Читать книгу Sharon Kendrick Collection - Sharon Kendrick - Страница 40

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘DON’T stop,’ begged Romy, not caring how desperate she sounded. Because if he stopped now she would die. ‘Please don’t stop, Dominic.’

She could see the indecision which darkened his features, and her body clenched with fear.

But the movement seemed to excite him, for he closed his eyes briefly, as if in despair, before beginning to move again. This time he broke through the barrier, and as he saw the tears which slid down from beneath her tightly closed eyes he could have cursed himself.

‘Did I hurt you?’ he whispered.

‘Only a little.’ And oh, if that was pain then she wanted a lifetime of it.

He stared down at her as he moved. Romy was a virgin! Dominic shook his head again in disbelief. And that was his last coherent thought as he began to employ every bit of skill and finesse he had ever learned.

He had never slept with a virgin before, but he knew that it was notoriously difficult for a woman to achieve orgasm during her first experience of sexual intercourse.

Never had it been so important to please a woman, and never had it been more difficult.

Dominic couldn’t ever remember struggling to hold back like this before—not even on his own very first encounter.

Emotionally, he felt as out of his depth as a sixteen-year-old, yet physically he was determined to make this the most fabulous experience of her life.

He watched as her body relaxed and accommodated his. He observed with fascination and absorption the physical signs of her flowering, seeing the delicious flush of rose-pink as it transformed the creamy lushness of her skin.

He moved slowly, revelling in each deep, agonisingly blissful thrust for immeasurable moments, until at last he sensed that she was on the very brink.

And then, only then, did he allow himself to become engulfed in the pleasure too, so that loss of control had never been quite so sweet or quite so poignant.

His last thought was that he had not given even a second of consideration to the question of contraception. But somehow he didn’t care, and even if he did it was now too late, and they both fell over the top, their cries the only sound echoing around the vast room.

Romy found herself completely engulfed in the aftermath. She was filled with the most delicious glow. Swamped by it.

She tightened her arms around Dominic’s bare back as it rose and fell with the effort of dragging air back into his lungs. She felt the gradual slowing of his heart and the infinitely pleasurable sensation of his spasms as they stilled deep inside her.

But then he levered himself up onto his elbows, his face dark with some unnamed emotion as he withdrew from her.

A stranger.

Romy shivered as the afterglow began to wear away. She became aware that she was lying almost naked on the sofa—still wearing her shoes and stockings, with her legs sprawled out all over the place.

He reached out an arm and retrieved his dress shirt, tossed it to her and said harshly, ‘Put this on.’

Shakily, she complied, her heart sinking as he got to his feet and pulled on his trousers, then moved to the fireplace where he stood, his face taking on the unmoving expression of a statue. Only his eyes glittered with life.

‘How?’ he said simply.

Romy shook her head. ‘Does it matter?’

He clenched his fists involuntarily by his sides. ‘Of course it matters!’ he ground out ‘Or did you imagine that I would simply overlook the fact that I was the first man for you?’ He forced himself to extinguish the possessive thrill that just saying those words gave him. ‘Even though you were married for over three years!’

Romy bit her lip in confusion. Her dilemma lay in whether to honour the living—or the dead.

Dominic stared at her. ‘How?’ he asked again.

Telling him was no guarantee of happiness, and Romy had been hurt too badly to risk it. ‘I’m sure you have ideas of your own, Dominic,’ she answered flippantly.

Black, warring thoughts crowded his mind.

Nameless fears which begged to be recognised. ‘Oh, sure,’ he answered coldly. ‘No shortage of those.’

‘Oh?’

Oh, the way she lay there, he thought, suppressing a groan. So beautiful and so damned erotic, the half-buttoned dress shirt giving him the occasional provocative glimpse of her silken stockings with those tantalising strips of bare flesh above. ‘Was that why Mark excluded you from his inheritance?’ he demanded.

Romy sighed. ‘He excluded me from his inheritance because I asked him to.’

Black brows were raised in a look which was frankly disbelieving. ‘Oh, really?’

‘Yes, really.’ Dominic’s contempt stirred her in a way that his indifference would never have done. Because the dark inner struggle which was taking place on those cold, beautiful features was surely some sort of indication that he cared? Did she dare to let herself hope?

