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THE NEXT MORNING Louise didn’t have to remind Joel to kiss her. He bent automatically an
d dropped a light caress on Lissa’s cheek as he got up from the table, and she told herself that it couldn’t possibly be disappointment that coursed through her at the lightness of that brief, preoccupied touch.
Joel was late coming home again. Louise pouted a little when she discovered that he wouldn’t be there to read her bedtime story, but eventually settled down. In fact Lissa was delighted with the way both little girls had adapted to their new environment. Whenever Louise mentioned her parents Lissa made a point of talking to her about them, encouraging her to keep their memory alive without touching on the tragedy of their death. Louise seemed to have accepted the fact that they were gone from her life in the physical sense, although sometimes she betrayed a tendency to cling to either Joel or herself, Lissa acknowledged.
At eight o’clock Joel rang to say that he was on his way home. He sounded tired and yet good humoured. ‘I’ve settled on someone for the Managing Directorship,’ he told her. ‘He starts next week.’
‘Louise will be pleased,’ Lissa told him. ‘She was complaining tonight because you weren’t here to read her story.’
Anyone listening to them would think them a long married couple, Lissa reflected when she replaced the receiver. But they were not married. Not in the real sense. What would Joel be like as a lover? Considerate, skilled, passionate …? Stop it she warned herself. Why was she continually exhibiting this desire to dance with danger … to flirt, even if it was only in the privacy of her own mind, with the idea of Joel as a lover?
Perhaps it was because the thought that he never would be piqued her interest. But it wasn’t pique alone that was responsible for the surge of physical awareness she felt whenever he was in the room.
She heard his car draw up as she was putting the final touches to their meal. He walked into the kitchen, surprising her with a brief kiss on her exposed nape, the way in which her bones turned to melting heat surprising her even more.
‘Champagne,’ he told her with a grin, showing her the bottle. ‘I thought we’d celebrate the end of my career with Hargreaves International.’
Lissa laughed, catching his mood, banishing him from the kitchen while she finished what she was doing.
They had the champagne before dinner—and after it, and although Lissa demurred Joel insisted on her drinking some wine with her meal.
By the time she got up from the table she felt distinctly light-headed, but in such a relaxed carefree way that she couldn’t refuse when Joel refilled her champagne glass. ‘We’ve got to finish it,’ he told her, ‘otherwise it will go flat.’
The golden bubbles tickled her throat, sliding smoothly down it inducing a sensation of relaxed light-heartedness inside her. Even her blood seemed to be fizzing slightly. They talked, or at least Joel did, while she listened in a hazy cotton wool, other-worldly cloud of relaxation. Occasionally she had the impression that he was watching her … waiting for something … but she dismissed it as imagination. At ten o’clock she started yawning and when Joel suggested she go to bed she didn’t demur.
‘I’ll clear these away,’ he told her, indicating the empty glasses. ‘Sure you can manage?’ He grinned as she stood up and promptly wobbled slightly.
‘If you’re suggesting that I’m tipsy, then you’re quite right,’ she told him, ‘and what’s more it’s all your fault.’
‘Want me to carry you upstairs, or can you manage on your own two feet?’ He said it teasingly, and yet when he looked at her Lissa felt the most unexpected surge of desire kick upwards along her nervous system. She giggled nervously to conceal it and shook her head.
Once upstairs, she showered languidly, studying the smooth slickness of her wet skin as she stepped out and reached for a towel. Her body was something she rarely looked at as a rule, but tonight she found herself studying it, aware of a certain sensuality to it that she had never noticed before. Fleetingly she wondered if Joel still found her desirable, trying to dismiss the thought as she towelled herself dry and then slipped on her cotton nightie, but unable to do so. She was like a child, excited by the thought of playing with fire, even while she knew that parental rule protected her from doing so she thought, angry with herself, trying to shake off the languorous indolence of her movements.
She had just climbed into bed when Joel came in.
‘I’ve brought you a nightcap,’ he told her, handing her another glass. ‘The last of the champagne. Drink it, it will help you sleep.’
The glass was three quarters full and Lissa sipped at it, watching him move about the bedroom. He took off his shirt and as though she were an observer to her own reactions she found herself monitoring her own physical response to him. His skin was faintly olive, tanned and sleek, his muscles hard without being over-developed. He disappeared into the bathroom, and Lissa heard the shower running.
She had just about finished her champagne when he came back and she watched him walk towards her.
