by Penny Jordan
Saul remembered the distaste and contempt he had felt when he first heard an American client disclose a view he had later come to realise was shared by a large proportion of his own sex. ‘Sure, we have a good sex-life. I pay her a hundred dollars every time she sucks me off—that way we both get something we want and I get the added bonus of knowing every time she goes out and buys herself a new outfit that it’s cost her as well as me.’
Admittedly it took two people to devalue a relationship to that point, but with hindsight he could see how close he and Karen had come to getting caught in the same trap.
Was that why Davina James had stayed married to her husband? Because of the money? He frowned. What the hell was he doing, dragging her back into his thoughts? And, besides, he acknowledged irritably, Davina James was the one with the money. Her father had seen to that. That must have galled her husband. He was the one who ran the business, but she was the one who had the real control.
Control … yes, it all came back to that one word … that all-important source of power.
* * *
Lucy examined her perfectly made-up face carefully in her mirror, searching for any betraying evidence of tears. There was still a slight puffiness beneath her eyes, a slight pinkness, but not enough for Giles to notice.
Face it, she told herself bitterly, Giles wouldn’t notice … wouldn’t care if he came home and found her stripped and spread-eagled on the sitting-room floor with some other man.
She closed her eyes tightly to prevent the tears welling and ruining her make-up, tears not of misery but of anger. Last night Giles had come home late. Again. And drunk. Well, maybe not drunk, exactly, but certainly he had been drinking and, she suspected, not alone, although he had denied it when she accused him of being with Davina.
She had been in the sitting-room when he came in, pretending to be engrossed in her magazine. He had hesitated in the doorway for a moment as though surprised to see her there. As though he would have preferred not to see her there?
He had come over to her, leaning clumsily over her as he aimed a kiss at her forehead and missed, and then trying to take her in his arms. It was the first time he had touched her in weeks … in months, and immediately she had pushed him away, infuriated and bitterly hurt that he could only face the thought of doing so when he was drunk enough to forget who she actually was … when he had anaesthetised his lack of any desire for her with drink.
To her chagrin, he had refused to let her go, and today she had bruises on her arms from where he had held her. Giles had never been a violent man, not even a rough one, but last night … She shuddered as she remembered the way he had held her, the way he had kissed her, trying to force some kind of response from her.
‘Don’t touch me,’ she had spat at him when she had finally managed to push him off. ‘I am not Davina. She—’
‘No, you’re not, are you?’ he had agreed, interrupting her grimly, not allowing her to finish what she was saying. ‘She’s a real woman, not a phoney copy. She doesn’t play at loving.’
His accusation, all the more hurtful because she had sensed that it was what he actually felt, had driven her into a frenzy of temper, hurling insult after insult at him, telling him that he was useless as a lover, a husband, a provider, telling him that as far as she was concerned he was free to go to Davina and that she wished he would.
‘You’re two of a kind, both of you,’ she had screamed at him. ‘Both of you useless in bed … sexless.’
It had been then that he had grabbed hold of her, taking her off guard by the speed of his attack. What had followed had been squalid and destructive, the complete opposite of the tenderness and intimacy they had once shared, but there had been a point where her body, aching for him, needing him, had overturned her rage and hurt to respond helplessly and eagerly to the driving force of his, matching the intensity of his angry possession of her.
This morning she had still ached a little from that possession, her flesh slightly bruised, slightly tender, so that somehow that small physical ache seemed to echo the greater and far more damaging ache inside her heart.
Afterwards, trembling as much with sexual release as actual shock and pain, she had accused him of raping her, had reminded him that a man no longer had the right to sexually abuse his wife.
Just for a moment the stricken, sickened expression in his eyes made her hesitate, made her want to open her arms to him and tell him that she was sorry; sorry for having goaded him, sorry for having lost him, and most of all sorry for having lost their child; but his eyes had hardened and the impulse was lost, buried beneath the burden of her grievances and betrayal.
