Authors: Sara Craven
His mouth twisted slightly. 'I didn't think my company was all that welcome.' His eyes met hers directly and a curious little shiver ran through her body.
She said in a low voice, 'It's always been you who's avoided me.'
'How very eccentric of me,' he said gravely. 'Shall I tell Mrs Arkwright to bring my supper in here?'
With a fair attempt at nonchalance, she said, 'Why not?'
Dane gave her a long rather enigmatic look, then crossed to the door and went out.
Lisa leaned back against the sofa cushions and closed her eyes, aware that her pulses were behaving oddly. She had been alone with Dane before many times. They lived in the same house, and were part of the same family. But this was different,and she knew it. This time a deliberate choice had been made and by them both.
She swallowed convulsively, feeling the wild coursing of her blood through her veins. Then she got up and went over to the hi-fi unit. She selected Ravel's 'Daphnis and Chloe' and put it on the turntable.
The music seemed to surge into the room, mirroring the emotional turmoil within her. She cleared a small table and brought it over to the sofa. Then she sat down and waited, her hands folded in her lap, her heart thumping painfully.
When Dane came back, carrying a tray, she saw that he had changed out of the dark business suit into casual grey trousers and a matching rollneck sweater in thin wool.
His brows rose when he looked at the table. 'Very domestic,' he commented, and Lisa flushed.
'You're laughing at me,' she accused in a low voice.
'And that isn't allowed? Well, in view of our past relations, perhaps not.' He set down the tray. 'Coffee?'
She shook her head. She was shaking so much inside that she would be bound to spill the liquid or choke on a crumb. At any other time it wouldn't have mattered, but this evening everything seemed to have an overwhelming importance.
'You must have something.' There was a note of imin his voice. 'You've been losing weight.' He put out his hand and lifted her chin, studying her face as if he had never seen it before. 'What is it?'
'Nothing,' she denied hurriedly. 'I—I just haven't been "sleeping too well, that's all. I think it's the hot weather.'
'Or stress.' He made no attempt to release her. 'Worried about school? Anxious about the future—or what?'
She swallowed convulsively. 'No—there's nothing.'
'I see.' He was silent for a moment, then his hand fell away and he turned away almost dismissively, pouring coffee into his cup and reaching for one of the sandwiches. 'And after all, why should you confide in me? I've never exactly encouraged you to up to now.'
Lisa said, 'No,' in a subdued tone.
'But I can at least encourage you to eat.' He held out the plate to her. 'Chicken or ham.'
She took a sandwich and forced herself to eat it, aware that he was watching her, his grey eyes cool and speculative.
When he had finished his meal he replaced his cup and plate on the tray and leaned back, closing his eyes. Lisa moved, intending to take the tray to the kitchen, but his hand shot out and captured her wrist.
'Leave those things,' he ordered. 'Just sit still and relax for a while. You look as if you're strung up on wires.'
She sank back against the cushions, biting her lip nervously. To be ordered to relax was one thing, but to obey was quite another, when every nerve ending in her body was screaming her awareness of him.
She said, babbling a little, 'Do you think there's going to be a storm? It's been threatening all day and the air feels so heavy.'
'You're not frightened of storms, are you?' Dane said lazily, his thumb making gentle stroking movements on the inside of her wrist. 'Is that why you're so tense?'
The almost casual caress was making her pulses go crazy. In the past, physical contact between them had been non-existent, so she had no means of knowing whether this would be the effect his lightest touch would always have had on her. But she doubted it. If he had ever touched her in the past, then it would have been in a brotherly way, but now the soft movement of his hand on her skin was telling her quite clearly that there was no kinship between them except that of the flesh.
He said softly, 'You're trembling, Lisa. Is it because you're worried about the storm or—is it this?'
He bent towards her and his mouth brushed across hers in a featherlight touch that made her lips feel oddly bruised.
She gasped, and her lips parted, mutely inviting the repetition of his kiss. He drew a sharp breath, staring down at her, his eyes suddenly harsh and bright, and then his mouth descended on hers with a searching intensity which drove all coherent, sane thought from her mind.
