And yet, when he said huskily, ‘You aren’t alone, you know,’ she immediately did just what she had been determined not to do, and dropped her hands from her face, lifting it so that she could look at him.
If it was the hesitant, almost tortured sound of his voice that compelled her to look at him, then it was the expression of wry self-mockery in his eyes that kept her attention on him.
‘You aren’t alone, you know,’ he repeated softly. ‘I have dreams too.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she denied shakily.
His mouth compressed.
‘No?’ he countered tautly. ‘Well, how about this, then? Last night, for instance, I dreamed that instead of leaving me after the wedding you came back here with me, and that when I kissed you the way I’d been aching to kiss you all day, with your mouth soft and open beneath mine, with your body warm and eager in my arms, that when I kissed you, you whispered to me that you needed and wanted me, and I picked you up and carried you upstairs to my bed, where I undressed you and touched and kissed every exquisite inch of your skin. I can still remember just how you looked and felt. It’s been tormenting me all day, driving me out of my mind, making me ache in a way I haven’t done since I was sixteen,’ he told her fiercely, ignoring her frantic husky denial of what he was telling her, pressing on inexorably.
‘Shall I tell you how soft your skin was, how warm, how wonderfully feminine, or shall I tell you about the way you cried out my name when I gave in to my need to be a little rough… a little violent, when it wasn’t enough just to touch and kiss the soft scented mystery of your body, when I had to suck and bite, and you, instead of reproaching me for my urgency, made soft delirious sounds of pleasure in your throat and clung to me, wanting me, driving me wild with the sweet passionate sound of your love cries and the way you clung to me, your hands…?
‘Shall I tell you what you did with your hands, Miranda? Shall I tell you how you touched me, stroked me, aroused me, until I was mad with the need to have you, to penetrate the sweet sanctuary of your body, to feel it welcome and envelop me, drawing me so deeply within it that I knew when the final moment of release came that I had touched the innermost core of you?
‘Have you any idea what it feels like for a man, knowing that… knowing that a woman wants and needs him so much that she allows him that degree of intimacy?’
They were both trembling, Miranda realised as she felt the deep vibration that ran from her own body to his. She could still scarcely comprehend what he was telling her, scarcely believe what she was hearing, even though her body had already responded shockingly to it, so that a slow sweet ache was spilling relentlessly through her, carrying its drugging intoxication to every part of her.
‘And then, later,’ Ben told her hoarsely, ‘later when I had held you and told you how awed you’d made me feel, how very much a man…’ He paused, his mouth twisting with self-mockery. ‘Do you realise that before this I’d always thought myself too intelligent, too cerebral to concern myself with such outdated, almost macho feelings, but perhaps our dreams reveal far more of ourselves than our conscious minds will ever allow, and I certainly can’t deny that in my dreams the feeling of being super-human almost, even, dare I say it, super-male… a feeling fuelled by your responsiveness to me… your complete and total acceptance of me, was so strong, so unforgettable, that it lingered even longer than my awareness that the degree of pleasure I’d shared with you was something I’ve never experienced in real life. Just as the fact that having made love with you so intensely and intimately once did not prevent me from repeating the experience, not once but twice in that same dream sequence, is also something I’ve never managed and, if I’m honest, never desired to do in real life, but in my dream, the moment your hands touched my skin, the moment you started kissing my throat, stroking my body…’ He paused, and Miranda saw that there were small tiny beads of sweat clinging to his forehead, and for some odd reason that, more than anything else he had said to her, finally convinced her that he was speaking the truth; that he was not simply tormenting her out of some crazy desire to amuse himself at her expense.
‘When… when I kissed you… what?’
Her voice sounded strained and husky. It wobbled slightly as well, but at least she had managed to speak, even if Ben was shaking his head and telling her roughly, ‘What did you do next? That’s something I can’t bring myself to tell you…’ His mouth twisted again as he looked at her and told her bluntly, ‘And not just because it would shock the life out of you. It damn near shocked the life out of me.’
‘What did?’ Miranda demanded almost aggressively. ‘That a woman like me with almost no experience… a woman who doesn’t date… who doesn’t… That a woman like me should actually want to show a man how much she… likes him… how much she desires him… how much she wants to give him the same pleasure he’s been giving her, no matter how shockingly intimate that pleasure might be? Is that what you think about my sex, that there’s a certain kind of woman who’s allowed to express her sexuality, her desire, and then another kind like me who isn’t—’ She broke off abruptly. What was happening to her… what was she saying… thinking? Ben had been talking about a dream… not reality.
‘Would you want to… to share that kind of intimacy with a man, Miranda? To feel his hands and his mouth caressing you so intimately? Would you want to caress him as intimately, to let him feel the silken softness of your lips against his flesh, soothing its heat and ardour at the same time as they incited it?’
The kitchen suddenly seemed to have become far too hot, Miranda, discovered, and the top button of her shirt too tight, constricting her breath.
She was aware that the spreading ache inside her body had become an almost frighteningly urgent pulse.
She licked her too-dry lips and said huskily, ‘I… I… don’t want to talk about it any more. I…’
‘You what?’ Ben demanded rawly. ‘You want to run away and hide yourself from the truth?’
