by Helen Brooks
She pressed against his hardness, feeling his shudder of pleasure with fierce satisfaction that she could induce such desire in him. Bending, he scooped her up into his arms and walked through to the bedroom, laying her on the soft quilted bedspread with exquisite gentleness as he murmured endearments against her feverish skin.
He undressed her slowly, savouring each second and admiring her with his eyes, his hands, his mouth until she was stretched out naked in front of him. As she reached out to do the same for him they heard a knock on the outer door. ‘The champagne.’ Jay smiled at her, kissing her deeply before he said, ‘I’ll see to it. Pull the covers over yourself if you’re cold.’
As he closed the bedroom door behind him Miriam did just that, not because she was chilled—the room was as warm as toast—but with Jay fully clothed she felt suddenly shy. She heard him speak to someone and then the sound of the door closing again before he re-entered the bedroom, pushing a food trolley. It held champagne nestling in an ice bucket, along with two flutes, an enormous bowl of fat red strawberries and a plate of luscious handmade chocolates. ‘They think of everything.’ He smiled at her as he poured two glasses of champagne and brought them over to the bed, handing her one as he sat down beside her. ‘To an afternoon of wicked satisfaction.’
Miriam drank deeply. The brief interlude had brought home the fact she was here, in a hotel room with Jay on a Monday lunchtime when the rest of the world was getting on with the nine-to-five grind. She should feel guilty and ashamed of herself—there were all sorts of things to see to this afternoon. ‘I need to phone the office and explain,’ she said quickly, knowing once he touched her again coherent thought would go out of the window.
Silently Jay handed her the phone and sipped his champagne as he listened to her explain she wasn’t as well as she’d thought and would need the rest of the day off after all to fully recover. As she finished the call he slid off the bed and fetched the bowl of strawberries, throwing himself down beside her and lazily offering her one of the juicy red fruits as he murmured, ‘Your medication, ma’am.’
She bit into the luscious sweetness as he held the strawberry to her lips, feeling a little like a femme fatale from the old silent movies. Jay licked a remnant of juice from her lips. ‘Delicious.’ His tawny eyes were glittering. ‘Why haven’t we done this before?’
‘Spent a fortune on a hotel suite for an hour or two?’ she said with an attempt at mockery to hide what being close to him like this was doing to her.
‘Stepped out of life and said to hell with the rest of the world.’
‘Is that what we’re doing?’
‘Oh, yes.’ He took the empty glass from her hand and placed it on the bedside cabinet before taking her mouth again, kissing her until she was melting. His hands slid beneath the covers, drawing them back and exploring her soft curves until a searing heat flowed through every nerve and sinew.
It felt so good, so right to be this close to him. As she let her senses take over, Miriam wound her arms round his neck, pulling him closer. ‘You’ve still got your clothes on,’ she whispered plaintively, needing to be able to touch his bare flesh and feel him, alive and virile beneath her fingertips.
‘Undress me.’ He brought her hands to the buttons of his shirt. ‘I’m yours to command.’
Her hands shook as she undid the tiny buttons but then she was peeling the cloth from his wide shoulders, exulting in the warm, supple skin and muscled strength beneath. Her fingers tangled in the short, soft hair on his chest and she sighed, bending and letting her mouth savour the slightly salty taste of one erect nipple.
She felt the involuntary jerk of pleasure and licked her way across the roughness of his chest to the other nipple, sucking and teasing as he groaned raggedly.
She was aware of him moving back to loosen his belt and then he dragged his thighs free of his trousers, his briefs following a second later along with his shoes and socks. Stark naked, he settled beside her, reaching to enfold her against him as he muttered, ‘I don’t know how long I can wait, Miriam. It’s been a long time…’
She didn’t want him to wait. The wantonness was part of the unreality of it all. She wanted him to take her, making her flesh join with his until they were one perfect whole. She needed to feel him inside her, carving a place that was all his own.
As though in response to her thoughts Jay eased her thighs apart, but instead of the quick, urgent coupling she’d expected he began to kiss and taste her with a warm sensuality that brought her to fever-pitch. She writhed and arched as pleasure became unbearable in its intensity and she moaned in pure ecstasy. His lovemaking was as mind-blowing as it had always been but somehow different. Or perhaps she was different, she thought with a stab of reason, now she had stopped fooling herself and pretending this was for ever. Knowing this was the last time they would be together like this made it bitter-sweet and infinitely precious.
‘You’re beautiful, do you know that? Inside and out, you’re beautiful,’ he whispered huskily as he raised his head to look at her flushed face.
‘I’m not beautiful,’ she murmured shakily. Not like some of those other women he had dated.
‘You’re so beautiful you take my breath away.’ His lips claimed hers, urgent and searching, and she gave herself up to the desire that was making her tremble uncontrollably.
When he finally entered her he filled her completely, devouring her with the need to make her his. And she met him thrust for thrust, wanting to give him pleasure as he was pleasuring her. They moved together in a rhythm as ancient as time but still Jay paced himself, building the intensity of their shared passion until she thought she would explode in a million pieces. The crescendo of sexual need for release increased, her internal muscles contracting to a point where she was stunned by the savagery of what she was experiencing. It was pain and pleasure and exquisite torment, their long months apart heightening every movement.
