A Whirlwind Marriage (12 page)

‘Beautiful. So, so beautiful,’ he murmured thickly, his voice shaking. ‘I want you so much…’

She stepped forward and rubbed herself against him with a brazenness she had never displayed before, and, inflamed by her boldness, he picked her up in his arms, carrying her over to the sofa and laying her gently on the coverlet. She lay stretched out before him, loose-limbed and pliant, and he knelt down on the rug and took the hardened tip of one breast into his mouth as his hands caressed her flesh.

The pleasure was so piercing as to be unbearable, and as she writhed and moaned his hands and mouth continued to caress and kiss every inch of her until she was trembling uncontrollably, her head moving frantically from side to side in a vain effort to combat the exquisite sensations he was drawing forth.

When he joined her on the sofa she was more than ready for him, utterly surrendered to the raging passion that had taken him over. He drove himself deeper and deeper into the moist, delicate sheath, and the contractions that had had her panting beneath his lips and hands exploded into a glorious, tumultuous release for them both, the world shattering into a million pieces.

They lay quietly afterwards, Marianne circled close in his arms as the flickering firelight played over their entwined bodies, and as a deep lassitude swept over her Marianne let herself slip into it. She was aware of the steady beat of his heart, the intoxicating, familiar feel of hair-roughened flesh against her smoothness and the sweet murmur of carols from the TV in the background, but it was all like a warm blanket covering her senses.

How long she slept she didn’t know, but when at last she roused herself it was to the knowledge that the curtains were drawn against the dark sky outside and she was wrapped round with her duvet.

‘Zeke?’

‘I’m here.’ He answered immediately, and when in the next moment he stepped into her vision she saw—with a touch of wryness—that he had come expecting to stay. Although the short towelling robe could hardly be called clothing, it was more than she was wearing beneath the duvet, and she suddenly felt unaccountably shy.

‘Don’t move; I’ll be right back.’ He grinned at her as he ducked away, reappearing almost immediately with an opened bottle of wine and two glasses, which he placed on the floor next to the sofa. ‘Move over.’

He discarded the robe with magnificent unconcern for his nakedness and joined her beneath the duvet before reaching down and pouring two glasses of the deeply coloured and fruity red wine, which smelt of damsons and spices. ‘I vote we spend Christmas just like this,’ he said huskily, the lightly rough friction of male skin against female arousing them both. ‘With brief visits across there for food and drink, of course, which we can then eat here too. What say you?’

With his arm about her shoulders and her head resting against his chest she could only nod her agreement; words were quite beyond her at that point. If this wasn’t heaven on earth she didn’t know what was.

Later, after they had loved some more, Marianne cooked the steaks while Zeke prepared and tossed the salad, as naked as the day he was born, and then they snuggled under the duvet again and ate the meal watching the classic film
Scrooge
on TV, with another bottle of wine.

It was an enchanted Christmas.

Marianne was conscious, as each hour slipped by, that she was in a stolen bubble of time. The joy of waking on Christmas morning and seeing his dark head next to hers on the lumpy old sofa bed was the best gift she could have
had, but he had bought her numerous presents, which they opened together over toast and tea which Zeke made.

They loved and ate and drank, and loved some more, almost rendering the turkey into a burnt crisp as they lost themselves in each other’s bodies. Zeke’s loving was urgent and hungry, as though he couldn’t get enough of her, but she didn’t let herself think that it might be because he was sensing time was short. As always when they touched each other the need was overpowering, taking control, doing away with the need to talk or communicate beyond the moment.

Even the weather conspired to make the time more chimerical and dreamlike, the snowstorms which had been forecast arriving with a vengeance early Christmas morning and turning the outside world into a blurred white cloud beyond the window.

It couldn’t last, of course.

Marianne had known that all along, but the end came with an abruptness that catapulted them both back into the real world with shocking suddenness.

It was late Boxing Day afternoon, and Marianne had been lying drowsily in Zeke’s arms watching a silly cartoon on TV, when he nuzzled her head with his chin. ‘I’ve another present for you,’ he said softly.

