Pride & Consequence Omnibus (12 page)

The lightning might have faded, softening the room back into darkness, but its brief life had lasted long enough for Jay to be able to reach unerringly for the buttons on Keira’s blouse.

He heard her whimper, then felt her shudder when he tugged the wet fabric away from her skin, allowing her to sway closer to him, her naked breasts openly ready for the possession of his hands.

Could this really be her? Moaning, wantonly arching her back, pushing her body hungrily and rhythmically against Jay’s touch? Keira wondered dizzily. Fierce spasms of pleasure surged through her, urging her to demand more. The caress of his hands on her breasts was making her ache unbearably for the touch of his lips against them, for the stroke of his tongue, the possessive, sensual suckling of her flesh that she knew would ignite a need in her that would change her for ever. Just thinking about it was making the pulse deep inside her grow, wanting the stroke of his fingers.

‘Does this pleasure you? Do you want more?’

She was beyond speech—beyond anything other than giving herself over to him completely.

Keira didn’t know whether or not she had spoken, but she did know that a message had been given and understood. And now they were both tugging at one another’s clothes, interspersing their actions with kisses and caresses and, in her case, soft, fevered, delighted little moans of pleasure as she discovered some new bit of him to touch.

Who could have known that rain-wet flesh could feel so erotic, or that such an intensity of urgency could possess her?

Jay’s hands were shaping her naked body, stroking down to her thighs and then up over her. His fingertips, spanning the smoothness of her bottom and then lifting her so that he could press her into his arousal, had her raking her nails down the length of his upper arm, whilst she sobbed her sexual heat into the wet flesh of his throat.

Had she parted her own thighs in open willingness, soliciting his long and deliberately erotic exploration of her intimate flesh, or had Jay parted them himself?

Keira had no idea, and she cared even less. She couldn’t think or exist beyond the sensual stroke of his fingertip backwards and forwards over her clitoris.

Possessed by the desire that had materialised as quickly as the storm, Keira tugged and tore at Jay’s clothes, shuddering with blatant sexual pleasure at each touch of his hands on her naked rain-sleek skin, moaning her delight and inciting more intimacy as each touch fuelled her hunger for more.

Here in this room, filled with the heat they themselves had generated, it felt almost as though the storm had ripped from her all her inhibitions.

Jay wasn’t touching her any more; he wasn’t giving her that almost too intense pleasure, and its loss was making her tremble and ache. But before Keira could voice her loss Jay was picking her up and carrying her to the wide bed.

Keira clung to him as he lowered her onto the mattress, pressing passionate kisses on his throat and then his chest, her golden eyes brilliant with what it meant to be the woman he had aroused within her.

The storm had laid bare her feelings, both physical and emotional. She couldn’t hide from them any more She had fallen in love with Jay.

He pushed her back on the bed and then kissed her mouth, slowly and deeply, until her senses swam and her nipples stiffened achingly into the palms of his hands. She welcomed the heat of his mouth as he kissed his way along the curve of her breast to circle first one nipple and then the other with the tip of his tongue.

The pulse deep inside her turned into a thudding, knowing, gnawing ache that leapt to the touch of Jay’s fingers and responded rhythmically to their caress.

He moved back down the bed, circling her slim ankle with his hand and lifting her leg so that he could string kisses from the inside of her ankle bone all the way along her leg to her knee, and then beyond, up over her thigh, whilst she trembled violently with a pleasure her body could not contain.

The thunder and lightning was inside her, possessing her, tossing her from one peak of pleasure to the next. Somehow her feet were on his shoulders. Somehow her body lay open to him to explore and enjoy as he wished. Keira gasped as his fingertips stroked through the parted wetness of the inner lips of her sex and her clitoris over and over again, slowly, then faster, moving over her and within her, taking her up so high, so fast, that she could barely draw breath between her shocked gasp of recognition and the sob of pleasure that convulsed her throat muscles at exactly the same time as Jay’s caresses convulsed her body into the sharp intense spasm of her orgasm.

The pleasure, so swift and savage, clung to her in an aftermath of intense sweetness and emotional sensitivity that left her trembling, and Jay looked down at her. Her body felt weightless and boneless, and yet at the same time so heavy with exhaustion that she couldn’t move. Overcome by her emotions, Keira reached for Jay’s hand and pressed it fervently to her lips in an age-old gesture of intense love.

She was good—even better than he had expected. Taking her pleasure with a direct simplicity that had acted on him like a powerful aphrodisiac. He wanted to see that pleasure again. He wanted to watch whilst he gave it to her and she took it. He wanted her legs wrapped around him whilst he took her, stroking slowly and deeply into her, until she begged him to move faster and deeper, until she took him with her to that place she had just been... But, unexpectedly, she was practically falling asleep as he held her.

Frowning, Jay lowered her onto the bed and watched as her eyes closed.

