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Involuntarily Lucianna’s eyes widened, her gaze focusing helplessly on Jake’s as she recognised that the movement of his mouth against her own felt nothing like John’s and, moreover, that her response to it, to him, was nothing like anything she had ever experienced in her life before.
Why was her pulse hammering, over-revving so much that her heart felt as though it was going to jump into her throat? Why were her own lips trembling so much? Why did she feel this sudden strange, strong need to get even closer to Jake, so much so that she was, she recognised dizzily, actually pressing her body against his?
Why did she have this urge to make those soft keening, whimpering little sounds she could feel bubbling desperately in her throat?
‘Jake…’
To try to protest had been a mistake, she realised seconds later as her lips parted but no sound emerged, for instead of being free to speak, it was Jake who had the freedom to cover her now open mouth with his and to keep it open by pressing his thumb against her chin whilst he slowly stroked the tip of his tongue back and forth against her parted lips.
It must be that the deliberately slow-building rhythm of what he was doing was having some sort of mesmeric effect on her, she decided in shocked bemusement, because instead of trying to stop him she was actually, she was actually…
A vision flashed behind her closed eyelids, a mental image of the couple she had been watching on the television screen and the way they had been kissing.
To her shock, almost as though he had been reading her mind, Jake started to kiss her in the same way—quick, biting kisses interspersed with softer, longer ones that for some reason compelled her mouth to cling helplessly to his.
She felt as though she was lost, adrift, drowning in the unfamiliar torrent of sensation that engulfed her. Beneath her clothes her body was behaving, reacting to Jake in a way it had never reacted to John, nor to anyone else. Jake was caressing the nape of her neck as he kissed her now and his tongue was beginning to make slow, sensual forays into her mouth.
His tongue!
Dizzily Lucianna dug her fingernails into Jake’s arms, somehow managing to find the strength to tear her mouth away from his.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ she told him stormily, all too conscious of her heightened colour and ragged breathing.
‘No,’ Jake conceded grimly. ‘I shouldn’t!’
Jake admitting that he was in the wrong? Lucianna could hardly believe it, and neither could she believe the extraordinary way in which she had responded to his kiss. In fact she wasn’t going to believe it, she told herself hastily. She was going to forget that the whole incident had ever happened.
She darted a wary look at Jake who had gone to stand in front of the window. He had his back to her.
‘Tomorrow afternoon we’re going shopping,’ he announced abruptly, startling her. ‘And this time…’ He paused and then told her, ‘If you want to be treated like a woman, Lucianna, then you’re going to have to learn to dress like one.’
Lucianna was far too relieved that he hadn’t made any reference to what had just happened between them to object to his plans for a shopping trip, or to the comment which had accompanied his announcement of them.
And besides, one totally unexpected offshoot from the hours she had stubbornly forced herself to spend people-watching had been a tentative awareness that there were other modes of dress for her sex apart from the two completely opposing sides she had previously believed existed.
There had been that woman she had noticed the other day, for instance, wearing neatly pressed, well-fitting jeans, an immaculate white shirt and a caramelly-coloured blazer which Lucianna had just known would feel wondrously soft to the touch, and to her own astonishment, as she’d studied her, Lucianna had experienced a wistful curiosity to know what it would be like to wear such clothes herself and with such confidence.
She had seen other women, of course, wearing garments she would never wear in a million years—tight, short Lycra skirts and equally tight, close-fitting leggings—but they too had exhibited the same careless confidence, a sort of insouciant ease which Lucianna was becoming increasingly aware that she did not possess.
She wore the clothes she did not just for practicality, as she had always insisted, she had been forced to recognise, but as a means of concealing herself, protecting herself. Almost as though if she was going to be accused of being unfeminine, unwomanly, then she might as well dress as though she wanted to be judged in that way.
She still wasn’t sure where it had come from—this unfamiliar shy yearning for something different, to be someone different—and she was still very nervous and wary of it. But for the first time since she had started to grow up she was aware of a need within her to reach out towards the femininity she had previously fought so hard to deny.
Two hours later, with Jake still questioning her on her reading of the books she had bought, she had all but forgotten the turbulent and passionate moments she had spent in his arms.
Relaying the information she had gathered from the books back to Jake, she’d been surprised to discover just how much she had learnt, but if Jake was equally impressed he was concealing it well, his expression impassive, his profile turned slightly away from her, his whole manner towards her rather remote and withdrawn.
Only when she had impishly given him a demonstration of the ‘mirroring’ technique she had just been reading about did he actually seem to focus on her, but if the brief flash of anger she saw in his eyes was anything to go by he wasn’t as surprised by her progress as she had expected.
‘Jake…’ Instinctively she reached out to touch his arm, unaware herself of just how much her quick mind had picked up from her reading or just how much her new knowledge was already reflected in the way she moved, talked and smiled. Ten days ago she would never have dreamed of touching Jake or any other man—but more especially Jake—to get his attention, and yet now she was doing it as naturally as though it were something she had always done.
She smiled teasingly at him as she said, ‘I think perhaps you ought to read the books as well. You’re supposed to respond to this…’ she touched him lightly again and moved slightly closer to him, giving him another teasing smile ‘…by looking properly at me and moving closer to me.’
‘It’s John you need to practise your flirting techniques on, not me,’ Jake told her harshly, moving away from her. ‘I think we’d better call it a night…’
Half an hour later, as she drove home, Lucianna felt an odd sense of let-down and disappointment. What had she been expecting? she derided herself. Not praise from Jake, surely? She knew him far too well for that. For as long as she could remember and certainly since she had been a teenager, he had done nothing but criticise her.
Once Lucianna had gone, Jake poured himself a large glass of whisky. He wasn’t normally a drinker, but right now…
