Temptation is the Night

by Marguerite Kaye

  “Did I come here just for you, do you mean?”

  Hope flickered in her breast, though he had not the look of a man who wished to be conciliatory. Rather the opposite. “Did you?”

  “Yes.”

  He pushed himself away from the door, covering the short distance to the foot of the bed with a panther-like prowl. Desire, unexpected, uncontrollable, long forgotten and long suppressed, snaked through her. Even at his most remote, even when he was pushing her out, shutting himself away, it had always been like that between them. White-hot passion. With nothing else to feed on, she had thought it would fade, but it seemed she was wrong about that too.

  Blushing, mortified at the raw need she was sure he must have glimpsed on her face, Lindsey pressed the backs of her hands to her flaming cheeks.

  Jack smiled as he watched her discomfort, a lift of his mouth which did not reach his eyes. “Yes, my lovely wife, I did come here just for you,” he said, a long finger under her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “But don’t get your hopes up. It’s not a reconciliation I’m after.”

  She swallowed hard. “What, then,” she asked, still not quite able to believe he really was here.

  His low laugh plucked at her heartstrings. “I’ve come to perform an exorcism.”

  Chapter 2

  “An exorcism,” Lindsey repeated in disbelief. “You think I’m some sort of evil spirit?”

  “Not evil, but in some way I feel possessed by you. I want you out of my head.”

  “I assumed I already was,” Lindsey retorted, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice. “Four years, and you haven’t once made any attempt to contact me.”

  “You left me, or don’t you remember? Not a hint, not a word, not a note. I was the one faced with the empty house. I was the one left behind to deal with all the tactful friends and the not-so-tactful gossipmongers. If only I’d known you were expecting me to come and fetch you back.”

  The ragged edge of his sarcasm sawed savagely through her. She flinched. “I didn’t. I wasn’t. Expecting you to, I mean. You were the one who told me to go.”

  She clasped her fingers together in front of her, caught sight of them and immediately unclasped them. She hadn’t expected him to be so angry. “What would I have said in a note, Jack? I would have gone sooner or later, even if you hadn’t ordered me out that night. I felt as if I was living with a stranger. You didn’t want me there, you made that perfectly plain. The only time we ever made any sort of connection was—was…”

  She bit her lip. Stupid to be embarrassed, he was still her husband, but she was. Which was the problem, really—he’d never felt like her husband at all. “When we said our vows, we promised to be united, heart, body and mind. One out of three, Jack, it just wasn’t enough in the end. I had to go, there was nothing else left for me to try. And—and anyway, I knew it was what you wanted.”

  The sheen of tears in her eyes made them look like amber, her pupils dark, like an animal trapped inside. Once more, Jack struggled to resist the urge to wrap his arms around her. Regret for what they had once so briefly had took him aback. Three months into their marriage it had started. Three months he’d had, of freedom from the blackness, of hope that it was forever banished by this fresh, new start. How wrong he’d been.

  The pain of her leaving had been worse than anything those episodes put him through, worse than anything dealt to him by the war. He had been expecting her to go, it had become inevitable, she was right about that. But still, when it happened, he really felt as if he had been slain.

  She was unfinished business, he reminded himself sternly, albeit rather more unfinished than he had realised. “It’s done now,” he said, resolutely. “No point in recriminations or picking over the carcase, it’s time for us to move on. More than time. I want to be free of you.”

  The sway she held over him was stronger, much stronger in reality than in his memories. He was struggling to reconcile the woman in front of him with the woman who lived in his head. She looked so very different. She looked so exactly the same. He sat down beside her on the edge of the bed, trailing his finger down the naked flesh of her arm. So beautiful. “I loved you so much.” The words were wrenched from him like a child from the womb.

  Loved, not love. Lindsey felt a tearing and ripping in her heart, as fresh and painful as that day she had closed the door of Crieff House behind her. Tears sparkled on her lashes. “Jack.”

