by Robyn Donald
Instinct should have directed her elsewhere. No, she thought suddenly and passionately, she was glad. At least she knew now what it was like to love, totally, completely, with all her heart and soul. She would not have wanted a calmer, less painful life.
It was quite cool when they finally got in, cold enough for Sarah to give up without complaint any idea of swimming. Kathy greeted them with pleasure and dinner, exclaiming over Sarah’s new teeth, and how much Simon had grown, so it was later than usual when they went to bed, but by ten-thirty both children were asleep, and Oriel was yawning herself. She had a long bath and was in bed and asleep by midnight.
It was the noise of the launch engines that woke her. As she rolled over in her bed she checked the clock. Two o’clock! She leapt out of bed and ran quietly down to the conservatory, peering° out into the brilliant moonlight. A red glow startled the darkness, then was dowsed. She heard a soft male voice, and realised that no one was stealing the launch; it was coming in. Curiosity held her still. Had Ned been indulging in a little night fishing? But he wouldn't take the launch, he had his own runabout
Then a lithe silhouette swung on to the jetty, and her hand stole up to her heart. Blaize had arrived! He must have flown up and been collected by Ned in the launch. It was a much shorter distance by sea and took only about the same time as by road.
Quickly, moving as quietly as she could, she raced back to her room and was in bed when she heard the unmistakable sounds of someone moving softly through the house. Insensibly she relaxed. So it made it all the more shattering when the door was flung open, the light switched on, and in a voice that for all its softness flayed the skin from her bones Blaize demanded, ‘What the hell were you doing in André Hunter’s apartment yesterday?
CHAPTER NINE
ORIEL gaped at Blaize, her eyes wide with confusion as she took in the dangerous tautness of his stance, the anger blazing in his expression. Then anguish at the long weeks of insulting politeness burst through in a flood of fury so intense it took her a moment to be able to speak, and when she did it was in a voice that trembled with rage.
‘How dare you?’ she exploded, jerking upright. ‘Get out of here!’
He came in silently, powerful and smooth as the death lunge of a predator. ‘If you want an affair,’ he said between his teeth, ‘then by God, Oriel, you can have one with me. You don’t have to go to bloody Andre Hunter to satisfy your urges.’
Temper dilated her eyes into pools of darkness. ‘With you?’ she spat. ‘Why would I want to go to bed with a man who rejected me as cruelly as he could, who let me offer myself to him and then turned me down with a few scathing comments about my lack of suitability? Tell me, why the hell would I be stupid enough to give you another chance?’
He hauled her out of the bed in one swift movement, all control gone now, his lean hands ferocious as they shook her. ‘Because at least I love you, damn you!’ he snarled.
Adrenalin was surging through her body, wiping away all restraint. ‘Love me?’ she hooted, her laughter as savage as her anger. ‘You don’t know how to love anyone, unless it’s a child. Loving someone means that you want them to be happy. You’ve done your best to make sure I’m as unhappy as I can possibly be, you swine. And now, just because your territorial instinct is roused, you’ve decided you do want me after all. André said you weren’t a dog in the manger. He was wrong.’
His hands tightened cruelly on the delicate bones of her shoulders. She cried out, and he released her, his face white, his mouth tightly compressed as he fought for control. ‘I'm sorry,’ he said, pushing back the thin material of her pyjamas to look bleakly at the marks he had made. He closed his eyes for a second, then opened them and bent and kissed the maltreated skin. His lips were cold, and suddenly her righteous rage ebbed and died, leaving the taste of ashes in her mouth.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said wearily. ‘It doesn’t matter, Blaize. Just leave me alone. Please.’
‘I can’t.’ He lifted his head and looked into her eyes, his own shadowed and driven. After a haunted second her repeated softly, ‘I can’t, darling. I tried, God knows I tried. I know you’re not ready for this. But when I heard that you’d been seen in Hunter’s apartment-’
‘The Duncans.’
‘Yes. Lora didn’t want to tell me, she felt a heel, but she was worried, and she knows how I feel about you.’
