A Stormy Spanish Summer(47)

Vidal denied her, bending his head and dipping his tongue into the moist arousal of her sex, lightly caressing the very heart of it, and then less lightly, whilst Fliss clung to what was left of her reason until she could cling to it no more, and then her cries for him to complete the pleasure he was giving her with the stroke of his flesh within her rose and fell against the fevered backdrop of their unsteady breathing and the inward clamour of their frantic heartbeats.

‘Now! Now,’ Fliss begged Vidal, all control and restraint lost as she was sucked into the maelstrom of desire Vidal had aroused within her. Her senses, already stimulated and aroused, absorbed the reality of his maleness as he stopped, poised over her, wantonly glorying in awareness of his need, of his erection taut and hard.

Fliss shivered in an agony of pleasure as she felt the strength of it pressing against the entrance to her own body. Her sex ached with longing, its muscles quivering in eager anticipation of the pleasure his possession of her promised. His first swift, urgent thrust made her cry out in a paroxysm of heart-stopping pleasure. Her body waited on the crest of that pleasure for more of what it craved.

Another thrust—deeper, harder—had her body tightening around him.

Her fiercely passionate ‘yes’ was breathed against Vidal’s mouth, her longing and arousal overwhelming her completely.

‘You want me,’ he told her.

‘Yes. Yes. I want you now, Vidal. I need you now.’ The hot, passionate words tumbled from her lips as she clung to him, holding him within her, trembling with pleasure and anticipation.

‘Tell me again,’ he urged as he stroked deeper inside her. ‘Tell me how much you want me.’

‘So much—too much. More than there are words for,’ Fliss told him as she pressed frantic kisses against his face.

Now he was moving within her, satisfying her need and yet increasing it at the same time. Helplessly Fliss clung to him as the tension within her grew, until it possessed every bit of her, every pulse of her blood and her heart, all that she was. And then all at once it was there, a brief second of hanging in space, and then the implosion, the fierce contraction of her body that took her over the edge of arousal and into the eye of a storm. Her orgasm was shot through with the pulse of Vidal’s release.

Lost in the wonder of their closeness, helpless and vulnerable to all that she was feeling, Fliss clung to Vidal, knowing that this wasn’t desire alone that possessed her, this was love. And his feelings for her?

Against her ear she could feel the warmth of his breath. Her voice trembled as she whispered softly, ‘Vidal?’

Vidal’s chest tightened. He could hear the emotion in Felicity’s voice. The way it had trembled when she had said his name had felt like a physical caress against his skin. That emotion, though, came from the satisfaction of desire. Nothing else.

He exhaled slowly. Taking another deep breath, he told her curtly, ‘Now we are even. You used my desire for you to prove that I misjudged you. Now I have used yours for me to prove that you lied when you said you didn’t want me.’

Fliss could hear Vidal speaking coldly as she lay there, still wrapped in the vulnerability of loving him so intimately and intensely, wholly unable to protect herself from the cruelty of what he was saying now.





CHAPTER ELEVEN


SHE couldn’t lie here like this for ever, in the grip of a grief so intense that it went way beyond the release of any tears, Fliss told herself. She must have showered and dressed after Vidal had gone, she recognised, but she had no memory of having done so. All she could remember was his final words to her, his final cruelty. She had been crazy to think that what had happened between them just now could change anything. He hated her.

Someone was knocking on the bedroom door. Fliss stiffened, and then trembled. Had Vidal come back? Did he want to utter more cruel words? Her heart pounded with pain. There was a second knock on the door. She would have to answer it. She got to her feet and walked unsteadily towards the door, exhaling with what she told herself was relief when she opened it to find the Duchess standing outside in the corridor, her face creased with tension.

‘Can I come in?’ the Duchess asked. ‘Only there’s something I have to say to you—about Vidal and what you said earlier.’

Numbly Fliss realised that in the heat of the moment, when she had been arguing with Vidal earlier, she had completely forgotten that his mother was also there—a silent witness to the accusations Fliss had made against her son. Unable to do anything else, she nodded her head and held open the door, closing it once the Duchess was in the room.

‘I had to speak to you,’ the Duchess told Fliss as she sat in one of the chairs by the fire, obliging Fliss to take the other or be left standing over her visitor. ‘No mother likes to hear her child being spoken of as you spoke of Vidal earlier. You will learn that for yourself one day. But it is not just for Vidal’s sake that I want to talk to you, Felicity. It is for your own as well. Bitterness and resentment are destructive. They can eat away at a person until there is nothing left but those destructive emotions. I would hate to think of such damaging emotions destroying you—especially when those feelings are not necessary.’