He did as he had said, putting her in the back seat, a cushion under her head. When he got in the driver’s seat Kate murmured huskily, ‘That boy…he was going to…’ Suddenly she couldn’t go on. Tears clogged up the back of her throat, pouring wetly down her face, her body shaken by fractured sobs. She thought she heard Jake swear as he depressed the accelerator, certainly the powerful car seemed to surge forward, and it was only minutes before he was pulling up outside his house, opening the rear car door as he bent to pick her up.
His bedroom was already familiar to her, and when he placed her on the bed, Kate felt too weak to move.
‘You told that policeman we were married,’ she whispered inconsequentially.
‘I’m sorry if you object to that.’ He sounded terse and anything but sorry. ‘No, don’t move, Kate,’ he instructed as she tried to sit up to tell him that there was nothing she wanted more than to remain married to him. ‘I want to see to that cut. I suppose I ought to have taken you to hospital, but it isn’t very deep, more of a scratch than anything else, and I didn’t want you to be bothered by too many questions.’ He saw her shudder and his mouth compressed. ‘You realise what a risk you took when you called out to me?’
‘I thought you were going to leave,’ Kate whispered. ‘I was so scared. Anything was preferable than enduring another minute…’ She swallowed, turning her head, and then wincing as he bent over her, using a small pair of scissors to complete the destruction of her jumper.
‘It’s easier doing it this way than taking it off over your head. ‘I’ll just go and get some water.’
‘Jake, I can manage by myself.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ He sounded like a man at the end of his patience. ‘Don’t be so damned independent! Have you any conception of how I felt when I pushed open that door and saw you behind it?’ He swallowed with some effort.
‘I can’t understand how you got there—how you knew I needed you?’ Kate whispered, not caring what she was betraying. His skin looked almost grey, his eyes black with some emotion she couldn’t define. ‘I saw you driving through the village with Rita…’
‘Yes. Kevin had been to see me, after that second article appeared in the paper. He loves you.’
‘Yes.’ Kate lowered her head. ‘But…but I don’t love him,’ she said levelly, ‘and we’ve never been lovers.’
‘I know. He told me that too, and that he suspected Rita of making mischief. That was what I was doing with her. I let her think I wanted to see her for…other reasons, and then when I got her here, I…er…persuaded her to tell me the truth. Next week the paper will be printing a disclaimer stating that you did not give them the information about the leak. I’m more sorry than I can say about that, Kate. All I can say in my own defence was that I was half mad with…’
‘Fury,’ she supplied, trying to smile. ‘Yes, I did get that impression—and, Jake…’ he looked at her from the bathroom door, ‘I didn’t come here that night to…to get more information from you,’ she told him huskily.
She closed her eyes as he disappeared into the bathroom without responding to her comment. When he returned she kept her eyes closed, wincing when the warm water touched her skin. He had removed her jumper and bra, but she felt no embarrassment in her nudity. As he had said the scratch wasn’t deep but it stung.
‘I saw Lyla when I was in London,’ she ventured when he uncapped a small tube of antiseptic cream.
‘Yes, I know.’
His casual admission stunned her. She lifted her head to stare at him. ‘But…’
‘She rang me from London. We had quite a long chat.’ Carefully he smeared the cream against her skin. His touch was quite clinical, but she was powerless to prevent the pulse at the base of her throat thudding hectically and when he had ceased his ministrations he studied it calmly for several seconds, apparently fascinated by its rapid movements. ‘She says you love me…’
Following quickly on the heels of astonishment came bitter dismay that Lyla could have betrayed her. Before she could formulate any kind of reply Jake got up and walked back into the bathroom. She was suddenly acutely conscious of her nakedness, of the rounded invitation of her breasts, her nipples hard and pertly aroused by his touch against her skin. He came back just as she was struggling to sit up and she folded her arms protectively round herself.
‘Don’t do that.’ His fingers unfolded her arms, his voice softly husky. ‘I want to look at you.’
‘Jake…’ She moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue, not knowing how to handle the situation. She felt acutely vulnerable, her determination to tell him of her love disappearing.
‘I want to look at you because your body can’t lie to me, Kate,’ he pressed softly. ‘Can you imagine what it did to me after what we’d shared the other night, to be faced with that damned newspaper? I thought I was on the verge of persuading you to come back to me.’
‘Come back to you?’
‘Are you going to repeat everything I say like a parrot?’ he mocked. ‘Dear God, Kate, you surely don’t still believe my arrival here was accidental? I know you’ve spoken to Art. He phoned me back and congratulated me on patching up my marriage. Said how much he wanted to come over and meet you. And then I had Lyla on the phone demanding to know what I meant by making you unhappy. Have I, Kate?’ he whispered huskily, ‘have I made you unhappy?’
‘Not as unhappy as I made myself,’ Kate admitted bravely. ‘Oh, Jake!’ she gasped in searing pleasure, her next words forgotten as his hands cupped her breasts lazily, his head bending until his mouth found what it wanted, a ripple of contentment spreading through her body when he eventually released her swollen, moist nipple.
‘Oh, Jake, what?’ he murmured as he inclined his head towards its twin, repeating the tormenting caress until her body was awash with fierce pleasure.
‘Oh, Jake, love me,’ she whispered back, no longer caring what she was betraying.
‘Only if you love me in return,’ Jake told her. The laziness was still in his voice, but it was gone from his eyes and his body was as taut as a bowstring as though ready to ward off any rejection.
