Sinful Nights(50)

Are you enjoying this?'

Joel's question caught her off-guard. Before his near silence had added  to the whole unreal aura that had enveloped her from the first moment he  took her in his arms. Almost she had persuaded herself that she had  strayed into some fantasy dream world from which she could simply wake  up any time she wished, but now suddenly reality hit her. She was here  …   in Joel's arms, enjoying his lovemaking with an intensity that was  sweeping away all her previous conceptions of herself.

As she looked into his eyes, seeing them clearly now, without the  benefit of any champagne-induced fogging haze; seeing within them a fine  mingling of compassion, tenderness, and something else  …  something so  eternally masculine and elemental that her body responded automatically  to it, curving into his, her husky Yes' was half lost against his skin  as she pressed her lips to his throat confused by the maelstrom of  emotions suddenly seething within her, knowing that it was not purely  desire that was making her so femalely pliable in his arms.

His skin tasted salt against her tongue and while part of her  acknowledged the pleasure of such tactile contact her mind laboured  dully trying to understand by what tortuous tracks and byways she had  come to where she was now  …  to loving him. The admission that she loved  him slid so easily into her mind that she knew it must have been there  some time. Instinct screamed at her that to love him would only bring  her pain, but held within his arms it was impossible to listen to  instinct or caution. She kissed him, tasting his skin, losing herself  completely in the joy of absorbing all she could of him into her senses  feeling the suddenly accelerated thud of his heartbeat as his body  responded to the touch of her hands and mouth.    

 



 

Now when he touched her there was a hint of pagan savagery beneath his  tenderness that drew a corresponding response from her; as though  physically their bodies were communicating on a deeper more primitive  level than their senses. There was nothing she wanted more than his  ultimate and complete possession of her, in fact she wanted it so badly  that she was the one to initiate it, moving arousingly against him, her  hips writhing seductively against his in an age-old dance of seduction,  which made it all the more bitterly devastating when suddenly, for no  reason she could think of, behind her closed eyelids the old vision of  him danced, bitter and contemptuous, freezing her body into rigid agony  at the moment of his possession, destroying the golden bubble of  pleasure that had enclosed her.

Lissa!"

She shuddered under the harshly abrasive way he said her name. It's all right  …  Open your eyes.'

Unbelievably she was obeying him, opening her tightly closed eyes to look despairingly into his.

See, it's all right. Look at me, Lissa. Look at me  … ' His heart was  still thudding erratically, sweat glistening on his skin, but the topaz  eyes were nothing like the ones that had haunted her darkness, the curve  of his mouth; the way his skin clung tightly to his cheekbones making  her realise that the portrait relayed to her by her mind's eye was  actually a caricature of reality  …  and that the way he was looking at  her, with desire, with need  …  but most of all with understanding bore  not the slightest resemblance to the expression she had once thought she  had seen.

The muscles of her throat started to relax, her small choked sob of distress, silenced by the gentle pressure of his mouth.

I want you, Lissa. I want to make love to you  …  to feel your body hold  mine like a silken sheath  … ' He was interspersing his words with hungry,  drugging kisses and she could feel herself responding, mentally and  physically. I need to be deep inside you.' He moved as he spoke and her  body melted, heat radiating outwards from deep inside her as he thrust  against her and then inside her, her resistance flooding away on a  shuddering breath of pleasure.

If she had thought she had already tasted the heady wine of pleasure, it  had been a mere sip compared to what she was now experiencing. Once the  trauma of her self-imposed barriers had been overcome the brief pain of  Joel's initial possession had been nothing; something fleetingly felt  and then forgotten beneath the waves of sensation which had overwhelmed  her.

It was like touching heaven; being immortal  …  escaping the bonds of  human limitations, and to know that Joel had shared that pinnacle of  human pleasure with her made it all the more precious.

As her body relaxed into lethargy she summoned enough energy to say drowsily, You got me drunk deliberately didn't you?'

"Not drunk,' Joel corrected her, merely pleasurably relaxed. Do you regret it?'

Lissa shook her head. No.' How could she regret it? How could any woman  regret sharing the most mystic of all human experiences with the man  she loved? But then of course Joel did not know that she loved him, and  he certainly did not love her. So why, why had he made love to her? Not  just on impulse but deliberately. She turned towards him, studying his  face in the lamp light. He looked relaxed, younger  …  supinely male and  satisfied. A tiny thrill of pleasure ran through her. It was frightening  to realise how vulnerable she was; how easily the smallest thing about  him could please her, even to the extent of knowing that it was making  love to her that had brought that almost animal langour to his body.

I don't regret it at all Joel,' she told him honestly. But why? It wasn't just on impulse.'

No,' he agreed. No it wasn't an impulse. Nor was it simply to satisfy  my own desire for you. Oh yes,' he told her watching her, despite what  you seem to have thought to the contrary; the fact that you were  sexually inexperienced did not lessen my desire for you, Lissa, and I'm  not going to pretend that what we just shared together was anything less  than extremely pleasurable  …  nor that I'm not hoping that it's a  pleasure we will share again, but after you'd told me about your phobia  it seemed to me that as I was the focal point of your trauma, then I  should be the one to help you to overcome it. I thought if you could see  me, not as some disapproving intruder, but as a man  …  a man very much  aware of you as a beautiful and desirable woman, and every bit as  vulnerable as you are yourself.' His thumb touched her cheekbone as she  turned towards him. Yes, you are beautiful and desirable Lissa,' he  repeated softly. Didn't my body tell you that?'    

 



 

The memories conjured up by his words caused her to tremble slightly with a tiny thrill of remembered need.

Yes,' she admitted huskily.

It wasn't all entirely premeditated,' Joel added. The idea of getting  you to relax via a few glasses of champagne only occurred to me today.  I'd noticed that you didn't recoil quite as strongly from me when I  touched you, so I knew you were beginning to relax with me.'

But  …  but how did you know  …  that, that I'd be responsive to you?'  Lissa asked him. Could he have guessed what she had not? Could he have  known that she loved him? She hoped desperately that he did not. What he  had said to her had made it plain that he did not love her; compassion  and desire were not love.

I didn't. It was a chance I had to take. For all I knew you could have  been completely turned off by me physically, but I was hoping the  champagne would lower your inhibitions for long enough for me to find  out if that air of sensuality you have about you had any basis in  reality. No matter what you might have been told, Lissa, one does not  have to be wildly or passionately in love to enjoy a sexual  relationship.'

No, but surely love does add something,' she protested, remembering the  surge of responsiveness she had felt when she realised that she loved  him.

A great deal,' he agreed, especially when we're talking about loving  someone as opposed to being in love with them. You and I get on  extremely well together Lissa  …  far better than I'd envisaged. It's my  view that our marriage could be an extremely fulfilling and happy  one-for both of us. Tonight was something of an experiment  …  an attempt  on my part to make some reparation to you for the past. I felt I owed it  to you to give you the freedom to overcome the past. I think I've  succeeded, but now it's up to you to decide whether you wish to use that  freedom in staying with me  …  as my wife  …  or whether you now feel you  want to be free to form other relationships.'

Lissa knew that he was being completely fair and open with her but her  heart ached for some whispered words of love  …  some absurd demand that  she remain his and his alone, even if they were lies.

Don't think about it now  …  Go to sleep.' As he switched off his lamp he  asked teasingly, By the way, am I forgiven for my sins? Plying you  with drink  …  seducing you?'

I'll tell you in the morning,' Lissa responded drowsily. He wasn't  going to have it all his own way. She might now know that she loved him,  but it was a secret she would always keep to herself, she decided  sleepily. Something she would do her utmost to conceal from him.