Too Scared to Love

by Cathy Williams

  He caressed her breasts with his mouth until she felt the warm wetness of his tongue flicking over her nipple. The sensation was overwhelming, beyond description. Had she really lived before this? It seemed not.

  He shrugged off his trousers, still teasing her breasts with his mouth and, as she felt the hardness of his body alongside hers, Roberta felt as though, in some strange way, she had come home. Their bodies felt so right together.

  She ran her hands along his back, curling her fingers in his hair as he travelled lower to explore her entire body with sensuous passion.

  He was a considerate lover, unhurriedly rousing her to a pitch of excitement which she had never before experienced, even though his hunger was every bit as consuming as her own.

  He pressed his face against her stomach and she whimpered, her feet moving restlessly against his thighs.

  Every caress was so exquisite that it almost hurt and, as he moved upwards to claim her mouth with a savage kiss, Roberta moaned into his ear, ‘Please, I can’t hold out much longer. I want you so much.’

  She had no idea what furious instinct was driving her on, but she did know that she couldn’t have stopped now even if she had wanted to.

  Nor could he. She felt the weight of his body on hers, and her fingers pressed into his back, urging him on until his fierce, rhythmic movements took her over the edge of ecstasy. Ripples of pleasure swept through her, finally ebbing, and she looked at him from under her lashes.

  His green eyes languorously returned her stare and he smiled, a crooked little smile that made her senses swim all over again.

  ‘I won’t throw you all those clichéd questions about whether the earth moved for you,’ he murmured huskily, ‘but I’ll tell you that it damned well did for me.’

  ‘Did it?’ She raised her wide grey eyes to his and he laughed softly under his breath.

  ‘You’re a witch,’ he told her, ‘a siren.’

  ‘I’ve never been called that before. Is it meant as a compliment?’

  ‘Figure it out for yourself.’

  Figure it out? She wasn’t up to figuring anything out at the moment. Her brain had not yet got into gear.

  She smiled at him drowsily and stroked his black hair, wanting time to stand still so that her brain never had to get into gear. She had been swept off to another planet with his lovemaking and, if she had her way, she would stay right there for the rest of her life.

  Outside the snow had abated, but it was dusky inside the cabin, despite the fact that it was only the middle of the afternoon. The fire which he had earlier lit had flooded the place with warmth, though. She had no desire to get back into her clothes.

  ‘You certainly made your point,’ she said, and he stared at her, bemused.

  ‘Point? What point?’

  ‘You wanted me out of that T-shirt, and you had your way after all.’ The merest flicker of a shadow crossed his features, and she asked lazily, ‘Why did you react so violently when you saw me wearing it?’

  If she had been thinking straight, she would have foreseen the answer long before the question had even been asked, but her mind was muddled, so when he did reply it came as a shock.

  ‘It reminded me of Vivian.’

  One little sentence that hovered on the edge of her brain and then shot in, blinding her with its impact.

  ‘It reminded you of your ex-wife,’ she repeated in a hollow voice.

  ‘It belonged to her. I have no idea how it remained at the bottom of that dresser. I guess I never cleared it out and, since I only use the stuff in there very irregularly, I just never came across it.’

  That warm afterglow that she had been feeling only moments before evaporated like early-morning mist. Now, there was a sour taste in her mouth that made her want to retch.

  ‘Was that why you made love to me?’ she asked acidly. ‘Because I reminded you of your wife?’

  Grant faced her, his body stiffening at her tone of voice.

  ‘I wasn’t making love to a memory, if that’s what you’re implying,’ he said tightly.

  ‘Weren’t you? Well, it very much sounds that way to me.’

  ‘You asked me a question and I answered it. Would you rather I had lied?’

  Roberta wriggled out of his embrace, pulling on her underwear with jerky movements. She looked at the wretched T-shirt with loathing, as if it had some unpleasant life of its own, and walked across to where she had laid out her clothes to dry, hastily slipping on her own shirt and her pair of jeans, which were no longer damp.