‘Finished?’ As he got into bed beside her, he turned towards her and took her glass. She was still sitting up and as he turned away to put the glass on the tray his hand rested lightly on her shoulder preventing her from lying down. The bedside lamps were still on and as Lissa reached out to snap hers off, Joel reached across her, his arm a dark bar against the whiteness of her nightdress. For some reason Lissa seemed unable to take her eyes off it. Her light went out, Joel’s arm moving against her body. Wonderingly she touched the olive skin of his forearm, completely absorbed in the sensation of his skin beneath her fingertips, warm and vital. She looked up at him, his face half in the shadow thrown by the other lamp. He leaned forward and his lips brushed hers. Curiously she was neither surprised nor apprehensive. It seemed as though some part of her mind had known that he was going to kiss her and directed her to turn into his kiss rather than away from it. His hand left the lamp and curled round her, turning her, but all her concentration was fixed on and fascinated by the slow movement of his mouth against her own and her own response to it. Easily, fluidly, she felt the natural reaction of her body to his proximity. Her mouth parted at the gentle insistence of his tongue, her senses half bewildered and totally confused by the delicately explorative way he ran it over her lips. She wanted more … more than this lightly arousing intimacy she realised inwardly, but that knowledge did not shock or frighten her. On the contrary, it seemed completely natural and right. So much so, that her hands lifted to Joel’s neck, her lips parting yearningly for his kiss.
But he didn’t kiss her. Instead he lay down, pulling her down on top of him, burying his face in her hair, tightening one arm round her waist while the thumb of his free hand, probed and stroked the vulnerable skin of her neck. Tiny frissons of pleasure shivered through her and while she knew Joel must be aware of them, she didn’t feel ashamed or embarrassed, instead she arched closer to him, closing her eyes and abandoning herself to the shivering delight he was arousing.
‘Lissa … Lissa, look at me.’ His lips brushed lightly over her closed eyelids and dutifully she opened them drowning in the deep gold pools of his. He kissed her cheek, lightly, trailing tantalising kisses to the corner of her mouth. Lissa gave a small tormented moan. She wanted him to kiss her properly. Almost as though he knew how she felt his mouth touched hers. But the contact was too light … to fleeting. He kissed her again just as lightly and Lissa could feel the blood drumming frantically in her veins. Her fingers curled protestingly into his shoulder, her lips clinging pleadingly to his when he kissed her again. Her small moan of protest when the pressure she craved for was removed was checked as his mouth returned to hers, this time satisfying the hunger inside her. Lissa gasped, reality melting like snow in the desert sun. Suddenly nothing was more important than that Joel kept on kissing her as he was doing right now. When he slid her nightdress straps off her shoulder she shuddered in reaction to his fingers against her skin but it wasn’t a shudder of rejection. How had she never known until now how right it would be to feel his hand against her breast, slowly stroking its rounded shape. She made a sound beneath his kiss, suddenly hating the intrusion of her cotton nightdress for coming between his touch and her skin, and when he released her mouth she tugged ineffectually at the fabric protesting huskily, ‘It’s in the way Take it off.’
The hot glitter in Joel’s eyes made her tremble, but in anticipation not fear, eager for the moment when he slid her nightdress from her body and cupped her breasts in his hands. Her heart was racing so fast it was making her dizzy, through a champagne induced cloud she gazed at Joel.
‘Are you enjoying this, Lissa?’ he asked huskily, ‘Does it give you pleasure?’
Amazingly it did. She nodded her head slowly, watching the smile curl his mouth. ‘So am I,’ he told her softly. His mouth nuzzled her throat, finding and exploiting a thousand pleasure spots, his teeth nipping gently until she twisted and arched against him in heady abandon.
Beneath the slow caress of his hands her breasts swelled and ached, her nipples tight and hard, wanting something more than the lightly arousing brush of his thumb. When he bent his head and slowly dragged his tongue over the tightness of her nipple Lissa reacted instinctively, her finger-nails finding his spine and grating over the vertebrae until he shuddered. ‘What is it you want, Lissa? This?’ His mouth moved over her skin, sending shock waves of arousal shuddering through her when it reached her nipple. In the light from the lamp she could see their entwined bodies; his dark and lean, hers feminine, curved, pale apart from the rosy aureoles of her breasts. Her nudity which hitherto had always displeased her was now something she took pleasure in. Joel’s hand cupped her other breast, his head bending towards it and desire kicked to life inside her, her body arching into his possession. She felt almost faint from the pressure of needing him so much. She muttered his name watching him slowly releasing the swollen tip of her breast, her fingers curling into his hair as the need to feel his mouth against her breast again overwhelmed her.
‘Lissa …’ There was a raw, primitive message of need in the way Joel said her name, the fierce demand of his mouth on hers, enflaming her senses further. She trembled
against his body, flattening her palms on his chest, confused by the harsh dragging cry that came from his throat when she did so. Beneath her hands she could feel the prickle of the dark hair that grew on his chest and also the tightness of his nipples. Were they as vulnerable to pleasure as her own? Slowly she bent towards them, running her tongue over their sharp outline as Joel had done with her. She felt his chest muscles contract as he dragged air into his lungs, his fingers curling into her hair.