Her body tightened as she reached her peak and at the same moment she felt Jay’s response, their climax violent in its wild fulfillment. She drew in sobbing gasps of air, his name on her lips as their two bodies blended as one.
She couldn’t stop trembling in the aftermath of their passion but Jay’s body was shaking too as he drew her closer against him, kissing her lips, her closed eyelids, her forehead. ‘So many nights I’ve dreamt of this,’ he murmured softly as her body slowly quietened, ‘wondering if you were awake too, what you were thinking, whether I featured in your thoughts or dreams. I’d smell the scent of you, hear you whisper my name…I thought I was going crazy…’
She curled into him, settling herself more comfortably in the circle of his arms. She was gloriously, achingly, satisfyingly tired, content to drift into the warm haven of his closeness without the real world intruding. She kissed the warm skin at the base of his throat, inhaling the scent of him. ‘You smell the same,’ she murmured throatily.
‘Is that good?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Miriam raised her head slightly and he took her mouth in answer to the silent request, kissing her gently until she pressed her body against his arousal. By the time he moved his body over hers again she was ready to receive him, the slow sensuality of his lovemaking achingly tender. As she felt him inside her she moaned softly, relishing the feelings he evoked and the way the need to please her always came first with him. He had always been the same in that regard but she knew from listening to the other women at work talking amongst themselves that not all men were so considerate.
Their joining became more intense and passionate, an exquisite physical pleasure taking her into a world of sensation and light where nothing mattered but Jay and what he was doing to her. She wouldn’t think beyond this stolen afternoon. Not now. Time enough for that later.
They stayed in bed all afternoon, making love, eating the strawberries and chocolates and finishing off the champagne. Outside the hotel window the sky drew dark with snow and then big fat flakes began to fall, whirling and dancing against the glass. A
t some point Miriam had pulled back the curtains so she could watch the storm and she knew she would never forget this day; Jay’s arms about her, the warmth of his flesh against hers, the cosiness of their hideaway and the taste of their shared passion on her tongue.
They didn’t talk about their yesterdays or their tomorrows, they didn’t talk much at all and when they did it was mostly soft murmurings and lazy nothings. They simply existed in each precious minute as it ticked by.
It was nearly five o’clock and completely dark outside when Jay nudged the top of her head with his chin, whispering softly, ‘I have to go. I don’t want to—hell, that’s the understatement of the year, but I’ve got a plane to catch.’
Miriam had been lying curled into him, her fingers stroking the supple, smooth skin of his back and her cheek buried against the hair on his chest. She closed her eyes tightly for one moment and then opened them to move slightly and gaze up at him. ‘I know.’
He kissed her hungrily. ‘I don’t want to leave you but there’s a lot hanging on my sorting things out in Germany, not least men’s jobs.’
‘It’s all right, really.’ She forced a smile. ‘I know you have to go, Jay. It’s not a problem.’
He smiled, kissing her once more before sitting up, one hand lingering on her silky flesh for a second. Then he swung his feet off the bed and padded across to the en suite. ‘I’ll shower quickly,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Would you mind having a cup of coffee waiting for me? Black, please.’
Miriam pulled on one of the thick white robes which had been waiting for them in the suite and busied herself making the coffee from the complimentary tray in the sitting room. When Jay joined her he was already dressed, his black hair damp from the shower. He walked across to where she was sitting, touching the side of her face with a tender hand as he said, ‘I love you so much. You know that, don’t you?’
She nodded before saying the words he had a right to hear. ‘I love you too.’
His breath caught at her declaration and he pulled her to her feet, holding her loosely within the circle of his arms as he murmured, ‘Does that mean what I want it to mean?’
She had known this moment would come, of course. All afternoon she had known it at the back of her mind and it had made each moment all the more bitter-sweet. She didn’t try to prevaricate or play dumb. Lowering her eyes because she couldn’t bear to look at his face while she said it, she said equally softly, ‘I can’t be what you need, Jay.’
‘I need you. That’s all. Just you as you are.’
‘No.’ She pulled away and he let her go, the tawny eyes tight on her face. ‘You need someone who can enjoy being part of your world and take what it means to be your wife in her stride; the social functions, the dinner parties, the entertaining, the—the women.’
‘I didn’t have an affair with Belinda,’ he said quietly. ‘From the first moment we met there has been no one but you.’
Funnily enough, for the first time she believed him. ‘That doesn’t make any difference.’
‘Doesn’t make any difference?’ He stared at her. ‘What the hell are you talking about? You left me because you believed I had been having some sort of relationship with that woman and after the lies she told and the way you found us at the office that night I couldn’t blame you for thinking the worst initially. I hoped reason would kick in and tell you I couldn’t possibly have betrayed you like that when you’d had a chance to think about it, I admit, but I hadn’t allowed for how deep the damage over what your father did to your mother had gone. But I love you, Miriam. You love me. What are we fighting about?’
‘We’re not fighting.’
‘I want you as my wife. You. No one else.’
