Christmas Nights (29 page)

‘Surely you weren’t still in bed?’ he criticised her.

‘No, I always dress like this. Of course I was still in bed,’ Lisa snapped, losing her patience with him. She could hear him clearing his throat, the sound grating on her over-stretched nerves. If she had known it was only Henry at the door she would have stayed where she was.

‘Mother thought I should come and see you,’ he told her.

Lisa stared at him in angry disbelief.

‘Your mother wanted you to come and see me… What on earth for? I would have thought I was the last person she would want you anywhere near. In fact, if I remember correctly, she said—’

‘Er—yes, well…’ Henry was flushing slightly as he cut her off. Why had she never noticed that slightly fishy bulge to his eyes when he was under pressure? Lisa wondered distastefully. Why had she never noticed, either, how very like his mother’s his features were? She shuddered.

‘The thing is, Lisa, that Mother thought I should make the situation absolutely clear to you, and—’

‘What situation?’ she demanded.

‘Well…’ Henry tugged at his collar. ‘The thing is that I’m getting married to… to someone I’ve known for some time. She and I… Well, anyway, the wedding will be in June and we’re having our official engagement party in February and…’

‘And what?’ Lisa pressed, irritated, wondering what on
earth Henry’s engagement and intended marriage had to do with her and why his mother should think she might want to hear about them.

He coughed and told her. ‘Well, Mother didn’t want there to be any misunderstandings… or embarrassment… She felt that it was best that you knew what was happening just in case you tried…’

Lisa couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

‘Just in case I tried what?’ she demanded with ominous calm. ‘Just in case I tried to resuscitate our relationship—is
that
what you’re trying to say?’ she asked him sharply. ‘Is that what your mother is afraid of?’

Did either of them really think… after what had been said, after the accusations which had been made, that she wanted anything…
anything
to do with Henry? Heavens, she wouldn’t so much as cross the street to say hello to him now, never mind try to resuscitate a relationship which Oliver had been quite right to tell her she was better off without, and she opened her mouth to tell Henry as much and then closed it again.

There was no point in losing her temper with Henry; rather, she ought to be pitying him.

‘Who is the lucky bride-to-be?’ she asked him with acid sweetness instead. ‘Or can I guess…? Your aunt’s god-daughter…?’

She saw from his expression that her guess had been right. Poor girl—Lisa hoped she knew what she was taking on.

‘It’s all right, Henry,’ she reassured him calmly. ‘I
do
understand and you are quite safe. In fact I wish you and your wife-to-be every happiness.’

And as she spoke she pulled open her front door and firmly pushed Henry backwards towards it whilst at the same time raising herself on her tiptoes to place her hands on his shoulders and deposit a dismissive and cold contemptuous kiss on his cheek—just as Oliver crossed the foyer outside her flat
and to all intents and purposes saw her with her arms around Henry and kissing him.

There was a second’s tense silence as Lisa saw Oliver over Henry’s shoulder, his face set in a mask of furious anger, and then Henry was backing away from her and almost scurrying past Oliver as he headed for the stairs, whilst Oliver strode towards her, ignoring him.

‘Oliver!’ Lisa exclaimed weakly. ‘What are
you
doing here? I wasn’t expecting you. I thought you were in New York.’

‘Very evidently,’ Oliver agreed tautly as he slammed the front door behind him, enclosing them both in the suddenly far too small space of her hallway.

‘It’s just as well your fiancé has decided to leave. I want to have a few words with you… Not very brave of him, though. Some husband he’s going to make… When I heard that your engagement was back on I couldn’t believe it. I thought there must have been some mistake.’

‘There has,’ Lisa agreed. If only her head would stop aching, she thought.

‘I tried to ring you from the airport,’ she heard Oliver tell her.

‘I was out at a party,’ she responded.

‘A party—to celebrate your engagement, no doubt,’ he accused her grittily, adding savagely as he suddenly stiffened and looked past her and through her open bedroom door to where the clothes she had discarded the previous evening lay scattered all over the floor, ‘Or did you save
that
until you were back here alone with him? My God, and to think I believed you when you told me that sexually he had never meant anything to you, that there had never been anything between you. What else did you lie to me about, Lisa? Not that it matters now…’

‘I haven’t lied to you,’ Lisa protested, reminding him, ‘And if anyone should be making any accusations surely it should
be me? After all, I’m not the one who promised to be back for New Year’s Eve and then broke that promise.’