‘There was very little inheritance in any case,’ she told him calmly. ‘The estate is all tied up for future generations. Mark’s brother’s son will inherit. And the remainder—the fairly modest amount of cash and jewels—well, that was needed to pay for Mark’s mother’s nursing. She’s infirm now, and needs round-the-clock care—’

‘Yes, I know,’ he said bleakly, and turned a piercing silver gaze on her. ‘And all that is admirable of you, Romy—but I’m still no closer to understanding why—’

‘We didn’t consummate our marriage?’ Romy looked down at her ringless hands.

‘Precisely.’

Romy thought of Mark and the comfort she had offered him. Of the long, dark nights when she had held his hand to try to ward off his fears. Able to give him in that small way what he had been unable to take from her in any other...

She looked up at Dominic, her eyes suddenly wet, her face a mass of confusion. ‘It’s Mark’s story,’ she said.

‘And Mark is dead!’ he lashed back, almost viciously.

‘Yes.’ Mark was dead. And Mark had loved her, in so much as he had been capable of loving anyone. The very last thing he had said to her before he died had been, ‘Be happy, Romy. Promise me.’

And she had replied in a voice choked with tears, ‘I promise.’

‘I never slept with Mark before we were married,’ she began slowly.

‘That became very apparent just a short while ago,’ Dominic clipped back, his eyes hooded and suspicious.

Romy swallowed. ‘He told me that it was because he loved me and respected me—which was why he wanted to wait until we were married.’

‘Go on.’

‘I knew that wasn’t the way that most people these days behaved, but in a way I was glad to wait.’ Romy swallowed. ‘It seemed an indication of how much he cared for me. And also...’

Dominic frowned as he heard her voice quaver. ‘Yes?’

‘It reassured me that I wanted to wait, too. That I was not desperate to leap into bed with him. That I was not as promiscuous as my...as my...’

‘As your mother?’ he guessed suddenly, and it was as though a curtain before his eyes had been lifted.

‘Yes.’ Romy did up another button of the shirt almost absently, not noticing that Dominic’s eyes followed the movement obsessively. ‘Then I met you. In the lift. And, well...you know what happened next.’

She scrubbed at her eyes furiously with the back of her fist, and Dominic had to quash the urge to go across and take her in his arms once more.

‘Yes,’ he said, in a grim voice. ‘I know what happened next—it has haunted me ever since, Romy.’

‘And me too!’ she retorted fiercely. ‘Or do you really think that I did that kind of thing with every good-looking man I bumped into? Well? Do you?’

He didn’t give it a moment’s thought. ‘No,’ he answered. ‘I don’t think that.’

She quickly brushed a tear away. ‘I went back to my room that day. I don’t know what I planned to do—maybe talk to my mother, except that she had passed out cold on the bed. And then Mark came by and I...’ She looked up, the truth written in her dark eyes, and Dominic recoiled as though she had hit him.

‘You told him?’ he queried incredulously. ‘You told Mark?’

‘Yes, of course I told him.’

‘Just what, exactly,’ he demanded, his eyes glittering dangerously, ‘did you tell him?’

Romy swallowed. ‘I told him that we had been—intimate. That if circumstances had been different we probably would have ended up making love. I didn’t go into details about what we had actually done.’

‘Thank God for that!’ uttered Dominic quietly.

‘I gave him the opportunity to call the wedding off, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He blamed himself, saying that he had put me in that position by not...’ She took a deep, painful breath. ‘By not making love to me himself. He told me that you were the type of man who had always had hundreds of lovers, and that even if I called off the wedding you wouldn’t be interested in me for more than a night.’

‘Oh, did he?’ asked Dominic, in a quiet, emotionless voice.

She knotted her whitened knuckles together. ‘He begged and pleaded with me to stay with him, and to marry him.’

‘And you agreed?’ he queried incredulously. ‘You agreed?’

Her eyes were dark and curiously empty. ‘Yes, I agreed,’ she told him sadly. ‘But I was young, Dominic. Frightened and guilty and confused. And I wanted to escape. Mark knew that—he played on my weaknesses, while I confess that I allowed him to. And I was nothing if not optimistic. I convinced myself that on our wedding night my love and affection for Mark would be enough to obliterate every memory of you.’

