A Cure for Love

r so urgently. Oh, God, what a fool she had made of herself. Of course he had to have seen, to have known, to have realised how she still felt about him. Of course he wanted to make it plain to her that he was not remotely interested in her. Oh, God, why hadn’t she been more careful…more cautious? Why had she had to put herself through this?

She could see him standing beside her bed, watching her…no doubt dreading her reaction to what he was going to have to say to her.

Well at least she could make it a little easier for him, and ultimately for herself.

Without turning her head, she said drearily, ‘It’s all right, Lewis. I know what you’re going to say. You didn’t want me twenty years ago and you most certainly don’t want me now. I apologise if I embarrassed you earlier on.’ She gave a bitter little laugh, and then lied, ‘You’ll have to put it down to the contrariness of my female hormones, I’m afraid. I suspect that my body, after twenty years of celibacy, must have decided to go into revolt, but please don’t take it personally, and I can assure you—’

‘What do you mean, twenty years of celibacy?’

She tensed abruptly, furious with herself for her unwitting self-betrayal.

‘Has there really not been anyone since me?’

She bit down hard on her bottom lip. For some reason something in his voice made her want to cry. ‘Did you imagine there would be? That I would allow anyone else the chance to hurt me the way you did?’ she challenged him acidly. The silence unnerved her, panicking her into adding quickly and defensively, ‘Surely you don’t imagine my…my body would have reacted to you the way it did, if I had…if there had been…if…?’

‘If I hadn’t been its only lover?’

The quiet words silenced her. She could hear him moving, and prayed that he would go, but she could tell that he was walking round the bed towards her, and she could hardly throw back the covers and walk away from him.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she told him huskily. ‘I—’

‘No, I don’t think I do either.’

He was standing beside her now, looking down at her with that same grave expression with which he had regarded her earlier.

‘You’ve been crying.’ He reached out and touched her face, causing her to shrink back from him. ‘Do you still want me, Lacey?’

The shock of it turned her rigid. She stared at him, unable to conceal her feelings. ‘No. No, I don’t,’ she lied vehemently.

‘That’s a pity,’ he responded evenly. ‘Because I want you. I want you more than I’ve wanted anything or anyone in my entire life. Twenty years of celibacy is a long, long time, isn’t it?’

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It was a joke, some kind of macabre joke; it had to be.

‘It’s been a long day,’ he was telling her. ‘And an even longer week, and right now there’s nothing I need more than to lie down and relax for a while, and since this is a very large bed, and since you don’t have any physical feelings for me whatsoever, I’m sure you won’t mind if I just lie down beside you on it for an hour or so, will you?’

He was getting undressed as he spoke and her senses responded helplessly to the sight of his body, tougher, harder now than it had been in his youth, more male somehow, more…more desirable, or was it just that her own maturity had made her so much more attuned to her own physical needs and desires?

She knew she ought to be doing something to stop him, telling him that this wasn’t what she wanted, challenging him to explain why, if he was now claiming he wanted her, he had walked away from her so easily before; but it was already too late, her stomach muscles clenching as he removed the last of his clothes. She tried to look away and found she could not.

He was easing back the bedclothes, coming down beside her, reaching for her. Panic engulfed her. Once he touched her, once her body felt the longed-for contact with his, she would be lost, helpless to control her response to him.

‘I want you, Lacey,’ he was telling her as he moved against her, his hands stroking over her skin, making him shudder and tense as he drew her firmly against him. ‘I want you more than I can find the words to tell you.’ He kissed her, silencing her protest, whispering against her mouth, ‘Let me show you instead, Lacey. Let me show you all the pleasure I’ve missed showing you all these years.’

He was touching her with hands that knew her body already; knew it and knew how to pleasure it, and she had no defences against that kind of knowledge, her frantic pleas to be released from her bondage her desire was imposing on her drowned out by the very intensity of that desire.

Lewis kissed her throat, her shoulders, the soft curves of her breasts, his hands shaping her ribcage, her waist and then her hips, holding her so intimately against him that she couldn’t stop the way her body was responding to him.

His mouth against her breast made her cry out and rake her nails against his back, her body arching, enticing, inviting.

She could feel him looking at her and immediately she started to tense, suddenly acutely self-conscious and ashamed of her response to him.

She was a woman now, not a girl; a woman, moreover, who had borne a child. His child.

His hands held her waist, his dark head bent over her body. Shock kicked through her as he moved, his hands spanning her hips, his face resting against her belly, his voice harsh, almost tortured.

‘My child. You’ve had my child. Even now…even knowing the truth, I still think I’m going to wake up and discover…’ His voice thickened and she felt the dampness of his tears against her skin as he told her, ‘Do you know just what this means to me? To discover after all these years…after believing that I’d never…’

She responded instinctively to his emotion, reaching out to cradle him against her, whispering to him as she had done to Jessica herself when she had been small, stroking the thick dark hair, feeling her body quicken with emotion as he started to press fierce kisses against her.