Frantically she moaned his name against his hot skin, touching, licking, kissing as much of him as she could reach.
‘Ran...now...please...now,’ she heard herself demanding, even though part of her mind wondered just why she felt so overwhelmed by her own sense of urgency, by her own need to have the hot male strength of him buried deep inside her. She just knew that she did.
She could feel him touching her intimately with his fingers as he kissed her but she pushed them away. Everything that was female and intuitive within her urged her to reject something that was only a substitute for what her body, her nature, her essence, demanded, instinctively refusing a satisfaction which could not give her what nature had designed her for.
No completion, no conception could take place through what he was offering her and her body; her senses, her nature demanded what they believed was their due.
Without any previous experience to guide her Sylvie responded to her own instincts, lifting her hips, rubbing herself against him, moaning her urgent need until she felt Ran’s hands move to her hips, holding her, lifting her as he finally moved against her.
A small tremor of shock made her gasp out loud, her body tensing and her eyes widening as she felt the reality of his body within hers. She had never really thought about the practicalities of sex...and he felt so...so male...so...so big...
She felt him check slightly and saw him frown, saw the recognition of her inexperience, her virginity, dawn in his eyes, but as he tried to draw back from her Sylvie wrapped herself around him, holding him, and then it was too late; then his body took over, demanding the satisfaction hers had been promising it.
It was everything and more that Sylvie had imagined—bliss, heaven... perfection, even if afterwards, as she curled up happily next to Ran, she did feel slightly sore... Slightly sore but oh, so deliciously pleased with herself. She was a woman now. Ran’s woman... They would be married at Otel Place, of course, and Alex would give her away... Happily she drifted off to sleep.
In the morning when she woke up she was in bed alone, and at first she thought she must have dreamt the entire incident, but when she went padding into her living room she found Ran standing there fully dressed, staring out of the window. Overjoyed, she rushed over to him, flinging her arms around him, but instead of responding as she had expected, instead of turning round and holding her, kissing her, picking her up and carrying her back to bed, he firmly disengaged her arms and pushed her sternly away.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ she demanded, not understanding. ‘Last night—’
‘Last night was a mistake,’ Ran interrupted her curtly. ‘It should never have happened and I wish to God... Why didn’t you tell me you were still a virgin?’
‘I... I...’ Sylvie could feel her eyes starting to fill with tears.
This wasn’t how it should be—Ran aloof, cold and distant, almost accusing.
‘Ran, I love you,’ she told him shakily. ‘I want us to be together...married...’
‘Married? You’re a child still, Sylvie... Your mother...’
‘I’m not a child, I’m nearly twenty,’ she protested frantically.
‘You’re a child,’ Ran insisted, ‘and if I’d known... Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you let me think that you and Wayne were lovers?’
‘I did tell you but you wouldn’t listen. I thought you’d be pleased...that you’d want to be the first...the only one...’ she told him pathetically.
‘Pleased? Oh, my God.’ Ran started to laugh, a harshly bitter laugh. ‘The only thing that could make this appalling situation any worse would be to discover that you’re pregnant...’
Sylvie’s face went white. Last night, lost in the throes of her love and their shared intimacy, she had craved the conception of his child, and to have to listen to him now, telling her that that was the last thing he wanted, that she was the last person he wanted, was the cruellest blow she had ever experienced.
‘I’m on the pill,’ she told him quietly, ducking her head as she explained, ‘There were... I had... My doctor recommended it for other reasons.’
It was the truth, and it made her blood run cold now to remember how unwilling she had been to take it. Thank God she had. To have exposed a child, her child, to the dislike, the bitterness she could see in Ran’s eyes and hear in his voice would have been more than she could bear.
All her dreams and her hopes lay in ruins around her, destroyed by Ran’s rejection of her.
‘Go and get dressed, please,’ she heard him demanding. ‘I have to leave soon, but first we need to talk.’
Get dressed!
Suddenly she felt as acutely self-conscious, as guilty as the first Eve must have done. As she tugged on her clothes in the privacy of her bedroom she knew that she had paid a heavy price for the intimacy of Ran’s love-making—the loss not just of her innocence, but the destruction of her love, her faith, her belief in herself as a woman. She felt as though she never wanted to see Ran again, as though she could never bear to face him again, as though someone had wrenched away a protective curtain. She saw that last night could have been nothing more to him than the mere satisfying of a sexual itch, that she had been nothing more to him than someone, a body, to relieve his sexual frustration with.
As she walked back into the living room he handed her a mug of coffee. Taking it from him, she was careful to make sure that not only did her fingers not touch his but that they did not even touch the mug where his had done. She felt scorched, besmirched, soiled from the experience of knowing just how little he had actually wanted her. What she wanted more than anything else now was to get him out of here, out of her flat, out of her life, out of her heart for ever.
‘Sylvie...’
‘I don’t want to talk about it, Ran,’ she told him proudly, turning her back to him. ‘It happened. It was a mistake, we both know that, but a girl has to lose her virginity some time...’ She gave a small painful shrug. ‘Wayne will be pleased. Like you, he didn’t want to be the first...’
What on earth was she saying...implying...? Sylvie wondered sickly as her pride demanded, commanded, forced her to retaliate, lie and to convince Ran that he hadn’t hurt her, that he couldn’t possibly have the power to hurt her.