The Hidden Years (72 page)

There was no rush, no hurry, no impatience in the way he
touched her, and then watched her as he saw the wonder of what was
happening to her reflected in her eyes.

He undressed her carefully and tenderly, kissing the soft
flesh of her throat, each swollen bruise, and then the pulse that was
beating so frantically fast at its base.

The room was in darkness, her body cloaked in shadows so
that he had to learn her by touch and not by sight.

He felt her tension when he touched her naked skin, and
the intensity of his own anger and compassion held him motionless.

'There's nothing to be afraid of,' he told her rawly. 'I'm
not going to hurt you.'

'I know,' Liz told him. Her throat was so sore that to
speak was an effort. 'I'm not afraid of that…just of
disappointing you.'

It had cost her so much to make the admission. She closed
her eyes, half afraid to look at him. She shouldn't be doing
this… shouldn't be here with him like this. She was Edward's
wife… Edward's, and yet she knew that if Lewis left her now
she would die from the pain of it.

'You couldn't disappoint me,' Lewis told her, swallowing
back his compassion, his anger against the man who had made her feel
that
she
was responsible for
his
inadequacy.

'I love you,' he told her. 'And you love me, and nothing,
nothing is more important than that…'

He loved her… She loved him… These
were forbidden words, forbidden emotions, and yet, as he removed his
own clothes, and she felt the heat of him, felt the scent of him
enveloping her, she reached up to him, watching him with tentative
anxious eyes.

'It's all right,' he told her softly. 'Everything's going
to be all right.'

And then he was holding her so that they were lying body
to body and she recognised in wonder and bemusement how much her flesh
had yearned for this tactile mating with his, how much her skin
welcomed the heavy warmth of his body, its muscled hardness, its weight
and its power. Every tiny movement he made against her created such an
erotic friction that she could hardly believe she was actually
experiencing such sensations.

Her need to reach out and touch him, to stroke her
fingertips over his skin, to taste its warmth and maleness, to explore
its alien contours, was so strong and so unexpected that she made a
small sound of protest against it in her throat.

'What is it—what's wrong?' Lewis asked her
anxiously.

'I want to touch you. To feel, to know…' She
could hear the confusion and bewilderment in her voice and knew that
Lewis could hear it too.

'I hadn't realised. I didn't know…'

She heard Lewis saying huskily, 'Give me your hands,' and
almost like a child she obediently did so, shivering with pleasure when
he placed them against his skin and told her, 'I'm yours, Liz. You can
touch me however and wherever you wish. If my heart doesn't have any
secrets from you, why should my body?'

He was touching her as he spoke, his hands caressing her
shoulders and then her breasts, his touch so tender, so full of love
that it was impossible for her not to respond, not to arch her body and
to press herself closer to him. The sound he stifled in his throat made
her tense a little as her body recognised his arousal and shied away
from it, remembering Kit's possession of her. But Lewis wasn't Kit.
Lewis's touch wasn't Kit's. Lewis's loving wasn't Kit's lust and long
before his mouth had touched the sensitive flesh of her nipples her
stomach had turned fluid with longing and need and her body was
twisting recklessly, pleadingly against his, while her hands moved
yearningly over his body, seeking to convey to him how much she needed
him.

When he did draw the tender, sensitive hardness of her
nipple into his mouth to stroke it with his tongue and then suckle on
it, her body arched convulsively beneath his hands, her soft cries of
pleasure inciting him to bite passionately on the swollen flesh as she
was pressing eagerly against him, as her whole body moved against his
in a rhythmic eroticism of which she was completely unaware.

As he struggled to control his own desire, Lewis marvelled
that she could ever have believed herself to be lacking in sexuality.
Her body, innocent and untutored in terms of experience, possessed an
awareness and instinct that had caused him to become so intensely
aroused that he wanted to devour her inch by inch, to touch and taste
every silky particle of skin, to possess her so completely that her
body would never forget him.

When he finally released her she lay in his arms,
shuddering from head to foot, her nipples gleaming damply in the
shadowy light, so sensitive now that merely to feel his breath against
them caused her to moan his name in protest and reach out blindly for
him.