* * *

It was the sound of running water that woke Keira—that, and a sense of loss because even in sleep she had known that Jay had left her.

The room was still dark, although the storm had gone. A shaft of oblong light from the half-open bathroom door coupled with the sound of the shower told her where Jay had gone.

She got up out of bed and padded naked towards the bathroom. Black marble covered the floor, its richness reflected in the ornately panelled mirrored walls. One half of the bathroom was almost filled with a large rectangular bath, sunk into the floor and reached via a set of marble steps. The other side of the room had been turned into the equivalent of a modern wet room, separated from the bathing area by a vanity unit and a glass screen. Jay was standing beneath the shower in the wet-room area, with his back to her.

Soapsuds and water glistened on his skin. Keira’s heart and body contracted on a surge of love for him. She watched him for as long as she could bear to be apart from him, and then ran to him.

Jay turned as she reached the shower, looking at her and then taking her in his arms, kissing her slowly and sweetly, and then less slowly as she pressed herself closer to him.

Keira scooped some of the lather off his body and rubbed it against her own, watching the way the colour of his eyes burned from grey to silver as he poured shower gel into his palm and then slowly applied it to her body.

Ten minutes later, when the foam had disappeared along with the shower water, Keira knew that the desire Jay’s touch had aroused in her was nowhere close to disappearing. Quite the opposite.

Slowly and wonderingly she reached out to touch him, running her fingertips along his breastbone and then down his body, through the soft dark hair that thickened around the base of his hardness.

Her chest rose and then fell sharply as her senses responded to the intimacy of her exploration, and uncertainly she stroked delicately along the rigid shaft.

Jay shuddered. What Keira was doing to him was sheer torment, and she must know it. He wanted to be enclosed by her, to be held firm, to feel her body embracing and caressing him. He wanted to take her and hold her and thrust deep into her. He wanted to feel her body’s desire for his. He wanted to lose himself in her. He wanted...

Keira could feel the heavy, uneven thud of Jay’s heartbeat, could taste the unique hot salt of his skin. ‘I want you,’ she told him, breathing the words out against his skin, the raw uneven huskiness of her voice matching the unsteadiness of her heartbeat. ‘Make love to me, Jay.’

Her hands flat against the hard muscles of his six-pack, she placed a line of kisses down his body, her lips moving lower until finally she placed a kiss of love and longing against the smooth, rigid hardness of the flesh that pulsed beneath the hold of her hand.

At last she had done it—had begged him as he had sworn that she would. His pride was appeased. And only just in time, Jay acknowledged. He wasn’t prepared to admit even to himself just how very few seconds more he would have lasted before his desire for her overwhelmed him and he had been the one begging her.

Now Jay couldn’t wait any longer. He swept her up into his arms and carried her back to the bed.

His desire to finish what they had begun drove through the barriers he normally imposed on himself, so that his lovemaking wasn’t confined to the mere physical skill he normally used to ensure his partner’s pleasure whilst he himself remained emotionally detached. That detachment was replaced with something he could neither control nor reject, that swept and burned through him, taking possession of him.

Keira herself was lost—totally and completely. All that mattered was Jay and what she was feeling. There was no room for anything else. Together they filled her senses and her thoughts. His lovemaking had taken her to the heights already tonight. Now he was showing her that there were heights beyond those heights—unimaginable peak after peak of such exquisite sensual pleasures that they burned her senses like a brand. Jay’s brand, she thought dizzily.

Keira was oblivious to the rustle of foil as Jay fought to control himself long enough to practise safe sex, knowing only that he had moved away from her. Wantonly she urged him back to her, with soft pleas interspersed with hungry kisses and caresses.

The return of the hard weight of him between her thighs made her shudder and arch up against him, her hands gripping his shoulders as he moved against her, thrusting slowly into her.

How could there be such an intensity of pleasure? It was driving her forward to meet it, to meet him, as he filled her body, possessing it—possessing her. It grew and sharpened, and an urgent, compelling need rushed through her, refusing to be checked, matching its pace to Jay’s deepening thrusts.

The world—no, the universe,
his
universe, Jay acknowledged, had become the feel of Keira’s flesh enclosing him, the feel of being with her and within her. This was all that mattered—the only thing that mattered. He thrust deeper, and felt the barrier that barred his way. The
barrier?
She was a
virgin
? How could she possibly be a virgin? Disbelief, followed by anger, followed by outrage, burned through him.

Why had Jay gone so still? That wasn’t what she wanted. Keira moved eagerly against him, covering his mouth with her own, showing him with the hot, urgent thrust of her tongue just what she did want.