‘And how do you feel about me?’ she asked very steadily.
‘I love you.’
Oh, how she wanted to believe him. But she loved him so much that she couldn’t accept anything less than a like commitment from him; it was ominous that there had been no mention of love until he thought she was having an affair with André. Was it his masculine possessiveness, the trait that refused to let him share, that had produced this sudden change?
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said sadly.
‘You will.’ He saw that she was trembling and said, ‘I shouldn’t have come in here, you’re exhausted, but when I heard Lora say you’d been with Hunter I wanted to kill you and him and myself for being so stupidly, wilfully blind to the most important thing that has ever happened to me. Darling, sit down. It’s cold, pull the blankets around you.’
She stared at him, obeying dazedly as he urged her down on to the bed and dragged the duvet around her so that she was cocooned in it. When she was comfortable he sat down on the end of the bed and looked at her, his eyes travelling over her pale face, his mouth tilted in the faint, ironic smile that had been missing these last weeks.
Very softly, he said, ‘When I came across you on the beach in the storm, wet and muddy, pale blue and shivering, a drowned rat personified, I thought you were plain, a lanky creature with a forgettable face. Then you began to dry out, and you had skin as clear and warm as the palest silk, and that wild hair started to curl around your face. You looked like a gypsy, untamed and irresistible, your smoky blue eyes long and slanted and lazy, summoning me to a feast you had never attended yourself. I was fascinated, I didn’t know that innocence and carnality could be combined so invitingly in one graceful girl. I wanted to indulge the carnality and take the innocence. I wanted to sink my hands into that incredible hair, hold your face still while I took your mouth. I wanted to feel you against me, beneath me, on me, all around me, your mouth on my skin, your body against mine. But you were innocent, and I knew I had to leave you alone.’
‘You couldn’t know that,’ she whispered, his words melting some deep, frozen part of her. ‘I don’t wear my virginity like a flag.’
He laughed deep in his throat. ‘That’s exactly what you do, my darling. And if I hadn’t known before, I’d have been convinced of your lack of experience when I kissed you that first time. The day you’d been swimming.’
She shivered, remembering the weird atmosphere of that day, the heavy mist pressing on to them, the wild passion he had aroused in her.
‘Yes,’ he said, watching the expressions chase across her face. ‘It was like nothing else I had ever experienced. I had never felt such an intensity of emotion, such need, and you were only too clearly caught up in the same web. But it was equally clear that you didn’t know what the hell was happening to you. So I backed off.’
‘I thought you were wooing me a little because you wanted me to work for you, to be a mother for Sarah.’
His mouth twisted sardonically. ‘Yes. Just a few kisses, I told myself, they can’t do any harm, and if she’s weak enough to fall for that kind of sensual blackmail-well, what is it to me? It’s all in a good cause. Oh, I wanted you right from the start. It was only too damned obvious. Normally I don’t harass women who say they don’t want me to touch them. I’ve always prided myself on my self-control, yet I couldn’t keep my hands off you! But I wasn’t prepared to admit that I could fall in love after one look.’
Her eyes were very clear as she said, ‘You can’t really. It’s not possible.’
‘Is that what you told yourself?’ His smile was a masterpiece of irony
. ‘What did happen, then? You sat up in bed, clean and pink after your shower, and stole my heart away.’
‘I couldn’t believe it,’ she whispered. ‘Your eyes turned from pewter to silver, and they set me on fire. I honestly thought for a moment I’d had an electric shock.’
‘You too?’ He leaned forward so that he could reach her hair, threading through a curl, straightening it, pulling it out, then releasing it back into the tight ringlet. His mouth compressed. ‘But, beloved, we didn’t just fall in love. You claimed me, and I knew that I possessed you. All within half an hour of setting eyes on each other.’
‘Then what took us so long?’
He sat back with an air of tense resolution, his features angular and drawn. ‘An arrogant refusal to admit that I am as human as the next man. I hadn’t believed in love for so long that I denied it when it came. And kept on denying it until I realised just how stupid I was being.’