‘Go to Davina, if she’s the one you want,’ she had screamed at him. ‘Go to her, because I damn well don’t want you. Go and rape her and see how much she likes it.’
She had heard him storming out of the house, and then the sound of his car engine firing, and was left to spend the rest of the night wide awake; she had watched the hours tick by, forcing herself to resist the impulse to pick up the phone and dial Davina’s number. Of course he had gone to her. Where else would he go? And Davina, of course, would succour and sympathise with him, Davina, whom no man would ever be driven to abuse and rape, Davina, the perfect wife … the perfect woman, at least as far as Giles was concerned.
* * *
Davina was in the shower when she heard the telephone ring. She had been outside, working in the garden for most of the afternoon, a means of clearing her head and organising her thoughts as well as completing a necessary chore. Now her body ached from kneeling and weeding, and she hesitated, frowning as she waited for the caller to get bored and hang up, but instead the ringing persisted, so that finally in exasperation she put down the sponge and reached for a towel.
‘Davina … at last. Davina, I need to see you … now.’
Her muscles tensed as she recognised the desperation in Giles’s voice. He sounded as though he had been drinking, although surely that was hardly likely at this time in the day, especially since he was normally a rather abstemious man? Now, however, his voice was slightly slurred, and her tension increased as she heard the background noise of voices and music.
‘Giles, where are you?’ she demanded.
‘I’m at the motel, the one by the motorway. I stayed there last night. It’s over, Davina. My marriage is over. I can’t—’
‘Look, Giles, stay where you are. I’ll come and collect you. No, don’t drive,’ she cautioned him as he started to protest. She wasn’t one hundred per cent sure but she suspected he was in no fit state to be behind the wheel of a car.
It took her ten minutes to dry herself off and dress. She didn’t bother with any make-up, simply running a comb through her half-damp hair before hurrying out to her car.
The motel was only fifteen minutes’ drive away. She found Giles in the reception area, his eyes bloodshot, his whole appearance dishevelled and so unlike his normal clean neatness that she felt an almost maternal pang of sadness for him.
He hadn’t seen her come in, and when she went up to him and touched him lightly on the arm he swung round, his whole face briefly alight with pleasure as he saw her.
‘Davina.’ He made a move to take her in his arms, but instinctively she stepped back from him, and then wished she hadn’t as she saw the look in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered awkwardly. ‘I …’
‘It’s all right, Giles,’ she told him. ‘Come on. Have you checked out?’
He hadn’t, of course, and while she did so for him he stood behind her. He was like a man suffering from some kind of shock or trauma, she recognised as she ushered him out to her car.
She kept the windows open as she drove, and by the time she had reached home he seemed rather more sober, his face white and strained.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked him gently once they were inside and she had made him some coffee. They were in the sitting-room, Giles’s dishevelment even more noticeable against the backdrop of the immaculate, elegan
t room.
She waited as he leaned back, closing his eyes. She saw the way as he swallowed that his Adam’s apple moved in his throat. He needed a shave, and when she moved close to him he smelled faintly of stale sweat. Normally these things would have, if not actually disgusted her, certainly not have sexually attracted her. With Matt she had discovered the sensual pleasures of every kind of intimacy, especially those very special ones that came from recognising and appreciating the scent of a lover’s arousal, but Giles was not her lover and now, as her senses observed these signs of self-neglect, she was moved to pity and an odd sort of almost maternal compassion.
She reached out and touched his hand, frowning as he stiffened and flinched back from her, his eyes opening, shocking her with their stark anguish.
‘Oh, God, Davina. I’ve done the most dreadful thing. I couldn’t stop myself. She made me feel so humiliated … and so … so angry …’
Davina’s stomach lurched with shock and dread. She wanted to stop him from saying any more, from making her a party to whatever it was that had happened, from making her shoulder any part of his guilt.
But why shouldn’t she? Wasn’t she just as guilty? By association if nothing else.
