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Mark… Mark had come back. She hurried to open the door.
‘Dee… Hi… how are you? Where’s Mark?’
‘Garth…’
Stupidly Deborah stepped back to let her visitor come in.
Garth Preston and Mark had been in the same year at university and the three of them had been close friends, spending a great deal of time in one another’s company until Garth had gone to work abroad. Now they kept in touch via sporadic letters and even more sporadic visits from Garth whenever he came home.
‘Mark’s gone,’ Deborah told him and then suddenly she was crying, crying like a baby, while Garth scooped her up in his arms and carried her over to the settee.
He was shorter than Mark but still taller than she was and chunkily built, square-bodied and square-faced with thick, curly dark hair and innocently round blue eyes.
Women loved him, and he loved them. Unlike Ryan, he did not deliberately set out to seduce, and unlike Ryan he did genuinely love his victims, for victims they were, as Mark and Deborah had often agreed, because as quickly as Garth fell in love so too did he fall out of it, and in love with the next adoring woman to catch his eye.
Not that that stopped Deborah from liking him. You couldn’t not like Garth. He was that kind of man.
‘Mark’s gone… gone where?’ he asked her.
‘Gone…’ Deborah repeated tearfully. ‘Gone… left… He doesn’t want me any more…’
Fresh tears fell… It must be the wine she had drunk that was making her react like this, she told herself muzzily. This just wasn’t her… she just wasn’t the ‘tears and helpless vulnerability’ type. Her feelings were normally something she kept strictly to herself.
‘Mark’s left you? Impossible,’ Garth was saying. He was wearing a soft woollen jumper that felt good against her skin, the warmth of his arms holding her making her feel cosseted and protected, reminding her of Mark, reminding her of all that her body had missed since Mark had gone.
‘Hey, come on; stop crying and tell me exactly what’s happened,’ Garth cajoled while he stroked her hair gently, pushing her hair back off her face and settling her more comfortably in his arms. ‘Come on; tell Uncle Garth…’ he coaxed teasingly.
Reluctantly Deborah smiled.
‘That’s better,’ Garth encouraged as he touched her mouth, pretending to hold her lips in their smile.
The pads of his fingers felt slightly rough, their touch against her skin unexpectedly sensual, reminding her of that last quarrel with Mark, of what had happened beforehand, of the way her body, her breasts had ached with such delicious anticipation for the touch of his skin against them… they were aching now, she recognised. In fact her whole body was aching. There hadn’t been a night since Mark had gone when she had not lain awake wanting him. It had hurt her that he had accused her of being too sexually aggressive, especially when in the past he had always told her how much her sexual openness and honesty had turned him on.
Why did men feel that they had to control a woman’s sexuality, that they should be the ones to give her permission to exercise it? Who ever heard of a man being ashamed of having a strong sex drive, and how many women did she know who were equally proud to acknowledge theirs?
‘You’re too thin,’ she heard Garth accusing her. ‘What have you been doing to yourself…?’
Deborah bunked up at him. It felt so good being physically close to another human being. In her mouth she could still taste the wine she had drunk, its taste sweetly sour on her tongue.
‘I’m not too thin here,’ she told him huskily, and she reached for his hand and placed it against her breast, and then, before he could say anything, she reached up and covered his mouth with her own, letting herself drown in the sensation of his hand reacting instinctively to the provocation of her warm, hard-tipped breast bare beneath the soft covering of her sweater, the response of his mouth to the demand of hers.
His thumb touched her nipple. Achingly she pressed herself closer to him. She felt so empty inside, so needy…
‘Dee… no… we can’t do this. What are you doing to me, you witch? You know how much I’ve always wanted you,’ Garth protested.
If he wanted her then why was it he had stopped kissing her… touching her?
She saw Garth frown as he accidentally kicked over the wine bottle, swiftly reaching for it, his frown deepening as he looked at her.
‘It’s empty,’ he told her.
‘I was thirsty,’ Deborah defended. ‘Garth… take me to bed… make love to me… I need…’
She closed her eyes, willing back the tears she could feel forming behind them.
Garth was picking her up, carrying her… asking her the way to the bedroom.
* * *
