The Hidden Years (48 page)

'What day is it?' she asked him, ignoring all the
questions he had expected her to ask, such as, what was she doing here
in his home?

Sensing the direction of her thoughts, he told her evenly,
'It's too late, Sage. He's gone… the flight left at nine
this evening.'

It was perhaps cruel of him, but sooner or later she would
have to accept that Scott had gone.

'I'm just going to have some supper,' he told her casually
and untruthfully. 'Fancy some?'

He saw that she was starting to shake her head and
continued as though he hadn't noticed, 'It's only an omelette, but I'll
bring you some up, shall I?'

She had turned her face away from him and he was
reasonably sure that she was crying. Repressing a sigh, he got up off
the bed and went back downstairs to make an omelette he was quite sure
that neither of them were going to eat.

He put half of it on a tray, poured Sage a glass of milk,
and opened the door into the sitting-room where he came to an abrupt
halt.

Sage was standing there in the shadows facing him, and
even though the room was only illuminated by the lamp he had been using
for reading there was enough light for him to see that she had pulled
on his robe without fastening it and that beneath it she was naked. Her
hair was wet and starting to curl wildly—tiny droplets of
moisture escaped from it, to gather at the base of her throat and run
down between her breasts and over her belly to become lost in the even
more tangled curls between her legs.

A suffocating heat overwhelmed him, a fierce jolting surge
of need that blotted out everything else but his need to discover if
the shadowed areola of flesh surrounding her nipple was the delicate
clear pink he had always envisaged, if her nipples themselves really
were so hard that they were pushing out the fabric of his robe or if he
was just imagining it. He wanted to take hold of her and show her what
she did to him, to rub his face against that tormenting triangle of
damp curls and breathe in the individual woman scent of her, to slowly
touch her sensitive woman flesh with his tongue and delicately explore
its most intimate secrets while she trembled with a need as explosive
as his own and opened herself to him, whispering to him how much she
wanted him to pleasure her.

All sheer fantasy, of course. He didn't know what she had
come downstairs for, but it certainly wasn't because she wanted to make
love with him—and yet as he put down the tray and started to
speak, she slid his robe off her shoulders and came slowly to him, her
eyes fixed on his face, as though it drew her like a lodestone.

'Sage…'

He told himself later that he had intended to hold her
off…that he had only wanted to talk to her, but she walked
into his arms and pressed her body against his, winding her own arms
around him, her voice a feathery, urgent plea against his ear as she
begged:

'Make love to me, Daniel… Please make love to
me… I need it so much…'

He forgot what he had been intending to do and could
remember only how many nights he had lain alone aching for her,
dreaming of her coming to him like this, wanting her so much that he
had scarcely been able to admit even to himself how much he desired her.

His brain became jammed with conflicting signals, any
warning it might have tried to put through brutally murdered at birth
by the overwhelming need of his body.

He held her, and discovered that he was trembling like a
boy with his first girl, far more apprehensive and enthralled in fact
than he had ever been that first time. Her body was still half cloaked
in shadow. Alluring, mysterious, a small slight upwards curve of her
mouth and the dark, knowing watchfulness of her eyes holding all the
enticement and promise of a Lilith.

He touched her, smoothing his hands over her skin, feeling
the first magical assurance that she wasn't a phantom conjured up by
his imagination, that she was actually real flesh and blood, and then
letting his hands drift slowly, absorbing the texture of her skin,
satin-smooth and cool, still damp in places from her shower, still and
quiescent beneath his hands as though waiting for him to give it life.

He purposely didn't touch her breasts, just skimming their
outer curves as he took his hands upwards to cup her shoulders and then
to close them round her throat, his thumbs searching for the pulse at
its base as he kissed the curve of her jaw, and felt the violent churn
of sensation in his stomach as he dragged his mouth towards hers.

For what seemed like a lifetime he had wondered how she
would taste, how those so full lips would feel, whether those small
sharp teeth would bite frantically at him in passion, but abruptly she
turned her head, her body stiffening, her withdrawal startling him.