Subduing her own instinctive desire to escape, she said huskily, ‘Giles … what is it? Please tell me what’s happened.’
His eyes were wide open, but he didn’t seem to be looking at her even though his attention was focused on her. He seemed to be looking past her … through her.
‘It happened last night. I … I wanted to come and see you but … I couldn’t go home. Not at first. So I’d gone to this pub … just to have a few drinks … to try and sort myself out … but then when I got home Lucy was waiting for me. We had a row.’ His mouth twisted. ‘Nothing unusual in that. That’s all we do have these days.
‘All I wanted to do was to stop her from saying those things … I never meant …’ He groaned, covering his face with his hands. ‘I don’t know what came over me. It’s just that it’s been so long, and she … she … I raped her, Davina,’ he told her rawly. ‘I raped my own wife. I wanted to kill myself afterwards. I’ve never been that kind of man. I’ve never … Oh, God. No wonder she told me she wants a divorce. Say something, even if it’s only that you think I ought to be shot …’
Davina forced a small, twisted smile. ‘No. No, I don’t think that.’
‘But you are shocked … disgusted.’
She took a deep breath. Yes, she was shocked, and yes, it was not the behaviour she would have expected from a man like Giles, and she certainly did not subscribe to the theory that certain women deliberately invited and even incited male violence, but, looking at him as he sat slumped in her armchair, his guilt and despair so plainly obvious, she also felt not so much disgust as intense compassion, for him and most of all for Lucy. She reached out hesitantly and then stopped as he drew back from her.
‘For God’s sake, don’t touch me,’ he cautioned her. ‘I shouldn’t even be here like this, inflicting myself on you.’
‘You could always go home,’ she told him quietly. ‘Talk to Lucy. Try to …’
‘Go home … She’s probably got half the local police force waiting there for me. It’s a crime now for a man to rape his wife, you know. Dear God, I never thought it would come to anything like this. All I wanted to do was … I never thought I could lose my control like that. I used to love her so much, Davina. She meant everything to me, but since we lost Nicholas she’s turned completely against me. She blames me for what happened … For her pregnancy … for everything.
‘I’ve tried to be patient … to understand … to wait. I never meant what happened last night to happen.’
He made an abrupt uncoordinated movement, standing up and turning his back to her, but not before Davina had seen the tears in his eyes. Instinctively she got up too and walked over to him, taking hold of him, motivated by an automatic feminine urge to offer comfort and compassion.
At first he resisted her, his body tight with tension and withdrawal, but then abruptly he held on to her, wrapping his arms around her, his body shaking with emotion as she held and rocked him. She could feel the dampness of his tears against her skin, his head a heavy weight on her neck.
‘Oh, God, Davina, how can you bear to be near me, after what I’ve done?’
‘Shush … shush … it will be all right,’ she comforted him.
‘Davina.’
She felt his mouth touch her skin, the caress light and sweet, conjuring lingering memories of another man and another time.
‘Davina.’ He said her name more huskily this time and the pressure of his mouth was stronger, more sensual. She felt his hand against her breast and was sharply reminded of how much larger the male hand was than the female and how very easily, how very naturally it could cup a woman’s breast.
It was not his fault, not even hers, she tried to comfort herself later. Her body’s physical response to his touch was simply that of flesh whose need had been denied a natural outlet for too long. He was, after all, a man she liked, a man with whom she felt comfortable and at home; and, whatever had happened between him and Lucy the previous night, she had no fear that there was any real violence in him. In fact, his touch was almost faintly hesitant, questioning and uncertain rather than demanding. Perhaps it was that which caused her own body to yield and in doing so incited the subtle alchemy that led to mutual physical arousal.
