‘Something is wrong. What is it, Lissa?’ He turned away from her abruptly, but she was too tense to get up. ‘It’s too late now for second thoughts; for wishing that I was Greaves.’
‘I don’t …’ The denial was blurted out before she could retract it, and she felt a curious twist of emotion curl through her heart as he frowned down at her; a combination of fear and an excitement she could not analyse; a tiny thrill of apprehension.
‘No? But you did shrink away from me,’ he told her softly. ‘Why, Lissa? Oh I know there’s always been a degree of antagonism between us, but you’re not naive, you know as well as I do that it’s an antagonism sparked by mutual desire.’ He looked grimly at her, and continued before she could speak. ‘Neither of us might be proud of desiring the other, but I know if we’re honest that neither of us could deny it.’
He caught the small sound she choked back and stared at her, watching the colour drain out of her face.
‘Lissa, for God’s sake.’ He sounded more angry than concerned and Lissa flinched back from him as he added, ‘Let’s stop the play-acting shall we? A physical relationship between us was part and parcel of the deal when you agreed to marry me. You knew that …’
‘Are you trying to tell me you married me solely because you wanted to go to bed with me?’ Lissa was proud of the cool way she threw the taunt at him.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You know damn well I didn’t. After all why the hell should I go to such lengths to secure something other men—plenty of other men have had for …’ He caught her hand just before it connected with his jaw, gripping her wrist so tightly that it hurt. ‘Cut out the injured innocent bit, Lissa … it doesn’t suit you.’
She was practically trembling with rage and yes with pain too, hating him for what he was saying to her; for revealing to her how he really viewed her. It was intolerable, unbearable … and to think she had contemplated telling him the truth! She could not endure to stay here a moment longer … The girls … all the logical calm thinking she had done during the day were forgotten … Nothing was more important than escaping from Joel and the agony he was causing her.
‘Let me go.’ She rubbed her aching wrists, as he released her, scrambling off the chair and moving on shaking legs towards the door.
‘Lissa …’
‘Don’t touch me!’ Her throat was so tight with pain she could barely speak, her voice a husky whisper of torment. ‘Don’t come anywhere near me! I’m leaving, now … this minute. I …’ To her bitter humiliation tears clogged her throat, filling her eyes, and threatening to flood humiliatingly from her eyes. She felt so weak and alone … desperate for some haven in which to hide away from him, and yet knowing she had none.
‘Lissa!’ He ignored her demands, striding towards her, catching hold of her arm with strong fingers. Panic exploded through her in wave after wave of sheer terror. She was back at the party, fifteen again, only this time Joel wasn’t just looking at her, he was touching her, hurting her physically as well as mentally. She gave a thin, high scream of pain, grateful for the deep heavy black void that opened up to receive her and grant her oblivion.
LISSA OPENED HER EYES reluctantly and stared round the shadowed bedroom. Where was she? Suddenly she remembered and she shuddered. This was Joel’s room. No, their room, she corrected herself, bitterly. He must have brought her here after … after she’d fainted. She must get away … She must escape before he hurt her any more. She sat up groggily, swinging her feet to the floor.
‘Lissa!
The peremptory command in his voice as Joel walked into the room froze her. He was carrying a tray with a cup of tea on it.
‘Drink this.’ He put the cup down on the bedside table nearest to her, ‘And then you and I are going to talk.’ He looked so grimly angry that Lissa started to tremble; her teeth chattering together as wave after wave of fear shuddered through her. She heard Joel swear and saw him come towards her, holding out her hands to ward him off. And then suddenly and unnervingly she was crying … deep, wrenching sobs that hurt her chest and made her whole body shake.
‘ Shush … shush … it’s all right …’ Unbelievably being rocked in Joel’s arm, with the warm pressure of his body against her own, created inside her an intense sensation of security and comfort. She wanted to cling to him Lissa realised numbly, to burrow against him and let the soft words he was murmuring soothe and relax her. But it was Joel who had provoked the emotional storm now racking her; Joel with his cruel jibing tongue who was responsible for her pain. It was also Joel who was easing it, she acknowledged hazily, Joel was making her feel cherished and cared for.
By the time the tearing sobs were under control she had recovered enough to want to pull away from him, deeply embarrassed and confused by her own behaviour, but Joel wouldn’t let her, subsiding on to the side of the bed, and taking her with him, still holding her in his arms.
‘Now,’ he said quietly, ‘I want to know what all that was about.’
Lissa managed a tight smile. ‘Oh just another trick in my repertoire,’ she told him brittley. ‘Very effective isn’t it?’
For a long moment he simply looked at her, and then he said quietly, ‘Extremely effective; so much so that I find it impossible to believe it was fabricated. And so no doubt you are going to tell me, was your faint.’ He watched the colour run up under her skin and said sardonically, ‘Exactly.
‘I’ve seen fear before, Lissa, and I’ve seen panic, and I know when they’re genuine. What I don’t know is why I should invoke them so forcefully in you.’
Now there was no going back. She would have to tell him, Lissa knew, and coupled with apprehension and reluctance was also relief. She wanted to tell him; she wanted to be rid of the emotional burden she was carrying.
Lifting her head she answered simply, ‘Because you want us to be lovers,’ and was rewarded by a physical reaction every bit as violent in its own way as her own had been. Dark colour burned up under his skin, stretching it somehow until it was pulled sharply over his cheek bones. His eyes glittered darkly with a mixture of anger and something else she couldn’t put a name to, his fingers curling round her wrist as he said grimly, ‘You have a hell of a way of putting a man down, Lissa. I won’t ask what it is that bars me from joining the ranks of those fortunate enough to enjoy your favours—I dare not …’
‘No … no … you don’t understand,’ Lissa interrupted impetuously, determined now that she had committed herself to honesty to go through with it. ‘It isn’t you … at least, it is, but … Oh look, Joel, let me go right back to the beginning.’
He released her wrist, and watched grimly as she moved back from him, putting a distance between them.
‘I can’t let you be my lover … or indeed any man be my lover because … because I … find the thought of sex … What I’m trying to tell you is that I’m … I’m frigid,’ she said flatly at last. ‘I’ve never had sex with anyone, Joel,’ she told him forcing herself to look at him and forestalling what she knew he must be going to say by saying quickly, ‘Yes, I know you must find that hard to believe but it’s true. That night, that party, when I was fifteen … that was the first time …’ She swallowed, trying to concentrate on a piece of wallpaper safely taking her eyes away from Joel’s and allowing her to continue her story without having to look at him and see how he was reacting.
‘Nothing really happened … just a little very light petting …’
‘Your father told me you were wildly promiscuous,’ Joel broke in curtly. ‘Are you trying to tell me …’
‘My father and I didn’t get on … I was extremely rebellious … but never in that way. My parents disapproved of my crowd of friends. I’d been forbidden to go out that night … but I disobeyed them—for the first and last time,’ she added wryly. ‘My father was an extremely strict man. Amanda knew how to get round him, but I didn’t have the knack. You see,’ she said with painful honesty, ‘I was never what he wanted in a daughter, I wasn’t blonde and small and cuddly like my mother and Amanda and … Oh well, no doubt much of it was my fault, because I never tried to conform to what he wanted me to do … You see I wanted him … both of them to love me for what I was … not as another Amanda, but you know how teenagers are, I couldn’t articulate any of this to them. My father disapproved of teenagers anyway … Every time he read about teenage misdemeanours in the press he used to go on about it … I wasn’t promiscuous at all … I suspe