So Close and No Closer

And now Neil was going to hurt her too.

She closed her eyes and tensed, her body waiting for the pain and humiliation to begin…knowing that it must begin and that the only way she could endure it would be to shut herself off from the horror…to use her mind to project herself away from it.

And then, unbelievably, she was free, the mattress moving slightly as Neil moved away from her. She was trembling so much that she could hardly move, her heart thudding painfully against the wall of her chest. She opened her eyes and saw that Neil was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching her with an expression she couldn’t fathom.

He reached out to touch her and she flinched, unable to stop herself.

From a distance she heard Neil speaking to her, his voice oddly thick and unfamiliar, and as she forced herself to concentrate on his words she heard him say jerkily, ‘Rue, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. It was unforgivable. My cursed temper…’

At first she couldn’t believe it. He was actually apologising to her. Julian had never apologised, he had laughed at her fear…had enjoyed her fear. Neil, on the other hand, looked white with shock. He lifted his hand from the bed and she saw that it was trembling. She looked into his eyes and saw the same fear and pain in his that she knew was in her own, and from some previously hidden well of compassion she had never guessed existed, her own hand crept out and covered his in a wordless gesture of comfort.

She saw the agony in his eyes darken them to slate-grey as they glittered with a dampness that made her heart turn over in her chest. As she stared wonderingly at him, unable to believe she was responsible for such emotion, he raised her hand to his lips and uncurled her fingers, pressing his mouth against her soft palm.

The gesture, wholly without sexuality though it was, made her body stir like the branches of a young willow tree in a spring breeze.

His lips moved against her skin and she heard him saying roughly, ‘Rue. The herb of grace. Your parents named you well.’

And then quick tears stung her own eyes and she said huskily, ‘It was as much my fault as yours. I shouldn’t have made you so angry. Julian…’

‘No,’ he interrupted her harshly, dropping her hand, and then when he saw the way her eyes clouded he cupped her face and said more quietly, ‘No, Rue. You did make me angry, that’s true, but anger, no matter how justified, is never any excuse for violence…especially sexual violence. I abhor such cruelty. I always have and I always will. You can’t know what it does to my self-respect to realise how close I came to…’

She couldn’t let him go on and so she rushed in breathlessly, ‘There’s no need to feel like that. You didn’t hurt me.’

‘Hurt you?’ She saw his eyes turn almost black. ‘Don’t you understand even now?’

Her mouth trembled and he seemed unable to stop looking at it. She saw him shudder, felt it in the convulsive movement of his fingers against her skin.

‘I didn’t want to hurt you, Rue. I wanted…oh, hell,’ he muttered thickly, unable to drag his gaze away from the softness of her mouth and its innocent provocation.

Rue knew he was going to kiss her, just as she knew that she could quite easily have stopped him, but she felt no compulsion to do so…no compulsion to do anything other than melt against him with an inarticulate sound of pleasure as he brought his mouth down to hers, hesitantly and gently, so that she knew how afraid he was of hurting her, his body rigid against hers, the muscles in his arms corded with strain as he cupped her face and fought to control the need raging through him.

Later Rue wasn’t sure how she had known that he wanted her, genuinely wanted her for no other reason than that his body ached for her, but she had known it, just as she had known that the torment of her mouth trembling against his, clinging to it, would be almost more than his self-control could stand.

Quite from where she had gained the knowledge that the tip of her tongue tracing the outline of his lips, lingering provocatively on the bottom one and slipping between their parted hardness, would make him groan in protest and then draw her tongue into the heat of his mouth, his control splintering so that she could almost feel the desire running like quicksilver through his veins, she had no idea, but gained it she most definitely had.

As he gently pushed her back on the bed, Neil’s mouth touched her temples, her closed eyelids, her jaw, the soft curve of her throat, and finally, when she thought she could stand it no longer, her mouth, drinking from it like a man too long denied such sweetness.

Against her body, she could feel the fierce beat of his heart as though it was her own. She ached for him to strip the clothes from her and make love to her properly. To run his hands over her skin, to shape the soft curve of her hips and the narrow indentation of her waist, to cup the fullness of her breasts and place his mouth against their swollen crests. Where once she had dreaded the mere thought of making love, now she ached to do so. She could feel that hard arousal of Neil’s flesh and was maddened by the thin layers of fabric that separated them, and still Neil kissed her, his hands holding her shoulders down against her bed, his body hard on hers, making her moan deep in her throat in pleasure…

A pleasure, though, which was quickly turning to frustration as she opened her eyes and looked into his, willing him to read the need there and to answer it. His own eyes were brilliant with desire, but he made no move to touch her, to push away the intrusive layers of her clothes and caress her aching body as she so longed for him to do.

Her womanhood, dormant for so long, refused to be denied the needs he had unleashed in her, so unfamiliar to her that she had no way of controlling them. His mouth slid from her lips to her jaw, taking hungry, fierce kisses, as though he feared that she might be wrenched away from him at any moment, and yet still he made no move to do anything more than kiss her.

It was more than Rue could stand. She reached up and clamped her fingers on his wrists, urging his hands down towards her breasts.

She felt him tense as she moved against him, and saw the fierce darkening of his eyes. She knew he wanted her as much as she wanted him, and yet when he spoke her name it was in a kind of desperate denial which she did not want to hear, so she turned her head and placed her mouth against his, willing him not to reject her. Tears stung her eyes and her body trembled with pent-up emotion. If he rejected her now she would know that it was all lies, that all his gentleness and kindness had meant nothing, other than that Julian had been right when he had said that she was undesirable, that no man would ever want her for herself.

Without knowing it, she conveyed these thoughts and more to him in the look she gave him, and like a man knowing that he should continue to fight against the tide, even as he knew it was too strong for him, he felt her body move beneath his hands and reality abruptly ceased to matter as he found the opening of her nightshirt and buried his mouth in the scented hollow between her breasts.

In the end it was Rue who helped him to remove her nightshirt and underwear, kneeling on the bed, bathed in moonlight, suddenly proud of her body instead of hating it, knowing instinctively what the curve of her hips, the arch of her spine and the thrust of her br

easts were doing to him, and rejoicing in her power over him like a pagan priestess of love.

His own robe was quickly disposed of, her hands deft and exquisitely sure as she untied its belt and slid her palms up over his torso, glorying in the tension of his muscles, the musky scent of arousal that came from his skin, the heat that burst from it as she touched him, stroking and then kneading his flesh with a sensuality she had never dreamed she could know.

And in the end it was she who placed her mouth to his throat, savouring the hot, salt taste of his skin, feeling the tiny pulse jerk and thud as she bit gently while he closed his eyes and shuddered, completely unable to deny his need for her.

Suddenly she felt gloriously free of the past, totally in control of her life, mistress of her own body and of his, and wantonly she let her mouth wander over him, tracing the dark line of hair with teasing kisses until she felt his belly quiver beneath her mouth and he cried out, holding her away from him and looking at her with eyes that glittered with desire-racked hunger.