Force of Feeling

‘I was so damn jealous. All those other men looking at you. God, you’re making me react like a Victorian…’

Guy, jealous? It made her heart melt with tenderness and love. She turned her head and kissed him, feeling the hard smoothness of his jaw against her lips. She touched his throat with her tongue-tip and felt him swallow, his hands tightening on her arms. She unfastened the buttons of his shirt, slowly dragging her open mouth against his skin, thrilling to the increased thud of his heart and the rapid harshness of his breathing.

They made love as they had done once before, in front of the sitting-room fire, Campion uncaring that her new dress lay in a crumpled heap where Guy had thrown it.

It was late when they went to bed, as though neither of them wanted to waste a single second of their time together, but Guy had still said nothing about seeing her in London, about needing her in his life…about wanting her.

He had talked about her forthcoming tour, he had asked her what she intended doing over Christmas, but he had made no suggestion that they spend any time together. This silence, so curiously at odds with the intensity of his love-making, saddened her, but she had to accept it. Guy was as he was. He had given her joy and pleasure; he had given her back her belief in herself; it would be sheer greed to ask for anything more.

She woke up early, tense and aching, still caught up in a dream where she had seen Guy walk away from her. She reached for him, wanting the comfort of his nearness, touching his skin with obsessive fierce need.

He woke up, murmuring soft, approving noises of pleasure at her touch. His hand stroked her breast, finding the already erect nipple. His mouth caressed her skin, and she shuddered in pleasure as she felt the light grate of his teeth against the sensitive crest.

Her body pulsed with need to be filled by him. The aroused strength of him pressing against her increased that need, and she moved against him erotically. She knew now those things that gave him the most pleasure but, when she reached out instinctively to caress him, he stopped her.

‘No. No, we can’t…’ His mouth left her breast to mutter harshly in her ear, ‘You won’t be protected. I could make you pregnant.’

Make her pregnant. Betrayingly, her body thrilled at the prospect. Guy’s child. She could almost feel the spasm of pleasure contracting her womb at the thought of conceiving his child.

Madness! she told herself. What she was contemplating was madness—folly—crass self-indulgence, but she touched him again, and felt the shudder that jarred his body as he tried to control his need.

He moved and she moved with him, possessed by an earthly, feminine power that overwhelmed all his protests, gently seducing him to the point where he cried out his great need to her and entered h

er fiercely, each thrust of his body within hers heightening both her pleasure and her instinctive awareness that this would be the last time they shared this very special intimacy.

It was over too quickly, leaving her both drained and replete. Guy lay on his back at her side, breathing heavily, making no move to touch her.

CHAPTER EIGHT

CORNWALL in December. Not the best time to visit this part of the world, Campion reflected grimly—not for the first time—as she stared out of her hotel bedroom window.

Almost a week since they had left Wales, and not a word from Guy. But what had she expected? That he would somehow discover in her absence that he couldn’t live without her? Hardly. She had been a temporary obsession, like one of the jigsaw puzzles he had felt compelled to solve; once the picture lay clear before him, he could go back to his normal way of life. She closed her eyes in anguish, remembering. To Guy, she had represented a challenge, that was all. He had meant to make sure she finished her book, and if making her fall in love with him was what it took… Well, he was a professional, and he had certainly managed to make her inject some real emotion into the story.

That last day they had had together, he had deliberately talked about her future in terms that made it clear he intended to play no part in it, mentioned her forthcoming tour, but sidestepping any mention of Christmas, giving her no indication of where he would be or how he would be spending his time. There had been no mention of him seeing her again. In fact, his conversation with her about this tour had been purely practical: questions about where she would be staying and for how long, and in which shops her signing sessions were being undertaken. Questions, surely, that any concerned agent might ask an author, but hardly those of a lover.

In fact, the only person who had seemed concerned about her was Lucy, who had been in touch to confirm their Christmas arrangement before the tour started. Campion had promised to arrive early, so that she could help her friend prepare for the onslaught of expected guests.

Campion shivered. Lucy had noticed the change in her immediately, commenting on her unconfined hair and searching her face closely. ‘It must be a man,’ she had said at last. ‘Do I know him?’

‘No,’ Campion lied, not denying the first charge.

‘Am I going to?’ Lucy asked in a more gentle voice.

Campion knew what she was really saying. She managed a wry smile, hoping it successfully masked her inner pain. ‘No, I’m afraid not,’ she said as lightly as she could. ‘It wasn’t that sort of relationship.’

‘Married?’ Lucy guessed, plainly rather disconcerted.

‘No.’ Campion drew a deep breath. ‘I decided I’d let Craig spoil enough of my life. The—the man I was with—made me realise that I’d been alone too long, that’s all.’

It sounded plausible enough, and perhaps her tone warned Lucy not to press any harder. Lucy smiled and said lightly, ‘Well, whoever he is, he’s certainly transformed you. I’m going to have to keep an eye on Howard while you’re around from now on, that’s for sure.’

Yes, Guy had transformed her, inwardly as well as outwardly. Campion levered herself away from the window. This tour was giving her too much time to think, to remember. She was reduced to poring over the past, looking for significant details that she’d missed in the joy of Guy’s company. And suddenly the memory of Craig, whose very existence she had forgotten until she needed an excuse to give Lucy, began to nag like a toothache. Craig had come from a poor family, just like Guy, and had got rid of all the traces of his past. He had seemed charming, attentive, caring…just like Guy. And Craig had never seen her as a person, only as a means to an end. If he hadn’t wanted something Campion could give him, he would never have come near her. Craig hadn’t got what he wanted, but it was beginning to look as though Guy had.

She would be better off working, she thought with sudden savagery, turning her talent of invention into a new book. Guy had promised to let her know what the publishers thought of her changed manuscript, but as yet she had heard nothing. He would have to contact her at some point, she thought wryly, or else she would be looking for a new agent.

All she could do was to try to live each day at a time, and to hope that somehow the pain would ease. Already she had lost the weight she had gained; already her face had a fragile quality of vulnerability about it, a yearning, lost loneliness that people saw and wondered about, but dared not question for fear of trespassing.

Tonight, she was having dinner with the owner of a local bookshop; tomorrow, there was a radio interview and a signing session. Once, the publicity might have unnerved her—now it was a way of filling in time before she heard from Guy French.