And when she knew from the painful sensitivity of her body’s responses that she could take no more, she found the strength to reach for him and draw him to her with insistent hands.
He lay over her, his hips against hers. She could feel the swollen evidence of his desire against her and deep within her she could feel the emptiness that cried out to be filled by him. She was almost frantic with the need to feel him inside her. She could see a matching fever in his eyes and in the shallow, quick rise and fall of his chest. The tattered remnants of his control had abandoned even that vital function.
He grasped her hand in his and her fingers were spread by his large ones. He slid into her, making her cry out with a deep gratification. The moment was the culmination of a promise made between them in one silent, sizzling glance across a boat cabin, a lifetime ago. Yet it was only in that moment Anastasia recognized the promise and recognized too, that despite every gram of energy she had expended on fighting it, it had been inevitable this moment would happen.
His possession of her finally broke his control. With a groan he crushed her to him and let himself follow the ancient rhythms, driving her with him, drawing them both to the peak they had been flirting with. Only this time the peak was conquered in a shattering, bone-trembling explosion of white hot light that blinded them both and left them utterly senseless, as they hung suspended outside reality and time.
She would have crashed down into reality but was instead drawn back by his lips upon her brow and his hands beneath her, cradling her against him. He was still buried deep inside her and she could still feel him, large and firm, filling her in a way that made her understand her essential feminism and revel in it. He was moving, tiny shifts and thrusts that sent spasms of agonized silvery pleasure through her. She tried to protest but could not. For he knew her better than she knew herself, just as he had told her. She was already responding, her sensitized body reacting to his tiniest movement.
He was looking deep into her eyes, her soul, reading each minute response she gave him, understanding better than she what she needed. She allowed him to do so, opening herself to him in an act of submission more fundamental than the gift she had given of herself.
He silently accepted her offering. She could feel his fingers crush hers but she didn’t feel the pain, for already her nerves were coming alive again to his touch. In a rush she was caught up in a wave of longing more intense than any she had experienced before. It was as if she had not been satiated a moment earlier, had never been satiated in her life, had been hungry for this man forever.
He felt her building response and kissed her fiercely on the lips. “Yes,” he murmured against her cheek. “Now you understand.”
Chapter Seventeen
Anastasia was unaware of falling asleep, until she woke with a small start as a heavy shower of rain began to bounce off the windows.
David was leaning over her, tracing her jaw line with one fingertip. His whole body seemed alert, alive. The driven, haunted quality of reserve had gone from his eyes, which were the almost colorless, liquid gray she remembered seeing under the bridge, the first time they’d met.
She shivered and he reached behind him for the discarded quilt.
“No, it’s all right,” she assured him, sliding out from under his arm.
“Where are you going?”
She drew the dressing gown back on and tightened the belt. “You’ve got a plane to catch, remember?” The words were casual and totally misrepresented the effort such a tone cost her.
David sat up, a small frown between his brows. “Do I?” He was watching her, puzzled. “That doesn’t explain where you’re going.”
She shrugged. “Home, of course. I’ll have to ask you for those clothes you promised me too. I’ve nothing to wear.”
David surged from the bed, stalking around the edges of it to face her where she stood at the foot, his naked body gleaming in the subdued light from the window. His magnificence turned her pulse thready and unsure and she gripped her hands together inside the oversized sleeves of the gown, to keep her body still and not expose her true responses to him.
“What did you say?” David demanded. He was suddenly wary and alert with more than joie de vivre.
She swallowed dryly. “I’m going home,” she repeated, forcing the words out. “And you’re going back to China.”
“You can’t,” he said flatly.
“I am.”
He stared at her for a moment. “Why is it I suddenly feel like I’ve been tipped into another dimension? I’m missing something here…” He glanced over her shoulder, toward the bed. “Why are you leaving?”
“Because you are.” She said it coolly, expressionlessly. It was easier than straining to sound casual.
He reached out for his jeans and thrust them on with sharp, controlled movements, sliding them up his long legs. “Why did you allow this to happen then? Why make love? And if you tell me it was some sort of farewell present, I’ll wring your neck.”
Anastasia shivered. The threat was exaggerated but very real despite that. She could sense a fine edge of danger in him. This was hitting him hard. It’s only his wounded male pride, a small voice whispered inside her. She recalled his own advice about lying, “Stick to the truth as long as you can.” She squeezed her hands together tightly. “We made love because I couldn’t bear not to, as you very well know. You’re leaving. It was time.”
His hands dropped away from the zipper of his jeans. “I don’t have to leave. You can stop me. Just reach out, ask me to stay. You have that power.”
She nodded. “I know.”
He stood very still, looking at her through narrowed eyes. Waiting.
After a moment, she shook her head. “No.”
David whirled away and struck his hand against the bed post, hard and fast and swore. He turned back to her, his chest lifting rapidly, his eyes glittering with anger. “Why not, damn it?”
She shook her head again. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“You’re going back to Hugh?”
She shrugged. It wasn’t exactly lying, she told herself. And it might make it easier for David to accept her decision.
