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She opened her eyes and looked at him. The expression on his face made her body tremble. She started to say his name, but his hands were already cupping her face, his mouth, his head descending… his lips feathering gently, questioning, against her own.
It couldn’t really be happening, of course. Adam couldn’t possibly have looked at her with so much love, so much need, so much anguished regret… just as he couldn’t possibly be holding her now, kissing her, whispering against her lips how much he loved her, wanted her, ached for her.
Hazily she reached out to touch him, the warmth of his skin, the pulse beating beneath it, the thick, clean crispness of his hair; these were things, sensations, she could surely not be imagining.
Against her body she felt him tremble and harden and a wild whirlwind of response raced through her.
‘Adam… Adam…’ Without knowing she was doing so she was repeating his name in a soft, anguished litany of love.
He was saying something to her, telling her how much he had longed for this… for her. His mouth caressed her jaw, her ears, and her body arched instinctively into his embrace, seeking more than just the intimacy of his clothed flesh against hers.
‘Why… why didn’t you tell me any of this before?’ he demanded between kisses. ‘You know how I felt about you… how much I loved you.’
Fern tensed and pulled back from him, looking into his face and seeing there the truth of what he was saying.
‘No. No,’ she told him shakily. ‘I didn’t know… I thought you just felt sorry for me. Nick had once told me that you… that you thought I was too sexually naïve to be desirable…’
‘And you believed him? For God’s sake, Fern! Didn’t you guess? Didn’t I show you that time…?’
‘I thought it was just… just male lust. I thought you felt sorry for me…’
‘And I thought you were just turning to me for comfort because of Nick’s betrayal. You let me think that you loved him even then!’
‘Because I didn’t want you to feel responsibility… or that you owed me anything. I was going to leave him, but… but he wouldn’t let me… and I was afraid that if I did you’d think…’ She shook her head, too emotionally overwhelmed to continue. ‘I thought you must have known how I felt,’ she said helplessly at last. ‘After the way I…’ Her hands balled into two small anguished fists as she looked away from him, bringing out into the open for the first time the thing which had tormented her for so long. ‘I was the one who insisted… who demanded… who forced you to…’
‘Is that what you really believe?’ Adam demanded, so incredulously that she was forced to look at him.
‘Fern, Fern… I wanted you so much, loved you so much that… Even if you hadn’t touched me when you did, it wouldn’t have made any difference. I would still have made love to you. Have you any idea how much remembering what happened between us has tortured me? Not just with guilt and remorse, but with need and wanting, too; with love, lust and anger and a thousand other emotions I can’t even begin to describe.’
‘Make love to me now, Adam,’ Fern whispered, shivering as she said the words.
She felt his tension and looked up at him.
‘Not here,’ he told her unevenly. ‘Never here. Come home with me.’
As he held out his hand to her, she put her own into it.
* * *
‘We’re going to go back to the beginning,’ Adam told her softly as he led her upstairs to his bedroom. ‘To the loving we should have shared… would have shared, if Nick hadn’t come between us. He told me that you didn’t want me, you know. He said you were too embarrassed to tell me so yourself… that you found me too old and boring…’
He paused to push open the bedroom door and then take her in his arms and gently kiss her as he heard the small anguished sound she made.
‘Oh, Adam, it was never like that. I loved you even then, but I was too shy, too immature… too unknowing. I thought you were just being kind to me. I never…’
‘Shush,’ Adam told her gently. ‘It doesn’t matter now. None of the bad things that happened are important… they don’t even exist any more. I just want you to think of this, Fern, that the time, the hours I spent with you are the most precious hours of my life, and it’s been the memory of them that’s held me back whenever I’ve been tempted to settle for second-best.’
‘Oh, Adam.’
She wept as he kissed her, drawing her with him into the room and towards the bed.
The room was soft with shadowy light, the furniture large and comfortable, well-polished, sturdy antique oak, the bed deeply mattressed, its linen starkly white, the scent of Adam’s skin still clinging to it, mingling subtly with its crisp freshness.
As she lay there watching him, savouring the intimacy of their togetherness, the unbelievable delight of it, the still almost uncertain joy of knowing that he loved her, Fern touched him gently, wordlessly, communicating her need to him.
He understood at once, lifting her hand in his, holding it and then pressing a kiss to its palm before stepping back from her and quickly undressing.
Fern watched him, mesmerised, not just by her own desire but by a dazed feeling that this still might not be real… that it could still be wrenched away from her… he could still be wrenched away from her.