Caught totally off guard by his discovery, and by the way it changed the dynamics of what was happening, Jay wanted to withdraw from Keira. But both her body and his own were conspiring to prevent him from doing so. Her flesh clung wantonly to his, enclosing and possessing him in its soft moist heat, overwhelming what his brain wanted his body to do. His body had very different ideas. He moved, intending to pull back, but Keira moved with him, and within the space of one sharp indrawn breath it was too late for him to stop—too late for him to do anything but submit to the demands of their shared desire.

This time the pleasure was different, Keira recognized: deeper, stronger, its convulsions tightening around Jay’s flesh and holding him there until her orgasm became his, and his hers. Until she was stormed, swept, elevated to a place beyond any place she had ever thought could exist, to a depth of intensity that shocked her as much as it pleasured her.

CHAPTER TEN

A
VIRGIN
—
HOW
COULD
she have been a virgin? Jay stared grimly into the darkness whilst Keira slept at his side. It angered and disturbed him that all his preconceptions about her had been so very wrong, and that as a virgin she had been so far from his original assessment of her. It angered him that his judgement of her had been so glaringly wrong. He felt betrayed by his own inability to assess her correctly, and further angered by the belief that she would now have expectations and ambitions that he had no intention of fulfilling. Had he known the truth about her he would have warned her off, making sure that they did not have sex. By concealing her true sexual experience from him, or rather her lack of it, she had allowed him to go on believing what he had, putting him in an untenable situation. Deliberately?

Twenty-something virgins had by definition to have a pretty heavy agenda going on. Either they had sexual hang-ups or problems—which patently she most certainly did not—or there was another reason. And the only logical reason Jay could think of was that Keira had remained a virgin because she expected to exchange her virginity for commitment. That was never going to happen. He had no intention of making a commitment to any woman—ever. During the years of their estrangement his father had let him know many times via his courtiers that he wanted to make plans to arrange a suitable marriage for him, but in that both he and Rao had withstood their parent, refusing to submit to a marriage of tradition and royal necessity.

Rao would, of course, ultimately have to marry, and his wife would have to be someone worthy of being his Maharani. For himself, Jay knew that it would be expected if he did marry that he too would marry a suitable bride. But he had no intention of marrying—not anyone, not ever. So Keira had wasted her virginity on him and he would have to tell her so. There must not be any more errors of judgement or aspiration.

Slowly, like wisps of fine cloud, memories of the night drifted back to him. Keira whispering his name to him, thanking him for her pleasure, her eyes huge with emotion.

Emotion. Jay’s mouth compressed. What had happened between them had nothing to do with emotion—at least not on his part—and the sooner he told her that the better. Both for her sake as well as his own. The last thing he wanted was to have her start building some ridiculous fantasy out of what had quite simply been a single night of sex—and one that he had no intention of repeating. He would have to speak to her before the situation got even more out of hand than it was already.

* * *

Keira had been awake for some time, lying in bed and marvelling at the difference between the woman she had been and the woman she was now. Her body glowed still with the aftermath of her pleasure.
Their
pleasure, she reminded herself. Jay would know now that he had been wrong about her, and that what she felt for him was unique, something she had never shared with anyone else. She was still on a physical and emotional high from last night, in a blissed-out state where the world felt like a fairytale come true and she its heroine princess. And all because of Jay.

Jay! Where was he? What would he say to her? What would she say to him? Her heart was thumping unsteadily. Already she missed him. Already she ached for him and wanted to be with him. Already the effect of the night’s sexual intimacy had changed her and their relationship, and her heart was speeding on wings into a magical world where everything and anything was possible.

It was Jay himself who brought her back down to earth, arriving with a tray of tea and an expression that had her giddy heart’s headlong race brought to an abrupt halt.

Something was wrong. Something was more than wrong. Jay was looking autocratic and distant. He was fully dressed. He didn’t come to her, or even sit down on the bed beside her, instead he walked over to the window and then turned to face her so that its light fell on her face but obscured his.

‘I owe you an apology. And I’m afraid it will have to be accompanied by a warning.’

He was speaking to her as though he was addressing a business meeting, Keira recognised, his whole manner cool and distant. Her heart was pounding again—but not this time with elation. Instead what she felt was dread.

‘I want to be frank with you, Keira. Had I known you were a virgin I would never have had sex with you. Were you a girl of eighteen or so, I would add here that I understand you might have had rosy romantic delusions about men falling passionately in love with sweet innocent virgins, and throwing their heart and an offer of marriage at their feet having taken that virginity. But you are not eighteen. You are twenty-seven. Women of twenty-seven do not remain virgins by accident or out of some romantic delusion. To have chosen virginity when yours is such a sensual and passionate nature can’t have been easy.’

Keira’s mouth had gone dry. She might not have been expecting quite the eighteen-year-old’s scenario he had described with such sparing and cruel accuracy, but to be addressed as Jay was addressing her now was a horrible shock and very hurtful.