‘Another present?’ She watched him in surprise as he rose and padded across to his coat, appreciating the way his long, lean body moved with powerful male grace. ‘Zeke, you shouldn’t have. You’ve already given me so much.’

‘This is different.’

His eyes were narrowed and very smoky as he handed her the envelope—she remembered that afterwards. Almost as though he was already concealing his thoughts from her. As he might have been.

‘I don’t understand. What’s this?’ She stared at the en
velope as he resumed his place beside her, his face hidden from her gaze as he pulled her comfortably against his chest, her head resting in the hollow of his throat.

‘Open it and see,’ he said lazily. ‘It won’t bite.’

‘The Bedlows property?’ She stared at the wad of documents in her hands. ‘You’ve bought the Bedlows property?’

‘You wanted it, didn’t you?’ he said softly. ‘Now I’ve got it for you.’

‘When? How?’ She twisted in his arms, her eyes bright and her face radiant. ‘Oh, Zeke, Zeke!’

‘We should have moved out of the apartment as soon as we were married; I realise that now,’ he said quietly as he looked into her excited face. ‘It was unfair of me to expect you to live there.’

‘It doesn’t matter!’ She flung her arms around his neck, her voice animated and high. ‘Oh, Zeke, Zeke, I can’t believe this. You’ve bought it! It’s ours.’

‘You’re pleased?’ He was watching her very closely.

‘Of course I am.’ She beamed up at him, careless of the way the duvet had slipped down to her waist, exposing the firm high peaks of her breasts. ‘When did you buy it?’

‘A few days after you had been to see it.’

That should have warned her. If she had been in her right mind that should have warned her, she told herself afterwards, but as it was she didn’t understand the portent of the statement. Not when she was held in Zeke’s arms and he had just given her a sign that he was going to meet her halfway.

But it wasn’t halfway. It wasn’t even a tenth of the way.

‘I can’t believe this.’ She felt as giddy as a schoolgirl. ‘It’s so beautiful and we’ll be so happy there; I know it. Of course I shall have to find out which colleges are within commuting distance; I don’t want to leave you for days on end, do I?’

And then, even before he said, ‘Leave me?’ in a flat tone of voice, she knew. Something in his face told her.

‘Marianne, this is going to be our home,’ he said softly, his eyes holding hers as she shrank back against the sofa. ‘It will be a new start, a new beginning.’

‘And that doesn’t include me furthering my education or getting a job or anything like that?’ she said very carefully, her heart thudding and the bile rising in her throat.

‘You’re my wife,’ he said roughly, his voice terse. ‘I’m giving you the house of your dreams—’

‘I don’t want a doll’s house, Zeke.’ She didn’t have to think about the words; they came straight from her heart. ‘Neither do I want to go back to the way things were. I’m a person, I’m real, I’m
me
; not a wife doll you can keep in a little compartment in your life. I love this house, of course I do, it’s the perfect home, but we are more important. Things have got to be right between us.’

‘So it’s got to be just as
you
see it, no compromise,’ he said accusingly, biting out the words.

This was so unfair. She stared at him, her eyes huge in the shocked whiteness of her face. And then she slid from beneath the covers, pulling on her dressing gown as she rose to her feet and stood looking down at him with tortured eyes. ‘I want to
do
something with my life, Zeke,’ she said painfully. ‘That doesn’t mean I don’t want to be your wife and have a family, of course I do, but that might not happen for years and years. And what about when the children are at school? Do you expect me to sit at home twiddling my thumbs and just living for the moment when you all come home?’

‘You’re painting it in the blackest way possible,’ he ground out between clenched teeth.

‘No, I am not,’ she said evenly, her mind racing but crystal-clear. ‘You still don’t trust me, do you? You still think I might be attracted to someone else if you can’t lock
me up in an artificial world of your own making. You said, when we talked before, that something died in you when you were a child. I don’t believe that. It might have become stifled, buried, but it’s there, Zeke, and it’s essential for our marriage.’

‘You’re saying that unless I give you exactly what you want you will end our marriage.’ His vice was icy cold. She could hardly credit that it was the same man who had been loving her for the last forty-eight hours.