But the shrug seemed to set off a rage in him, instead. He began to speak, at first with a controlled violence, a heavy pulse beating at his temple and throat, “It’s not that you think I won’t understand the reasons why you’re leaving. It’s because you think I will understand that you won’t tell me. I know you.” He searched for words. “I know you,” he finally repeated. “I know you better than you know yourself in those ways where you keep denying your character. You’ve just had perfect proof of that—” and he waved toward the bed with one hand. “You know I will understand and you’re afraid I’ll take those reasons away from you. You’re afraid I will see what it is that is really driving you away.”
His anger was frightening in itself. Anastasia could feel herself trembling as it washed over her. All the lingering good feelings that had risen from the morning dissipated, diluted to nothing under the deluge. She could feel her back stiffening. It was the reaction that she had learned as a child was the best defence when her father roused himself from cold disinterest to hot outrage.
“You don’t know me at all,” she shot back. “Except for some crude, fundamental instincts that all animals share.”
His anger seemed to leap to life and she felt herself backing away from him, although he made no move toward her. “Even if I don’t know, I still know enough to see that whatever twisted, distorted reasoning you might care to give, it ultimately boils down to the fact that you’re afraid of anything that might upset your sterile little world, or push you beyond your safe, predictable self-imposed limits.”
“You arrogant son of a bitch!” she cried, stung to the quick.
“And you are a lily-livered coward!”
His voice, harsh with his fury and sounding out cruel words and the throb of the vein in his neck—all provided an image that sent her mind tumb
ling back to the days of her childhood. Back to when her father and mother stood just as she and David were, hurling abuse and insults at each other.
She remembered the pain, fear, the bewildered child she was, hiding in her room, afraid to come out. And then, worse, the agonized silence after her mother’s departure and the wreck that was her father, whom she could not reach, not even when she had tugged on his hand, tears in her eyes, trying to comfort him. Please, Daddy, don’t cry. I love you, you know.
Anastasia stared at David, her eyes wide. “Oh dear God,” she cried, almost moaning with the agony of that memory. “Not again. Not you too.”
She spun away, blindly reaching out for the door and hauling it open. Tears obstructed her vision, as did the unbidden memories that kept replaying themselves with appalling clarity in her mind. Her worst fears had been confirmed. Not only did she and David have a passion that seemed identical to her mother and father’s but they were doomed to part in the same heart-rending torment she had witnessed as a child.
She scrambled down the stairs, tripping over the hem of the gown, grabbing at the wrought iron balustrade. Behind her, she could hear David calling out to her to stop, to wait for him but she didn’t. She needed to get out—away from him.
She wrenched open the front door and threw herself out of the house, into the heavy pouring rain. She was soaked to the skin in seconds, the dressing gown becoming heavy and cumbersome, dragging at her ankles and tripping her up even more, slowing her down.
She was half-way across the lawn when David’s large hand came down heavily on her arm and she was halted as easily as a bird on a tether. He spun her around to face him.
“Anastasia.” He had to lift his voice over the noise of the rain. “Don’t run away from me.”
She shook her head, unable to voice the tumult of pain racing through her. She tugged, trying to loosen her arm.
He merely caught her other arm in his free hand and drew her closer, trying to contain her frantic struggles to be free. Then, with the simple expedient of picking her up and tucking her inside his arms, he took her back into the house.
He kicked the door shut behind them and carried her into the living room, his arms iron bands around her. He dropped her with a rough gentleness onto one of the huge floor cushions in front of the fireplace.
Her first instinctive flight reaction had subsided and she allowed herself to be manhandled, her mind numbed from the shocking events.
He stripped the sodden gown from her, grabbed a large blanket folded across the back of one of the sofas and wrapped her in it. Rivulets of water ran down his own bare chest and his jeans were dark and wet. “Stay still. I’ll light the fire.” He took matches from the mantel shelf. The hearth was cold but laid in readiness for another fire and he quickly had the flames roaring. Despite his speed, he was shivering by the time he had the fire going and Anastasia could feel the chill creeping into her bones despite her thick warm blanket.
He stood and stripped off his sodden jeans and wrapped a blanket around himself and sat in front of the flames, looking at her.
“You have an affinity for water, don’t you?” he said with a teasing note.
She turned her head to look at him. Whatever levity was in his voice was not reflected in his eyes. She could see concern there and nothing else. Not even anger.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he growled. “It’s not me who has conditioned you into running like a frightened rabbit at the sound of an angry voice.”
She flinched, violently. “I know,” she admitted.
“It’s your father, isn’t it? Or does it go back to when your mother was alive?”
It took her nearly a full minute to answer. The reluctance to talk about that painful period in her life was strong. She had become an expert at bottling it up, riding out the pain and trying not to bother anyone with her trivial problems. Everyone had always been concerned with her father’s bitterness. Talking about herself was alien to her. There were ancient seals that needed to be broken and removed before the words could come out.