‘My assumption has to be that you chose virginity because you saw it as, shall we say, a good business decision—an insurance policy that would mature with handsome dividends when it was offered to your chosen recipient: your exclusivity sexually, both past and future, in exchange for the right kind of marriage. I do not doubt that there are men, wealthy men, who are willing to make such a barter in return for the security that comes from knowing that their wife is indeed a model of virtue. However, I am not one of those men. To be blunt, I have no intention of making a commitment to any woman ever, either inside marriage or outside it, and had you told me the truth about yourself first, I would have suggested that you retained your virginity to bestow on someone else. Sexually, what we shared last night was very enjoyable, but that was all it was for me. A fleeting enjoyment which is now over and will be quickly forgotten. I am sorry if my words offend or upset you, but it is better that you know the truth. It would be cruel of me indeed to allow you to hope for something I have no intention of giving you or anyone else.’

Keira felt each word like a blow to her heart and her pride. He was both wrong about her and right. She had not set out to use her virginity to force him into a commitment, but she
had
given it up to him because she herself had made an emotional commitment to him. He must never know that, though. Not now. For her pride’s sake she had to salvage what she could of the situation and her self-respect.

It did not help that she was lying naked under the bedclothes whilst he was fully dressed. Didn’t it tell her all she really needed to know about him that even now, when he was humiliating her, he had taken for himself every advantage there was to be had in order to give himself more power than her. He was dressed; she wasn’t. He had the light behind him; she had it on her. He had had time to plan and rehearse what he intended to say; she had not. Well, luckily for her, living with her great-aunt had taught her a great deal about how to defend herself when she was the weaker party.

She pulled the bedclothes securely around her body and sat up.

‘I appreciate what you’re saying,’ she told him, trying to keep her voice as cool and focused as his had been, ‘but I must tell you that once again you’ve reached a conclusion about me that isn’t correct.’

There was a telling silence during which Keira waited, praying that he wouldn’t tell her outright that he didn’t believe her.

His assessing, ‘Meaning?’ had her exhaling unsteadily.

‘Meaning that, yes, I had chosen to remain a virgin, but the reason I did so had nothing whatsoever to do with any desire on my part to get married. Far from it.’

He had moved slightly, but she still could not see his face.

‘You remained a virgin because you don’t want to get married? Forgive me, but I have to say that I don’t...’

Any minute now he was going to start asking questions she could not answer. She had to head him off with something plausible.

‘I wanted a career and my own independence, and as a teenager it seemed to me that as soon as a girl fell in love she stopped wanting those things. So I vowed not to fall in love. It was far too dangerous. Remaining a virgin was a by-product of my decision not to fall in love.’

She gave what she hoped was a convincingly careless small shrug.

‘Obviously as I’ve grown older I’ve been able to recognise that it is possible to have sex and remain emotionally independent, and I had begun to wonder what I might be missing because of a decision made when I was very immature.’

‘And you’ve been looking round for someone to experience sex with? Is that what you’re trying to say?’

Keira actually managed to laugh.

‘I hadn’t got as far as that, and if I had done there would have been the embarrassment of my virginity to deal with. I’m old enough to understand that what happened between us was something that neither of us expected to happen and that both of us would probably have preferred not to have happened.’

There had been the clear ring of truth in her voice when she had spoken about her vow not to fall in love and her fear of doing so, Jay acknowledged. He had already misjudged her once. His pride didn’t want him doing so a second time. It made sense for him to accept what she was saying, but at the same time he still intended to reinforce his own message to her by putting things on a strictly business footing.

‘It might be best in the circumstances if we terminated our contract,’ Keira told him. She couldn’t afford to break it herself, but she was hoping desperately now that
he
would terminate it. How on earth was she going to be able to work for him now feeling as she did about him?
Feeling
as she did about him? What did that mean?

‘I do not wish to terminate our contract,’ Jay was telling her sharply. ‘It would be too costly and disruptive to find another interior designer at this stage. That is in part why I am speaking with you as I am. I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings—any hopes or aspirations, shall we say, that cannot be met.’

Keira permitted herself a small, bitter inward smile as she imagined what he would think if he knew the truth about her.

‘All my hopes and aspirations are focused on my business.’

‘As mine are on mine,’ Jay responded.

* * *

Jay had gone. She was on her own, but even now Keira did not dare to give way to her emotions—just as she had never dared to do so when she had lived with her great-aunt.

To allow anyone to see her pain was to risk having it used against her, to hurt her even more. She had learned that lesson very young. But the pain she had experienced then was nothing compared to what she must somehow find a way to live through now.

The unthinkable, the unbearable, the most cruel of all cruelties had infiltrated her defences and overpowered her. She had fallen in love with Jay. But he must never know that. She would die before she would humiliate herself by letting him see what a fool she had been.

Last night she had broken the most important promise she had ever made to herself. Now she must face the consequences, she told herself bleakly.