Certainly making love with Giles or anyone else had been the last thing on her mind when she had brought him home with her, but now, with his hand hesitantly caressing her breast, his body hard and aroused against her, his mouth slowly exploring the warm curve of her throat, and that tiny, betraying and so erotic faint trembling within her own flesh, instead of moving away from him she found she was actually moving closer to him, her muscles, her flesh subtly accommodating itself to him, as though it had been merely days and not years since she had last been touched like this … held like this.
He kissed her slowly, lingering over the caress so that she could taste the whisky he had drunk and somehow become ever so slightly intoxicated by it herself.
She ran her hand along his arm and up to the nape of his neck, sliding her fingers into his hair, splaying them against his scalp, holding him against her mouth as she felt him shudder, his tongue thrusting eagerly against hers.
‘Davina … Davina.’
He was touching her more impatiently now, one hand moving down her spine to rest flat and hard at its base, urging her closer to him, while the other caressed the curve of her hip and then tugged at the cloth of her skirt.
He wasn’t as skilled a lover as Matt had been, but there was still a sharp surge of excitement and awareness within her. Perhaps because she was older, more knowing, his slight clumsiness and lack of expertise caused her to feel tenderness and compassion rather than discomfort and unease.
She took hold of his hand, guiding it back to her breast, holding it there as she murmured softly against his mouth. He trembled violently against her, his thumb rubbing fiercely against her nipple.
She had a momentary, sharp aching memory of Matt undressing her, caressing her breasts, his mouth tender and controlled against her untutored flesh. Her spine started to arch, her body moving to invite and support the heavy weight of his head against her. She could feel him tugging impatiently at the buttons on her shirt and was just about to help him when she heard the doorbell ring.
‘Lucy!’ Giles breathed as they automatically froze and then stepped guiltily back from one another. ‘For God’s sake, don’t answer it, Davina.’
‘I have to,’ Davina told him. ‘We can’t just leave her outside.’
Lucy was her friend, and guilt warred with female solidarity, with the knowledge of how she would have felt in Lucy’s shoes. She could not humiliate her by refusing to acknowledge her presence, her right to demand her own part in what was happening.
Hurriedly buttoning her shirt, she went to answer the door, knowing
as she did so that her guilt was plainly written not just in her eyes but on her body as well, her nipples tight and hard, thrusting against the fabric of her shirt. The last thing she had ever wanted to do was to break up anyone’s marriage, especially a friend’s, and it increased her guilt to be forced to acknowledge that what had motivated her actions had not been love for Giles but simply physical desire.
As she swung open the door she was already mentally rehearsing her excuses and explanations, but they were not necessary, because it wasn’t Lucy who had rung the bell.
As she stared blankly at him Saul realised immediately what he had interrupted. Her flushed face, her eyes, her tension and guilt would have betrayed it to even the most obtuse visitor even if her body had not. He felt his own body tense in recognition of the meaning of the aroused thrust of her nipples. He even wondered savagely at what point he had interrupted their lovemaking. Certainly she had barely had time to fasten her shirt—two of the buttons were mismatched in their buttonholes.
‘Davina … Lucy …’
Saul switched his attention from Davina to Giles as the other man came into the hall, his mouth curling in disdain as he took in his unshaven face. They had obviously made rather a night of it, although to judge from their contrasting appearances Davina had recovered from their lovemaking rather faster than her lover; certainly fast enough to have been at the supermarket earlier.
‘I’ve obviously called at an inconvenient time,’ he said sardonically, and as he looked at her Davina suddenly became conscious of the fact that her blouse was incorrectly buttoned and half hanging out of her skirt. She felt the hot embarrassment scorching her face, and wondered why on earth she should actually be wishing that her visitor had been Lucy.
Who was this man, and what on earth was he doing here outside her front door, looking at her with those ice-blue eyes of cold disdain? With one look he told her that he knew exactly what he had interrupted. Indeed, for one appalling second it was almost as though he had actually seen Giles fumbling with her buttons, had actually seen into her own mind and witnessed her own visual image of a man’s head at her breast, his mouth on her nipple.