‘But it didn’t happen?’

Romy shook her head. ‘No, it didn’t. We didn’t make love on our wedding night, nor on any other night.’

‘Mark didn’t want to?’

‘Mark couldn’t,’ she told him bluntly. ‘Mark was impotent.’

He let out a long, tortured sigh. ‘Dear God,’ he said to himself bitterly. ‘And when did you discover this, Romy?’

She swallowed. ‘On our wedding night, actually. He told me then.’

Dominic’s eyes narrowed with suppressed rage. ‘He was prepared to do that to you? To begin a marriage knowing that it might never be consummated?’

Romy stared at him, wide-eyed. She had never thought about it in those terms before. ‘He told me that he had never had any interest in sex, but he was too frightened to go to the doctor about it. And when eventually he did, soon after we were married, we discovered that he had very little time left.’

‘And of course you couldn’t leave him then?’ he guessed.

‘Of course I couldn’t,’ said Romy. ‘And he didn’t want me to.’

‘Emotional blackmail,’ said Dominic heavily.

‘Oh, it was a lot more complex than you make it sound, Dominic. In a way, I felt it was the least I could do after betraying him—and with his best friend, too. I was at least in part responsible for the ending of your friendship. And it wasn’t as bad as it sounds—I liked Mark. I always had done. Staying with him was not an awful prison—I was glad to be able to help him. And besides,’ she finished miserably, ‘I had nowhere else to go.’

There was a long silence, before Dominic said, ‘I see,’ in an odd, final sort of voice, and Romy decided that she would leave with her pride intact. Before he kicked her out.

She rose stiffly to her feet, longing to go upstairs and get changed. The white shirt she wore was full of his scent and unbearably evocative, reminding her with heart-rending clarity of just how beautifully he had made love to her.

‘I’d better go,’ she said, and he frowned.

‘Go where?’

‘Home. Anywhere. Away from here, in any case.’

He had taken on the watchful pose of someone deciding how best to break in a young horse.

She strode towards the door, aware that she must look ridiculous in a thigh-length shirt and a pair of high-heeled shoes.

‘Walk out of here now, Romy Salisbury, and you walk out of my life for good,’ came his grated comment from behind her.

Romy whirled round, searching his face for clues. ‘But what alternative do I have?’

‘The alternative is that you stay.’

But what was he offering her? A wonderful love affair? Would that be enough for her? Romy wondered. Would she be prepared to settle for that when she wanted so much more?

‘But there is, of course, a condition to your staying,’ he continued, still in that same, rather emotionless voice.

And this was the pay-off. Romy wondered just how he would word it. Would he insist on laying down ground rules right from the beginning? Insist that she must make no demands on him? That she must always be there for him?

Romy bristled. Well, he could keep all those conditions, and she would tell him exactly where he could put them!

She fixed a saccharine smile to her face. ‘Oh? And what’s that?’

‘That you’ll try one day to find it in your heart to love me almost as much as I love you,’ he told her gently.

There was a long, stunned silence.

‘Oh, Dominic!’ she wailed, and burst into tears. ‘I do love you—I always have! I’ve thought about no one else but you, since the day I met you! And you didn’t even realise—you stupid, stupid man!’ she sobbed.

He pulled her into his arms and let her cry. She soaked his bare chest, and then he found a handkerchief in the top pocket of his discarded jacket and very tenderly wiped her face with it.

And only when she had stopped snuffling did he allow himself to smile, and to kiss the end of her nose with all the sloppiness he normally despised in other people but which now—most extraordinarily—he found he wanted to indulge in for the rest of his life!

‘Am I really stupid?’ he queried softly.

‘Yes!’

‘So I suppose marriage is out of the question, then?’

She eyed him suspiciously. ‘If you think that, Dominic Dashwood,’ she declared, ‘then you really are stupid!’

He smiled again at her baffling lack of logic. ‘Soon?’

‘I don’t mind. Just so long as we can live together first.’

‘It had better be soon,’ he told her sternly. ‘Since we have just made love without using any form of contraception.’

‘Gosh!’ Romy felt quite dizzy with pride. ‘So we did.’ Then she frowned. ‘Are you normally quite so careless?’

