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‘I still don’t really know why you came round here today, Lewis, but I would prefer you to leave now before you really make me angry.’
She was quite proud of her small speech, but Lewis didn’t react to it at all.
‘What I came round for was to ask you not to be too angry with Jessica for getting in touch with me. I know how you must feel about it, how little you must want any kind of contact between us. But I also know how much you love her and how little you will want to alienate her—’
Lacey couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
‘Do you really think me so stupid,’ she demanded when she could interrupt him, ‘or so selfish? No, if you want the truth, I don’t want you in Jessica’s life, but that’s a personal feeling: my feeling. Do you really think I can’t put myself in Jessica’s shoes, that I can’t understand how she feels? Do you really think I’m so selfish…so…so possessive that I would…?’ She broke off and swallowed. ‘And as for my being angry with her…’ Her body knotted with tension. ‘I’m not angry with Jessica, Lewis.’
‘Meaning that I’m the one you’ve directed that emotion against.’
‘Look, I just want you to leave,’ she told him huskily. ‘I don’t see any point in our continuing with this discussion. You know where the front door is,’ she told him pointedly, heading for the stairs. ‘I won’t see you out if you don’t mind.’
As she walked away from him she could feel tears starting to sting her eyes.
‘Lacey, please, I…’
She tensed as he came after her, catching hold of her arm, all the tension and emotion his presence was causing her boiling up inside, breaking down the barriers of her self-control so that she tried to pull away from him, crying out frantically, ‘Let go of me…don’t touch me!’
As she tried to jerk herself free of him he let her go. She stumbled awkwardly, blindly putting out her hand to save herself. Her hipbone collided painfully with the chest against the wall, but before she could fall any further she was suddenly snatched up off her feet, Lewis’s voice harsh and angry against her ear as he gritted, ‘You little fool! What’s wrong with you? I wasn’t going to hurt you. I only wanted…’
She was shivering, trembling violently as the heat coming off his body surrounded her. She could smell his familiar scent, see the dark shadow along his jaw where his beard grew. Her heart was thudding in frantic panic, her body aching…yearning. She tried to blank out what she was feeling, to focus on something other than his face, to blot out the effect he was having on her senses, on her emotions.
He might be holding on to her in anger and impatience rather than in desire; her brain might be perfectly well aware of that, but the trouble was that her body seemed to have difficulty in recognising this fact.
Her body. Her eyes burned with the strain of suppressing the tears; her throat felt raw and over-tight. Every breath she took was reinforcing her emotional and physical awareness of him. She could actually feel her own yearning need for him deep within her body. Her breasts suddenly felt heavy and tender. She wanted to lean against him; to wrap herself around him; to…
Frantic with panic, with the need to protect herself and conceal from him what she was feeling, she twisted in his grasp, trying to pull away from him, trying to escape the enervating masculine heat of his body.
‘Lacey, for God’s sake, what is it? You can’t really think that I’d hurt you.’
Her head jerked round, a reminder on her lips of how easily and carelessly he had once done exactly that, emotionally if not physically, and then confusingly she heard the pain in his voice. Unwittingly she focused on him.
She knew immediately that he had seen what was in her eyes because she saw the recognition of it flash through his own. She tried to pull away, to turn her head, an inarticulate sound of denial and panic strangled in her throat as he said her name, his hand leaving her arm to cup the side of her face, stroking gently against her skin, so gently that it was almost as thou
gh he couldn’t believe he was actually touching her.
As she flinched and trembled he slid his fingers into her hair, his thumb brushing the flushed heat of her cheek, touching the corner of her mouth.
‘No. Lewis. No, please, I don’t want this,’ she protested huskily, but they both knew it was a lie and that there was nothing she wanted more than the intimacy of his mouth against her own, his arms around her, his body…She wasn’t even trying to free herself any more, simply standing instead within the shelter of his arms, still trembling, while his eyes gravely searched her face.
She was still helplessly trying to protest that she didn’t want him when he started to kiss her, slowly at first, both his hands now cupping her face, his mouth lifting from hers so that he could look into her eyes, huge and shadowed with all that she was feeling.
She lifted her hands to his chest to push him away. Beneath his shirt his skin felt as though it were on fire. She could feel the rapid thumping of his heart, and her own body trembled in response. He was kissing her again, tasting the texture of her lips, his tongue caressing their soft outline.
Tears clogged the back of her throat as she fought to deny her own emotions.
How many, many times down the years had she dreamed of him kissing her like this, only to wake and find herself alone? As she struggled against what was happening to her, she tried to remind herself of all the reasons why she should stop him, why she should deny herself the intimacy her body craved. But even as she argued with herself her lips were clinging softly to his, and then parting, her tongue unable to resist the temptation of exploring his mouth as he had done hers. Its familiar texture and taste swamped her senses, the soft little moan of pleasure she gave drowning out the cautionary voices clamouring inside her. The hands she had put out to push him away had somehow or other slid over his shoulders, her fingertips trembling as she touched the familiar hard bones. The gap between them had been completely closed now. Beneath her T-shirt and shorts she could feel the heat burning her body.
‘Lewis.’
She was unaware of whispering his name, only of the fact that his mouth was covering her own, that he was kissing her now with a fierce intensity that matched and fed her own need. She clung to him, opening her mouth to the invasion of his tongue, welcoming its possessive thrust with soft eagerness.
His hands moulded her body, urging her even closer to him. The heat and scent coming off his skin made her ache for even closer contact with him, to be able to touch him without the barrier of his clothes between them.
As a lover he had always been caring and considerate as well as passionate, and her body responded to him now as eagerly as it always had done, heedless of the warning cried out by her brain.
She wasn’t sure which of them unfastened the buttons on his shirt, her only awareness that of the infinite pleasure it gave her to slide her hands over his damp skin, to kiss the hard damp column of his throat and feel the tremor that burned through him at her touch.
