Justine Elyot (19 page)

‘Stiff upper lip, eh?’ he said. His voice was light, but as he turned back, an odd-looking lung of rubber in his hand, there was a strange manic gleam in his eye. ‘Stiff upper lip,’ he repeated, his tone harder this time. ‘That’s us, isn’t it, Edie?’

‘Now it’s my turn to ask if you’re all right,’ she said, propping herself on her elbow, watching him sheath his erection in the tubular covering. ‘You sound angry.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m not. Not with you. Forget I said it.’

He smiled, a little tightly at first, then he straddled her hips and his face transformed to an expression of heartfelt desire.

‘Put your arms around my neck,’ he commanded softly. ‘Kiss me.’

She reached up, enjoying the novel sensation of her nipples pressed into his chest, wondering how it was that such a simple thing as skin-to-skin contact could feel so addictively good. Their lips crushed together, cheek met cheek and nose rubbed nose. Throughout the kiss, though, Edie was aware of the insistent pressure of Charles’s erection on her lower abdomen and she knew that the moment was coming when she would have to let him in.

Sooner than ever, now, when he lowered her back down, still connected at the lips, until he lay on top of her. His legs were between hers and he rolled his pelvis against her pubis, demanding admission.

‘Let me in,’ he whispered into her ear.

A rising panic seized her, weakening her legs, but he nudged them wider apart and braced himself above her, kissing her all over in a frenzy – face, neck, breasts, shoulders. The kisses were not quite enough to distract her from the blunt intrusion between her lower lips, bathing itself in her juices. It still felt so
wide
. And so hard.

She was unable to avoid tensing herself as the tip of his shaft made its progress downwards to that impossibly tight place.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said. ‘It will only hurt for a moment, and I can promise you, you’ll have felt much worse if you’ve ever stubbed your toe.’

She giggled, a little hysterically. ‘You make it sound so attractive.’

‘I’m not joking.’

He sounded so stern that she pressed her lips together and lifted her bottom a little, as if to show him that she was made of grittier stuff than he gave her credit for and she would go through with it regardless.

‘I’m trying to make this as nice for you as I can,’ he continued, a little mollified. ‘Stop giggling like a schoolgirl. It’s a woman I want here tonight.’

And I want a man, she thought, instantly sobered. And I’ve got one.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what the form is.’

‘Of course you don’t. And it’s all right to be a little bit scared, love. It’s quite natural. Now hush. Try to stay relaxed.’

Her hands were still clasped, locked almost, around his neck and she felt them tremble when the rounded tip of his cock began to push into her.

‘It can’t,’ she gasped, but he kissed her silent and kept up the pressure.

He put one hand beneath her bottom and held it firmly, keeping the cheeks apart to open her further. Somehow, he was sliding in, just a tiny bit at first, but she was spreading without discomfort. It felt so odd, all the same, and not a bit natural.

Goodbye, virginity.

She squinted at the clock on the mantel, feeling somehow that she should record the exact time in her mind. The crossing of the Rubicon.

‘Hold tight now,’ he said in a strained voice.

She wrapped her arms around his back and clung for dear life while he made a fierce jolt forwards.

She couldn’t help letting out a scream – not so much from the pain, which was momentarily sharp but soon over, but from the expectation of it and the sheer brute force of the movement.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he whispered, dropping kisses all over her face as if each one were an apology. ‘The worst is over, I promise.’

‘I’ve done it now,’ she said, the words keeping rhythm with the dull waves of pain radiating outwards from the initial shock. ‘It’s done. Can’t be undone.’

‘Sh, it’s all right, it’ll be better than this from now on. You might not think it now, but you’ll come to love this.’

She searched his eyes frankly.

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I won’t deny it hurts a little, but I rather like having you inside me. I can’t describe the way it makes me feel, but … you needn’t worry, you know.’

She wanted to reach up and gather the tenderness in his face, to hold it to her heart. He looked so loving and so relieved. It made her emotions seesaw until she hardly knew what they were or who she was.

‘What if,’ he said slowly, sliding his hand between their stomachs and down over her mons, ‘I were to touch you here …’ Now he had his finger on her clitoris and she thought how strange and different it felt now that he was inside her, just below. ‘Would that make it better?’

