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She said nothing. He was the only man she had ever wanted, but it had been an adolescent’s wanting. After Robbie’s birth she had closed her heart and mind against physical desire. She had Robbie to worry about, and he filled her life. She wanted to plead with Rorke to set her free, not to subject her to such humiliation, but deep down inside her she recognised that there was a need in him to punish her as he had described. Perhaps he had never stopped resenting the fact that he wanted her; even though it was now in the past. Perhaps the very fact that he had once done so was a permanent scar on his pride.
He moved and her dress slithered to the floor, leaving her dressed only in black silk French knickers and her silk stockings and suspender belt. Her embarrassment was as unfeigned as Rorke’s very obvious and totally masculine appreciation.
‘You have changed, Lisa,’ he remarked softly. ‘At seventeen you wouldn’t have had anything like that in your wardrobe, never mind worn it. Once I thought I was going to be the man who taught you how to give and take pleasure, but obviously I was wrong. However, someone has taught you, and I’m most appreciative.’
Tension locked her throat. He might say he was appreciative, but he certainly didn’t sound it, nor after that one illuminating glance did he look it. In fact he looked furiously angry, and Lisa was angry too. It was an insult to suggest that she had dressed with deliberate sensuality. She had simply worn the underclothes she always wore under that particular dress. At home she might have worn tights, here she had worn stockings simply because they were cooler; but something told her that even if she explained to him Rorke wouldn’t believe her.
His hands moved to her hips and she stiffened as she felt the warmth of his fingers against her skin, deftly removing her stockings. He picked her up as easily as he might have done Robbie, carrying her over to the bed and placing her on it, trapping her against the coverlet with his arms either side of her body. She knew that he was going to kiss her and she told herself that she could resist him, but the kisses she remembered had been tempered to her youth, and the mouth closing on her own wouldn’t let her resist. She tried to keep her lips tightly pressed together, but Rorke nipped her with his teeth, making her gasp with the brief pain, allowing him to devour the moist sweetness she had withheld from him, and Lisa felt her senses sliding out of control. Her arms clung weakly to his shoulders, her fingers finding and unfastening the buttons of his shirt, her palms pressing urgently against the moist warmth of his chest.
She strained upwards automatically to meet the pressure of his kiss, barely aware of the fact that he was slowly drawing away from her, forcing her to cling urgently to him to prolong the kiss.
She felt the bed give way as he joined her on it, quivering under the sensual stroke of his fingers over her hips and across her stomach before he untied the silk ribbon fastening of her French knickers. Lisa stared at him helplessly as he removed the last barrier of her clothing, shivering as his fingers curled round her ankle, to stroke slowly upwards, caressing the long curve of her thigh. An explosive tension built up inside her, sensations she could barely remember springing to life. Had she felt like this that first time? Had she experienced that same wanton need to touch his body as he was touching hers? This was what he wanted, she acknowledged as a hot tide of desire flooded through her. He wanted her to feel like this, to want him. His lips caressed her throat and she moaned softly with pleasure, the last tautly straining vestiges of control snapping under his skilled assault on her senses. No longer caring what he might think, she buried her hot face against his skin, letting her lips taste the warm saltiness of his flesh, barely aware of the fact that he was shrugging out of his shirt with muttered impatience, until she felt the burning warmth of his chest against the aroused sensitivity of her breasts.
His lips stroked slowly over her throat, encouraged on their downward path by the instinctive arching of her body. Her heartbeat thudded like jungle drums as Rorke lifted her towards him, his tongue and lips teasing first one erect nipple and then the other, as Lisa pressed herself against him in a frenzy of need, brief, inarticulate murmurs of pleasure escaping her lips, her fingers locking in his hair, trying to prolong the pleasure he was giving her. It no longer mattered that she was betraying to him how much she wanted him; she was past caring what she betrayed. Her entire world was encapsulated in the sensations centred deep inside her, the age-old primitive need for possession; Rorke’s possession.
Her overheated flesh seemed to burn with longing for his touch. Lisa was barely aware of scattering wild kisses against his shoulders and throat as she clung to him, rapidly becoming aware that her desire wasn’t all one-sided. Rorke wanted her too, and no matter how much he might try to deny it his body betrayed him as hers did her.
She moaned softly, enjoying the pleasure of feeling the weight of his body on hers; the tautness of his thighs and his very evident desire.
‘I’ve wanted this for years, dreamed of it and ached for it,’ he muttered thickly as his hands investigated the curves of her hips. Her own need was a physical ache inside her, and Lisa couldn’t believe it when he slowly released her and got off the bed, her eyes betraying the emotions that quickened her sensitive flesh.
