For Better for Worse

‘It’s all my fault,’ she told him helplessly, lifting her head from his shoulder and looking up at him.

‘No. That’s not true…’

The harshness in his voice silenced her, her body stilling as she looked into his eyes and saw herself reflected there: saw the intimacy of their embrace, felt the sudden shift in her own emotional balance, the thrill of electric sensation that ran through her as she recognised what she was experiencing.

Helplessly her gaze slid from his eyes to his mouth and lingered there, her need, her hunger so overwhelming that it totally obliterated everything else.

She heard him saying her name, his voice unsteady, urgent with a warning she deliberately chose to ignore.

In the past when they had kissed it had been with the chasteness of friendship and she had not known how to communicate to him her desire.

But she was a woman now, not a girl, and she ached so sharply and intensely inside to know the touch of his mouth on hers as a lover, to experience the taste and texture of his passion, that she was already leaning towards him, her breath constricting in her throat as she whispered his name and placed her mouth against his.

He was not to blame for what had followed. He was after all human, and a man—very much a man, as she discovered when she moved her mouth delicately over his, her body trembling as she gave in to her need to explore the texture of his lips, the response of her senses so overwhelming that it totally drowned out everything else.

She was vaguely aware of his mouth moving, framing her name in a taut protest; she could feel the muscles in his throat moving against the palm of her hand, feel the tension in his body, but as she clung to him his reaction changed, the hands which had grasped her forearms as though he intended to push her away suddenly relaxing, their touch becoming caressing instead of constricting.

As she felt his fingertips smoothing over her skin, stroking the delicate flesh of her inner arms, following the blue line of her veins as it disappeared beneath the loose sleeves of her top, her whole body became engulfed in an open rigour of need so intense that her flesh shuddered in the aftershock of it, leaving her clinging helplessly to Adam’s body, her breasts pressed flat against his chest, her arms wrapped tightly around him, her mouth soft and helpless with shock against his.

She said his name—in denial? A protest? A need? She had never known which, only that the helpless little sound of anguish she had made against his mouth had seemed to trigger off something within him which even he himself had no power to control.

To describe what had then happened as a kiss was probably like describing Niagara Falls as a tumbling brook. It was true that their mouths had met and merged, that their lips had caressed and clung, that their tongues had twisted against one another in the sinuous, sensual dance beloved of all lovers; but a kiss described merely the meeting of two mouths, two pairs of lips, two tongues.

What they shared was an embrace, so intimate, so intense, so consuming that its effect on her was as powerful as though they had actually been lovers in every physical sense.

And yet when Adam released her, slowly untangling his fingers from the silky thickness of her hair, whispering soft words of comfort and reassurance to her as he continued to caress her mouth with his, smoothing her hair back from her face, hot and flushed now, instead of coming back down to earth and recognising what she had done, she had clung to him, shamelessly winding her arms round him, pressing her body against his with a wantonness, a deliberateness she had not known herself capable of expressing. Her lips trembled and she moved them fiercely against his skin, tasting the sexual heat of him, feeling the rough abrasion of his jaw against the soft inside of her mouth, shivering openly with all that she was feeling as she begged him not to send her away… not to stop touching her now; not to deny her womanhood this need it had to experience fulfilment, to feel his hands on her body, his flesh deep within her own, driving away the emptiness Nick had left within her.

He had hesitated, tried to reason with her, tried to stop her, but she had overruled him, pleading, begging, and finally touching him with such a sure intimacy, knowledge and a desperation she had not known she possessed so that he had finally given way, holding her, touching her, stripping the clothes from their bodies with hands that trembled slightly, kissing the firm swell of her breasts, gently at first and then with such urgency that she had cried out in a thrilled shock of pleasure, her arousal so intense that tiny climactic quivers already ran through her.

She had thought of herself as a woman of negative sex drive, blaming herself, as she knew that Nick blamed her, for the lack of excitement or pleasure his touch engendered, resigning herself to the fact that for her the sexual side of their marriage was at best a sharing of intimacy and at worst a passage to be endured with guilt for her own inability to respond to Nick’s carefully choreographed caresses.