Her eyelids flickered, her face going pale. What did he mean by the truth? Had he guessed that she loved him? Had he…?
‘Do you think it’s just possible that our mutual subconsciouses are waging a war against us, Miranda, and trying to tell our conscious minds something they seem to want to ignore?’
Her heart was thudding so heavily it was practically a physical pain. She focused numbly on him, her eyes huge and haunted. He looked tired, drawn, as though what he had said to her had drained him emotionally and physically; it could not have been easy for him, she recognised. No man liked admitting he was vulnerable, especially not to a woman, especially not to the woman who was the cause of that vulnerability.
She wetted her dry lips again, heat burning her skin as she caught the way he was watching her; felt the smouldering burn of his concentration on her face… on her mouth. Without being able to do a thing about it, she felt her lips soften and swell slightly. She tried to compress them together, horrifiedly realising that they were almost forming a pout, almost willing him to respond to their provocation by…
She tried frantically to redirect her thoughts but found them sliding helplessly into even more dangerous channels… her hands against his skin, her lips. She closed her eyes and realised at once that it was a mistake. In the darkness behind her shuttered lids, she was far too vulnerable to the erotic images of her rebellious thoughts.
‘What is it, Miranda?’
Ben’s breath against her ear was pure torment, as dangerous to her self-control as though he had taken her in his arms and destroyed it with the fierce stamp of his kiss. ‘Does the intimacy of your dreams disturb you as much as mine do me? Does it haunt and beguile your waking hours? Do you find yourself caught between your logical waking need to suppress such thoughts, such needs, such dreams, and your sleeping desire to allow yourself the freedom you could never permit your waking self?
‘You speak of there being two kinds of women, but those are your thoughts, not mine. Perhaps you are the one who bel
ieves that for some reason you cannot allow yourself—’
‘No. No, that’s not true. You’re the one who said you couldn’t.’
‘Not because I categorise you into a certain preset mould, but because I felt you had every right to be both offended and angry that in my dreams I had virtually compelled you into an act of intimacy which should only be shared, given and taken with mutual wanting and respect.’
Respect. Miranda savoured the word shakily. It seemed an odd choice for him to have made, especially when the intimacy they were discussing…
She felt her skin burn, not just her whole face, but her body as well, and heard Ben saying curtly, ‘You see? Even talking about it embarrasses you, so how the hell do you think I feel? And not just because of the way my dream self made love to you… not just because of the intimacies we shared. How the hell do you think it’s been for me? Looking at you, and remembering; looking at your mouth and thinking… aching… helpless to do a damned thing about it, even while I’m cursing myself for my lack of self-control?’
‘It’s been the same for me.’
She had blurted out the admission before she could stop herself, torn between shame and relief; shame at what she was admitting and relief that she was not alone; that there was after all someone who shared and understood the appalling nature of this self-inflicted torture.
‘You know why all this is happening, don’t you?’ Ben demanded grimly.
She held her breath, her body tensing. Was he going to say that it was her fault… that it was somehow caused by the fact that she had fallen so deeply in love with him, that she was in some indirect and unfathomable way giving his body some kind of message which translated into the dreams they were both suffering?
Without waiting for her to reply, he continued angrily, ‘I know you won’t like hearing this and I’m damned sure you’re not going to admit it, but I submit that the reason we’re both suffering these dreams is because, despite all the evidence to the contrary, physically at least we’re very much attracted to one another.’
Miranda’s brain flinched from what he was saying; from the fact that, while he spoke of need and desire, he made no mention of love, and yet at the same time she was relieved: relieved that he hadn’t after all guessed her secret. Attracted to one another, he had said… physically, at least.
‘Nothing to say?’ His voice jarred, hurting something soft and vulnerable inside her.
‘What am I supposed to say?’ she asked him tightly. ‘Yes, you’re right, let’s jump into bed and have sex with one another? Who knows, perhaps the reality will be so very different from our dreams, so disappointing that it will cure us of them for good?’
There was a long pause. Miranda looked doggedly into space, angry with both him and with herself. She was over-reacting, behaving like a child, but she couldn’t help it, she was afraid—afraid of the helpless longing beating inside her, a longing which told her that once he touched her, held her, loved her, even if that loving was only physical, only sex, she would never ever be able to return to the person she had been before; that a part of her would be destroyed, held in bondage forever; that she would never again be completely whole… completely her own person. She was afraid of the intimacy of loving him, of the awesome power of it, of the commitment she knew she would be helpless to stop herself from giving him, and yet hadn’t she already made a far deeper, and far more dangerous commitment in allowing herself to fall in love with him in the first place? Allowing herself… She bit down hard on her bottom lip.
‘Is that what you think—that the reality is bound to be disappointing… to fall so far short of our dreams that it will make us both wish we had left things as they were?
‘Is that your previous experience of loving someone intimately, Miranda?’
There was such a quiet sadness in his voice that it made her eyes sting with painful tears.