  She knew that Grant had twisted around, was watching her every movement. He stood up and moved across to her, not bothering to get dressed, and she kept her eyes rigorously averted.

  ‘Well, answer me!’ he demanded, yanking a towel out of the dresser and wrapping it around his waist. ‘Would you have rather I had lied?’

  The anger brewing inside her was partly directed at him, but mostly it was directed at herself, because she should never have allowed their lovemaking to happen. She could have stopped it. He would not have forced her. But, like a fool, she had stuck her head in the sand and pretended that no problems existed, because she could not see them, or rather had not wanted to see them.

  She had courted disaster with a reckless disregard for common sense, and she was paying the price for her mistake.

  She thought of Brian, of her foolishness, which had blinded her to reason, and then she thought of Grant. And the similiarity between the two situations made her want to throw up.

  She looked at him scathingly. ‘By all means, tell the truth,’ she bit out. ‘Honesty is always the best policy, isn’t it?’

  He approached her and she stood her ground. Where could she run? Running, anyway, would not have solved anything. She could run a million miles, and the pain she was feeling now would still be as acute.

  ‘Obviously not in this instance,’ he grated. ‘Does it make a difference, anyway? We made love, that’s something that you can’t deny, and—’

  ‘Deny it?’ she yelled. ‘Who’s trying to deny anything?’ She took a few deep breaths to steady herself, and at the end of it she still felt like throwing things. ‘I must have been mad,’ she whispered.

  ‘What’s so mad about doing something that you want?’ he threw at her. ‘Do you intend to take refuge behind that mask of yours for the rest of your life, just because you happen to have had one bad experience with a man?’

  ‘And stop acting as though you know what motivates me,’ she said fiercely.

  ‘What did he do to you?’ he pursued relentlessly.

  Roberta stared at him silently, then she turned away with a weary gesture.

  ‘Look,’ she said, controlling the tremor in her voice, ‘I’m not looking for involvement—’

  ‘Nor am I.’ He stepped towards her and she looked at him coldly.

  She knew what was going on in his mind. As far as he was concerned, neither of them were looking for involvement, so where did the problem lie? He had told her that she only saw things in black and white, but right now that was exactly how he was seeing things. He fancied her, and she had been stupid enough to show him that the attraction was mutual, so why not make love? Sex for him was quite distinct from emotional commitment. It was an act of pleasure, a meeting of two bodies. Commitment, she thought bitterly, was something he reserved for his dead wife.

  His experienced, seductive touch had sent her spinning off to another planet, and the inevitable bump back to reality hurt. She thought of Brian. What was the point of learning lessons if you then rushed head-first into the same mistake?

  Grant was not a con man; he lacked Brian’s calculating deviousness. No doubt he really believed that he played fair by telling his Vanessas that he was out of bounds. But underneath it all, weren’t they both alike?

  She felt devalued and miserable.

  ‘There’s no point discussing what happened,’ she said, struggling to fight down that sick feeling inside her. ‘It was all a big mistake. Now, do you mi
nd just dropping the subject?’

  ‘Yes, I mind!’ he grated, raking his fingers impatiently through his hair. ‘We made love and you stand there, prepared to act as though nothing had happened.’

  ‘Has it slipped your mind that you have a girlfriend?’ Roberta threw at him, and he looked at her blankly, as though he couldn’t quite figure out how that fitted into anything at all.

  ‘There’s no commitment there.’

  ‘How convenient,’ she said coolly. ‘Do you think that Vanessa would see it from that point of view?’

  ‘Do you think,’ he returned, ‘that you could stop acting like an enraged virgin who’s just been raped?’

  There was a long silence, then Roberta walked off towards the kitchen to prepare something to eat. She was still trembling, still disgusted with herself for having given in to a physical urge with a man who made no effort to hide the fact that sex, for him, was a temporary pleasure. A matter of course.

