Forbidden or For Bedding?

For a moment she could see something flickering in those incredible eyes. It seemed to be amusement. But it was also something else. Something that suddenly, belatedly, sent a dart quivering along her nerve fibres. Then he was responding to her polite, formal leavetaking.

‘It was my pleasure,’ murmured her host. ‘And this,’ he continued, somehow closing the gap between them, ‘is an even greater pleasure…’

His smooth, long-fingered hand slid around the nape of her neck, the other hand took hers, twining his fingers between hers to draw her to him. His mouth dipped to hers. For a fraction of a second shock, sheer and undiluted, sheeted through her. Then a completely different sensation took over….

It was like nothing she had ever experienced! She had been kissed before, of course she had, but nothing, ever like this…

The lightest, most velvet touch, the merest grazing of his lips on hers, the most subliminal pressure of the tip of his finger moving in the delicate fronds of her hair at that most sensitive point on her nape. She felt her body start to weaken, her pulse quicken, and her conscious mind simply dissolve.

Slowly, very, very slowly, his kiss deepened.

And the last dissolving vestiges of her conscious mind left her.

And then, some completely indeterminable amount of time later, by some quite unaccountable means which she could never afterwards explain, she dimly realised that she was no longer standing by the door, but was instead—quite mysteriously—in a room that was dominated by a vast brocaded bed. Onto the broad expanse of this bed she was being effortlessly lowered, and slowly, very slowly and expertly, being made love to by Guy de Rochemont.

And there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that she could do about it—because with every cell in her body she realised it was the most exquisite thing that had ever happened to her…

Now, as she gazed out into the dimness of the hotel room, the night gone and day come again, her conscious mind came into residence after its extraordinary absence all through the long, dissolving night. She felt incredulity open within her.

How had it happened? How had it possibly happened? Disbelief was still echoing through her. How could she be in bed with Guy de Rochement? It was impossible! Just impossible!

Except that it wasn’t.

It didn’t take the evidence of her eyes to tell her that.

No, her whole body could bear testimony…

Memory shimmered through her every cell. Memory of sensations so exquisite, so extraordinary that they, too, could surely not be real. Except they were…

Hands—cool, fleeting—grazing along her bared arms. The tips of long fingers slow-running along the striations of her skin. Lips as soft as velvet playing over the contours of

her body so that her whole being became a symphony of sensations—sensations that she had not known a body could experience. Light, questing fingertips exploring every curve, every secret sensual place, and lips tasting and arousing—oh, arousing! The swell of her breasts to coral peaks, which he savoured and engorged. Then his lips brushing down over her satin flesh. He had parted her loosening thighs and with a touch like silk prepared her for his possession.

She felt her body flush with warmth evoked by the humid, arousing memories.

How had it been possible to feel such sensation? It was beyond imagining! Beyond everything except experience. An experience that was completely beyond her comprehension.

I never knew! Never dreamed it could be like that—never!

Wonder soared through her, increasing her bemusement, her incomprehension of how this had come to be, her presence here. She knew with a frail, wavering fragment of her normal self that what she had done had been not only inexplicable, but total and complete folly—to have fallen into bed with Guy de Rochemont could be nothing else! Yet right now, as she lay cocooned at his side, there was nothing more she could do, than acknowledge these truths. She knew that if she had any vestige of sanity left she should leap from the bed, bundle herself into her clothes—his clothes—the clothes that he had first dressed her in then taken off her—and rush out of the hotel as fast as decorum could take her. Yet she could not do so. Not because it wasn’t the sane thing to do, but because her body seemed so strangely, uncommonly inert…languorous…

That sense of wonder, mixed now with a strange new sense of extraordinary well-being, suffused her body and her mind, making her feel slumberous, supine. And now something else came over her—an overwhelming urge to turn her head, to see the man who had accomplished her presence at his side.

Slowly she tilted her head, and as her eyes lit upon his face she felt something very strange lift inside her—just the slightest ripple, as if a light breeze had moved across still, untouched water, setting in motion something she did not know. She could not tell what it might be—some ineffable current that might take her she knew not where? As her eyes came to rest on the face of the man lying beside her she felt again wonder and bemusement—and more.

She felt her breath catch. Dear God, the man was perfection! That face that she had drawn so often, sketching over and over again to try and capture its essence, that she had tried frustratingly, so frustratingly, to translate into paint on canvas, riveted her gaze.

She had never been so close to it—to him. The sense of intimacy overwhelmed her—that she should be centimetres away from him, their limbs still half entwined. His face was so close that all she had to do was lift her hand, as she found herself now doing without conscious volition, and brush with the lightest touch the lock of satin hair across his forehead. She gazed at the long lashes of his eyes, swept down over the sculpted plane of his cheek.

He was deeply asleep—she could see the steady, rhythmic rise and fall of his chest, see the pulse at his throat, feel the warmth of his breath on her hand. As she touched him he did not stir, and she was glad—for she wanted only this moment now, gazing at the extraordinary perfection of his face, a homage to male beauty that for this one night had out of nowhere been a gift of fortune to her.

And that was what it had been, she knew. Whatever the reason Guy de Rochemont had chosen not to send her home but to take her here instead, she knew it was no more than a passing appetite, no more than filling an empty night with someone who, for a night at least, was worthy of his possession however fleeting his desire for her. Yet it felt like a gift. She felt it with every sensuous memory still warming her body, flushed with the heat of their congress.

I was mad to let it happen! But it did, and I cannot regret it—not now, not here. I can regret it later, tomorrow—all those tomorrows—and think how weak and foolish I was. But for now, for this day, I cannot regret it.

A smile played at her mouth. Yes, she had been foolish beyond belief, foolish and weak, but what had happened she could not regret—not with her body whispering to her in every cell just how transformed she was. Her eyes softened as her gaze stayed upon that perfect face, displayed for her in deep repose.

Cliché it might be, but any woman chosen by Guy de Rochemont must surely take away from the encounter only her appreciation