Furious with herself, she closed her eyes. What on earth had prompted her to say that, to betray to him how much his broken promise had hurt her… how much
he
had hurt her?

‘I had no choice,’ she heard Oliver telling her angrily, ‘but you did, Lisa, and you chose—’

‘I chose nothing,’ she interrupted him, as angry with him now as he patently was with her.

What right, after all, did he have to come back and make such ridiculous accusations—accusations he must surely know couldn’t possibly be true? And how come he could manage to get back
now
when he hadn’t been able to do so before?

‘No?’ Oliver strode past her and walked into her bedroom, demanding dangerously, ‘No? Then would you mind explaining to me what the hell has been going on here?’ He picked up the half-empty champagne glass that she had abandoned the previous evening and gestured to its now flat contents contemptuously as he snarled, ‘Couldn’t he even wait to let you finish this?
His
glass is empty I note…’

His
glass?

Indignantly Lisa opened her mouth to put him right, but before she could say anything Oliver demanded savagely, ‘It must have been quite some celebration the two of you had. What the hell did he do—tear the clothes off your back? You should have told me that that was what you liked,’ he advised her, his voice suddenly dropping dangerously, his eyes glittering as his glance raked her from head to toe. ‘I’d no idea your sexual tastes ran to such things. If I had—’

‘Oliver, no…’ she protested as he reached for her, catching hold of her arm and dragging her towards him as he ignored her angry denial.

‘You don’t understand,’ she said, but he was beyond listening to reason or to any of her explanations, she realised, her
heart lurching against her chest wall as she saw the way his gaze raked her, his look a mingling of loathing and desire.

‘I think it’s you who doesn’t understand,’ Oliver was correcting her softly, but there was nothing remotely soft about the way he was holding onto her or the way he was watching her. Her body trembled, her toes curling protestingly into the carpet. ‘I thought we had something special, you and I… I thought I could believe in you, trust you… Like a fool I thought, when you told me you needed me, that you…

‘What is it, what’s wrong?’ he asked her as he felt her body shiver and his apparent concern almost caught her off guard, until she saw the steely, almost cruel look in his eyes.

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Lisa denied. ‘I just want you to let me go.’

‘You’re trembling,’ Oliver pointed out, still in that same nerve-wrenchingly soft voice. ‘And as for letting you go… I will let you go, Lisa, but not until I’ve reminded you of exactly why you shouldn’t be marrying Henry…’

I’m not marrying Henry, Lisa wanted to say, but she only got as far as, ‘I’m not—’ before Oliver silenced her mouth, coming down hard on hers in a kiss of angry possession.

She tried to resist him and even physically to repel him, her own anger rising to meet his as she alternately tried to push him away and twist herself out of his grasp, but the more she fought to escape, the more her body came into contact with his, and as though something about her furious struggles only added extra fuel to the flames of his anger Oliver responded by propelling her back against the bedroom wall and holding her there with the hard strength of his body whilst he lifted her arms above her head and kept them pinioned there as he continued to brutalise her mouth with the savagery of his punishing kiss.

Lisa could feel his heart thudding heavily against her body, her own racing in frantic counterpoint, her breathing fast and
uneven as her anger rose even higher. How dared he treat her like this? All thoughts of trying to explain and pacify him fled as she concentrated all her energy on trying to break free of him.

She could feel the heat coming off his body, the rough abrasion of the fabric of his clothes on her bare skin where her robe had come unfastened. Her mouth felt swollen and bruised from the savagery of his kisses, but there was no fear or panic in her; she recognised only an unfamiliar and fierce desire to match Oliver’s fury with her own.

‘You want me… Me…’ she heard Oliver telling her thickly between plundering kisses.

‘No,’ she denied, but the sound was smothered by the soft moan that rose up in her throat as her body responded to its physical contact with his. Somehow, against all logic, against everything she herself had always thought she believed in, she was becoming aroused by him and by the furious force of their mutual anger, Lisa recognised. And so was he.

