His mouth still caressed her breast, and realising he was not after all going to leave her, she started to relax, releasing her grip, but it seemed he had mistaken her intentions and as she pulled away his fingers entwined with hers and then placed her hand against the taut flesh of his belly.
Beneath her fingertips she could feel the faint abrasion of body hair. She could also feel the tension within him. He moved, placing his lips against her ear, his jeans sliding free of his body as he muttered rawly, ‘Touch me…’
He shuddered as her hand moved across his body in immediate response. The fingers of one of his hands were curled into her shoulder, while the other dealt with her own zip.
The moment she felt the heat of his hand just above the line where her narrow briefs finished, she knew exactly what had made him utter that raw, tormented demand, and it was all the more shocking when suddenly he pushed her hand away and sat up with his back to her, his skin gleaming satin-gold in the half-light.
Unbelievably the thunder seemed to have stopped, but she had been so wrapped up in her desire for him that she had not even been aware of it. But now it was over. Lyle, it seemed, had realised what he was doing. She started to sit up herself, and then checked, slow quivers of nervous excitement building up inside her as she realised that Lyle wasn’t leaving her; he was simply removing the rest of his clothes.
As he came back to her the thin light fell directly across his body, aroused and undeniably male. She wanted to reach out and touch him, Jessica realised, recognising within herself a primitive and very strong urge to worship and embrace the maleness of him, not so much in desire as in a wholly feminine need to pay homage to him as a male source of life.
It was a revelationary moment, illuminating for her an aspect of her own nature she had never guessed existed. To kneel before him and caress the male contours of his body might seem to others to be an act of humility and recognition of his male superiority, but Jessica knew that it wasn’t that. It was more a need to acknowledge the power and perfection of him, fashioned so specifically to complement and complete her own femininity.
Her hands were on his thighs before she was even aware of moving. Beneath her fingertips his muscles felt like corded steel, his body so immobile it was almost as though he were afraid to move.
She glanced up and saw in his face acute torment and acute desire and suddenly realised just what she was doing to him. She started to withdraw, her breath rattling in her lungs as his hands dug into her shoulders, her sense of reality totally swept away as he groaned a tortured denial. He wanted her to touch him.
Slowly, delicately she did so until their mutual calm was shattered by desire. Jessica could feel it pulsing through his body, thudding openly through his veins and held tightly under control as he thrust her hands away from him, gripping her fingers so tightly that she felt they might break as he fought for control.
‘No…’ The sound was almost strangled in his throat, the muscles clenched and ridging. ‘Not like this…not yet… I want you… I want you, Jessica.’
He had said her name. He knew who she was. His recognition of her half-shocked her into immobility, awareness only flooding back as she felt him removing her jeans.
Her body was not something she had ever given much thought to in the past, but now suddenly she was anxious about it, and she stiffened in tension as he removed her briefs and looked down at her. For a second the silence was something she could almost feel pressing down on her, and then she heard Lyle sigh and the tension was broken.
‘You’re so beautiful.’
His hands stroked over her skin, gentle and yet scorching her where they touched, making her ache with the torment of all that they promised and yet still withheld. She wanted him. She wanted him now, and in the most primitive and intense way it was possible for a woman to want a man.
‘Jessica.’ He said her name against her ear, lying down and taking her into his arms, his voice muffled and strained. ‘I can’t make love to you the way I wanted to…I can’t wait that long. I want you, now.’
Jessica wasn’t sure which of them had said it, she only knew that as he moved and fitted her beneath his body there was nothing she wanted more than to feel him deep inside her.
And yet despite the intensity with which she had wanted him there was still a momentary sensation of discomfort, of tightness, quickly dispelled as her body adapted itself to him. Of course it had been a long time, and even then nothing, nothing like this. And then her thoughts turned hazy and finally had to be abandoned as her body picked up the rhythm his was imposing on it, matched it and gloried in it, her legs wrapped tightly round him as she sought to draw him deeper and deeper within her.
The pulsing, demanding pressure that had been building up inside her from the moment he touched her gathered strength and grew, her body slick with sweat as she arched breathlessly against him and felt the bubble of pleasure explode and expand in a series of pulsing ripples that Lyle’s climax caught at their height and intensified to such a pitch that for a moment she almost felt as though she had actually fainted.
Now with the last residue of pleasure gently washing through her body she was reluctantly coming down to earth. Now the caution she would not acknowledge earlier came crashing down over her, and as Lyle moved away from her and the harsh sound of his breathing started to ease slightly she wondered in appalled comprehension just what interpretation he would put on her behaviour. At all costs he must not guess that she loved
him! If he did he was all too likely to send her away, and that was something she could not endure. She had broken the most important of the rules governing their marriage, and now she must try to repair the damage before Lyle started putting two and two together and came up with four.
It cost her everything she had to appear detached and say calmly, ‘I thought you couldn’t do that.’
She felt Lyle’s momentary tension without having to look at him. The mattress moved slightly as he levered himself up on one elbow, and knowing that he was watching her Jessica turned her head. In the dim light it was impossible for her to read his expression, but his voice was even calmer than hers as he retorted drily, ‘It seems that anger is a very effective aphrodisiac.’
So now she knew. He had not made love to her out of any real desire for her but simply out of a desire springing from his earlier anger, but then hadn’t she known that all along?
He was still looking at her, and continued to look at her for a long time, almost as though he was searching for something, she thought warily, and then at last he said coolly, ‘Do you expect me to apologise?’
Jessica knew that he was challenging her to deny that she had enjoyed their lovemaking. Summoning her strength, she responded lightly, ‘For your unwarranted accusations about my brother-in-law earlier, yes. For making love to me, no.’
She had a feeling that somehow she had angered him, without understanding why.
‘You and he may not yet have been lovers, but that does not alter the fact that there’s something between you,’ he said curtly.
Jessica was about to tell him that she felt nothing but contempt for David, when totally unexpectedly he asked harshly, ‘How long is it since you last made love?’
Every muscle in her body screamed a danger warning. There was just enough light for her to see that Lyle was frowning, and she knew it was pointless to lie; initially at least her body had been as unprepared for the masculinity of him as that of a totally inexperienced girl.