Lovers Not Friends

He said no more, concentrating on the short ride home through the sleeping countryside that was still and dark. Was it only yesterday that he had cooked her Sunday lunch? she asked herself incredulously as they turned off the main lane into the little sandy track that led to Blade’s cottage. A lunch that had ended so disastrously, with Blade leaving in icy silence as soon as they had eaten and her sitting in numb frozen stillness all the long hot afternoon? How long could they carry on like this, on this emotional see-saw that continued to empty and fill her until she thought she would explode with the intensity of her heartache? And there was no escape. Not now. Not ever. The best, and worst, that she could hope for was that he would leave her alone.

‘Out you get.’ She could tell from his voice that he was trying to be cool and brisk, to give an air of normality to an evening that had anything but. ‘I think a cup of coffee liberally laced with brandy is in order, don’t you? Perhaps you’d see to it while I change my shirt.’ She looked at the one he was wearing, torn and stained with blood, and felt sick again as he opened the door to the cottage and waved her in.

‘Blade—’ She stopped abruptly as he swung round, his eyes enquiring. He was so handsome, so strong in mind and body, she loved him so much … ‘I think you should bathe that bruise on your face. Your eye is almost closed.’

‘No problem.’ He dismissed the battered state of his face with careless disregard.

‘No, please.’ She caught hold of his arm. ‘You sit down and I’ll get some water and a towel. You’ll have to have a bath and soak all the rest of your injuries later; you’re going to be black and blue.’

‘I’m not going to argue if you want to fuss a bit over me,’ he said with the quirky smile she loved so much. ‘I’ve missed it.’

She turned away quickly, the lump in her throat threatening to choke her, finding once she was in the kitchen that she had to unclench her hands from the tight fists they had knotted into before she could collect what she needed.

As she went back into the room the very air was vibrating, the silence loud and deafening, and as she knelt in front of him and gently touched the cold flannel to his swollen face she found she was praying desperately, a soundless blind prayer that she wouldn’t betray herself, that she would be strong, that—

‘Kiss me.’

‘What?’ His eyes had been closed, but now they were open and staring straight into hers, dark and glittering.

‘I said kiss me.’ As she remained frozen in front of him, his eyes softened and turned warm and meltingly gentle. ‘Please.’

And so she did what she knew she mustn’t do, what she wanted to do, what she ached and longed to do, touching her lips to the swollen taut skin under his eye and tracing a path across the hard tanned face to his waiting mouth. And he kissed her back, wildly, frantically, like a man dying of thirst at the fountain of life. And after that there was no going back.

At first his hunger made him almost savage as his mouth devoured hers, bruising and crushing her lips until she thought she would cry out, and then the control he had always drawn on re-emerged, and his mouth became warm and sensuously erotic, helping his hands bring her body to glorious life as he gently stripped the clothes from her body and then his own.

She froze, just for a second, as she saw the marks on his body that the gang’s fists and boots had inflicted, and then he smothered her pale limbs with his own, soothing her, touching her, until nothing else mattered in the world but the two of them and the sensations he was bringing forth out of her aching form. The riptide of pleasure was impossible to fight, her pale, almost translucent, skin a stark contrast to the tanned hardness of his, her full breasts, heavy with passion, wonderfully aroused against the coarse tight body hair that covered his powerful chest.

How had she managed so long without him? As his mouth and tongue made searingly sensual assaults on every part of her body, she ran her fingers over the warm male flesh that was so completely hers. He was hers. The knowledge was traitorously exhilarating. From the first moment they had met he had been hers. As she had been his. He meant more than life itself.

At the moment of possession she was pierced through, for one brief second, with an emotion of such feverish joy and sadness that she cried his name out loud, and then they continued into the heights together as he murmured her name over and over again in an agony of love.

And then, when it was over, he cradled her close against the comforting bulk of his body, wrapping his arms and legs round her as though to protect her from all the world could inflict, never knowing that what attacked her was from within. She found she couldn’t talk or think, sinking into the deep blanket of sleep as she lay enfolded in his arms, her mind dulled and still, and just content to be held next to the man she loved so much.