‘Don’t twist my words like that.’ She was angry and bitterly disappointed. ‘I’m saying that I have to be able to breathe and be me, just like you do. I
want
to go into medical laboratory work; it fascinates me and I know I’d be good at it. You and any children we might have would come first, of course you would, just as I’d expect that same degree of commitment from you. Your empire—this wonderful “thing” that you have created—actually isn’t what life is all about, believe it or not! You don’t have to prove yourself, Zeke. Not with me.’

She hadn’t meant to say that last bit, it had just popped out of its own volition, but now the impact of her words whitened his face and he rose savagely from the sofa, walking across the room and beginning to pull on his clothes as he said, his voice harsh, ‘You’ve never really loved me, have you? It’s been a sham, all of it.’

‘Don’t you
dare
say that!’ She had never before been in the grip of a rage that made a red mist rise before her eyes, but she was experiencing the phenomenon now. She must have walked across to him—she couldn’t have flown—but she had no memory of it. ‘Don’t you dare. I love you. I’ll never love anyone but you, if you want to know, but that doesn’t mean I’ll let myself be submerged. I want to be loved for
myself
. I want you to be proud of anything I achieve, not threatened by it. I want you to
support me, for any children we might have to be our joint responsibility, not a means of tying me to the house.’

‘Oh, so you actually remember the house now?’ he snarled sarcastically as he finished dressing and turned fully to face her. ‘This wonderful house that you wanted above anything else?’

‘It’s only bricks and mortar, Zeke.’ His cold eyes had brought a devastating emptiness into her heart that was reflected in her bleak face. ‘You are more important—our relationship is more important—than any house.’

‘How noble,’ he said derisively.

‘No, it’s not noble,’ she said very quietly, her face deathly pale. ‘Just love. A few weeks ago you said you’d destroy me if I stayed with you and that you couldn’t change. What you are offering me is no different to what you were offering then, however you have convinced yourself otherwise. I have missed you every bit as much as you have missed me, but lying to ourselves is not the answer. The house is not the issue, children are not the issue, your work is not the issue—don’t you
see
? And if we start again under false pretences and you do destroy me with your jealousy—’

‘So it’s all me!’

‘Yes, it is,’ she bit back with equal ferocity. ‘And I won’t be bought or silenced with the offer of a doll’s house or anything else. Your other women were happy to take you on the terms you offered—perhaps a sterile relationship suited them as much as it does you; I don’t know—but I want more. I want
you
. I don’t expect you to be perfect—I know I’m not!—but I want you. All of you. Not the little bit you’ve offered me in the past.’

‘How can you say that after what we’ve shared the last couple of days?’ he said angrily.

‘That should be my line, Zeke.’ The stark bitterness brought his gaze shooting to the chalk-whiteness of her
face and her wounded eyes. ‘You came here knowing exactly how you were going to play it for maximum effect, didn’t you?’ The breath caught painfully in her tight throat but she forced herself to go on. ‘I don’t know if you thought you were buying me or fooling me or blackmailing me or what, but I can’t live like you want to live. Not any more. And if you have any real feeling for me at all you won’t ask me.’

‘I love you, Marianne.’ His voice reflected her own agony and she almost softened. Almost.

‘If you love me, Zeke, really love me like I love you, you’ll trust me enough to give me my freedom,’ she said huskily. ‘Trust that I would come back to you of my own free will, without having to be kept in a beautiful gilded cage. Trust me enough to talk to me about your innermost fears and know that I wouldn’t put you down or think any the less of you for being human. You should be able to give me everything, as I’ve given you everything.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘No, I probably don’t, not completely. Because you won’t let me,’ she said sadly. ‘But I’d like to.’

There followed a silence so profound she didn’t dare break it. This was it. This was make or break time, she told herself silently as her senses clamoured and her mouth went dry. Let him just reach out, just the slightest…

‘I’d better go.’

She heard the words, the tight, clipped tone registering on her bruised mind, but she didn’t really take them in until after he had reached for his coat and overnight bag. And then she stood taut and still, enduring the light kiss on her forehead and his muttered, ‘I’ll be in touch,’ with just a nod and a raising of her chin.