Back in the Marriage Bed

by Penny Jordan

  But he still hated the thought of leaving Annie. For the past three days she had been crying in her sleep at night, and there was a tension between them that both of them seemed powerless to defuse.

  Annie had been due to start her first term at university the week after he’d left, and on that particular day, in an attempt to give them both something else to think about other than his imminent departure, he had spent the evening discussing with her the career options that would be open to her once she had obtained her degree.

  ‘I’m not sure I want to take up my university place any more,’ she told him quietly. ‘After all, we’re married now, and…well…once we have children—’

  ‘Children!’ Dominic interrupted her blankly. The issue of whether or not they would have a family was not one they had as yet discussed. The experience of his own upbringing—his childhood belief that he wasn’t important to his parents versus his now adult recognition of the demands their work had placed on them both—had forced him to acknowledge that not every adult was up to the huge responsibilities that being a parent meant, and to question whether or not he was himself.

  Now he saw that Annie had a completely different viewpoint from his own, and he knew that he had to make her understand that they both needed time to adjust to their relationship to one another before they even began to discuss whether or not they would make good parents.

  Certainly there was no question of them having a child whilst he was committed to his current contract. No way did he want a child to suffer through him in the way he had done as a boy—oh, no, no way!

  ‘You don’t want children?’ she exclaimed in shock. ‘But…but why not?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t,’ he confirmed sharply.

  ‘But why not?’ Annie demanded, and Dominic cursed himself for the pain and disbelief he could hear in her voice, setting out as gently as he could to explain his feelings to her.

  ‘Parenthood isn’t just about having a baby, Annie. It’s…’ Desperately he struggled to find the right words. ‘It’s a very big responsibility. When we create a child we aren’t just giving it life, we’re giving it…burdening it, if you like, with ourselves…with our own personal history. And at the moment I feel that just isn’t something I would want to burden a child with. We’ve got one another…isn’t that enough?’ he beseeched her, adding almost desperately as he saw the look in her eyes, ‘I married you for you, Annie, and not for…for children.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she agreed, her voice becoming almost pleading as she added huskily, ‘But sometimes things happen…a baby is conceived without being planned and…’

  ‘No way…not for us,’ Dominic denied immediately. ‘I don’t…’ He stopped, then asked her gently, ‘What are we arguing for? After all, there’s no way you could be pregnant.’

  One of the first things he had done, the very first time they had made love, was to assure her that she need have no fear of him being careless about contraception, and he had been touched and amused when, just before their marriage, Annie had hesitantly confided to him that she had read that sex could be more pleasurable for both of them if he did not have to…to ‘use anything’, and that because of that she had taken the responsibility for contraception into her own hands.

  He had let her do it, partly because, if he was honest, he was just as eager to be inside her, skin to skin, flesh to flesh, as she was to have him there without a protective barrier between them.

  ‘We can’t have any accidents, Annie,’ he reinforced firmly.

  ‘But if we did?’ she persisted with unusual stubbornness.

  He frowned as he looked at her. Her face was flushed and her eyes unexpectedly determined as well as anxious. It was unlike her to argue with him, and the last thing he felt like doing when they had so little time left together was to argue about a hypothetical pregnancy. He rubbed his temple, where a pounding headache had been irritating him all day.

  ‘If we did,’ he told her tersely, ‘then of course we would do the sensible thing, take the only reasonable option, and have the pregnancy terminated.’

  ‘An abortion!’ She gasped and went white. ‘You mean you would want me to destroy our baby…to kill it…?’

  ‘Annie, for God’s sake stop being so emotional,’ he demanded short-temperedly. ‘When the time comes we can sit down together and discuss starting a family rationally and sensibly. Until that time does come, though, it would be crazy…impossible for us to have a child. Look at you,’ he taunted her. ‘You’re still practically one yourself…’

  ‘I wasn’t a child when you wanted to take me to bed—or to marry me,’ Annie immediately pointed out stiffly. ‘And this is my body we’re talking about. Mine, not yours. And I can tell you, Dominic, there’s no way I could ever, ever destroy our child. And if you tried to make me then…then…’

  ‘Then what?’ Dominic demanded in exasperation. The ache in his head had gone from a single angry pounding to a pain that was jangling his already overstretched nerves to a rising crescendo so intense that he was having to grit his teeth to prevent himself from complaining about it.

  ‘Then I’d leave you,’ Annie told him flatly.

  ‘Leave me? For God’s sake, don’t be so ridiculous, so childish,’ he fumed. ‘We’ve been married less than a month, Annie. You aren’t pregnant, and…’

  ‘But if I were? If I were you’d make me have a termination? Right?’ she persisted emotionally.

  Dominic sighed. ‘It would be impossible for us to have a child right now.’

  ‘Impossible? Why? Because you don’t want one? Because—?’

  ‘You know the position I’m in,’ Dominic interrupted her shortly. ‘I’ve got my career to think of, Annie, and…’

  ‘Oh, yes, your career…I mustn’t forget that must I?’ she demanded, her eyes filling with tears. ‘Nothing, no one must interfere with your precious career, must they Dominic?’

