The Baby Scandal(30)

"And then," he murmured into her ear,  holding her head with his hand so  that she couldn't escape him. "I would  work the soap over your  stomach. Remember? Over your stomach and down  to your thighs..."

"No. Stop. Please."

"And between them.  Slowly and thoroughly. Between your thighs, and then  I would touch you  where you were aching to be touched, and rub you  there, and there would  be no telling where your natural dampness and  the bath water began...  Are you wet for me now?" He laughed softly, and  then flicked his tongue  into her ear so that she moaned and squirmed  at the same time. "Can I  feel? Find out if you're as turned on as I  am?"


His voice was  mesmerizing. There was no other word for it. She had been  hypnotized,  or at least that was how she felt. He undid the button of  her jeans and  then pulled down the zip. From a great distance, she  seemed to be  watching all of this, and to be in¬capable of stopping it.

He  pushed his hand beneath her underwear and then, what she had been   waiting for, every nerve stretched to breaking point, his finger slid   inexorably into her, rubbing against the dainty bud, now swollen with   pleasure, circling and pressing it until she thought she might go mad   with desire.

Stripped of sanity, she found herself shakily  unbut¬toning her shirt,  easing her breasts out of her bra with¬out  bothering to unclasp it at  the back, and she watched, fascinated, as his  mouth found her engorged  nipple and he began tugging at it, pulling it  into his mouth while his  tongue rasped against the tender, swollen bud.

"Enjoying this, darling?"

Ruth  nodded. In a minute she would concentrate on the stupidity of her   actions. Right now his mouth and fingers were doing crazy things to her   nervous system, crazy things she thought she might be addicted to.

"Why  fight what we feel for one another?" he whis¬pered, straightening  to  kiss her while his fingers con¬tinued to play with her moist,  feminine  cavity. "We still want one another. Why stop it? Why not just  see where  it leads?"

Ruth drowsily considered his question, and when she opened her eyes it was to find him looking at her urgently.

"Accept  this," he said. "Let's enjoy one another." His words were like a  gush  of cold water over her. He wanted her to enjoy what they had, but  even  now she could feel her own enjoyment fading and her erotic  oblivion  being swiftly replaced by dawning horror that she had been so  happy to  jeopardize her peace of mind for the sake of a few moments of  stolen  pleasure. She pulled away sharply.

"Stop fighting me," he said. "Why fight? Why wage war when we can make love? Why struggle when we both want to give in?"

"Because giving in to what we felt for one another was what landed us in this mess." She risked opening her eyes to look at him.

"Lying to your parents is what landed us in this mess."

"And  how would it have been any different other¬wise?" Ruth demanded,   finding her strength now that she wasn't having the ground yanked away   from under her by the seductive lure of his voice with all its erotic   fantasies. She had squirmed totally out of his grasp and was shakily   redressing herself.

He clicked his tongue and stuck on the ubiquitous dressing gown.

"If you'd said something from the start..."

"How  could I?" she asked hotly. "Neither of us had planned on a baby.  Are  you telling me that you would have been over the moon if I'd sat  you  down and informed you that you were going to be a daddy?"

Yes.  The tiny word crept into his head with shocking effect. He stared  at her  and his mind had gone com¬pletely and utterly blank. Blank but  for that  single ad¬mission that had stolen into his brain without  giving the  slightest forewarning of its intent.

Taking his silence for agreement, Ruth felt her an¬ger gather momentum.

"You  would have been horrified!" she said, hugging herself tightly as  he  pulled the robe around him and gazed down at her belligerently. "You  say  that you know me better than I think. Well, I know you better than  you  think! You've lived your life this far without managing to be  snagged by  anyone and that's the way you like it. You've made no bones  about that!  Did you think that I was the sort of girl to push you into a  role of  responsibility you had neither courted nor wanted? Would you  have  appreciated the gesture?"                       
       
           



       


Ruth couldn't believe that she was  raging at this man with a furious  eloquence that she had never had at  her command before. He had given  her strength without even knowing. Just  one more thing, she thought  bitterly, to be lost in the rubble of their  rela¬tionship, one more  good thing to spend the rest of her days  remembering.

Franco continued to stare at her in silence as he  grappled with his own  line of thought which, having taken root, now  seemed to be growing at a  frightening rate.

So this was what it  felt like to have the shoe on the other foot. A  ridiculous situation, of  which he had zero experience, had come home to  roost with a vengeance.

Ruth  might well have done what she did for mis¬guided but naively  altruistic  reasons. How ironic that he now found himself in the  position of  craving the one thing she didn't want. Stability,  commitment. He  couldn't bring himself to say the Marriage word, not  even to himself.

"Well?  Well? Are you going to answer me?" she pressed on bitterly.  There was  the glimmer of tears in the corners of her eyes and she wiped  them away  with an exasperated gesture.

"You make it sound as though I  intend to swan through life as a  bachelor so that I can die a lonely old  man, because picking women up  and dumping them is what I enjoy  doing..."

"Let's be honest," Ruth said painfully, looking away  from him. "Even if  you were to get married, at some point in the future,  later rather  than sooner, then it wouldn't be to someone like me. Just  because I'm a  country bumpkin doesn't mean that I'm the village idiot as  well. I  know the kind of woman you would be attracted to, the kind of  woman you  would want by your side, and I don't fit the bill." She gave a  short,  choked laugh. "I'm not polished, I don't possess all those   sophisticated little ways, I blush too much!"

"That's a load of nonsense. You..."

"Don't,  Franco," she said wearily. "What's happened has happened. All  we can do  is accept it now, but if sleeping with you is part of your  end of the  deal, part of the deal for agreeing to keep my parents in  the dark about  the reality of the situation, then, thanks but no  thanks."

"How  the hell can you talk about making love to¬gether as a deal?" He  shook  his head and raked his fingers through his hair. "What kind of  man do  you think I am, for God's sake? The sort who would try and  blackmail you  into bed?"

"I didn't mean that," Ruth objected, confused  be¬cause her words had  been misinterpreted somewhere along the way.  There was nothing sleazy  about Franco, but without thinking she had made  him sound that way.

"Don't worry," he said harshly, "you can  sleep peacefully in the bed  tonight. I won't lay a finger on you. And in  the morning I'll be gone."

His words went straight to her heart like a sliver of glass.

"There's no need," she began weakly.

"Correction.  There's every need. And you needn't worry that I'll spill  the beans to  your parents. They, at any rate, deserve better than that.  No, I'll do  the vanishing act you were so desperate for me to do and  then I shall  make contact with you via a lawyer. Know this, though...I  will not  vanish out of my child's life, and I don't care how much that  will suit  you. I will see the baby and you will accept mainte¬nance for  yourself  and for the child. What you do with yours is your affair, but  no child  of mine will ever want for anything.

"Now..." he nodded to the  door against which she seemed adhered as  though with glue "...if you  don't mind, I'll go and have my bath. Where  you sleep is your concern,  but I shall be sleeping on that bed. Take  it or leave it."


Ruth  stood aside silently to let him pass, and when she heard the click  of  the bathroom door further down the corridor she felt her body sag,  as  though invisible strings holding it up had suddenly been severed.