‘Why? What made you so adamant that it was just “nature’s way of perpetuating genes”‘
‘Cynicism,’ he said gravely. ‘And pride. Cynicism because there are always women who are willing to sell themselves.’
‘Men do it too.’
He nodded, his mouth twisting, seemingly absorbed in what his fingers were doing to her. hair. ‘Yes, I know. I became accustomed to them, Oriel, those men and pared to sell their bodies or their principles for either or both. I forgot the multitudes of people who try to keep to their high standards. I’ve always prided myself on my principles, but along the way I lost my ideals.’
‘And pride? You said it was cynicism and pride.’
‘Ah, pride. I’d come to think that love was for lesser people. Blaize Stephenson saw more clearly; he was in control. Then I saw you and I was forced to admit that the only reason for my vaunted self-possession was that I hadn’t yet met you. I felt-a lesser person, I suppose‘. His smile was narrow, echoing the self-contempt in his tone. ‘Less of a man, because I was at your mercy. So fear came into it too. I was afraid that by loving you I was losing myself. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been so overpowering, so primitively basic. I looked at you and everything, the intelligence I had always been so proud of, my will-power, my strength, was swamped in a deluge of emotion.’
‘It happened to me too,’ she admitted, moved by his brutal frankness. ‘It still scares me. It’s so-so mindless, a kind of blind hunger. I thought it was a violent attraction, a kind of irritation of the senses.’ Smiling, she told him about the debate she had had with herself on the beach about pheromones. ‘I felt as though you’d cast some kind of spell over me, and I couldn’t struggle free of it.’
His hand touched hers. She shivered, and he said hopelessly, ‘If this is love I don’t know how people cope with it. It eats away at me-I thought love was supposed to be happy, to make the world a more pleasant place.
Instead it’s terrifying, not the cosy, safe emotion I’d always imagined it to be, but dangerous, and exciting, and addictive. But as well as that-claiming, there was your kindness, your gentleness-your honesty. What I feel for you is so much more than this damned uncomfortable desire.’
She caught his hand and pulled it to her lips. ‘I love you, Blaize. I want to make love with you, I want to live with you and have your children, I want to be there for you for the rest of my life. Perhaps this kind of love will change-after all, we’ll change over the years, but although the thought of spending the rest of my life with you frightens me as much as it thrills me, I want to.’
‘Dearest heart.’ His voice was incredibly moved, thick with emotion. His hand tightened about her face, then lifted to thread into her hair. Pulling her face towards him so that his breath warmed her mouth, he said very deep and low, ‘I want all that too. To walk into a room and -know that your eyes light up only for me, to know that you are there, always to be there for you. And at night, to go with you up to our bedroom and watch you undress, to be able to touch you, and at last to lose myself in you-Oriel, I want that so much. I’ve been eaten away with hunger, these weeks with you, so calm, so aloof, in my house. Even before I heard about your visit to Hunter I’d decided that I wasn’t going to last out, that my pride was an arrogant desire to punish you and myself because I was afraid of being vulnerable.’
‘What were you going to do?’
He moved down the bed and loosened the duvet, pulling her gently against him, as he smoothed her hair back from her suddenly hot cheek. ‘I was going to wait until we were alone here and ask if there was any possibility that we might start over again.’ Grim laughter was an undertone in the deep voice. ‘I was going to tell you that I loved you, and that my soul was dying without you. What would you have said, Oriel?’
She listened to his heartbeat, watched with sultry eyes the pulse in the strong brown column of his throat. ‘I’d probably have told you to go to hell,’ she said demurely.
His teeth gleamed a moment as he laughed. ‘Then perhaps it’s just as well Lora spilled the beans, and I came up here seething with righteous anger. How long would you have made me plead?’
‘I couldn’t make you plead!’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said calmly. ‘Didn’t you know, my heart’s delight, my lovely lady? You could make me plead, and enjoy doing it. Why do you think I’ve been fighting you for so long?’