The throb of pleasure his gesture provoked rose up and merged with the ache of pain inside. If he kept that up, it might even defeat it.

‘I think … it would,’ she whispered.

‘All right. Now keep holding on. I’m going to move inside you. I’ll take it very slowly, don’t worry.’

Edie screwed her eyes shut and tried to concentrate on the spark of pleasure above that gnawing ragged pain. As he worked inside her, with painstakingly slow and small movements, she told herself it would all be all right, it would all be fine, it was what people did, it was what everyone did.

At first he spoke to her, in low reassuring little bursts. Was she all right? Did it start to feel nice at all? Did she know how tight she was, how perfect she was?

It did not feel nice until he stopped moving for a little while and concentrated on rubbing at her bud, so intently that she was able to surrender to the growing pleasure and give herself up to him. Unexpectedly, the knowledge and sensation of his being inside her added a great deal to her climax; taking her to a higher peak than she had experienced before.

When, before she had even had time to float down from her place in the stars, he began to thrust harder and more roughly, she did not feel the pain she thought she would, but was able to keep her legs wide and accept his plunging strokes, even welcome them.

The sting was good, it was what she had needed, that blank unidentified craving that had plagued her since she was young. Tear away all the learning and the reserve and the manners and the anxieties and she was just a little female animal, opening herself to her mate, as her ancestors in the caves had done without half the agonising.

He had nothing to say now, his teeth gritted and his brow taut with effort. He looked quite wild, and quite magnificent, a noble brute pursuing his evolutionary purpose. He was not silver-tongued Charles Deverell any more. He was primitive man.

Oh, she must do this again. Often. She must feel this weight pinning her down and accept these bruising kisses and feel the savage force of what held them together and would not let them come apart.

A moment came when his determination became something else – what was it? Was it fear? Shock? Awe? It looked like all three, and sounded like triumph when he rode to his own conclusion.

She wanted to hold him, soothe him, crush him against her and stroke his matted hair. How different he was in his moment of rapture – how unpolished and without artifice, his mask of suavity dropped in an instant.

She was touched beyond expression. When he laid his face upon her bosom, she kissed his hair and shed a few tears into it. Was he right after all? Was he right about having to fall in love with him?

Now that it was too late, she understood what she had exposed herself to. He had peeled away her defences and here she was, laid bare. Whatever he asked her to do now, she would do. She was a fool. But she would not let him see it. She must never let him see it.

‘Darling, precious girl,’ he murmured. ‘Now you are mine, all mine.’

He shifted position so that he could see her face, which she turned away.

‘Oh, don’t be cold, love,’ he said, with such dismay that she turned guiltily back. ‘Have I hurt you too much?’

He stroked her cheek and found the incriminating tears.

‘Edie,’ he whispered. ‘Talk to me.’

‘I’m not hurt,’ she said. ‘At least …’ She propped herself up and squinted down at her thighs. Smears of sticky bright blood were upon them, and further stains disfigured the sheet. ‘I am, a little, but …’

She lay back down, her speech degenerating to a croak.

‘Pretty stupid of Mother Nature,’ said Charles, his old tone almost entirely recovered now, ‘to make the first time such a botch job. Doesn’t she want the girls to do it again? One would think she tried to sabotage herself.’

‘Between her and God making childbearing so foul, they’ve made a mess of things, haven’t they?’

Charles chuckled and kissed her.

‘At least you don’t have to worry about the second one,’ he said, fumbling to remove the French letter and tie a knot in its end. ‘But they did one good thing. They gave you this.’ He pressed hot fingers to her clitoris. ‘No earthly use for anything but pleasure. I don’t think they can have been entirely against the idea, do you?’

‘You’re a wicked man,’ she said with a yawn.

‘But you love me.’

‘Shut up. I don’t.’

‘Ah, you do. Whether you know it yet or not.’ He lay back down and spooned her in his arms.

Oh, how delicious it felt, almost as good as having him inside her. Now she even relished the sweet aftershock of the pain between her legs. Everything about him made her weak with longing, from the size of the hands that held her to the vibrations of his deep voice in his chest, tickling her spine when he spoke. God, if he knew what he had done to her …

‘What was your first time like?’ she asked, needing to understand more about him. She hoped the question did not give her away, tried to make it sound vaguely curious rather than hungry for more knowledge of him.