  But she didn’t really blame him. She blamed herself. She should have known better. The recrimination rang through her head until she just wanted to find somewhere dark and private where she could cry her eyes out.

  But there was no such escape and she would never cry in front of him. Never.

  She wondered where they would have gone from here had she not reacted the way that she did. Would he have happily conducted a love-affair with her until she was ready to leave, waved goodbye at the airport, then taken up the reins of his life with the next woman in the queue? The thought made her sick.

  She stared outside. At least there was little chance of her being pregnant. Not at this time of the month. Wouldn’t that, she thought, have been the final, crushing defeat?

  The furious onslaught of snow had died down to a half-hearted flurry. The car, though, was still shrouded in white, but with any luck she would be out of this place by tomorrow. Beyond that she did not care to think.

  Lunch, as well as being extremely late, was a silent affair, the conversation stilted, with Roberta unable to meet his eyes.

  The computer terminal, which Roberta had originally thought highly incongruous in the setting of a distant cabin, proved a blessing in disguise. It spared her the discomfort of having to talk to him in a neutral tone of voice for the remainder of the day. He worked on it, frowning in concentration, and she read an outdated Western paperback which she found lying about.

  Or rather, she made a valiant effort to read, but shutting her mind to the disturbing thoughts flitting about inside was impossible. Had she agonised this much after her disastrous affair with Brian? She couldn’t recall. When she tried to summon up an image of him, she failed. All she could see was Grant’s black hair, his vivid eyes, and that cynical twist to his mouth, which could change with alarming suddenness into a smile of unbearable charm.

  Dinner was an equally stony affair. She asked him how his work was coming along, and he replied that it was all wrapped up, not that it made much difference since it was unlikely that the meeting would be held the following day anyway.

  I could have been spared all this, Roberta thought bitterly. Wasn’t fate capricious?

  ‘Are you still tired?’ she asked, scouring her mind for something to say.

  Grant sat back and looked at her. ‘Not any longer. Maybe I’ve just gone past the point of physical exhaustion, or maybe there’s another reason.’

  That was enough to make her stand up and busy herself clearing away the dishes, refusing his offer of assistance. She didn’t want to have to look at those powerful hands and to be reminded of how they had made her feel.

  ‘I’m off to bed now,’ she said, when the kitchen was tidy and the only other option facing her was the outdated Western.

  He nodded, his back to her, and she scurried off to the bedroom with a sigh of relief. She was beginning to fall into a light sleep when the door opened, and her body tensed immediately.

  She sensed rather than saw him start removing his clothes, and she sat up abruptly.

  ‘And I thought you were asleep,’ he said drily, standing in front of her with just his trousers on.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What does it look like I’m doing? I’m about to get into bed.’

  ‘Not this bed, you’re not.’

  ‘And where else do you suggest I sleep?’ he asked coldly. ‘In case you haven’t realised, this is the only bedroom, and that’s the only bed.’

  He unzipped his trousers and she looked away. She felt the bed depress under his weight as he sank on to it, and she stared at him, horrified.

  ‘I don’t care!’ she shot out. Under the duvet, she knew that he was completely naked, and the thought frightened her to death. ‘Why can’t you sleep in the living-room?’

  In an effortless movement his hand reached out to grasp her wrist, his eyes glittering in the darkness.

  ‘One bedroom,’ he grated, ‘one bed, one duvet. If you don’t like it, then you’re free to go somewhere else, though I wouldn’t recommend it. When that fire dies, this place will become freezing cold, and I have no intention of dealing with hypothermia. Now, do you lie back down or do I have to pin you down forcibly?’

  Roberta glared at him with helpless fury, but she lay down nevertheless.

  Underneath the crisp cotton man’s shirt which she had taken out of the dressing-table, she could feel her heart beating painfully. How was she supposed to fall asleep, knowing that he was in the same bed as her? Naked?

  ‘Just make sure that you...’ She searched around for the right words, and he found them for her.

  ‘Keep my hands to myself?’

