To her relief it was. Lyle must have gone into his surgery to do some work. With him gone she felt able to breathe properly for the first time that evening.
Shivering a little, she went to the window and watched the approaching storm, gathering momentum now, the thunder drawing ever closer. Storms had never frightened her, on the contrary she found them strangely invigorating, but tonight she was not in the right frame of mind, already far too tense and wound up by the events of the afternoon. She felt as edgy as an animal sensing danger, she thought wryly, acknowledging that her most sensible course would be to remove herself from the possibility of encountering Lyle by going to bed.
Switching off the light she made her way upstairs, pushing open the door of her bedroom and then coming to an abrupt halt.
Lyle was standing by the window, apparently watching the storm as she had been doing earlier. Suddenly her throat was so constricted she could barely breathe, her ‘what are you doing in here?’ coming out as an agonised croak.
‘Waiting for you.’ He had swung round as she walked in, but with his face in the shadows and his voice devoid of all emotion it was impossible to guess at his mood.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘WAITING FOR ME?’ Unlike his her voice vibrated with her feelings. ‘Why? To apologise for your totally unfounded accusations this afternoon?’
Mild hysteria cramped her stomach as he turned and she saw his face. His voice had deceived her—totally—she could see now that he was blazingly, furiously angry.
‘Apologise? For what? Preventing you from sating your lust for physical satisfaction?’
It was the ugly, jeering sound of his voice that did it, that and the derogatory look in his eyes. She flew at him like a wildcat, raising her hand to strike his face and then when the grip of his fingers manacling her wrist prevented her, using her nails instead.
She heard the indrawn hiss of his breath and felt him recoil with a savage sense of pleasure. The thunder outside seemed to be echoed by the tumultuous pounding of her blood as it beat through her body. She was in the grip of a feeling as primitive and elemental as the storm itself, too intent on her own fierce need to draw blood to even think of the consequences until she found herself flat on her back on her bed, with Lyle bending over her, his face contorted in a mask of rage.
It was his need to punish her for daring to attack her that was responsible for the indignity of her present position; sprawled out on her bed, with the heavy weight of Lyle’s body keeping her there, his breathing harsh and uneven, whether from rage or exertion she wasn’t quite sure. She squirmed beneath him, her own anger burning as high as his, and then stilled in mute shock as she felt his body’s reaction to her.
For a moment as their glances tangled in mutual recognition it seemed to Jessica that he too was shocked and then the shock was gone and his hands were on her shoulders, pinning her against the bed, his mouth fierce and bitter as it took hers.
Close at hand now the thunder crashed and rolled, its urgency mirrored in the febrile excitement heating her blood. She could tell that Lyle felt it too. His mouth moved on hers in relentless, feverish need that her mind told her had nothing to do with any gentle emotion, but which her body, fiercely exultant, would not let her heed.
She felt Lyle’s hands slide down her rib cage, gripping her almost bruisingly as he tugged her T-shirt free of her jeans, and part of her brain fought free of desire long enough for her to register how much she wanted the touch of his hands against her skin.
Her body arched willingly, helping him to remove her thin top and bra.
Now it was almost dark outside, the lightning that suddenly split the sky almost overhead illuminating her naked breasts, turning her skin a pagan gold.
She heard the tormented, aroused sound of Lyle’s indrawn breath, her body quivering on the verge of intense pleasure as he cupped her breasts, holding them as reverently as though they were indeed made of that most precious of metals.
Strangely, even while he touched her one part of her knew that like her, tonight he was a different person transformed by his earlier anger. Tomorrow… But she would not think of that now. She would not even think beyond the exquisite pleasure of the look in Lyle’s eyes as he stared down at her.
Oddly, she felt no embarrassment or awkwardness, rather a heightened sense of acceptance; of knowing from the moment she had first seen him that this would happen. And now that it had, with the knowledge of her love for him still fresh in her mind she felt able to abandon herself completely to the fiercely drugging desire heating her veins without either guilt or regret.
‘Beauti
ful…you’re so beautiful.’
Lyle’s voice was slow and slurred, the tension in his body like that of a man in a trance, and then when, acting on an impulse totally new to her, Jessica arched her spine slightly, pressing her breasts tormentingly into the warmth of his palms, she saw that tension break, his body shivering with reaction as he bent his head and drew the hard peak of one breast into the heat of his mouth.
Both the caress and the sensations it aroused were new to her, the shock-wave of pleasure convulsing her, making her moan huskily and cling to his shoulders while wave after wave of delight rippled through her. Her one previous lover had not been interested in any form of love-play, and although she had read and heard about it, nothing had prepared her for the intensity of it.
Now she was shivering too, digging her nails into the smooth muscles of Lyle’s back as she fought to hold on to reality and to ignore the deep aching pressure building up low in her body, activated by the feverishly urgent tug of Lyle’s mouth on her breast. Her skin was so sensitised and aroused that she could feel the faint abrasion of his jaw, and when at last he released her aching nipple she clung to him, not wanting the pleasure to cease, frightened that somehow the spell might have been broken and that Lyle had realised what he was doing and with whom—because she was convinced that he had been so caught off guard by his own physical desire that he had not yet realised who she was—at least not consciously. To her relief instead of drawing away he turned his attention to her other breast, muttering thickly into her skin.
‘Did you like that? Did it make you feel good? You taste of honey, did you know that?’
All the time his mouth was moving closer to the pink aureole of her nipple, pressing soft kisses into the smooth skin of her breast as his hand cupped its twin.
Wholly unable to articulate any response, Jessica did all she could to communicate to him the frantic urgency building up inside her, arching her spine, making small sounds of need deep in her throat that ended in a sob of release as his tongue ceased teasing her aching flesh and his mouth closed satisfyingly around it.
This time the pleasure was even greater, piercing her almost painfully so that she sobbed his name beneath her breath and moved instinctively beneath him, wanting to get as close as she could to the hard throb of his body.
When he eased himself away from her slightly, she cried out in denial, reaching down between their bodies to curl her fingers around his wrist, her tension slackening only when she discovered that he was easing down the zip of his jeans.