Diminution, yes… a total cessation… He had begun to wonder recently if there was something physically wrong with him as he’d struggled to force his body into reluctant arousal, panicking inwardly in case it failed him, but his physical response to the clerk had proved to him that there was nothing wrong with him physically… far from it.
The problem must lie elsewhere, then… with Deborah? Or rather with his reaction to her?
It wasn’t that he had stopped loving her, he knew that, and he had hoped originally that this time away together would help to restore the sexual chemistry which had once burned so strongly between them, but Deborah’s reaction to what he had done had left him physically numb, his masculinity somehow threatened and under attack.
He didn’t want to talk to her and he didn’t want to go to bed with her either, he recognised bitterly. If the truth were known, he was sick and tired of the new role in their lives which she seemed to have cast for him, just as he was sick and tired of Ryan’s mocking comments and constant allusions to Deborah’s controlling position in their relationship.
Couldn’t she see how hard things were for him at the moment… couldn’t she understand… ?
‘Oh, Mark, this is going to be such a wonderful weekend… just the two of us.’ Her eyes were shining.
* * *
‘When you said you wanted to go out for a walk, I didn’t realise you meant a full-blown hike,’ Deborah laughed protestingly as she caught up with Mark, who was walking with the group’s leader.
‘You’re the one who’s always complaining that we don’t get enough exercise,’ Mark reminded her.
They had arrived at the hotel late the previous evening and it had been dark by the time they had unpacked.
Deborah had pulled a face when he had insisted on their having dinner in the dining-room rather than ordering a room-service meal, but she had accepted it tolerantly enough, just as she had when he had spent the rest of the evening in conversation with a fellow guest, leaving Deborah to make what conversation she could with the man’s shyly timid wife.
She ha
d frowned a little this morning when he had got up before her and then come back to announce that he had booked them both on to a local organised walk.
‘Come back to bed,’ she had suggested, smiling invitingly at him; the spring sun had warmed the pale ivory of her skin to soft gold and he’d known that it wasn’t the coolness of the air on her naked body that was flushing her nipples into rosy hardness, but he had still shaken his head, telling her,
‘We can’t; the walk starts in three-quarters of an hour.’
And he had deliberately stayed downstairs, waiting to come up and announce what he had done until he knew that there would not be enough time for them to make love.
Her sunny acceptance of his refusal and her good humour during the walk had only added to his guilt and also, oddly, to his anger against her. It would have been easier for him to justify what he was doing if she had objected or protested.
‘Mmm—I can’t wait to get back to our room and that lovely big bath,’ she whispered in his ear, teasingly nuzzling it while no one was looking.
* * *
‘Oh… that bath felt good, and so do you,’ Deborah told Mark as she slipped behind him, pressing her wet body against his, sliding her hands beneath the shirt he was just fastening over his chest.
‘Hey, watch it—my shirt’s getting wet,’ Mark complained.
Deborah laughed. ‘Take it off, then,’ she suggested as she bit playfully at the warm flesh of his shoulder.
Standing together like this, with her behind him, her fingertips stroking lightly against his skin, it was not after all as difficult as he had dreaded to will his senses into a state of desire and his body into a state of arousal, Mark discovered to his relief.
Deborah was no textbook lover—she was far too sensual and imaginative for that—her slow fingertip-stroking of his skin deliberately tantalising.
‘Had enough?’ she asked mischievously when he trapped her provocative fingertip flat against his belly and then added as she pressed herself closer to his back, ‘Mmm… I do love your body, Mark. It feels so good to touch… Just the way a man’s body should feel…’
‘Oh… and how exactly is that?’ Mark asked her. He felt safer now with the movement of her hand stilled and under his control. ‘Or do I already know the answer to that one?’ he added mockingly as he glanced wryly at his own erection.
Deborah laughed.
‘No… not because of that, you vain creature… not that it isn’t a very… tempting sight,’ she added judiciously. ‘No, what I meant was that you feel good to touch—here,’ she explained as she lifted her other hand and slowly traced the width of his chest. ‘And here,’ she added softly as her fingertips ruffled through the fine softness of his body hair.
‘And here.’ Her voice had taken on a betraying husky note as she outlined the hard curve of his buttock and then traced the edge of the hairline that surrounded his penis.
‘You taste good as well,’ she mumbled as she bit gently at his shoulder. ‘Taste good, smell good, feel good… Oh, Mark.’