The Deserving Mistress

‘I said let me go.’ Her voice was like ice now, although she made no move to push him away from her, acquiescent but removed as she lay lifeless in his arms.

There was no need for her to push him away, Jude knowing her withdrawal from him was already complete, no matter how close in proximity they might still be physically.

And they were close, their near-naked bodies still entwined, Jude able to feel the slender length of her against him from shoulder to thigh, the dark silkiness of her hair against his face.

But in reality she might as well have been a million miles away.

And it shouldn’t be like this. What they had just shared, their completely uninhibited response to each other, was something to explore further, not deny.

As May was denying it, even now sitting up to straighten her dress, her face deliberately turned away from his in the dim light given off by the low bulb overhead.

‘May, I’m not going to leave this here,’ he assured her determinedly even as he pulled on his shirt and buttoned it with slightly unsteady fingers.

‘Leave what here, Jude?’ She seemed to have recovered slightly, her voice scathing now. ‘We’ve had a little romp in the hay, that’s all—’

‘No, it is not all, damn it!’ he rasped furiously, eyes glittering with the emotion as he turned to look at her. ‘Just now—what happened between us—’ He drew in a deep breath, choosing his words carefully. ‘That isn’t usual, May.’

‘Sexual desire isn’t usual?’ she returned mockingly, standing up to move away from him. ‘You have straw in your hair,’ she added derisively.

‘So do you,’ he dismissed impatiently, moving to stand beside her. ‘May, that wasn’t just sexual desire—’

‘Of course it was,’ she insisted waspishly. ‘Admittedly, it went a little too far, but that’s probably because emotions were running high anyway—’

‘Stop it, May!’ he rasped harshly, his hands once again grasping her arms as he held her immobile in front of him. ‘I can’t say I’m any happier about this revelation than you appear to be, but—’

‘Revelation?’ she repeated scathingly, green eyes hard as she looked up at him unflinchingly. ‘As far as I’m concerned, the only revelation that took place here tonight was that I’m not as immune to physical attraction as I thought I was.’ She gave a shrug. ‘I’ll know better another time,’ she added hardly.

Jude looked down at her with narrowed eyes, his gaze searching on the shadows of her face, finding nothing but cold dismissal in her expression, green eyes deliberately unreadable.

His hands dropped away from her arms. ‘That’s all this was to you—physical attraction?’

‘What else?’ she scorned dryly. ‘We seem to have been sending sparks off each other, in one way or another, since we first met. Tonight, what just happened, was just a natural outlet for those sparks.’ She shook her head, her smile self-derisive. ‘It was better than hitting each other, I suppose!’

Jude looked at her frustratedly now. Did she really believe what she was saying? Or was she just as disturbed by their reaction to each other as he was, but chose to belittle its importance rather than confront it? Because he couldn’t believe, from what he knew of May, from what he had come to know of her whole family, that she had ever behaved in this abandoned way with any man before him.

Or was it just that he wanted to believe that she hadn’t…?

Why the hell would he want to believe that?

He had been involved with quite a lot of women during his thirty-seven years, and he had never expected any of them to be untouched, a virgin, so why should he imagine that May was? Why should he want her to be?

Because he did.

That was the only answer he could give himself for the moment. The only answer he could accept for the moment. Because, loath as he was to admit it, he was more disturbed by his response to May, by her response to him, than she appeared to be.

He needed to get away from here—far away from May—to try and work out for himself exactly what all this meant.

His mouth thinned. ‘Perhaps you should go inside now,’ he rasped dismissively, bending down to retrieve his jacket, shaking the straw from it before putting it back on. ‘No doubt your sisters have seen the car outside and are wondering what’s happened to us both,’ he added ruefully, having been completely aware of the interest shown earlier by Will, Max and the two younger Calendar sisters in the two of them spending the evening together. But, like May, he had chosen not to satisfy that curiosity. How much longer he would be able to continue doing that, he had no idea.

May nodded abruptly. ‘I—would rather you didn’t come in with me,’ she told him huskily, her face now slightly pale in the semi-darkness.

He gave a humourless smile. ‘I hadn’t imagined that I would,’ he conceded dryly, that smile turning to a scowl as he lifted a hand and May instantly flinched away from him. ‘I was only going to remove the straw from your hair,’ he rasped harshly.

‘Oh.’ Colour heightened her cheeks now. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered, no longer meeting his gaze.

Jude frowned grimly as he concentrated on removing the straw from the darkness of her hair, his movements deliberately businesslike, all the time knowing that one movement of encouragement on May’s part, even the slightest relenting in her stony expression, and he would sweep her back into his arms. And this time he wouldn’t be able to let her go.

But it was as if she sensed that, stepping sharply away from him as soon as all of the hay had been removed from her hair, turning away from him as she picked up her own discarded jacket.