David remained perfectly still and silent, letting her sort it out herself. He didn’t encourage her to speak. He simply let the silence grow longer and longer, until she rushed in to fill the gap herself. “I stepped outside myself when we were arguing just then and what I saw was a replica of the way my parents used to argue, just before Mom left.” A simple, single sentence but the admission cost her two tears, which slid down her cheeks in unison.
“And you think because we argued the same way, we’re doomed to the same unhappiness your parents suffered?”
She clenched her fists and forced herself to stick to the truth, now she had come this far. But the single word cost her far more dearly than any others combined, for it revealed the central issue of the dilemma she was skewered upon. And despite David’s anger, he had been to a degree right in his insight. She was a coward. She was afraid of moving out of the comfortable pattern of her life or of changing any of the boundaries within which she chose to live because to do so might bring her into those spheres in which her parents had moved and suffered—passion, anger, envy, joy…love.
So it took her considerable courage to speak the simple affirmative and her “Yes” was nearly inaudible. But she said it.
David touched her shoulder, a sympathetic caress that told her he realized the effort it had taken her to speak. He let his hand fall again.
“You know how irrational that is, don’t you?” he said.
“Tell that to my instincts.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Maybe but it’s a chance I can’t afford to take.”
“So the answer is no?”
She nodded.
“And you won’t reconsider?” he asked.
“Every time I see you I find myself reconsidering,” she said truthfully.
The silence fell again and she could see his shoulders rise slightly under the blanket as he took a deep breath and let it out. “I owe you an apology,” he said. “I called you a coward but I was wrong. I knew I was wrong even as I said it. Jealousy can do some strange things to people, although I’m not offering that as an excuse.”
“You are jealous of Hugh?” Anastasia asked.
“Envious, really,” David admitted easily. “Because he has you and it appears I do not. Well, at least I know why, now.” He paused for a fraction of a second. “But you’re wrong, you know,” he added. “You’re wrong about us, about where we might end up. We’re different people from your parents.”
“Are we?” Anastasia asked, suddenly fuelled by a bitter swell of knowledge. “Are we so very different we can discount the possibility?” She sat forward. “Do you know where I got that dress I was wearing last night?”
“Benitta told me. It was your mother’s. And you defied your father to wear it.”
“Exactly,” Anastasia said flatly. “My mother’s dress. It fitted perfectly. I didn’t have to change it by an inch, anywhere. It fitted me and it suited me—even you acknowledged that. And why? Because I am so much like my mother. I get tired of hearing how much like her I am. My father has spent the majority of my life trying to stamp out any inclinations in me to act like my mother. That fight you witnessed last night was the death knell to his ambitions. He knew he’d lost the battle. He lost it yesterday when I decided to hell with it—”
She broke off, suddenly aware of exactly where her words were leading her and to whom she was talking.
But amazingly, David finished her sentence for her. “You thought, to hell with it, I’m going to be myself and if that means I become like my mother, then so be it. Because there’s an in-built factor of unhappiness when you try to be something that you aren’t, as you’ve become aware of over the last few weeks. And you’ve also discovered that you like following your true nature. It’s fun, it’s exciting. It stirs your blood and it is a little bit like an addiction. You’re not going back to who you were once trying to be because you’ve had a taste of living
now.”
Anastasia stared at him. “Yes.”
“And you thought, ‘I’ll wear the dress, because that’s the way I’m feeling and the rest of the world can think what it likes. And David will understand’.”
Again she whispered, “Yes.”
“And I did,” he agreed. “Only, I understood more than you thought you were telling me. It was also a signal that I had succeeded in at least one of my aims.”
“Your damned hidden agenda.”
“It was never hidden. I always made it quite plain what my intentions were. I even told you but you didn’t hear me properly. Benitta saw it. And in the end, so might have Hugh. I think that’s why he deliberately dropped the news of my return to China on you like he did, despite my request he keep it to himself for a while. He wanted to test your reaction.”
“He certainly got more than he bargained for, then.”
David shrugged. “Why is it, do you think, I’m fighting so hard to keep you here? I was angry because you wanted to go. I love you, Anastasia.”
She closed her eyes against the conflicting pain and the warm glow within her that his words created. “What are you trying to do to me?” she asked.
“Haven’t you guessed? Haven’t you worked it out yet? That was my hidden agenda. I was holding out for love. Right from the start I knew I would accept nothing less than that. With no qualifications, strings, or compromises. I wanted your love, Anastasia. I’ve spent weeks, every waking hour, devising ways of making that happen, ever since I saw you trying to rescue that damned albatross. I knew as soon as I saw you crying when we let it go. I knew then that I wanted it all. And there we were, strangers, thrown into each other’s lives again through a quirk of fate that finds you engaged to my best friend.” He grimaced, the corners of his mouth twisting down.
“Somehow I knew I had to draw you out of your shell, let you get to know me and teach you about life again, before I could even hope to kindle any love. Last night, when I saw you wearing that dress I knew I had succeeded in that. It was a sweet victory for an entirely selfless reason. I knew that regardless of how the situation between us was settled, you at least would live the rest of your life as a whole person and for that I was deeply glad.”
Inconvenient Lover Page 17