She was conscious of nothing but Dane, his hands holding her, the weight of his body pinning her against the cushions. Her response was total, unequivocal. She had hungered for him for months and not known it, or not admitted it, but now she knew, and her admission was made in a whimper of satisfaction against the hardness of his mouth.
His kiss deepened and demanded beyond the possibility of her experience. She was swimming in deep waters, caught by unknown currents, and she was content to let the floodtide of untried emotions carry her along.
She had always hated him, never trusted him, yet now he was all her senses craved, and she submitted unquestioningly to his ruthless invasion of her awakening senses.
His hands were no longer gripping her bruisingly, but moving with slow expert sensuality, moulding her against him, making every inch of her conscious of the same aching excitement. Under their thin Indian cotton covering, her breasts were full and throbbing, the nipples swollen as they pushed against the warm muscular wall of his chest.
The bodice was low and square-necked, fastened by half a dozen tiny buttons covered in the same material as the dress. Very slowly and deliberately, without fumbling, he began to unfasten the buttons. The dress fell away and Dane looked down at her, his breathing perceptibly quickening. Then he bent his head and his tongue gently teased first one delicate pink bud, and then the other.
Lisa was hardly breathing. Her eyes were wide and very brilliant, glowing with the delight of her first experience of physical enslavement.
His mouth lingered on her breasts, his lips and tongue tracing small erotic patterns on her skin, while his hands slid slowly downwards, losing themselves among the soft folds of her skirt. Dimly she was aware of the music swelling and soaring. Daybreak, she thought dazedly, the beginning of life, the dawning of joy—each and every daybreak in Dane's arms.
And then like a sudden shower of cold water, she heard another sound, brisk and intrusive, the sound of Mrs Arkwright's footsteps coming along the corridor, and the swift, sharp knock on the door.
The sweet sensual spell which seemed to bind them was broken. Dane jack-knifed away from her with a muttered curse, feverishly raking his fingers through his dishevelled hair.
He said in a savage undertone, 'Fasten your dress,' as he piled the used crockery back on to the tray. Lisa obeyed, but her shaking fingers made her clumsy, and Mrs Arkwright knocked again impatiently. At last she forced the last button back through its loop and Dane called, 'Come in.' He was standing over by the french windows looking out into the garden, holding back one of the long velvet curtains.
Mrs Arkwright came bustling in, then checked. 'I didn't know Miss Lisa was here, sir.'
Lisa felt herself flushing as she heard the disapproval in the housekeeper's voice. The fact that she and Dane were now on opposite sides of the room meant nothing. Mrs Arkwright was no fool and the rumpled sofa probably told its own story.
Dane said coolly, 'Does it matter?'
'It's just that there was a phone call for her, sir. I daresay you didn't hear the phone because of the music. I went up to her room to look for her, but had to tell the caller I thought she'd gone for a walk.'
'Who was the caller, Mrs Arkwright?' Lisa asked.
'Mr Laurence Hammond, Miss Lisa. He asked me to give you the message that the invitation stood for this evening.'
Mrs Arkwright collected the tray and departed.
'Since when have you been accepting invitations from Hammond?' Dane asked bleakly.
'I haven't,' she protested. 'I don't know what he's talking about. It must be some kind of obscure joke.'
'It seems relatively straightforward to me.' His voice was grim. 'Apparently you have a date with him tonight, which I've been selfishly keeping you from. My apologies.'
Lisa got to her feet. 'But it just isn't true! I wouldn't go out with Laurie Hammond. I don't even like him.'
'You appeared to be on good enough terms a few weeks ago,' he said. 'Yet you're very quick to deny any association with him. Why, Lisa? Is it because you know that Chas wouldn't approve?'
Only minutes before he had been her tutor in the first intimate lessons of lovemaking, but now they were miles apart again, with all the old hostility and mistrust vibrating between them.
She said on a note of swift anger, 'No, he probably wouldn't approve, but then I don't suppose he'd be overly impressed with your behaviour of the past half hour either.'
'How very true,' he said sardonically. 'Perhaps Mrs Arkwright's interruption was more timely than I thought. Purely as a matter of interest, do you make a habit of behaving like that, because if so I advise you to be very careful, particularly where Hammond and the bunch he runs around with are concerned.'