  She didn’t reply, and he continued with a trace of ice in his voice, ‘Rest assured I won’t touch you. You can huddle in your pristine little corner of the bed, nursing your grievances, in peace.’

  His words stung, brought a flush of colour to her face.

  ‘Good,’ she muttered.

  ‘I don’t go around forcing myself on unwilling women. I don’t have the need.’

  ‘I’m sure you don’t!’ Roberta snapped.

  He ignored her outburst. ‘And I certainly have no time for women who make love and then try and make out that, Oh, dear, it’s all been a horrible misadventure, what on earth came over me? I’m really not that type of girl.’

  He was mocking her, his voice a cynical mimicry of prim horror, and Roberta flinched. Was that how he saw her? Probably. She knew that she had given him every reason, with her burning response to him, that she was quite willing to play his sophisticated games of love, no strings attached.

  ‘That’s not fair,’ Roberta said in a small voice.

  He had turned on his side to face her, and she stared upwards at the ceiling, feeling his breath on her face, uncomfortably aware that if she did look at him, that overpowering, pointless attraction that she felt for him might begin to work again.

  ‘Isn’t it? And how do I know that you’re not playing hard to get for a reason?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Perhaps you think that a challenge is more enticing to a man than an easy catch.’

  Roberta looked at him, speechless.

  ‘That’s a nasty thing to say,’ she finally whispered. ‘It’s also untrue.’

  ‘Prove it,’ he murmured huskily. He reached out to stroke the curtain of hair away from her face, and she flinched back.

  ‘I told you, I made a mistake. I didn’t mean to let things get so far.’

  ‘And where did you want to stop, exactly?’ he asked in a hard voice, removing his hand. ‘Before I took your clothes off, or maybe just slightly afterwards? Don’t you know that it’s dangerous to give a man a taste of honey and then whip it away? Do you think that if you hold out for long enough, I might promise you something?’

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more of this.’ She covered her ears with her hands and squeezed her eyes shut tightly.

  With a swift movement, he pulled her hand away, and when he spoke his voice was laden with intent. ‘Nobody plays ga
mes with me, lady. You might have your reasons for retreat, but you’ve whetted my appetite. Just remember that. This won’t be the last time that we share a bed, and the next time I might not be quite so restrained.’

  Was that a threat? Roberta wanted to ask because, if it was, she wasn’t going to bend under it. He might go through life pulling all the strings, but she had no intention of becoming another of his disposable women.

  She pointedly turned over, so that she was staring at the wall, waiting for him to prolong his attack, but nothing came, and after a while she was aware from his deep, regular breathing that he had fallen asleep.

  A thin grey light was filtering through the curtains when she woke up the following morning. It took her a second of blissful unawareness before she remembered that she had not slept alone in the bed the night before, then she twisted around quickly, expelling a long sigh of relief at the empty spot next to her.

  Where was he now? She didn’t dwell on the matter for too long, just in case he surprised her in the bedroom. There was no lock on the door, and the last thing she needed in her fragile state of mind was to have to face him in a state of undress.

  She found the cabin empty and, pouring herself a cup of black coffee, she strolled across to the window and stared outside. Definite improvement in the conditions there. No fresh snow had fallen, and he had scraped the car completely. What time had he got up? she wondered. It was now only just after eight o’clock.

  It made her uncomfortable to think of him getting up, looking at her as she lay sleeping, thinking God only knew what, and she turned away abruptly.

  It was another hour before he reappeared, and as soon as she saw the door open Roberta felt her body tense. He was wearing the same pair of trousers which he had travelled up in, but the olive-green chunky sweater and the well-worn waterproof coat had obviously come from the cabin. They suited him.

  Roberta eyed him as he crossed the lounge.

  ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t up earlier to help you,’ she said awkwardly, relieved that there was nothing hostile in his face when he looked back at her. Maybe, she thought, he had considered what she had said and realised that what had happened the day before had been an unfortunate slip up.