  Loved, not love. Though it was the last thing she had come here for, being with him here, like this, made her realise it would never be a past tense. For her, it was love, not loved. She reached for him, touching her fingers to his cheek, running them through the soft silk of his hair. Hair not just black but black as night. “Can’t we try again?”

  He stared at her for an eternity, then he shook his head. “Is that what you came here for?”

  She shook her head. “No. I came because I thought it was over.”

  “It is.”

  Lindsey paled. “You want a divorce?” The words like arsenic on her lips, and just as lethal, came out as a whisper.

  Though it was the next logical step, and lately had become not only acceptable, but for some of his peers almost a way of life, divorce had not occurred to Jack. The idea was repugnant. “I told you, I want an exorcism.”

  “You think yourself haunted?” Amusement close to hysteria fleetingly banished the anguish Lindsey felt was wringing her dry.

  He’d forgotten how she smiled with her eyes. He’d forgotten that tilting look, the way their colour changed, lightened and sparkled. He had always thought of it as his smile. Only for him. Against his will, Jack found himself smiling back. “Don’t you?”

  Lindsey’s amusement faded. “Yes. Yes, I suppose I do.” She could not gauge his mood or his intentions. Eighteen months they had been married, but if anything they understood each other less at the end than at the beginning. “I failed you—us. We had something special, and it died.” For Jack, anyway.

  “It didn’t die, that’s the point,” Jack said. “Or if it did, it came back. Like a spectre.”

  A single tear escaped her, trickling down the well-worn path of the countless others she had shed since leaving him. “Surely—Jack, surely if there’s something there, if you still feel something for me, could we not…”

  He shook his head, more decisively than he felt at that point. “You can’t bring ghosts back to life, no matter how much you might want to. All you can do is lay them to rest.”

  “Who says you can’t?”

  “It can’t be done, Lindsey. It’s over. Perhaps it should never have begun. At least that way we’d both have been spared the pain.”

  For just a second, she saw what it had cost him. The darkness in his eyes, the hardening of his face into something she recognised, from enduring so much of it herself. The getting-by but not living, which the last four years had been. It ripped the last shred of resistance from her. She could not bear to see such suffering in him.

  “I still don’t know what went wrong. It torments me, Jack, what we lost. In that sense I really am haunted. Can’t you at least help me find some answers?”

  “You don’t want answers, you want reasons to try again, and I don’t want to. It would be painful and pointless.”

  Despairingly, she heard the note of absolute finality in his voice. A closed door. One of the many which had been their downfall. She remembered it only too well, that feeling of powerlessness as it slammed shut in her face. “So we do it your way or not at all?” There was an acrid note in her voice she could not subdue.

  “Don’t be like that. I’m right. You’ll see I’m right.”

  Same old Jack after all. “You didn’t really mean it when you said you wished we had never begun, did you? You don’t regret us, do you?” she asked, clutching desperately for the solace of at least this much.

  A long look, then Jack slowly shook head. “No. I can’t regret it, though I know I should.” Some of the tension seemed to leave h
im. He traced the delicate line of her jaw, to the point where her precision bob ended. “You cut your hair.”

  “Long hair is for little girls. I grew up.”

  He touched her neck now, her shoulder, her arm again, his hand brushing the side of her breast. “You certainly did.”

  Lindsey shivered. Her nipple puckered and stiffened through the heavy beading of her dress. “So you want an exorcism,” she said, forcing herself to focus on the now, to take what she could from the now, to give what she could too. “How do you propose to achieve that?” Somehow she knew he did not mean crucifixes and incantations. Unbelievably, excitement glittered inside her like the sharp edge of a blade.

  “A dose of reality. I want to make love to you. I need to prove that the real you can’t live up to the ghost of what you were in my head. I want to live in the real world again, Lindsey. I’m tired of inhabiting some Never Never Land.”

  “You’re joking!” Even as she said it, she knew from the way he was looking at her that he was not. She knew from the way she was responding to his look that she did not want him to be either, for if she could not have it all, she would take this. They had always had this, and she wanted it, just one more time. She wanted it with a fierce wanting she had not thought herself capable of again.