  He guessed then—or at least he thought he had guessed—what was really wrong. Like him, she was dreading their imminent parting, and immediately his heart softened.

  ‘Come here,’ he commanded huskily, reaching for her. But to his chagrin, instead of responding, instead of running to him and flinging herself into his arms, as he had expected, she deliberately took a step back from him, her face and her body freezing with disdain.

  ‘Sex…is that all you can think about, Dominic? Well, I’m sorry, but I’m just not in the mood.’

  And with that she stalked off, leaving him open-mouthed, torn between anger and amusement.

  He hadn’t seen her display such haughtiness before, nor such obstinacy, he reflected later, when she refused all the tentative attempts he made to coax her back into a more loving frame of mind, and in the end, irritated both by what he considered to be her childishness and his own headache, he shrugged his shoulders, telling her pithily, ‘If I were you, Annie, before I thought about having a child I would check on my own maturity…or lack of it!’

  That night for the first time since their marriage they slept without touching. Several times Dominic was tempted to reach out and take hold of her, to end their discord by telling her how much he loved her and how much he was dreading being apart from her. But he had a stubborn streak of his own, and an even more well-hidden vulnerability as well, and a part of him needed to have her to be the one to turn to him, to tell him, show him, that he was wanted, that he meant more to her than the as yet unconceived child they had argued so hotly and painfully about.

  But she didn’t, and in the end, because of the pain in his head, he resorted to taking some of the strong painkillers he had been prescribed for such attacks, with the result that he overslept the following morning.

  When he was finally able to drag himself out of his drug-induced sleep Annie had gone.

  Gone never to return…

  At first he simply assumed that she had gone into the city to do some shopping, but then lunchtime came and went, and then teatime, and it finally began to dawn on him that s
he might not be coming back.

  He scoured the town for her, and the university, empty as yet, but he couldn’t find any sign of her.

  In the end, in desperation, he visited the lodging house where she had been staying when he had first met her, but the woman who ran the place was away on holiday with her husband, and her cousin, whom she had left in charge, didn’t even recognise Annie’s description.

  He didn’t sleep that night, nor the night after, expecting with every heartbeat that she would return. But when?

  One day passed, and then a week without any sign of her, without any word from her, and Dominic began to think the unthinkable. Annie had left him, and all because of a stupid quarrel.

  She’s eighteen, a baby still, he tried to remind himself. Her reaction to their quarrel was excusable and understandable. She would come back once she had stopped sulking. Their love was too strong for her not to do so.

  Ten days later, on the eve of his departure for the Middle East, he still hadn’t been able to accept that she had actually left him, that she wasn’t just playing a silly game with him to punish him. Right up until the moment the final call for his flight was given he still kept on expecting her to appear, to come running up to him, telling him that it had all been a mistake, that she loved him.

  And even then he still didn’t give up hope, asking the estate agents and the couple he had let the house to to let him know if she should get in touch.

  But of course she didn’t do any such thing, and in the end he had to accept that the reason she hadn’t returned—no doubt the reason she had walked out on him in the first place—was that she regretted their marriage and considered it to be a mistake.

  He didn’t bother returning home to the UK that Christmas. What was the point? His birthday in March he celebrated alone, and all the birthdays that followed it, along with certain other special anniversaries: the one when he had first met her, the one when they had first made love, the one when they had married.

  The years passed, and with them his initial shock of disbelief. All that remained was a natural irritation at not knowing why she had gone without an explanation. He had resigned himself to never losing the hurt, but the last thing that he had expected or envisaged was that she would simply walk back into his life, his home—his bed—as though nothing had happened…without any warning…without any real explanation, without any acknowledgement of what she had done. And he had certainly never imagined that she would behave in such an extraordinarily bizarre way.

  His body tensed now, as he fought to quell the surge of aching longing that filled him. In the past, as lovers, he had been the tutor and she the disciple. But tonight…With the bitterness of the gall that only a man who has loved a woman more than she has loved him can feel he gritted his teeth against the ferocity of his jealousy at the thought of the relationships she must have had in his absence.

  All that rubbish she had talked about fate and them being meant to be together had just been so ridiculous. Surely she couldn’t possibly have expected him to believe her! So why hadn’t he said something, stopped her—stopped himself? Because he was a man, that was why…She meant nothing to him on a personal level now—nothing whatsoever—and the first thing he was going to do when she eventually woke up was to demand an explanation of her reappearance in his life.

  Yes. That was the first thing he was going to do. And the second was that he was going to get a divorce!

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ANNIE woke up with a small anxious start, peering quickly round the bedroom before smiling in relief as she saw the tall, familiar male figure standing in front of the window.

  ‘It wasn’t just a dream,’ she breathed happily.

  Dominic stared at her. What the hell was she playing at? Well, he could play as well.

  ‘No, it wasn’t a dream,’ he agreed silkily. ‘And I’ve got the scratches to prove it. Want to see them?’