Dominic hid a smile. He was not used to being told off by a woman. He rather liked it. ‘Never,’ he told her honestly. ‘But I just assumed that you were on the Pill—and please don’t look like that, Romy; you have to agree that it was a perfectly reasonable assumption to make, under the circumstances.’

‘I suppose so,’ she sighed, and kissed the gravelly shadow of his chin. ‘But what if I had had millions of partners before you?’

He stared deep into her eyes. ‘Do you know—the thought of using contraception as a protective device with you simply never occurred to me? And I’ve never, ever taken that risk before.’

‘So why do something so out of character with me? Someone who you would have been justified in protecting yourself against, given all the evidence?’

‘Because I wasn’t acting on evidence; I was acting on instinct,’ he told her lovingly. ‘Maybe I knew, deep in my heart, that the only risk I was taking was having my heart broken into the bargain!’

No chance of that! thought Romy.

‘In fact,’ he mused, ‘if we’re talking about carelessness, I could wonder why you didn’t bother telling me that you were a virgin...?’ He raised his dark brows at her questioningly.

Romy sighed. ‘I guess I wanted to get my own back. You thought that I was a raving nymphomaniac, and I wanted to prove to you that I wasn’t.’

‘Revenge in its sweetest form?’ he questioned.

‘You could say that.’

‘But rather a dramatic way of going about it.’

‘You bring out the worst in me, Dominic,’ she murmured, but he shook his head.

‘The very best,’ he demurred.

Well, she wasn’t going to argue with that! ‘And also,’ she admitted, ‘I was terribly afraid that if you knew I was a virgin you would insist on doing the honourable thing.’

‘The “honourable thing” being?’

Romy shrugged. ‘You know. Insisting on me staying pure and unsullied, and not making love to me.’

He grinned. ‘I may have honourable traits, sweetheart, but I’m not completely stupid!’ He narrowed his eyes, as if a thought had suddenly occurred to him. “That—um—divine experience in the garden... How in heaven’s name did a virgin learn how to do that?’

‘She used her imagination,’ Romy told him smugly. ‘I happen to have a very vivid imagination, you know, Dominic!’

His eyes darkened. ‘Shall we go to bed now?’ he growled.

‘Oh, yes, please,’ she sighed happily. ‘And can we do it again?’

Dominic laughed aloud, feeling more light-hearted than he could ever remember feeling. ‘As often as you like, sweetheart—as often as you like.’

He suddenly noticed the telephone receiver lying on the floor by the sofa. ‘Oh, dear—one of us must have kicked it off,’ he observed drily, loving the way she blushed so sweetly.

He replaced it onto the handset and it trilled out almost immediately. Romy listened while he said, ‘Mmm. Mmm. When? Good. That’s good! Yes. Yes, she is.’ And finally, ‘I’m getting married. Yes! Of course it’s to Romy. We’ll tell you all about it. Tomorrow?’ He grinned at Romy. ‘Well. maybe not tomorrow—I have the strongest suspicion we’re going to be very tied up for the next few days! I’ll phone you.’

He put the receiver down, looking very slightly bemused. ‘That was Triss,’ he explained. ‘Archie has been trying to get through to us, but couldn’t—so he rang her and Cormack instead. He and Dolly arrived at the hospital just as their daughter-in-law produced a baby girl—she’s quite small but absolutely perfect! And they are both doing well.’

‘Oh, Dominic,’ said Romy breathlessly. ‘Isn’t that just fantastic?’

‘It is.’ He smiled indulgently. ‘In fact, everything is.’

‘Just one other thing.’ She pursed her lips together as he lifted her into his arms.

‘Mmm?’

‘How on earth did Triss know that you were going to marry me?’

He smiled. ‘Before the party, I told her that I wanted to get you out of my system.’

‘And was that why you brought me here?’ she quizzed softly.

‘I’m afraid it was.’ His expression was rueful and his eyes were as silver as the moonlit lake outside. ‘But it went even further than that. You hit the nail on the head when you accused me of wanting to make you fall in love with me, sweetheart. I did. But I didn’t question my motives for doing so too closely.

‘You see, Romy, I thought that following an appropriate period of mourning you would come looking for me after Mark died. And when you didn’t...I...’