‘My previous experience of sex,’ she told him fiercely, stressing the word ‘sex’, refusing the anodyne of his soft-voiced ‘loving someone intimately’, ‘is restricted to the extremely humiliating and rather less than pleasant half-hour I spent with the boy to whom I lost my virginity. I was twenty. He was twenty-three. We met on holiday. I’d grown tired of wondering what it was all about, of wanting to know and knowing that there was no way I could find out, not living here… not with anyone I knew… not unless I was prepared to take the same route my girlfriends were taking—going steady, getting engaged, married… having children. I didn’t want that… and, as I quickly and probably very well deservedly, rather painfully found out, I didn’t want the kind of cheap encounter I’d invited by encouraging Ricky.’
‘Did you love him?’
The harsh question almost seemed accusatory. She flinched from it but shook her head, glaring at him as she demanded, ‘Did you love the first girl you had sex with? Can you even remember her?’
‘I was seventeen. She was twenty. I found out later she had seduced me for a bet,’ he told her drily. ‘Does that answer your question? After that I was extremely selective about allowing myself to get involved in any intimate relationships. If I can’t honestly say that, yes, I loved the few women I’ve been intimate with, then at least I can say that at the outset, when the relationship was new, I believed I could love them and that that love could be returned. I suspect I was rather too intense for them. It took me a long time to realise that modern women relished their independence and did not, as my mother had done, believe that true fulfillment came from falling in love with a man and having his babies. As I said, I was rather too intense and certainly very immature. I know better now, and fully appreciate that a woman needs her independence, her career… that she has a right to direct her own life, and that it is possible to combine marriage, a career and motherhood, provided both partners are willing to share the responsibilities and burdens that go with that kind of commitment.’
‘You consider children to be a burden?’ Miranda challenged.
He looked at her for a long time and then said steadily, ‘No, I don’t. Just as I would never carelessly or without thought cause a woman to conceive a child. Unless…’ He stopped, looking at her with such an unfathomable expression, with such heat… with such intensity that she had to clench her body against the reaction to it, biting instinctively and deeply into her bottom lip. ‘For God’s sake, don’t do that.’
The harsh command confused her. She looked at him uncertainly.
‘Don’t you know what it makes a man want to do when he sees a woman he already desires… aches for, doing that? Don’t you know how it makes him want to soothe the soft swelling caused by that small sharp pressure with his tongue, with his mouth, that need driving him to such a pitch that he becomes the one savaging that softness, using its sensitivity to make her cry out with passion and need of her own, and invite him to penetrate the sweet depths of her mouth, to hold her body against his, to let her feel all that she’s making him feel… how she’s making him ache? Just the way you’re making me ache right now, Miranda.’
‘No.’ Her own senses recognised that it was more a moan of acquiescence than a denial, but it stopped him. Momentarily at least, long enough for her to get stumblingly to her feet, and to attempt to step past him. This had gone on long enough. She had to leave, now, while she still had the will-power to do so, but, as she made to move past him, her feet became unusually clumsy. She hesitated, stumbled, and fell awkwardly against him, clutching instinctively at the open lapels of his robe, while he moved forward just as instinctively to catch her, both of them unaware that her instinctive grab for his robe had caused the slack knot in its belt to unravel, leaving only the thinness of her own clothes as a barrier between them as he caught her up against him, not out of desire or lust, but simply out of an automatic and wholly male chivalric response to her plight, her weakness, she recognised as she clung dizzily to his robe and allowed herself to savour her intimacy with him. Just for a second… a minute. It could, after all, do no harm. She would soo
n be gone, and never again…
As though in defiance of what she was thinking, her body willfully pressed closer and then trembled at its own audacity.
In her ear, Ben muttered sharply, warningly, ‘Miranda, don’t.’
She turned her head to retaliate untruthfully that she had done nothing, at the same moment that he turned his. Her eyes were almost level with his mouth. She watched it helplessly, seeing it frame something she could no longer hear, no longer wanted to hear.
When she touched it with her fingertips he trembled, and so did she. She could have withdrawn from him then, should have done so, but she didn’t. She told herself later that the reason she had pressed her fingertips so briefly to his mouth had been because she wanted to stop them from trembling and not because—as he seemed to believe—she had wanted him to open his mouth and to slowly and shockingly draw her fingers inside it, sucking on them, licking them so slowly and lingeringly that, long before he had gripped her wrist and removed her damp fingers from his mouth so that his lips could caress her palm and then her wrist, she had forgotten why she had got to her feet in the first place… that she had ever intended to leave, that she had ever intended to do anything other than stand here with her body pressed against him, trembling and shaking as though she had a fever, small mewing sounds clogging her throat as he showed her just how pale and shadowed were her dreams when compared with reality.
CHAPTER NINE
WHEN he kissed her, her response to him turned the caressive pressure of his mouth into a fierce driving heat that made her feel as though her bones had melted, as though her body had become soft and pliant like ivy, clinging and twining with its more solidly muscled host until the two of them grew as one.
Ben’s hands were in her hair, holding her a willing captive beneath his mouth as he opened hers, incited to do so by the hungry impatient passion of her small teeth biting at his bottom lip.