On a wave of shocked despair she closed her eyes, but that only made things worse; the feel of him, the scent of him, the weight of him against her—these were all so familiar to her aching, yearning body that they immediately fed her roaring, feral need, turning her furious attempt to wrench herself free from him into something that even to her came closer to a deliberately sensual indication of her body’s need to be possessed by his than a genuine attempt to break free.

Her anger now wasn’t just directed at him, it was directed at herself as well, but with it now she could feel a surge of sensual, languid weakness, a heat which seemed to spread irresistibly throughout her body, so that under the hard pressure of Oliver’s searing kiss, instead of resisting him, her body turning cold and lifeless in rejection of him, she was actually moving, melting, yielding, moaning softly beneath her breath.

‘Lisa, Lisa…’ She could hear the responsive urgency in Oliver’s voice, feel it in his hands as he released her pinioned arms to push aside her robe and caress her body.

Her anger was still there, Lisa saw as she watched him studying her semi-naked body, and so was his, but somehow it had been transmuted into a form of such intense physical desire that she could barely recognise either herself or him in the two human beings who had suddenly become possessed of such a rage of physical passion.

She had never dreamed that she could feel like this, want like this, react like this, she acknowledged dazedly several minutes later as she cried out beneath Oliver’s savage suckling of her breast, clawing at his back in a response born not of anger or pain or fear but rather of a corresponding degree of intensity and compulsion.

And she made the shocking acknowledgement that there was something—some hitherto secret and sensually dark part of her—that actually found pleasure… that actually wanted savagery, a sensation that was only seconds away from actual pain, that a part of her needed this release of her pent-up emotions and desires, that this dark self-created floodtide of their mutual fury and arousal possessed a dangerously addictive alchemy that made her go back for more, made her cling dizzily to him as he wrenched off his clothes and lifted her, still semi-imprisoning her, against the wall.

He entered her with an urgency that could have been demeaning and unwanted and even painful but which was, in fact, so intensely craved and needed by her body that even she was caught off guard by the intensity of her almost instantaneous orgasm and by her inner knowledge that this was how she had wanted him, that part of her had needed that kind of appeasement, as Oliver allowed her to slide slowly down towards the floor.

Shocked, not just at what had happened but by Oliver’s
behaviour and even more so by her own, Lisa discovered that she was trembling so much that she had to lean against the wall for support. Ignoring the hand that Oliver put out to steady her, she turned away from him. She couldn’t bear to look at him, to see the triumph and the contempt she knew would be in his eyes.

‘Lisa…’

Whatever it was he was going to say she couldn’t bear to listen to it.

‘Just go,’ she told him woodenly. ‘Now… I never want to see you again… Never…’

She could hear her voice starting to rise, feel herself starting to tremble as shock set in. Her face burned scarlet with mortification as she reached for her abandoned robe and pulled it around her body to shield her nakedness as Oliver got dressed in grim-faced silence. Now that it was over she felt sick with disbelief and shock, unable to comprehend how she could have behaved in the way that she had, how she could have been so… so… depraved, how she could have wanted…

‘Lisa…’

Oliver was dressed now and standing by the door. A part of her could sense that he too had behaved in a way that was out of character but she didn’t want to listen to him. What was the point? He had shown her with damning clarity just what he thought of her.

‘No… don’t touch me…’

For the first time panic hit her as she saw him turn and start to walk towards her. She couldn’t bear him to touch her now, not after…

She could sense him, feel him willing her to look at him but she refused to do so, keeping her face averted from him.

‘So that’s it, then,’ she heard him saying hoarsely. ‘It’s over…’

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘It’s over.’

It wasn’t until well over an hour after he had gone, after she had cleaned the bedroom from top to bottom, changed the bed, polished every piece of furniture, thrown every item of discarded clothing into the washing machine and worked herself into a furore that she realised that she had never actually told Oliver that she and Henry were not getting married. She gave a small, fatalistic shrug. What did it matter? What did
anything
matter any more after the way the pair of them had destroyed and abused their love?