‘What?’ she whispered, thinking of the countless times she had lifted the telephone to contact him, and replaced it again, not daring to risk his contemptuous rejection.

‘I felt used,’ he admitted. ‘No better than a stud you’d got a cheap thrill from. I couldn’t forget you—in fact, the memory of you was making it impossible for me to live any kind of normal life. And so I plotted to bring you here—wanting you to be ensnared by me so that I could inflict on you the same kind of suffering and torment I had been forced to endure while you were away from me.’

‘Revenge?’ mused Romy.

‘Revenge,’ he echoed, and his face darkened. ‘But for once I lacked the perception to see that I was still totally ensnared by you.’ He looked at her candidly, a wry smile curving his lips. ‘And I never thought that when love came it would hit me like that.’

‘Like what?’ she asked him, intrigued.

‘Like a thunderbolt. Sudden. Powerful. Irrational.’ His eyes glittered. ‘And all-consuming. That kind of wild, crazy love seemed too much part of the world I had grown up in, where instant gratification was everything. The world I had wanted to escape so badly.’

‘And how did you think that love would come, Dominic?’ she asked him softly.

‘Oh, slow...and considered. And carefully evaluated.’ He smiled. ‘Deadly dull, in fact.’

He picked her hand up and slowly kissed each finger in turn, and Romy thrilled at the expression of wonder in his eyes.

‘I also told Triss that I had an old score to settle with you.’

‘And what did she say?’

‘Just that I was straying into dangerous waters—that she knew from her own experiences that revenge has an awful habit of backfiring on you. And it has,’ he finished, on a whisper, ‘in the most delightful way imaginable.’

‘Oh, Dominic,’ sighed Romy, her heart almost bursting. ‘I love you very much.’

‘Then show me, sweetheart,’ he said, and his voice was suddenly urgent. ‘Show me.’

‘And I now pronounce you man and wife.’ The registrar beamed when—as if on cue—a blackbird began to sing its heart out in one of the trees. ‘You may now kiss the bride,’ he said.

Dominic needed no second bidding. He bent his head and briefly brushed Romy’s lips, their eyes meeting in a long, long smile which excluded the rest of the world.

And then came the low buzz of conversation as the guests all began to chatter excitedly.

‘Not a very passionate kiss,’ whispered Lola rather disappointedly. She had been hoping for a passionate clinch in the manner of Rhett and Scarlett! ‘And certainly not what you would expect from Dominic Dashwood—not with his reputation!’

‘I rather suspect,’ answered Geraint drily, ‘that Dominic is holding back—and that if he really kissed her he might get completely carried away. Did you see that look he gave her just now? Positively X-rated!’

Lola screwed up her blue eyes. ‘I see what you mean,’ she whispered delightedly. ‘Look at the way they’re gazing at each other now—they look as lovestruck as two teenagers!’

Geraint laughed, and gave her a look of mock despair as he pulled her into his arms. ‘And do you still gaze at me that way, my love?’

Lola looked smug, remembering the way he had ravished her on the bed just an hour earlier—nearly making them late for the wedding! ‘I look at you that way all the time, Geraint Howell-Williams—as well you know.’

Geraint laughed, just as Cormack and Triss wandered over. Cormack had a sleeping baby in a stripy suit flopped contentedly over his shoulder, while Triss was wearing fuchsia-coloured satin trousers, which were skin-tight, with a matching matador jacket whose orange buttons matched her outrageous hat.

‘The Italian designer?’ guessed Lola.

Triss grinned. ‘Spot on! Completely over the top, isn’t it? But I love his clothes, and I’d feel guilty about paying shop prices for them.’

‘And fortunately I love them, too,’ said Cormack, his eyes glinting as he gazed adoringly at his wife. ‘I shall never forget that excuse for a skirt you wore on our honeymoon! The gondolier almost fell head first into the canal! Remember?’

‘Mmm.’ Triss had seen far less of the canals and treasures of Venice than she had expected, but she knew every single centimetre of their rooms at the Cipriani! They really would have to go back and visit when they weren’t on honeymoon!

‘We only just got married before Romy and Dominic, didn’t we?’ said Triss, looking dreamily into her husband’s eyes. ‘And we’ve known each other for ages longer.’