‘You really want to know? I barely remember it.’

‘You must do. First times are always memorable.’

‘You’re right. I don’t want to tell you because, like most things, it doesn’t reflect very creditably on me. Suffice to say, I was a bad boy, but she was a happy girl. And when I say girl, I actually mean woman of twenty-nine.’

‘Charles! You can’t fob me off with that. Tell me.’

‘Well, I won’t mention her by name, because she’s rather prominent in good society, but I was a schoolboy of sixteen, visiting a friend in the summer hols, and she was his aunt.’

‘She seduced you.’

‘You might choose to see it that way, but I was more than ready to be seduced. It happened after a game of tennis. We were playing doubles, Freddie and I versus his sister and his aunt. It was a hot day – Freddie and sister gave in and went to get changed. But she and I stayed on for more until I lobbed the ball right out of the court and into the shrubbery. I did it on purpose. We’d had this kind of flirtatious rivalry going on all week – anything I could do, she had to do better, and so it went on. She knew I was attracted to her and she played on it, and I knew she did.

‘There in the shrubbery, pretending to look for the ball, I made my move. She acted shocked but she was thrilled. It did not take much to get her to reciprocate. She invited me to her room that night and I took her up on it.’

‘Poor Freddie.’

‘He knew nothing about it, and still doesn’t. Poor Freddie’s sister, rather. She was a little bit sweet on me, I think.’

‘What an idiot then.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Nobody should be sweet on you. You squander other people’s love.’

‘I have done,’ he said soberly. ‘I’ve taken it for granted too often. But I’m thinking of changing my ways.’

She craned her neck, looking back at him, expecting to see a mocking smile or some other sign that he was not serious, but she could detect none.

‘Are you?’

He kissed her, catching her nose before she turned her face away.

‘I hope so. I’ve had enough of it now. I’m not getting any younger. Bed-hopping in big houses was fun for a while and quite a wonderful antidote to the three years I spent behind barbed wire in Belgium, but perhaps it’s time to give it up.’

She caught her breath. ‘The war,’ she said but he interrupted, putting a finger over her lips.

‘Hush, let’s not,’ he said, then he released her, sat up and lit a cigarette. ‘Want one?’ he offered, waving the packet at her, but she shook her head.

The giant spectre of recent history had raised its head and neither of them could quite shake it off.

Edie cast around her mind for a change of subject.

‘Who seduced whom?’ she asked. ‘You or … Lady Deverell?’

She had thought of saying ‘my mother’ but the words had sounded so freakish on her lips that she retracted them.

‘Oh, must we?’

‘So many forbidden topics.’

‘Look, it doesn’t reflect well on me, all right? I did it for my own reasons, which were selfish and vapid and spiteful. Though I still think she’s a disastrous wife for my father and he should get rid of her. But I don’t want to be telling you what a bastard I am. Not now. Not after we’ve …’

He put out his cigarette half-smoked and caressed her cheek, looking half-heartbroken.

In his post-coital rumple, baggy-eyed and off duty, he looked more lovable than Edie had ever seen him – a man of sad regrets and dreams and hopes. This was a man she could like, she realised. Oh, why was he doing this to her? Why did he have to make her like him, as well as all the rest?

‘I want to make it all better,’ he whispered. ‘For you.’

‘For me?’ Her heart thundered. ‘I’m just … you’ve had what you wanted from me, haven’t you? I’m just the maid.’

‘No,’ he said, sounding dreadfully hurt. ‘You’ve misunderstood me. You think I just wanted a quick fumble and then I’d let you go? Christ, Edie, did it mean so little to you? Have I had no effect on you at all?’

‘I don’t know
what
you want,’ she said, suddenly on the verge of tears. ‘I don’t know what you
can
want.’

‘I want you,’ he said passionately, drawing her to him so that their foreheads touched. ‘That’s all. Just you. I want to get into you, to that core of defensive repulsion I keep seeing, and break through it. I want to make you love me.’