‘I thought you were never going to let me.’ She tried to hold her voice steady, but it trembled betrayingly, her admission worth everything it had cost her pride when she heard the sound smothered in Jake’s throat and saw the fiercely possessive gleam in his eyes as his gaze slid over her body.
‘Oh, honey, my problem is, and always was, stopping myself from begging you to,’ he admitted wryly. ‘When I married you you were a child, and no one was more conscious of that than me. I tried to ease my conscience by telling myself that…’
‘You were rescuing me from a life of sin,’ Kate offered, dimpling, her fingers busy on the buttons of his shirt, exposing the powerful muscles of his chest, pressing her palms against the crisp dark hair that grew there.
‘Something like that,’ Jake agreed. His eyes darkened as her fingers traced the dark arrowing of hair down over his body, the sudden clench of masculine muscles very satisfactory when his hand closed over those fingers, his eyes resting potently on her breasts. ‘Do you want me to finish this story, or make love to you?’ he ground out at last.
Kate managed to laugh. ‘Both,’ she responded provocatively. ‘Oh, Jake!’ Her eyes were nearly as dark as his, as she pressed her lips impetuously to his skin, breathing in its familiar warm smell, her tongue flicking delicately against the pebble-hardness of his nipples.
His whole body tensed, his fingers biting almost painfully into her waist. ‘Kate…he made her name both a warning and a plea, ‘if you don’t stop now…’
‘I want you to make love to me, Jake,’ she told him huskily. ‘We can talk later. When we touch each other we say so much without words. I don’t just want to tell you how much I love you, how much I regret the wasted years, I want to show you. I was immature when we married. I did confuse my resentment of your domination with my hatred of nuclear weaponry, but today, when that boy…’
she shuddered deeply, and forced herself to go on. ‘I realised that it would be almost impossible for there to be total disarmament and the dangers that could ensue if there wasn’t. It doesn’t change what I feel about the threat of a nuclear war, but it does give me a fresh insight into the complexities of the situation. Nothing is so clear-cut that I can take up my old stance again, and anyway, I had already admitted to myself that what I felt for you transcended everything else. That I loved you so much that there wasn’t room for my old resentment—and Jake…’ He tensed, watching her carefully. ‘Jake, I want very much to have our child,’ she told him huskily, seeing the fierce pleasure darken his eyes.
‘I did some thinking too when we were away,’ he told her. ‘I wasn’t letting you grow up to be an individual. I got so mad when you kept on rejecting me. I couldn’t see that I wasn’t allowing you to think for yourself. I was damned if I was going to give in to you and give up my job. I told myself you were just like Lyla, acting like a spoiled child, but when we split up I too came to realise that I’d thrown away the most precious thing in my life. I knew I had to come back and somehow find a way to make it work between us. It won’t be all roses,’ he warned her. ‘We’re both pretty strong characters. We can’t agree on everything.’
‘But we can agree on the most important things. Such as the fact that we love one another,’ Kate responded softly.
Jake had closed his eyes and he opened them to study her, unzipping her skirt and removing what was left of her clothing. ‘I want to feel all of you against me,’ he told her huskily. ‘The other night…’ He closed his eyes and swallowed. ‘You were never like that with me before—so open and giving. Touching me as though you wanted the feel of me against your skin as much as I wanted to touch you. Oh, you were always passionate enough—in the end—before, but there was never a time when I didn’t feel I had to hold back a little, to restrain myself from taking too much; from burdening you with my need…’
‘It’s a burden I welcome gladly,’ Kate assured him, reaching out to him, and this time his hand didn’t come out to stop her when her fingers teased the dark hair disappearing beneath his waistband. She continued to caress him for a few moments in silence until he muttered thickly, ‘Kate, if you don’t stop teasing me…’ His hands came out to capture her breasts, his tongue tracing molten circles against their fullness, making her arch pleadingly against him, her fingers tugging impatiently at his belt.
When they were both naked she paused to study him slowly. He laughed softly, unembarrassed by her scrutiny of his aroused body, but the laughter died when she bent to kiss and caress him, and for a few brief seconds she was allowed to experience the heady pleasure of being totally in control of their lovemaking, of having him respond blindly to her briefest touch, offering himself to her in a way that went deeper than surface love-play. Both of them knew that he was freely making himself vulnerable to her, letting her know the power that was hers; not just to arouse him physically, but an admission of his emotional need of her.
When he had endured a surfeit of her teasing he pulled her gently into his arms, covering her mouth with his, kissing her slowly, and then more deeply, the ascent from play to passion so gradual that it seemed to Kate that it was something so right that nothing could have prevented it.
His lips probed her mouth, gradually asserting his dominance, and her body yielded willingly, inviting the slow possession of his. With something approaching awe she registered the fact that they had never been quite like this before, and Jake echoed her thoughts when he told her hoarsely that he had never possessed her so completely. The rhythmic movements of his body were so sweetly insistent that she lost herself completely in them, wanting to give him everything there was of her to give; wanting them to be one person; wanting the sweet pleasure of feeling himself lose himself completely in her.
It was all that and more, a climactic surge of pleasure that took him with her, their bodies melting together, time suspended as normality gradually reasserted itself.
‘You realise you’ve totally destroyed my credibility as an anti-nuclear campaigner, don’t you?’ Kate murmured softly, later, still snuggled deeply in Jake’s arms, ‘and branded me as a loose woman as well!’