Her sex normally enjoyed the sensuous contact of mouth
upon mouth, of tongues twining and entwining, of a lover's hands
stroking the soft contours of their face, of his fingers tangling in
their hair, and he enjoyed it too, relishing this small act of foreplay
with almost as much enjoyment as he enjoyed the physical act of
possession itself.

Daniel liked women and he liked making love to them, and
he knew without vanity that he was a good lover; not because he
deliberately strove to be—anyone could learn such mechanics
and still not be able to give and take one tenth of the pleasure shared
with a partner who had an instinctive delight in, and love for, his
lover's very different and wholly desirable female flesh. He liked
women; liked to hear their soft sighs of pleasure, liked to feel the
soft satin of their flesh against his own, liked to stroke and taste
every inch of them until their own arousal was as great as his; and
never had he wanted that more with any woman than he wanted it with
this one.

The second time she tried to turn her face from his, he
stopped her, anticipating her and sliding his hand along her jaw to
hold her still so that he could slowly explore the unbearable softness
of her lips. They trembled when he caressed them, causing deep shudders
of need to jerk through him as he fought to hold on to his self-control
and deny the ferocity of his instinctive need to lay her down on the
rug where they stood and stamp his possession on her so thoroughly that
no other man would ever be able to overlay its memory.

Such instincts were not commensurate with his desire to be
compassionate and civilised, with his need to show her tenderness and
respect.

He traced the shape of her mouth with his tongue and tried
to slide between their closed softness, but she wouldn't let him. She
even trembled against him as though she was afraid.

He was the one feeling fear. Fear that he wouldn't be able
to match the skills of her past lovers… fear that she might
after all change her mind…fear
that—what— that she was using him as a substitute
for Scott? Scott whom he knew she loved… ?

He closed his mind to the thought, whispering to her that
he wanted to take her to bed and make love to her until she cried out
with the pleasure of it, telling her how much he wanted her, how much
she pleased him, stroking her skin with ever-increasing urgency,
kissing the smooth flesh of her throat, the sharp angle of her jaw, the
unbelievable delicacy of her ears.

She trembled in his arms, her eyes closed in the shadowed
half-darkness that cloaked her body.

He shuddered as he looked at it, feeling his stomach twist
in knots as he gazed at the soft paleness of her skin, the firm
fullness of her breasts, their areolae the deep, dark pink he had
envisaged, her nipples hard, swollen.

He stared to undress, almost tearing off his clothes in a
feverish sweat of anxiety not to lose her, not to let her somehow slip
away from him. Every inch of her was perfect…
perfect…

He wanted to shape the firm roundness of her breasts with
his hands, to feel her breathing quicken so that her body lifted
urgently against him and with it the taut hardness of her nipples pulse
as he lapped them softly with his tongue, delicately laving them with
its moistness until she cried out and held his head to her, urgently
begging him to suckle at them and rake them with his teeth as her
passion caught fire from his.

He ignored the message from his brain that something was
wrong, that she was too still, too tense, too unaroused, that she was
not sharing his need. It was too sudden, too unexpected; she was not
motivated by desire. Nor even by lust; the coldness of her skin
reflected the coldness of her desire, and it was this inner and outer
chill that was responsible for the erect stiffness of her nipples, just
as it was responsible for the rash of goose-bumps he could feel beneath
her skin.

He didn't want to listen to such cerebral arguments; he
wanted…

He groaned out loud as he threw off the last of his
clothes. In the darkness he saw her eyes flicker and felt a fierce
elemental stab of male pride. His body was so different from hers, his
skin tanned from his last stint on one of his father's building sites,
hard and calloused still in places, his torso covered in thick, fine
dark hair, his belly hard and flat where hers was soft and gently
rounded, his arms roped with sinewy muscles, rough with dark hair where
hers were soft and white…and too thin. His heart gave a
painful jolt. Despite the voluptuousness of her breasts, the femininity
of her curves, he was suddenly conscious of her fragility—his
hands could easily, too easily span her waist. On an impulse he didn't
try to decipher he bent his head and dropped a light kiss on the soft
flesh just above her navel, and while she quivered wildly in reaction
to it he picked her up and turned towards the door.

