that had been lying on a chair. ‘Okay, okay,’ he called lazily as he found the key and unlocked the door. ‘What’s all the hurry?’
‘All the hurry be that this here coffee be getting cold,’ Mama Case scolded as she waddled into the room with a breakfast tray, her face breaking into a wide beam as she drew her own—and obvious—conclusions from the untidy disarray of the room and Lisa’s hot face.
‘No need to blush, honey,’ she chortled to Lisa. ‘You’m a married lady right enough, and you’ve got the marriage lines to prove it.’
‘What were you doing in bed with my mummy?’ Robbie demanded accusingly,
‘Mummies and daddies always share beds, honey chile,’ Mama Case told him with a grin, winking at Rorke. ‘I think it’s time we found this young man a room of his own somewheres.’
‘Oh no,’ Lisa protested instinctively. ‘He’s always shared with me…’
‘Then he’m gonna have to get used to not doing,’ Mama Case retorted firmly. ‘Especially when you’ve got another little one to attend to—’
She had forgotten how earthy the islanders could be, Lisa reflected as Robbie protested and came back to the bed, climbing on to it and snuggling up to her. She had never made a particular thing about concealing her body from Robbie, but then neither had she deliberately drawn attention to her nakedness. She wanted Robbie to accept the differences between male and female naturally, but believed that, as yet, he was far too young to do so. He was already reaching the stage where he sometimes preferred privacy when he was undressing, and Lisa had wisely respected this need. However, when he pulled aside the bedclothes and snuggled up to her, she made no attempt to stop him. Robbie often came into bed with her at weekends for a special cuddle, and although admittedly she was always wearing a nightgown, she sensed that to reject him now because she was not would be something he wouldn’t understand. Robbie was, after all, only a little boy, and yet the dark head against her breast was far too reminiscent of his father’s not to be disturbing, and as Robbie dislodged the sheet she was intensely aware of Rorke’s eyes on her body. Her muscles tensed in remembered desire as she trembled with the memory of her wanton response to him.
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