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Sexual chemistry was easy to recognise but hard to define, according to The Art of Flirtation, and without it…
Lucianna turned back to her plants, but this time as she nipped off the dead heads her fingers weren’t quite as steady. The relationship she had with John might not be smouldering with sexuality and passion but there was more to a good relationship, a meaningful relationship, the kind of relationship she, Lucianna, wanted with a man, than mere sex…
She glanced at her watch. Jake was due back this evening. He had been away on business for the last few days but he had telephoned her from his hotel this morning, instructing her to present herself at the Hall this evening so that they could start work on the new phase of ‘The Plan’.
Out of the corner of her eye she suddenly noticed the way her brother’s hand had dropped to Janey’s stomach.
It was no secret to Lucianna that her brother and Janey had been wanting to start a family for quite some time. Did that small possessive gesture she had just witnessed mean that she had now conceived?
Thoughtfully Lucianna watched the way her brother kept his arm around his wife’s shoulders as they walked back to the house together. He was certainly being rather more physically protective and careful of her these days…or was it simply that she was more aware of the subtle messages of other people’s body language which had hitherto been a closed book to her?
‘Jake’s still obviously not got around to taking you shopping yet’ David teased, as Lucianna joined them in the kitchen tugging affectionately on her hair. ‘I can’t wait to see what he’s got in mind for you. It will have to be black, of course—that way the oil stains won’t show.’
‘David…’ Janey began to warn, but Lucianna shook her head and smiled.
‘It’s all right, Janey,’ she told her. ‘I know when I’m being wound up.’
Yes, she knew, but in the past she had always reacted with defensive anger to such teasing, she acknowledged. Overreacted, some might say, but since her eyes had been opened to the power and the potential of using her body language to work for her she had discovered that there were far more subtle ways of getting her arguments across than verbal arguing—and apparently, if the book on flirtation was to be believed, more ways of attracting a man’s interest than by dressing provocatively.
In the privacy of her own bedroom she had already secretly been practising the small, telling gestures which were supposed to draw a man’s attention…
CHAPTER FIVE
HALFWAY through cross-questioning her on how much time and attention she had given the books she had bought, Jake had had to excuse himself to take a business call in the library. From the way he had been speaking to her since her arrival at the Hall she might have been a schoolgirl, Lucianna decided wrathfully, absently glancing at the TV screen she had just switched on, her eyes widening as she saw the couple on the screen start to kiss one another with passionate intensity. As the camera closed up on their faces Lucianna tensed and watched closely.
When she and John kissed she felt none of the intense passion this couple were so enviably sharing. No, John had certainly never kissed her the way the man on the screen was kissing the woman, holding her face in his hands as he pressed hungry, biting kisses onto her mouth and she responded, twisting and turning in his arms as though she couldn’t get close enough to him.
Lucianna felt her heart start to beat faster, oblivious to Jake’s return as she stared in fascination at the screen. The couple were kissing differently now, their mouths fused together, their breathing laboured.
‘What’s wrong, Lucianna? Hasn’t John ever kissed you like that?’
At the sound of Jake’s voice Lucianna spun round, her face burning hotly, embarrassed at being caught studying the screen as though she had actually been guilty of voyeurism.
‘Y-yes, of course he has,’ she told Jake fiercely, starting to stammer slightly and somehow unable to meet his eyes.
‘I don’t believe you,’ she heard him challenge her suavely. ‘In fact I don’t believe you even know how to kiss like that…’
‘Of course I do,’ Lucianna asserted quickly.
‘Yes? Then prove it,’ Jake demanded softly. ‘Come over here now and prove it to me, Luci
anna…Kiss me…’
At first Lucianna thought that Jake couldn’t possibly mean what he had said—either that or she must have misheard him—but when she searched his face for confirmation she realised with a fierce, sharp thrill of fear that he had meant it.
‘You can’t, can you?’ she heard him saying softly to her. ‘You can’t and you don’t—’
‘I can,’ Lucianna lied immediately.
‘Prove it, then…’
How had Jake managed to move so quickly that he was now standing right next to her, one hand already cupping the back of her head, constraining her, preventing her from moving? His mouth was only centimetres away from hers. Nervously she licked her lips and heard him say, ‘Well, that’s an interesting start, but you’re supposed to be the one kissing me, not enticing me into kissing you…’
Enticing him! Fear and anger, always a dangerously volatile cocktail of emotions, exploded inside her and before she could lose her courage Lucianna closed the distance between them, her lips firmly pressed together as she brushed them against Jake’s mouth. His lips felt cool and smooth and nothing whatsoever like John’s, which if she was honest always felt just a little too wet and soft and—
‘Call that a kiss? If that’s the best you can do then no wonder you’re having so much trouble with your love life…The wonder is that you’ve got one at all,’ Jake told her succinctly.
Furious now, Lucianna opened her mouth to retaliate and then discovered that it was impossible for her to speak for the very good reason that, despite the fact that she was sure she had removed her lips from his, Jake’s mouth was now covering hers, covering it and…