'No…' Her voice was surprisingly strong, almost
harshly so, stopping him.

'It's all right,' he told her softly. 'I'm not going to
hurt you. I only want to carry you upstairs. We'll be more comfortable
in my bed.'

'No.' This time the denial was almost guttural. 'No, not
upstairs. Here… now…'

'Now.'

He stared at her and then slowly released her as he looked
round the shadowed room. Funny child—she deserved to be
humoured, though… and then later, when she was less on edge,
more relaxed with him, then he would take her upstairs…

He smiled to himself, anticipating the pleasure they would
share, slowly leaning towards her, pushing the half dry and tangled
cloud of hair back off her face and dragging his open mouth against her
skin, savouring its texture and its taste. When he reached her ear he
nibbled at its lobe, while his fingers stroked the delicate skin behind
it.

She reacted as though she had been stung…as
though no one had ever touched her like that before, tensing and
wrenching back from him, crying rawly, 'No… no more of
that… Now… I want you to do it now…'

Daniel stared at her, frowning. He hadn't realised she was
already so aroused… In fact…

Storm signals flashed from her eyes, as he watched her.

'You do want me, don't you?' she demanded, watching him.
'Because if you don't…'

He grinned to himself. He could hardly deny wanting her,
since the evidence of that wanting was throbbing achingly and very
visibly for her to see.

And that was when he made his biggest mistake. Instead of
listening to the small inner voice urging caution, warning him that all
was not as it seemed to be—as he wished it to seem to
be—he took her words at face value and caught hold of her,
making it explicitly obvious to her that he did want her, and how much,
by giving rein to the need which had ridden him virtually from the
moment he had first set eyes on her.

He tried to tell himself that he wasn't disappointed that
she didn't want the long, slow lovemaking he had been aching to give
her, that she simply seemed to want… to demand the raw
immediate heat of his physical presence within her body without any of
the preliminaries to that possession. He even tried to tell himself
that he wasn't even disappointed by her refusal to kiss him or to look
at him, to touch him, that her attitude towards him did not reduce him
in his own eyes to the status of a hired stud. He even tried to tell
himself, as he laid her on the floor and covered her body with his own,
that she wanted their coming together as much as he did himself.

It was true that he was puzzled by the tension of her
body, by the way she refused to do anything to help or accommodate him,
by the way he had physically to manoeuvre her legs before he could
actually try to enter her, but again he was so blinded by his own need,
so convinced that secretly she must perhaps always have shared it,
must
have done surely to have come to him like this now, begging…
demanding that he make love to her, that the obviousness of the truth
didn't hit him until he thrust powerfully into her, felt the tensing of
her muscles, recognised the tightness of her body and the immediacy of
its recoil, and recognised what he ought to have recognised the moment
she told him, 'No more…'

She hadn't said those words because she was so eagerly
ready for him, he knew in angry shock; she had said them like a child
preparing herself for a nasty-tasting medicine…like an adult
preparing herself to go through a necessary but unwanted ordeal. And
the reason she hadn't done anything to help him hadn't been because she
was playing games with him, teasing him into a greater frenzy of
desire, but simply because she hadn't known what to do.

'You're a virgin…'

He hadn't realised he had said the words out loud, until
she rolled back from him, drawing her knees up under her chin, hugging
her arms protectively around her as she glared back at him, demanding
aggressively, 'So…?'

He stared at her in shock, torn between rage and
disbelief. She was a virgin. A bloody virgin…the woman he
had been fantasising about for months, the woman he had stupidly
imagined had all the sexual knowledge of every woman who had ever been
born at her fingertips, was so totally inexperienced…