  As she blushed and lowered her eyelashes in faked modesty he admitted to himself that she was an excellent actress. Even he, knowing the truth, still found his heart giving a funny little erratic beat as he fought the temptation to move reassuringly closer to her.

  Hardening his heart, he prepared to tell her that she was wasting her time trying to bamboozle him, but before he could say anything Annie pre-empted him, telling him shyly, ‘I know this sounds silly, but I still can’t quite believe that all this is real. That you and I are real,’ she added for extra emphasis.

  ‘What would you like me to do to prove it to you?’ Dominic asked her urbanely. ‘Come over there and—?’ He stopped abruptly as he recognised that his words, designed to put her in her place, were instead having a very emphatic and very unwanted effect on his own body as his mind agilely leapt the chasm between his words and the events of the previous night, furnishing him in no uncertain terms with the knowledge of just how his body felt about renewing the intimacy they had so recently shared.

  His body might want her but his emotions most certainly did not, Dominic assured himself sturdily, but for some reason he still found that he was moving closer to the bed and to Annie—because he wanted to ensure that she had no way of escaping when he confronted her and demanded an explanation of her behaviour he told himself firmly.

  ‘I really ought to get up,’ she was saying quietly. ‘You must have things to do, and…’

  ‘And so do you. What are you doing with your time, Annie? With your life?’ he demanded aggressively.

  For a moment she looked slightly taken aback, but her manner as she gathered the duvet around her body was so composed and quiet that Dominic felt reluctantly impressed.

  ‘I…I work part-time for Petrofiche,’ she told him hesitantly.

  Dominic stiffened. No doubt that explained how she had known that he was returning to the area. She must have heard on the office grapevine about his appointment.

  ‘Part-time?’ he began critically, but Annie didn’t appear to register the contempt in his voice because she had ignored what he was saying.

  ‘Oh, this is a dream come true for me,’ she told him huskily. ‘I never thought…And then, when I saw you in the restaurant the other night…I never imagined that this could happen.’ As she spoke she reached out to touch his hand, her expression one of luminous joy, her whole body trembling openly as she whispered, ‘People say that reality can never match up to the expectancy of one’s dreams, but now I know that they’re wrong. My reality…You…’

  She paused, visibly swallowing as she raised her head and fixed her gaze on him, her eyes wide and dark with an emotion that looked so real that Dominic had to remind himself just what she was, and how impossible it was for her to mean a word of what she was saying.

  ‘You,’ she emphasised, ‘are more, so very much more than…than I ever dreamed you could possibly be. I can’t believe even now that I’ve been lucky enough to find you…that fate should have picked us out for one another. I feel so…’ She paused and swallowed, her eyes almost purple-grey with the intensity of the emotions Dominic knew she had to be faking as she continued huskily, ‘I feel so, so blessed too. Last night,’ Annie went on tremulously, drawing his hand closer to her, so he had to sit on the bed, ‘was the most wonderful, the most beautiful, the most perfect night of my life.’ She paused, and Dominic could hear the tiny emotional catch in her voice before she said, ‘You made it that way for me. I love you so much…I…’

  When her voice became suspended by emotion Dominic reminded himself that she was merely acting…lying…

  ‘Oh, dear,’ he could hear her saying, her voice rueful and husky with self-deprecatory laughter. ‘I think I might be going to cry, and men hate weepy women, don’t they?’

  He had originally fallen almost as much in love with her gentle sense of humour as he had with her, but, like everything else about her, it was a fiction, he reminded himself sharply now as he made to pull away from her.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ he told her abruptly. ‘I’ll go downstairs and start breakfast.�
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  It made sense to wait until they were in less emotive surroundings before he confronted her, he told himself as he moved to stand up, but to his consternation, instead of letting him go, she clung tenderly to his arm.

  ‘I’m hungry too—for you,’ she whispered, her voice soft with love.

  She blushed as he turned to look at her—a soft pink flushing of her skin that, like her downcast glance, had to be manufactured, he told himself.

  ‘You want sex?’ he demanded angrily, and then, before she could say anything, and without giving himself time to analyse either his anger or the way he was reacting to it, he turned back to her, once again sitting on the bed as he reached for her, wrapping her tightly in his arms, his mouth hard and punishing on hers.

  Annie felt almost as though she might faint. To wake up this morning in the bed she had shared last night with the man she loved, to know that he was real, that their love was real, was almost too much for her to comprehend. And now to have him hold her, kiss her with such fierce hungry energy, to know, to see that he wanted her so much…She ached to reach out and caress him…intimately…but there were still some things, some intimacies she felt too shy to make the first move towards.

  And then her hesitancy was forgotten as he suddenly pushed her back against the bed, growling against her mouth, ‘You’re the one who wanted this.’

  ‘I do…I want you,’ Annie whispered back. ‘I love you…so much…’

  She gave a small moan of delight as he pushed back the duvet, his hand and then his mouth hotly fierce against her naked skin, her naked breasts. In the clear morning light she could see the rosy crests of her nipples, her breasts still slightly flushed and swollen from the night’s lovemaking.