One kiss might not sound much, but that one kiss was her only pleasant memory even remotely attached to sex.
‘You ought to go back inside,’ Zahid said. ‘Your mother is looking for you.’
‘I loathe them,’ Trinity said.
‘It shows.’
‘I love them, though.’ He was surprised by her admission, not that she loved her family, more at the hopelessness in her voice. ‘Do you get on with your family?’
‘I do,’ Zahid said. ‘Most of the time.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning most of the time I get on with them.’
‘You’re terribly straightforward.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Just that.’
‘You should never assume,’ Zahid said, for his thoughts were less than straightforward where Trinity was concerned.
‘I don’t want to go back in,’ Trinity admitted. ‘Do you think anyone would really notice if I just disappeared?’
‘You know that they would,’ Zahid said. ‘It will only go for another half-hour or so.’
She let out a breath. Half an hour felt like an eternity right now. ‘I don’t want to sing.’
‘There are many things that I would prefer not to do.’
‘But you do them.’
‘Some of the time.’
‘Would you sing?’
God, but she loved it when he smiled.
‘No.’
His smile almost turned to a wince as Dianne’s voice invaded them again. ‘Trinity?’
He watched her jaw grit as the call continued and her mother’s voice started to get near. Zahid took Trinity’s arm and led her around the corner to where it was dark, and she could smell the pine from a tree and the thud of music and people in the distance and she wished they were back there in the woods.
‘I wish you’d taken me with you that night.’
‘I was tempted.’
‘It didn’t show,’ Trinity said, and in sudden defence she mocked him a little. ‘Have you been trained to hide your emotions?’
‘Who said that I had any?’
She attempted a suitable reply but it dawned then that his hand was on her waist and the other was on her face when normally contact, any contact, was unbearable, just not tonight, and so she answered his question. ‘Your kiss told me that you did.’
‘Sex is not an emotion,’ came his brusque response, but for the first time he lied and she knew it, for neither could deny what thrummed between them now. It was more than lust yet it tasted almost the same, it was more than want yet still he fought not to call it need as he looked to her lips.
‘Where were we?’ Zahid asked, but the years could not disappear. There was so much hurt there that for Trinity it was not as simple as a kiss. So great was her fear of contact she was petrified how she might react to his touch. She knew about his reputation with women and, of course, he assumed hers, but just as a kiss was surely inevitable Trinity saw her way out and she leapt on it and wriggled from his arms. ‘I doubt your fiancée would be very pleased...’
‘I have not chosen my bride yet,’ Zahid said, and he took her champagne glass and placed it on a window ledge then pulled her back to where she had been just a second or two ago. ‘If I had, I would not be about to kiss you.’
‘Oh.’
Well, that settled that, then, Trinity thought. There was nothing to stop them other than her fear and that she could not stand being held by a man, except she was being held now and there was no urge to run, there was no urge to do anything other than receive the lips softly descending on hers.
Would he be able to tell from her kiss, her terror? Trinity wondered.
No, she fast realised, because to his mouth there was no terror, just the melting of fear and the bliss of his lips and the stroke of his tongue.
Would he be able to tell from her rigid body that she did not know how to respond, that her body refused to obey?
No, because she sank into his embrace without thought and the press of his erection against her felt like a reward.
His mouth did make the pain disappear; his kiss did, on a night she had been dreading, actually allow her to forget, and Trinity found out something new—it was very hard to kiss and smile at the same time but she was trying.
‘What are you doing?’ Zahid said, as she paused for a moment and allowed her mouth to stretch into the beam that this moment deserved.
‘Smiling,’ Trinity said. ‘That’s better.’ For her lips could better relax against his now.
He kissed her deeper, and Trinity felt the weight of his mouth and the hastening of his tongue as he pulled her harder into him, she felt again the press of him on her stomach. The ugliest dress in the world fast became her favourite as his hands roamed the silk and located the not-so-stupid concealed zip and expertly slid it down just enough for his thumb to stroke her aching nipple.
The sirens were back, the sirens she’d heard but once, only they were louder now, closer now, with each and every stroke of his tongue.