She looked directly at him. He was watching her, that little smile at the corners of his mouth, but in his eyes was the naked truth. ‘I would never make you plead,’ she said steadily. ‘Pleading has no place between lovers.’
‘My compassionate love. Then are we going to wait?’
Oriel knew what he meant. His voice stroked along her nerves, teasing each cell in her body into life. She lifted heavy lashes and smiled at him, pierced through by his smile, his narrowed, brilliant glance. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Why should we wait? I love you. You love me. Isn’t that all that’s necessary?’
He carried her up the stairs and into his bedroom, his arms strong and sure about her, havens when she needed them. As he stood her beside the huge bed he asked on a note of passionate laughter, ‘Are you shy?’
Colour flaked the length of her cheekbones. ‘Yes. I suppose I’m still terrified that you-that you might find me-too thin.’
His brows drew together. ‘Your mother may not have recognised your potential,’ he said curtly, ‘but I happen to like tall women with bodies like racehorses, lithe and long-limbed, with silky skin and-’
‘Small breasts,’ she said, pulling his hand to cover the swell of her breast. His fingers cupped, moved slowly, silkily across the taut, expectant tips. She shivered at the uncomfortable excitement of her nipples peaking.
‘Small,’ he said on a sigh. ‘My heart, they fit my hand perfectly. And we know they fit my mouth perfectly. They will fit the mouths of our children perfectly. How can they be too small? By the time I’ve finished loving you, you will know that they are perfect, that you are perfect, made for me, made for my loving, made for my life and my heart.’
Sensation sizzled through her. She had never known that knees could literally go weak and useless at the words of another, but hers weren’t able to support her. Sinking against him, she held up her mouth. His came down to meet its innocent invitation, gently at first, and then, at her ardent, untrammelled response, with a ferocity that should have frightened the wits out of her.
Perhaps it did, for her wits certainly left her. Recklessly, blindly, she offered the bounty of her body, shuddering with delight as his trembling hands wrenched her clothes from her until she was naked before him, her body open to his gaze.
‘You look like a goddess,’ he said, his voice impeded yet ringing with the control he was exerting. ‘Not full-breasted Juno, but Diana, the huntress, strong and graceful and lithe, so dangerous that no man could look at her and survive. Oriel, for the only time in my life since the very first, I’m terrified that I’m going to do something wrong. I need you so much. I’m afraid I’ll hurt you, disgust you...’
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sp; ‘Nothing you could do could disgust me,’ she whispered, her hands sliding up to undo the buttons on his shirt. ‘And if something goes wrong-well, what does it matter? We have a lifetime to get it right, haven’t we?’
‘My lovely, sane darling!’ He gave the triumphant laugh of a lover, and kissed her, holding her a long moment against his hard body. ‘Yes. If I go too fast, it simply means that next time I’ll be able to slow things down until you’re screaming for fulfilment. Now, are you going to undress me, or shall I put a stop to the torture you’re indulging in and yank my clothes off myself?’
His shirt gaped open, but she had got no further, her hands side-tracked into searching out the whorls and scrolls of hair that formed fine patterns across his chest. Her questing fingers found the tiny, hard nubs of his nipples; she put her mouth to them, but jerked her head away when he groaned.
‘Don’t you like it?’ she asked worriedly.
‘Yes.’
She understood. Smiling, she did it again, and slid her hands down to his belt. ‘It won’t come undone,’ she whispered in frustration.
He wrenched it free, and stepped out of his trousers and the briefs beneath, bent to kiss her, easing her carefully into his embrace so that she became accustomed to his full arousal. Then she was lifted, and put in the bed, the sheet cool on her back; he hauled the bedclothes down and stood for a moment, his pale, glittering gaze tracing the contours of her body, the sweet curves and long limbs, the flushed skin.
‘All spare, graceful beauty,’ he murmured in a voice she barely heard. ‘Clean, elegant lines with no need for an embarrassment of embellishment.’
All shyness gone, Oriel smiled and held up her arms to him. He was magnificent, she thought hazily, the splendid masculine presence never more wonderful than now, unclothed and revealed to her, all barriers gone.