She knew, because Nick himself had told her so, that his sexual expertise had given pleasure to other women, which made it all the more confusing and disarming that she should respond so much more intensely and overwhelmingly to Adam’s touch than to Nick’s, especially when her brain recognised that there was nothing calculated or planned about the way Adam was touching her; that, like her, he was far too caught up in the rolling surge of his own desire to lead her through a carefully planned arousal technique.

But it seemed she needed no technique, no skilled, carefully monitored sequence of caresses; her body was already trembling on the brink of orgasm, the sheer delight of feeling Adam’s skin against her own, of breathing in the familiar and yet headily unfamiliar scent of him, spiked as it now was with the heat of his arousal and desire, of touching him hesitantly at first with just her fingertips and then voluptuously sliding the whole of her hand against his flesh, absorbing its texture, feeling the hardness of his bones, the power of his muscles, and knowing that magically, beneath her touch, all that strength and power became so weakened that she caused him to groan out loud; these were enough to bring her to a state of arousal so intense and so unfamiliar that she had no time to fight against it or to try to control it. It swamped her, engulfed her, delighted and terrified her as finally she was forced to abandon herself completely to it, pushing herself against Adam, lifting her hips against him, her body urgently seeking the union it needed as eagerly and voluptuously as though they had already been lovers a thousand times.

In the end though she had had to do more than arch her body against him in a sinuous instinctive movement of invitation and demand, and the hands he placed on her hips were there not to hold her against him while he slowly filled her with the longed-for hardness of his body, but instead to hold her away from him while he told her that they could not… must not…

But she was beyond listening to reason, beyond accepting as she would surely normally have done his rejection of her; now it was not just her body that screamed tensely for release but her senses, her emotions as well, and as he gently urged her away from him she did something she had never imagined herself doing,

reaching out to touch him, closing her fingers round him, moaning his name, pressing hot, agonised kisses against his skin, begging him not to leave her, not to refuse her.

Beneath her hand he was hard and erect. She had never touched Nick like this, never imagined doing so, not wanted to, and yet now she was unable to withdraw her dizzy, fascinated gaze from Adam’s body, a sense of wonder and power softening the urgency of her own desire as she absorbed the hot silky feel of his skin; the strength and need that pulsed against her fingertips, and, most tellingly of all, a wholly female and previously unknown awareness of how very vulnerable that strength and power was; how even the most male and indomitable man as Adam could be rendered vulnerable by a woman’s touch.

Governed by an impulse that was more protective than sexual, she bent her head, gently touching her lips to him in a kiss, a caress aroused by love and not by passion.

Tears filmed her eyes as she lifted her head and started to move away from him, reluctantly releasing him from her touch.

He was right. They could not… must not. He did not love her as she now knew she loved him. He never had done; to be here with him like this was not just a betrayal of her marriage and Nick but in a way a betrayal of Adam as well. She had seen in his eyes the conflict between his sexual arousal and his desire to behave honourably, and yet as she lifted her head and looked at him, intending to tell him that she understood, something seemed to break apart inside her, releasing a need, a yearning so intense that before she could stop herself she was crying out to him to please not refuse her, to please, please ease the ache within her as only he had the power to do, to fill her with the silky heat and power of his flesh, to let her feel the movement of him within her and to know it echoed the movement of every vital force within the universe.

Which of them then moved first she wasn’t sure, never being able to remember whether it was her hand that guided him into her body or his that touched her, soothed her as he made that first achingly slow and careful thrust into her body.

Oddly, the physical release of her desire, the actual moment of orgasm, climactic and consuming though it was, did not touch her as powerfully or intensely as the emotional completeness she had—the sense of being held, protected, wanted… loved, she had felt.

It had been then, afterwards, lying blissful and replete in his arms, her face still damp from the exalted tears of sexual release she had cried and which he had tenderly licked away, that she came abruptly to earth and realised what she had done, recognised the heaviness and unfairness of the burden she had placed on Adam’s shoulders in overwhelming his scruples.

He didn’t love her, he felt sorry for her. He was a compassionate, caring man who would feel endlessly guilty and responsible if he realised the truth and discovered that she loved him.

She could not face that happening, could not bear to watch Adam carefully and courteously distancing himself from her, hating having to hurt her and yet too honest to lie and pretend to feelings he did not have.