But as though she had actually said the words, made the
plea that was pulsing so fiercely through her body, he said thickly,
'No, not yet, my darling… Just be patient, and I promise
you…' He was kissing her stomach, his mouth open and moist
as he dragged it over her flesh. His hands held her thighs, moving her,
lifting her, her senses so overwhelmed and bemused, so hungry for his
total possession that she had no awareness of what he intended to do
until she felt the warmth of his breath against the most intimate part
of her body.

She tensed immediately, but still had no awareness of what
he intended to do; her own experience fell very far short of such
intimacy, so that the sensation of his tongue moving, stroking firmly
and deliberately against her body was doubly shocking. Shocking because
beneath that first sensation of reaction and withdrawal lay a far
different and more compelling feeling; a need not merely to lie tensely
and still and force herself to accept what he was doing to her, but
rather a need to move with voluptuous encouragement, to incite and
invite the deeper penetration of her flesh, to have his mouth caressing
her now as he had done before when he had drawn first one and then the
other nipple into his moist heat, when he had first sucked and then
bitten so erotically on her flesh.

She started to cry out in denial of her own feelings, and
then discovered that she was crying out instead because Lewis had put
her unspoken wishes into practice and because the sensation he was
causing within her body both excited and terrified her, so that she
both wanted to beg him to stop and at the same time to plead with him
never, ever to cease what he was doing to her.

As she struggled to hold on to reason her body defied her,
the sensation building up inside her, driving her, possessing her,
obliterating everything else.

The unbearable tension within her body, the intensity of
her physical need, were things she could barely comprehend, crying out
to Lewis that they were something she just could not endure, even as
the fine-drawn threads of desire snapped, setting her free to fly
beyond the barriers of mortality, and then to float there lapped in the
warm, soft darkness of completion.

Her body was trembling with reaction and shock when Lewis
took her in his arms, tenderly stroking her skin, whispering words of
praise and love to her.

'But you didn't… we didn't…'

'We will,' he told her gently. 'When you're ready.'

When she was ready… He was turning her in his
arms, curving her into the warmth of his body, and as she felt its male
arousal a tiny
frisson
of responsive sensation
danced through her.

'When you're ready,' Lewis had said.

She looked at him and said huskily, 'I think… I
think I shall be ready very soon. In fact I think…' She
stopped abruptly as he started to kiss her and she discovered that that
earlier tiny
frisson
of sensation had become much
stronger, so much stronger in fact that she was already moving eagerly
against him, wanting him, needing him, inviting him…

This time she knew what to expect; this time, her body,
tutored by his tenderness and love, meshed rhythmically with his so
that the sensation building inside her was something reinforced and
shared with the growing urgency of his body's movements within her.

The sensation was the same but different, deeper, so that
her whole body seemed to sigh with pleasure and open to him as though
it wanted to draw him within it so deeply and intimately that her flesh
would have the memory of him imprinted within it long, long after he
had gone.

Later, when she had cried out her love to him and their
bodies were at peace, he turned to her, tensing when he saw the tears
glittering in her eyes.

'I'm sorry. I'm sorry,' he whispered, holding her, anguish
making his voice harsh. 'If I hurt you—'

'You didn't,' she assured him. 'It's just… just
that I never knew it could be like that… Once as a girl I
thought, believed… but then Kit, David's father—'

She stopped as he took hold of her hand and kissed the
pulse that beat in her wrist and then slowly and tenderly kissed each
finger.

'It was the same for me,' he told her. 'That's the
difference that love makes. It transforms the base metal of our desire
into the pure brilliance of gold; takes us from our mortal plane to one
that's higher.'

They made love again, slowly, lingeringly, and this time
Liz took the initiative, caressing him as intimately as he had done
her, tentatively at first and then more surely when she saw how much
she was pleasing him.

She woke up early, well before dawn, turning to study his
sleeping form in the shadows of her room, taking each memory to her to
cherish, knowing they would be all she could keep of him, knowing she
could not allow it to continue no matter how much her heart might cry
out that it needed him, that it would die without him.