‘It hurts, doesn’t it, Lisa?’ he mocked her, crouching down beside her, and grasping her chin so that she was forced to look into his eyes. ‘Ah, yes, I can see it does. You want me, and we both know it.’ His fingers stroked lazily down the length of her body and she shivered and trembled visibly under the languid caress.
‘Well, I’m not going to torment you as you tormented me, Lisa. All you have to do is ask, that’s all.’
He was watching her with cruelty in his eyes, and she summoned every ounce of willpower she had to defy him. She wasn’t going to give in; she wasn’t going to pander to his massive ego, and she would tell him so.
‘Rorke.’
Strange how weak and shaky her voice sounded. Not at all as she had intended it to do.
‘Lisa,’ he mocked softly.
‘Rorke…’ She looked into his face and was suddenly overwhelmed by a flood of love and need that made her very bones ache. ‘Rorke, I want you—I need you.’ She heard herself crying like a child in pain, the sound of her own anguish tormenting her, so that tears filled her eyes and rolled helplessly down her cheeks, as she turned her head aside, expecting with every breath Rorke’s rejection and scorn. She knew he had moved away from the bed, and bitterly regretted her weakness. Why had she given in so easily? Because she loved him and some deeply primitive instinct urged her to capitulate so that they met on the only common ground they still had; their mutual desire. But obviously Rorke’s desire had been satisfied by her abasement. He no longer wanted her, her humiliation had all been for nothing, he… She tensed as she felt the warm brush of his mouth against her damp skin. Fresh tears flowed, and kept on flowing in soundless agony until Rorke stopped the flood with the kisses he placed against her closed lids.
‘Don’t cry, Lisa,’ he murmured against her skin. ‘Don’t cry, everything’s going to be all right.’ His hands were gentle on her skin. There was no haste, no urgency, and it came to Lisa on a sudden rush of knowledge that this was the wedding night they had never had. Her admission that she wanted him had, temporarily at least, satisfied the devils that drove him, and he was obviously prepared to be generous in victory.
‘You’re more beautiful than I ever imagined,’ he murmured huskily against her skin. ‘More perfectly feminine than I thought possible.’
He moved, and moonlight glinted over his body, and Lisa realised that he too was naked, his body as perfectly sculptured as she remembered. His hands left her body and she trembled, thinking that he meant to leave her now when her mind and body were at their most vulnerable with wanting him, but instead she felt the warmth of his lips against her instep gradually moving upwards, his hands and lips caressing her body until she thought she could no longer bear the waves of desire pounding through her. She shuddered helplessly beneath his touch, whispering pleas he would only ignore, apparently intent only on giving her the utmost pleasure—pleasure so intense it was almost a pain. The touch of his mouth against her thigh made her cry out with the exquisite agony of wanting him, her incoherent protests suddenly smothered beneath the pressure of his lips as his own need drove out his earlier gentleness and he held her against the length of his body, hard and urgent with desire, his kisses drowning out everything but the need he was feeding with his hands and his mouth.
‘Lisa, Lisa…’ he murmured her name like an incantation between kisses, parting her thighs almost roughly, possessing her mouth in a long deep kiss as his control snapped beneath the weight of his desire, and the savage imprecation he muttered beneath his breath was lost on the rising storm that swept them both.
It was nothing like it had been the first time. Surprisingly there was pain and she felt his stilled response to it; and then pain and every other consideration was swept aside in the swirling molten force clamouring for appeasement, and she remembered nothing except crying out Rorke’s name as she plunged with him into a deep pit of golden darkness. As she lay exhausted on the fringe of sleep she thought she heard Rorke murmur her name and she fought valiantly to respond—to assure him now, when surely he would believe her, that she was his and his alone. But the words slipped away before she could utter them.
* * *
What on earth was that noise? Someone was banging on the door. Lisa opened her eyes and fought for consciousness. Robbie—something was wrong with Robbie! But no, Robbie was there standing beside her, eyeing her with round-eyed disapproval.
‘You haven’t got any clothes on,’ he pronounced at last, adding, ‘and neither have you, Daddy.’
Daddy! Lisa froze. Rorke was in bed—with her? The events of the previous evening came flooding back. She couldn’t bear to look at Rorke. What on earth must he think of her, or was he enjoying his victory too much to think about her at all?
‘I suppose I’d better go and open that door.’ She felt the bed give as he got up, pulling on a towelling robe that had been lying on a chair. ‘Okay, okay,’ he called lazily as he found the key and unlocked the door. ‘What’s all the hurry?’
‘All the hurry be that this here coffee be getting cold,’ Mama Case scolded as she waddled into the room with a breakfast tray, her face breaking into a wide beam as she drew her own—and obvious—conclusions from the untidy disarray of the room and Lisa’s hot face.
‘No need to blush, honey,’ she chortled to Lisa. ‘You’m a married lady right enough, and you’ve got the marriage lines to prove it.’