  “No joke. I’ve thought about it and it’s the only thing that makes sense. I’m tired of carrying you around in my head like some impossible dream.”

  “Does it have to be so impossible?”

  “We’ve already proved it is. Was. I don’t want to talk about it any more. I don’t want to think about us—you—anymore. I just want…”

  “An exorcism. You said.” She couldn’t help it, it hurt. Some vital part of her was being severed. “You want to make love to me, to prove that I can’t live up to my memory, but what if I do? Do I get another chance?”

  Jack shrugged, feigning a certainty he was far from feeling. Lindsey in the flesh, new Lindsey in her new flesh, was unbelievably enticing. He wanted her, and badly. He could not afford to let her know how much, let alone admit it to himself. “You won’t. You can’t. Now either take off your dress, or tell me to go,” he said as coldly as he could. Though if she did the latter rather than the former—no, he couldn’t bear to think of that.

  Lindsey gazed at him, her breathing fast and shallow, as if she had been running. Already she knew that his dose of reality would be much, much more wonderful than her own ghosts, her own memories, her own impossible dreams. This time, she would not allow him to have it all his own way. If she must be exorcised, she would make damn sure the part she played in it was memorable!

  She got to her feet to stand in front of him. “Unfasten me then,” she said and saw, with immense satisfaction, just as she turned her back on him, the look of surprise on his face. His hands were cool and competent on her dress. She turned back towards him when he had done and slipped her arms free, allowing the heavily beaded swathe of silk to pool around her feet. A tiny surge of triumph rippled through her at the sudden stillness of his look. She had never undressed so brazenly in front of him before. She had always preferred to have the light turned out. Not tonight. Tonight she wanted to see. She wanted him to see too. If it was a last chance, it would be the best.

  She was wearing a camisole top and French knickers. Peach silk trimmed with ivory lace covering very unfashionable curves. Totally delightful curves. She stood before him, a slight blush staining her cheeks, but her head held high, her eyes never wavering from his face. She wanted him to look at her.

  Deliberately, Jack allowed his eyes to trail down to the line of her breasts, noticing with a flicker of excitement the outline of hard nipple through the thin material. His eyes continued their downward journey, to the dip of her waist, the sweep of her hip. Her skin had a lustre to it. He could see tantalising glimpses of flesh. Her thighs in the gap between her garters and the lacy hem of her French knickers. The hollow at the base of her throat. Perfectly covered flesh, dipping curves and luscious mounds. Unmistakably, indisputably female. Unmistakably Lindsey, yet indisputably not. She was his wife. And she was not.

  Want shafted through him, urgent and pure. She must have seen it in his face, for her eyes widened. She licked her lips, a flick of tempting pink tongue against their plump softness, making him think of the darker pink folds between her legs. Like a bolt of electricity, her action, his thoughts, connected directly to his groin. He was hard. Straining hard. Aching hard. “You’re beautiful,” he said, pulling her to him by the strap of her camisole. “Quite beautiful.”

  She was aroused. She could feel it in the way her blood rushed through her veins. The way her breath came a little too fast. The tingling in her pulse points. She had forgotten. She hadn’t allowed herself to remember. Jack was right, she needed this exorcism every bit as much as he did.

  She moved closer, so that she could feel the heat of his body. Her nipples ached as they strained against the silk of her lingerie. He was watching her, examining her face, searching for something—what? She twined her fingers into his hair. She bowed her body so that her breasts, her stomach, her thighs, brushed against him. She pulled at his tie, loosening it, then his shirt collar. She lifted her face, so that her lips brushed his. She kissed him, allowing her lips to trail heat over his, running her fingers through the short, silky hair on the back of his head, flicking her tongue into his mouth, licking and tasting, listening to the voice in her body that said, do this, now this, then this. Feeling. Communing. And kissing.

  He was kissing her back. Hot and feverish. His hands on her, holding and gripping, moulding her to him, running over her skin, the silk of her underwear, trailing heat and fire, pushing her over towards the bed, throwing her down so that she was splayed on the dark green velvet of the counterpane. The nap of the soft material on her skin fanned the flames of fire in her belly.