There was a note in his voice that made something shrivel and die inside her.
She said, lifting her chin, 'Thank you for the warning, but I assure you it isn't necessary. I can take care of myself.'
Without hurrying, she turned and left the room.
She thought at first that it was the crack of thunder which had woken her. She lay still in the darkness listening to the lashing of the rain against her window. The storm had broken in earnest, she thought sleepily. It sounded as if it was hailing. The tinkling against her window wasn't like ordinary raindrops. In fact it sounded more like pebbles, as if someone was throwing handfuls of gravel…
She pushed back the covers and jumped out of bed. She opened the window and looked out and down into the darkness, gasping a little as the damp chill of the air rushed at her. The lightning flashed and she thought she saw the pale oval of a face looking imploringly up at her, and before the crash of the thunder a whispered entreaty, 'Lisa!'
Julie's voice, she thought frantically. But she had looked in earlier and her stepsister's bed had been occupied. She would have sworn it was.
She called down in a low voice, 'I'm coming.'
Not bothering with slippers or a dressing gown, she slipped out of the room and downstairs to the side door. It was unbolted, she noticed, but the catch had been dropped. When she opened it, Julie was huddled in the porch. She had a light raincoat huddled around her, but her hair was hanging in dripping rats' tails around her face, and her feet were bare and muddy.
Lisa gasped. 'Julie—you'll catch pneumonia!' She hauled the shivering girl into the house and gave her a little shake. 'Where on earth have you been?'
Julie looked at her piteously. 'Oh—Lisa!' She seemed about to dissolve into tears.
Lisa bit her lip. 'It's all right, I suppose I can guess. Come upstairs at once and get out of those wet things. And where are your shoes?'
'I dropped them,' Julie whispered. 'I'd taken them off so I could run faster, but I heard someone following me, and I —panicked, I suppose, and dropped them.' She gave a little shudder. 'They were my new ones, with high heels. I—I couldn't run in them, you see, and…'
'Never mind, love, never mind,' Lisa said gently. 'Don't talk now. Let's get you upstairs and warm and dry.'
But as she propelled Julie up the stairs, she found herself wondering in a kind of anguish what had made her stepsister run away barefoot through a storm, and felt her hands curl into claws as she thought of the Hammonds.
She was thankful that Chas was away. His room was nearer to theirs and he might well have been disturbed by the noise, because Julie was crying openly now, a low monotonous sobbing.
Lisa hustled her into her own room and got her out of her wet clothes and into a dressing gown, while she ran a hot tub in the adjoining bathroom. She filled a hot water bottle while she was about it and took it into Julie's room, recoiling with a little cry when she saw the motionless shape in the bed.
Julie said from the doorway, 'I used some of the spare pillows from the linen cupboard. I knew you used to look in each night, and that you'd come looking for me if you knew the bed was empty.'
Lisa pulled back the covers and tossed the pillows on to the floor. 'Clever,' she commented shortly. 'How many times have you played this little trick?'
'This was the first.' Julie's face crumpled a little. 'I know you won't believe me, but…'
'Why should I believe you? You gave me your word, and you broke it.' Lisa put the bottle in the bed and tucked the covers around it.
'I didn't mean to.' Julie shrugged wearily. 'I was just so— bored. And when Mrs Arkwright came up and knocked on the door and called out that Laurie had been phoning you, I just decided I'd go over there.' She shivered. 'But I never will again. It was horrible! They had a lot of people there I'd never met before—not the usual crowd, older people. I didn't like them. They said we were going to play games, and I asked what sort of games because they seemed—well, too old really, and they laughed and said party games, and that I'd enjoy them.' She put her hand over her mouth and closed her eyes. 'It was a kind of Forfeits,' she said in a muffled voice. 'And when I realised what they were going to do—what they wanted me to do, I got scared and I ran away, and Laurie came after me. He'd been drinking, and he said horrible things to me—about me being a gatecrasher and a silly little prude, and that I'd have to pay the first forfeit because I hadn't been invited.' She stopped and looked at Lisa, her eyes very wide. 'I ran,' she said.
Lisa felt nauseated, but she smiled gaily and encouragingly.