Her hands were in his hair, she was back on tiptoe again but with the guide of his hand this time and the sirens neared dangerously close for both of them. She wanted him to lift her, she wanted her legs coiled around his hips. Visions of just that took over as Zahid struggled to halt her ascent, for he wanted to lift her, he wanted to be inside her but he would never compromise her.
‘Not here...’ Zahid pulled his mouth from her lips but they did not leave her face as she spoke. ‘As I said, you deserve better than the woods. Do what you have to and then...’
She shivered at what Zahid left unsaid.
He kissed her ear and then peeled his face from hers and turned her a little. Lifting her arm, he dealt with the zip but did not leave things there. Instead, he kissed the sensitive flesh of her upper arm, and how he found her armpit sexy, she would never know, but clearly he did, because he was deep kissing her there now. Her panties were soaking. Trinity wanted to be back in his arms, but he turned her to face him and straightened her dress and then rearranged a few tendrils of her hair. ‘I will be in in a moment,’ Zahid said.
‘Come in with me.’
‘Trinity, go in.’ Zahid’s smile was wry for there was no way he could go back to the reception just yet. ‘I’ll be there soon.’
She almost floated in, just on a high from his kiss and the very real promise of tonight. Finally, finally, her body seemed to know how to respond, finally the curse was lifting.
It was possibly the very worst time to come face to face with her mother, closely followed by Clive.
‘Everyone’s waiting for you, Trinity,’ Dianne said.
She just stood there, praying for Zahid to come up behind her, to take her hand, to just walk her away, but instead she faced this man with only the pathetic barrier of her mother between them.
‘It’s time to sing!’ Dianne smiled.
‘You want me to sing?’ Trinity said, her voice a challenge.
‘You know that I do.’
One moment she had been the happiest she’d ever been, Trinity realised, but now she was suddenly the angriest.
Oh, she’d sing!
Trinity was ready to sing from the treetops now!
She marched into the hall, muttering, and strode up to the microphone.
Yes, she’d sing, Trinity decided, wrenching the microphone from its stand. She’d sing as loudly as she knew how if the microphone would just stop screeching feedback.
Her starting number would be, Trinity decided, ‘I Was Seventeen Going on Eighteen’, and she’d point to Clive as she sang, as she told the whole world about that night.
The skeletons were coming out to play, the linen basket was going to be emptied too!
Yay!
She felt as angry and as uninhibited as Harry had been on the plane, and there was no need to hide anything, none at all.
Zahid walked into the hall in time to see Trinity stalk to the microphone and start to tap at it, tossing her hair. Her eyes spelt danger and Zahid turned as Dianne came and stood beside him. For once she wasn’t wearing that plastic smile and, as everyone had this wedding day, in crisis Dianne turned to Zahid.
‘Stop her!’ Dianne pleaded.
Zahid wasn’t following Dianne’s orders as he walked to the stage, it was to get to Trinity, because there was a recklessness to her that troubled him and Zahid would not let her look a fool.
‘I’d like to dedicate this number to—’ Trinity started, but Zahid pulled the plug and her arm at the same time and hauled her from the stage.
‘Put me down.’
‘Not yet.’
‘Put me down,’ Trinity shouted, as he carried her over his shoulder behind the stage and out through the back exit to the elevators. It all became a little blurry then. She remembered him letting her down and Zahid demanding to know what was going on.
‘Nothing!’
Jet-lag, champagne, nerves, fear, want all combined in desperate tears and then she lunged at him, desperate for escape, but Zahid denied her that. She tried to rain kisses on his face but Zahid held her at arm’s length as she pecked away like an angry woodpecker who couldn’t meet its mark. She wanted the sex he had promised, the bliss of escape with the one man who knew where it resided in her.
She wanted Zahid.
And so she told him.
‘I don’t reward bad behaviour.’
‘You’re not training a dolphin!’ Trinity shouted, but then she started to laugh. ‘I tried that, actually.’ She put on an American accent. ‘“Positive reinforcement-based training”...and it didn’t work!’