Nothing he was saying was making her feel any better. Something had broken in her that afternoon. The problem wasn’t Jay, it was her, and she would always be this way. She knew she would. And she didn’t want to ruin both their lives with her jealousy and distrust and turn Jay into someone he wasn’t. Shaking her head slowly, she murmured, ‘Remember the good times, remember this afternoon; let it end like this.’
‘The hell I will.’ His eyes glittered like spun gold in the subdued lighting in the sitting room. ‘This is not some play or film, Miriam. We’re real people in a real situation without a dramatic fade-out, and if agreeing to spend the afternoon with me was your idea of a swansong then you can forget it. I’m not got rid of so easily.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘You’re dead right there.’
She didn’t think she had ever seen him so angry. ‘It’s me, not you,’ she said wearily. ‘At first I thought you had been seeing Belinda but over the last weeks I faced the fact that might not be true and I’d made a terrible mistake.’
‘It wasn’t and you did,’ he put in grimly.
‘But there’ll be other Belindas, don’t you see?’ she said jaggedly. ‘Women like you; they throw themselves at you.’
He stated the obvious. ‘I can’t help that.’
‘I know that. I know you don’t encourage them but it happens anyway. Another woman might be able to take that in her stride but I can’t. I know that now. I—I should never have agreed to marry you, Jay. It was a disaster waiting to happen.’
Red streaks of temper were searing colour across his cheekbones but his voice was more controlled, low and steady, when he said, ‘This is nonsense. Are you seriously telling me that you accept there was never anything going on with Belinda, or anyone else if it comes to it, but it doesn’t make any difference to the way you feel about ending our marriage? That doesn’t make sense and you know it. I’ve told you how I feel about you; what more do you want from me?’
Struggling for calmness, she said, ‘If I came back to you we’d end up hating each other eventually. Jealousy does that. I—I love you but I can’t trust you. I can’t, Jay. I’ve tried but all the time at the back of my mind I’d be questioning, wondering when the one is going to appear who would get your attention.’
‘I’ve told you, she’s here.’
‘And I believe you. At this moment.’ There was a tinge of panic to her voice as she tried to make him understand. ‘But outside these four walls is the world and we have to live in it. That’s where I’d fail. That’s where I’d fail you.’
‘I’m not accepting that.’
‘You have to.’
‘What can I say to convince you?’
‘You can’t.’
‘Damn it, Miriam, have the courage to put the past behind you.’ He was breathing hard in the effort to hold on to his temper. ‘I’m not your father any more than you’re your mother. We’re two different people with a different life together. I can’t alter who I am, the way I look, and I wouldn’t if I could. I’m me. I’m not ashamed of it. I was always absolutely honest with you about my past relationships. I sowed my wild oats, we both know that, but I never told a woman I loved her until I met you and I sure as hell never asked one to marry me. When I met you I fell head over heels, you know that too. I told you it’s the kind of love that will last for ever, that I wanted you to be the mother of my children, that I wanted the roses round the door and commitment and the whole caboodle, and nothing’s changed. Not for me.’
She had to do this. It was tearing her apart but it would be worse in the future if she gave in now. Somehow she had to make him see. Trying to find the words to explain the truth of how it was, she said, ‘I know and, like I said, this is my fault, not yours. I love you, although you might not believe it, but that itself is the problem. If—if I didn’t love you so much I wouldn’t feel this way but the whole time we were married I was on edge. I didn’t realise it until that night I saw you with Belinda but it’s the truth. And I don’t want to live like that, Jay.’
‘So you’re telling me you love me but you don’t trust me or want to remain married to me?’ he said in a low, tight voice. ‘Then forgive me but your idea of love stinks. Don’t you think I get jealous too? That I’ve been burnt up with
it since you left, wondering if some other guy would sweet-talk you into believing you’d be better off with him while you’re in such a vulnerable state? Times I wanted to come and get you, drag you back by force if necessary, but I didn’t because I genuinely believed you needed time to come to terms with this stuff. I was foolish enough to trust in you, in your love for me, all the promises and the vows we made on the day we married. And now you’re telling me you want to throw away what we had, what we still have, because you’re too damn cowardly to come out of the past and live in the present?’
He was breathing hard, his eyes angry and hostile. Miriam felt paralysed by the force of his rage. She tried to think of something to say and failed utterly. She was a coward, she thought wretchedly. And his opinion of her couldn’t be lower than the one she had of herself. But it didn’t change her mind. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, weakly.
‘No you’re not.’ His words were emphasised by the silence that followed, a silence that pressed on the nerve-endings until it was a force in itself, dark and angry. After some long moments he ground out, ‘If you were sorry that would be something to work with but you’re so damn sure you’re right about all this. You’re content to retreat into yourself and lock the door in your mind labelled love and throw away the key, that’s it at bottom. You’ve always faintly despised your mother for loving your father the way she did, but I tell you this. If you had half her backbone and courage you’d be doing all right.’
‘How dare you?’ Suddenly the weakness was gone and she was furiously, blazingly angry. ‘I have never despised my mother, not for one second. Just because I didn’t agree with her wasting years of her life waiting for a man who wasn’t worthy to lick her boots, it didn’t mean I thought any the less of her.’