She woke up again just after dawn to find herself held
securely in his arms. He was already awake watching her.

'I love you,' he told her, kissing her tenderly. 'I love
you more than I believed I would ever love anyone. You're mine, Liz,
and when I go back to Woolonga you and David are coming with me.'

She tensed in his arms, 'I can't—'

'You can and you shall,' he contradicted her, telling her,
'You can't stay with Edward now. Not after what he tried to do to you.
No one would expect it.' He just managed to stop himself saying what
was in his heart, and that was that Edward was either criminally or
emotionally insane and that, that being the case, he should be locked
away for his own good as well as that of the rest of humanity.

'The man's dangerous, Liz,' he told her. 'He could have
killed you. No court would oppose granting you a divorce once they knew
what he'd tried to do.'

A divorce… The word chilled her, shocking her
back to reality.

'I'll have to go and see him. I can't just leave him
there…'

She felt so confused, so unsure of herself—her
heart, her body, her senses all urged her to do what Lewis was
suggesting. Edward had changed—yesterday he had really
frightened her. She had looked into his eyes and seen that he did
actually want to kill her. But she was his wife. His wife…

And Lewis was her lover!

'I'm not letting you stay with him, Liz,' Lewis told her
later as he gathered up his clothes. 'You love
me
.'

It was true, she acknowledged when Lewis had gone to the
bathroom. She did love him, she wanted to be with him more than
anything else in the world, and yet the thought of Edward and what
would happen to him if she divorced him haunted her.

Lewis wanted her to stay in bed, at least until Ian Holmes
had been to see her, but she refused, insisting on getting up.

The bruises round her throat looked even worse this
morning. Her throat itself was still sore, raw and painful inside, so
that she couldn't eat, and could in fact barely swallow the coffee
Chivers brought them. Did he suspect that Lewis had done more than keep
watchful vigil beside her bed last night? Liz wondered. She felt guilty
in testing Chivers's loyalty to Edward.

Ian arrived just as they were finishing breakfast. As he
greeted her Liz wondered if what had happened was visible to him in her
eyes. She now felt no sense of guilt in physically loving Lewis. Her
body was, after all, her own, as was her love.

Maybe, but her fidelity, her duty as a
wife…those belonged to Edward. She bit her lip, no longer
wanting to listen to her own conscience.

'How…how is Edward?' she asked Ian nervously.

'Heavily sedated and full of remorse… He's been
asking for you,' he told her gently.

'Why?' Lewis intervened bitterly. 'So that he can have
another go at murdering her? Look at her… look at her
throat, man. Look at what he's already done to her.'

'I'm sorry, Liz. I should have asked you how you're
feeling,' Ian apologised, ignoring Lewis's bitter comments.

'I'm fine. My throat's a bit sore, but Edward…
How is he, really, Ian? Does he—?'

'Physically he's fine, but mentally… Well, you
know how he feels about being away from here. He wants to see you,
Liz… He needs to see you, really. You needn't be
afraid… I'll be with you, and as I said he is very heavily
sedated…'

She was biting down hard on her bottom lip, wanting to
tell him that she couldn't bear the thought of ever seeing Edward
again, that she wanted to shut him completely out of her mind, that she
wanted to turn her back on him and walk away from the shadows of her
life with him so that she could live in the sunshine and warmth of
Lewis's love, but she knew that the words could not be said, that if
nothing else she at least owed it to Edward to go and see him. And
besides she was concerned about him, despite what he had done to her.

At her side Lewis made a small movement towards her. She
could feel his concern, his love reaching out to enfold and protect her.

Lewis was a gentle man, a tender, caring man; she had
known that when he'd told her about his dead wife and child, and had
had that knowledge reinforced last night when he'd made love to her.
With Lewis she would be loved and protected, cherished and adored, with
Lewis she would be truly fulfilled as a woman, for the first time in
her life. Didn't she have the right as a human being to reach out and
take what Lewis, what life was offering her? Why would fate have sent
him into her life in the first place if it only intended to part them
again?