'You're so lovely,' Randal groaned, letting her slip back on to the bed and lying next to her. His grey eyes wandered freely over her nakedness, sensuously explored her breasts, moved downwards to her hips and thighs. He leaned over to kiss the pale flesh his eyes had just discovered. 'Beautiful,' he whispered.
Her eyes closed helplessly as his mouth heatedly caressed her breast, his hands stroking below, over her hips. Her tiny panties slid down; alarm shot through her as that last barrier went and she recognised that if she didn't stop him now he was going to take her and she would not be able to resist him.
She tried to struggle up, get off the bed, but he pulled her back so that her thighs fell open with him sliding between them. She wished desperately that it did not seem so natural to her to have them there, fitting with her like spoons in a drawer.
'I won't let you!' she gasped.
'Well, I won't force you,' he said thickly, staring down at her smooth bare flesh. 'But I need you, Pippa, my God, I need you.' He kissed her again, deeply, passionately, and her eyes shut again, her lips moved in hot response, her body quivered. Every time he kissed her, touched her, he got the same reaction; she could not help it, even though she angrily despised herself for being so weak and foolish. Had her mind no control at all over her treacherous body, then?
Through the feverish clouds of her pleasure she suddenly realised Randal was taking off his jacket, then he was shrugging out of his shirt. He was stripping, she thought, appalled! As she realised what was happening she felt his legs kicking his trousers away.
Events were moving far too fast. She must stop it now, before it was too late!
But it was already too late. Randal was between her parted thighs and now he was naked, too, his bare skin brushing hers sensuously, his hands sliding beneath her, lifting her buttocks off the bed so that her knees fell apart.
'Randal, don't!' she groaned. 'I've never … I'm a … It would be my first time and I can't, not like this!'
'Sweet,' he whispered, kissing her. 'That's what I love about you, your innocence, your integrity and sense of self-respect. They are what make you the woman I adore.' His kiss deepened, took fire, until she drowned in it, forgetting everything else but him, her arms round his back, her body clinging to his.
'You're mine. You know you are,' Randal breathed against her parted, hungry lips. 'And I want you to be part of me, for ever.'
She wanted that, too, but she mustn't admit it. Between her thighs he moved in a slow, sensuous rhythm, and she moaned with pleasure, moving, too, opening to the seduction of that brushing contact The pressure deepened, she felt him pushing into her, then a sharp pain. She gave a cry, 'You're hurting! Don't!' and tried to push him off, her palms flat on his naked chest.
Randal kissed her harder, groaning. 'Don't ask me to stop now, darling, not now, so close … '
Another pang of pain, fiercer, and then he was deep inside her, filling her, and she lay still, breathing wildly, feeling an intolerable ache of pain and satisfaction and desire. What was the point now of denying that she wanted this, had longed to merge with him, be part of him?
His mouth moved down to her breasts, sucked at her nipples, his hands cupping the warm, rounded flesh until she relaxed again, her pain forgotten, and a moment later he began moving again, his hot, hard flesh probing inside her, setting off jangling pulses in places where she had not known they existed, sending waves of ecstatic sensation through her entire body.
Over the next few minutes she almost lost consciousness, mind drowning in physical sensations, holding him, moving with him, mindlessly, sobbing in ecstasy. The next clear awareness she had was of lying still, limp and drained, with Randal collapsed on top of her, while tears ran down her face.
Suddenly he rolled off her. They were separate again and she felt cold and lonely, losing him.
'Don't cry,' he whispered. 'What is it? Did I really hurt you?'
She put her hands over her face, shuddering in sobs, couldn't answer. She didn't even know why she was crying; it certainly wasn't with pain, but in a sort of desolation. After the intense pleasure she had been through she had come down from a wild peak into this darkness and misery.
Randal pulled her hands down, leaning over to stare at her, then began kissing her wet lids shut, kissing her nose, her cheeks, her trembling lips.
'Stop it, Pippa, stop crying. I'm sorry, don't be unhappy. It was selfish of me, but I was afraid you would vanish again after this weekend, and I couldn't bear it I had to stop you somehow, make you stay. I thought..'
'Thought what?' she muttered, sat up and grabbed her dress, hurriedly put it on, wishing he wouldn't watch her.
He sighed. 'That if you finally let me make love to you, you'd stay. There's an old legend about a mermaid, who fell in love with a human man, but kept going back into the sea until he made love to her and then she became human and they were married and lived happily.'
'Until one day the call of the sea was too strong and she vanished again, this time for ever,' Pippa recalled.
He grimaced. 'Is that how the legend ends? I only remembered … '
'The bit you wanted to come true?' she mocked. 'How convenient! Well, I'm going to have a shower, and I'd like you to go back to your own room, please.'
'We have to talk!'
'We've done enough talking. Randal, I need to take a shower. Please leave.'
He rolled off the bed and collected up his clothes. She knew she shouldn't watch him, but she couldn't take her eyes off that long, lean, supple, naked body which had just taken her to heaven and back. Randal walked to the door without bothering to dress and she padded barefoot after him to bolt the door behind him.
Wryly, she faced the fact that she was locking the stable door after the horse had bolted. All these years she had avoided making love to him, to anyone, and finally it had happened. She was aching physically, body burning, bruised, weary. What did she do now? She asked herself as she went into the bathroom to shower. What in God's name did she do now?
She discarded her green dress and stepped under the shower, washed from head to foot, the warm water sluicing over her, trying to think, trying to understand how everything had changed over what had just happened.
Randal was right. She groaned, closing her eyes. Oh, he was much too shrewd; he understood her far too well. Nothing would ever be the same again. In taking her just now, he had conquered, had shattered all her arguments, her reasons for saying no to him.
He had realised what she had always known, that she had been dying to make love with him for so long, but had resisted him under the lash of her rational mind-and now it had happened, and she was different . As Randal had intended, she felt differently.
Or did she?
She walked out of the shower and put on a white towelling robe, towelled her damp chestnut hair, looking at herself in the cloudy bathroom mirror. Her green eyes held a bleak realisation now.
Had those moments of bliss and intimacy altered anything? He would still put his son first if it came to it He would never put her first. She would never matter more to him than anyone else in the world.
Nothing important had changed. She still did not want to accept second place in his life. She still couldn't stay with him; she had to go away.
Like the mermaid in the legend she would have to vanish, this time for ever.
CHAPTER NINE
She deliberately chose the most demure outfit she had brought with her: a dove-grey straight skirt, a black chiffon shirt which tied at the waist Contemplating herself in the mirror, she decided it was exactly the look she wanted for the evening ahead. That last thing she wanted was to look sexy, or put ideas in Randal's head. Her chestnut hair she brushed back and clipped at the nape with a black Spanish comb, leaving her face a clear, cool oval. She wore very little make-up: a faint touch of green on her eyelids, palest pink on her lips. As an afterthought she used a flowery perfume, an English fragrance which drifted about with her, leaving a hint of summer on the air.
She tidied her room, now that all her clothes had been put away, and watched TV for a while, although she found it hard to concentrate.
Randal tapped on her outer door an hour later. She checked on her reflection rapidly before she answered. Yes, that was how she wanted to look-remote, untouchable. As far as possible from the wildly responsive woman he had held in his arms on her bed earlier.
She opened the door and caught a flash of surprise in his eyes. He hadn't expected her to look so serene, and noticed at once the demure way she had dressed.