Zoe was not promiscuous, although at first he had wondered, even judged her openness as a sign that she might be; he had not realised then, in those early days, that the ease and delight with which she had instigated their lovemaking came not from a wealth of varied previous experience but from a much more simple and natural awareness of her own needs and desires.
In fact, he had discovered later that she had far less experience than he had imagined, much, much less than he had had himself, and that in wanting them to be lovers she was simply expressing physically her emotional reaction to him. Zoe had shown him an aspect to sex he had never previously known existed, a special shining beauty and purity in it, which others might think was at odds with her obvious enjoyment of the physical side of their relationship, but which he had come to recognise was a very rare form of honesty and trust.
Through her, he had gradually let go of his own inhibitions to discard the destructive sexual attitudes he had collected during his teens when girls who did ‘it’ were easy, and those who didn’t too much hard work. Girls who did were for having fun with, those who didn’t for marrying.
Zoe had taught him to see things from a very different perspective, to accept that a woman had a right to control her own sexuality and to feel free to enjoy it.
And Zoe did enjoy it. And through her enjoyment gave a very special and rare form of pleasure to him, he acknowledged as she kissed him sleepily and snuggled up to him.
‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ he warned her, disengaging himself from her and giving her a small shake. ‘We’re not here to enjoy ourselves. It’s eight o’clock and dinner’s booked for half-past—remember?’
Zoe laughed and rolled on to her side, watching him. He had a wonderful body, she reflected as she studied him through half-closed eyes. His skin was firm and golden, warm both to look at and touch, his arms hard and well-muscled, and strong enough not just to hold her, but to pick her up as well. She smiled to herself at her own foolish femininity in finding that knowledge a small turn-on, but it was sexy knowing that the arms that held her were also strong enough to hold her safe.
Safe? From what? She laughed to herself as she sat up.
It had taken her a long time to coax Ben to be as relaxed and confident about this kind of shared intimacy as he was now. She could still remember a time when the moment they had finished making love he would reach for his clothes. Now…
She looked up at him as she ran a teasing fingertip along his thigh.
‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ he checked her, covering her hand with his own and removing it as he reminded her mock sternly. ‘Not this time. Dinner…’
Zoe pouted. ‘How can you even think of food, when instead you could…?’
She paused deliberately, looking at him through her lashes, making Ben laugh even though he refused to give in to her teasing, getting off the bed, and collecting clean clothes as he headed for the bathroom.
‘I’m a chef—that’s how,’ he told her. ‘Oh, no,’ he added as Zoe started to follow him. ‘This time you can wait until I’ve finished. I’m not risking going in there with you. Not with that damned jacuzzi…’
‘Coward,’ Zoe called out after him mildly, as she stretched luxuriously on the bed.
Her body felt deliriously satisfied, sleek and relaxed, still warm from the intimacy of Ben’s, still…
She touched her stomach lightly, smiling to herself, and then her smile widened into a blissful grin as she reflected on the sheer perfection of the day.
The house had been wonderful, everything she had imagined and more. Or at least it would be once it had been renovated, the kitchen redesigned, the new extension built.
She rolled over, breathing out a small ecstatic sigh of quiet happiness.
She was still lying there when Ben emerged from the bathroom, his hair damp, his skin glowing from the shower. It must be all that lifting and carrying of heavy sacks of food that had developed those powerful muscles that lay so tautly beneath the sleek healthiness of his skin, Zoe reflected appreciatively. She liked the way his body hair grew across his chest, and then arrowed narrowly downwards over his belly. Those Fifties women who had sighed over male film stars who had been instructed to shave off such evidence of their masculinity hadn’t known what they were missing, she decided dreamily.
She loved the way the silky fineness of Ben’s body hair felt against her fingertips and her breasts; sometimes, to tease him, she tugged tormentingly at it with her teeth, making him yelp in protest.
She smiled secretly to herself, remembering the occasion he had been tempted to retaliate, and what had followed; that had been in the early days of their relationship and she remembered how he had told her tautly afterwards how he had never known until then just what degree of intensity of sexual pleasure it was possible for him to experience in that kind of intimacy.
Now neither her body nor its responses held any secrets from him.
It didn’t bother her that their sexual roles were reversed from what was generally and romantically considered the ‘norm’; that she had originally been the one to initiate sex between them and that she had also been the one to draw him deeper into its shared intimacies; in fact she rather liked it, enjoying the sense of equality and rapport it gave her.
‘You’ve got fifteen minutes,’ Ben told her firmly.
Obligingly she got up, and headed for the bathroom; for all her teasing and playfulness, underneath she was just as conscious as he was of the real purpose of their stay here. What was even more important was that he knew she was aware of it as well. But of course, being Ben, he couldn’t resist chivvying her, worrying around her like a sheepdog ever anxious about the potential silliness of its flock.
She liked that about him too, she admitted as she showered and then quickly dried herself. She had alwa
ys prided herself on her independence, and fiercely rejected anyone, but especially any male, who attempted to control or curtail it, and yet there was something almost perversely reassuring, some deep-seated core of feminine instinct, not for her own preservation but for the preservation of the seeds of life she carried within her that made her feel reassured by Ben’s conscientious worrying even while she teased him for it.
She paused in the act of drying her body to frown as she made a closer inspection of her own idle thoughts, but then, as she heard Ben calling out impatiently to her, she shrugged and dismissed them, hurrying into clean underclothes.
* * *