‘It wasn’t through a lack of asking,’ growled Cormack.

‘I just like keeping you guessing,’ answered his wife sweetly as she planted a tender kiss on the top of their baby’s silky black head.

‘And what are you keeping me guessing about this time, I wonder?’ queried Cormack softly.

‘Guess!’ She smiled, but she could see from the look in his eyes that he already knew she was pregnant with their second child.

‘I love you, Triss,’ he whispered.

‘The feeling is entirely mutual, I can assure you.’

The bride and groom had wandered hand in hand through the rose-decked arbour and out towards the lake.

Romy wore the simplest dress in cream silk, which brushed the grass as she walked, and a circlet of matching cream roses on top of her blonde head.

The sun dazzled off the mirror-smooth surface of the water and their senses were full of music and laughter and birdsong.

They stood in silence for a while, both lost in thought, reflecting on their good fortune and happiness. Then Dominic turned and looked at his wife, experiencing the usual thrill of pride and pleasure.

‘Happy?’

‘Mmm. Unbelievably so.’

‘But you’re very quiet,’ he probed. ‘Are you sad because your mother couldn’t make it?’

‘Wouldn’t make it, you mean,’ Romy corrected him drily, but her words were totally without anger. Dominic had taught her that when you couldn’t change something it was sometimes best just to accept it.

She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not sad. I’m glad she’s happy with her new man, and if she had come she probably would have done something totally out-rageous—like making a speech or jumping into the swimming pool fully clothed!’

‘So why are you so reflective? Were you thinking about Mark?’

Her eyes shone with tears at his perception, and she nodded.

He cupped her face in his strong hand. ‘Don’t be sad, sweetheart. Mark’s out of pain now. And today you kept your promise to him in the fullest sense. You told him that you would be happy, and you are going to be happy. I’m going to spend the rest of my life making that promise come true.’

Ever since that night two months ago, when they had come together so passionately, Romy had sometimes felt that she was going to burst with happiness!

But Dominic was right, and it was time to let the past go now. Time to let go of any lingering regrets and guilt.

On an impulse, Romy scooped the circlet of roses off her head and tossed it into the lake, like a discus. The gleaming water parted and rippled as the flowers hit the surface, and the sun gilded the cream petals. She said a short, silent prayer for Mark, and bade him farewell, then lovingly turned her face up to her husband.

Dominic squeezed her hand tightly. ‘OK now?’

‘OK.’ She smiled, and looked down at her posy of cream roses which she was still clutching tightly to her chest.

Dominic shot her a brief glance. ‘Want to go back to the reception and toss your bouquet in traditional fashion?’

What Romy wanted was to have her gorgeous new husband all to herself, but she had the rest of her life for that, and she thought she could possibly share him. Just for today!

She turned to him with a grin. ‘But there’s no one left to get married, is there? Lola and Geraint. Triss and Cormack. And now us.’

Dominic frowned. ‘What about that friend of yours? The rather attractive one with dark hair?’

‘Stephanie? She’ll be delighted to hear that you described her as attractive.’

‘But a little miserable, I think?’

‘She’s just broken up with her boyfriend.’

‘Ah! Then she sounds the perfect bouquet recipient to me. Come on, sweetheart.’

He took her by the hand, but she halted and turned her big brown eyes up to him.

‘Kiss me first, Dominic!’

‘Romy,’ he warned, because he knew that look very well.

‘Just a kiss,’ she pouted.

‘With you it’s never just a kiss. Oh, come here, then.’ He sighed, on a note midway between passion and perplexity. ‘Why is it that I can never resist you?’ he wondered aloud. ‘I’m like putty in your hands, do you know that, Romy Dashwood?’

‘Oh, that!’ Romy’s eyes sparkled. ‘That’s called love!’ And the bouquet slid unnoticed to the ground.

Dominic sighed with pleasure as he kissed her very thoroughly, and she slid her hands beneath his jacket to encircle his waist. ‘Romy!’ he groaned.

‘What, darling?’ she questioned innocently, her fingertips massaging his broad back through the silk of his shirt.

Dominic knew when he was beaten—but more importantly, he knew when he wanted to be beaten.

He was laughing with delight as he tumbled her down onto the grass and began to kiss her.