  His jacket was on the floor. He was beside her on the bed now, breathing harshly, holding her, hands on her, looming over her. For moments, moments, moments Jack looked at her with such a hunger she thought she would be engulfed. Then his mouth took hers again and she was truly possessed, his kisses sucking the life-blood from her. Bruising kisses, plunging and plundering, making her moan and pant like a wild thing. Making her suck and plunge in return. Taking and taking and taking. Then giving and giving and giving.

  He pulled her on top of him. She could feel the hardness of his erection between her legs, straining into the flesh of her thighs. He kissed her again and again. Punishing kisses for all they had lost. Challenging kisses for all the darkness there had been between them. Deep kisses for all the pleasures they had once shared. She tore at his shirt, fingers fumbling with the starched front, the pearl buttons, raining begging kisses onto the hard wall of his chest, feeling the tickle of his hair on her nose, biting into the muscle of his shoulder.

  Underneath him again, the straps of her camisole top were pulled down over her shoulders. His mouth on her breast through the silk. Hot, tugging at her nipple, making it ache and filling her with such a flood of longing she struggled to breathe. Strong hands wrenching impatiently, the sinews on his wrists and arms flexing, the fabric of her underwear ripped, and Jack’s face, his eyes dark with desire, looking down, drinking in.

  Fingers touching her reverently now, slowly, hands cupping her breasts, tracing the curves of them, licking around their form, then sucking, a gentle sucking that filled her with such sweetness and started something new and straining inside her.

  It was like chains tightening, painful in the most pleasurable way. She had forgotten, like an out-of-focus photograph, or a horizon forever distant. She forced her eyes open and saw Jack’s profile, the fan of his long lashes on his cheeks, the fall of a lock of wayward, coal-black hair on his forehead. His mouth, his beautiful mouth, on her breast, on her stomach.

  She ran her hands over his back, then his chest. She arched up against him, tugging at his belt. “Jack,” she begged, hands clumsy with need, and he unbuckled it for her
, standing up to quickly discard the rest of his clothing, and she caught her breath. Broad shoulders, tapering waist, flat abdomen. The thin white line of the scar he would never let her touch, curving down along the line of his rib cage. His muscles were defined under the glow of his skin. She could see each one move as he moved, a flexing and un-flexing, bunching then smoothing. Pulse-quickening movements. He had an all-over tan too. She wondered fleetingly where he had been and with whom, trying and failing to tamp down the spurt of jealousy. Its poison lent her gaze an edge, a reminder that this was her only chance for him to be hers. Possessiveness made her want to clutch at him like a trap on its prey. He was hers.

  Lindsey shrugged off the remnants of her camisole. Jack quickly removed her knickers, her stockings and garters. He pulled her forward on the bed so that she was sitting with him standing between her legs. Her breasts were heavy with need, her nipples brushing achingly against the heat of his stomach. His scent was musky. Male. His erection silky hard. Man. He took her hands and placed them on his body, encouraging her to touch, over the dip of his buttocks, the rough of his flank, the softer skin and hotter heat between his legs.

  She felt him tense, waiting for her to touch him. She did. Without waiting for his encouragement, she cupped him, the rough, tender skin weighty in the palm of her hand. He drew his breath sharply, the muscles on his abdomen flexing beneath her cheek. Still cupping, she touched his erection with her other hand, stroking the delicate skin, marvelling at the hardness of him, the size of him, the beauty of him. She wanted him inside her. She felt herself straining with the want, as if she was at the end of a leash.

  Jack pushed her back onto the bed. Jack covered her body with his. Jack kissed her deeply. Jack touched her. His hand between her legs, he brushed her thighs, pushing them apart. He cupped her as she had him, his hand heeling against her, his fingers stroking and coaxing and parting her soft folds. She had never been quite like this before, so lush and damp and hot. So patently aroused. He was so hard he felt dizzy from it.