Exorcism. PENNY JORDAN
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He had turned it back, holding her face between his hands, his palms hard and warm against her skin.
‘There’s nothing wrong in wanting to look at me, Christy,’ he told her then. ‘I enjoy looking at you you know … I do it all the time … in fact, I want to do more than look at you. Much more,’ Christy had thought she heard him mutter thickly under his breath as his head descended, blotting out the sun, his mouth moving slowly over hers until her lips lost their stiffness and clung softly to his with shy eagerness.
He had groaned slightly as he ended the kiss, still holding her face as he asked in a rasping voice, ‘I suppose you’re still a virgin?’
Christy had nodded her head, worried because her confirmation did not seem to please him. Surely all men wanted the girl they fell in love with to be virginal … untouched … and Simon must love her, even though he hadn’t said so … otherwise why would he have kissed her? Made suddenly brave by the heady pleasure of knowing he cared about her, she had reached out and traced the line of his mouth with her fingers, and had said softly, ‘Don’t let it worry you … it isn’t important.’
What she had meant was that it wasn’t important to her … She didn’t mind being virginal; in fact there was no one she would rather have to initiate her into the mysteries of love than Simon. Strange, how she had known the moment he kissed her that she loved him and that he returned her love; and how knowing that had made everything else drop into place … Now she could understand why her pulses thudded every time she saw him; why her stomach tensed and her skin coloured hotly.
She hadn’t said anything else, simply smiling shyly at Simon, but his topaz eyes had glittered over her face and then her body and she had felt the tension in his fingers, threatening to crush the fragile bones of her face before he released her to say huskily, ‘Come on, race you into the water.’
Christy was a strong swimmer. It was her favourite sport and she had learned to dive very young. During her final two years at school she had taken advantage of living near the coast to join a sea-diving school, quickly learning to love exploring the underwater environment.
Simon, too, was a strong swimmer, and when she realised that she was not going to be able to beat him she dived quickly, swimming underwater, holding her breath. She was almost at the limit of her lung power when Simon dived down alongside her, grasping her roughly and hauling her to the surface. They broke the water together, mischief darkening her eyes, fury darkening his, as he grasped her, treading water as he shook her roughly.
‘Just what the hell were you playing at?’ he demanded thickly, ‘when I looked round and couldn’t see you …’ One hand was curled through her wet hair, imprisoning her, the other round her waist and she could feel the hectic thud of his heart. He was angry because he loved her, she marvelled, almost giddy with the sudden sensation of joy. It made her brave—and foolish. Pressing herself against him, she kissed his wet throat. ‘I’m sorry …’
His skin pulsed beneath her mouth, a fierce tension emanating from him, his voice unexpectedly rough as he said thickly, ‘So you damned well ought to be. I’m not a man who likes to be teased, Christy,’ he warned her, disengaging himself from her. Tawny lights flickered in his eyes, inciting a fierce heat in her veins, as she sensed that he wasn’t simply talking about her dive.
‘You’re the one who teases me.’ She made a small mou, touching her tongue to her salt-encrusted lips. ‘I wouldn’t know how to tease you even if I wanted to.’
She knew that she was lying, and the delicious, heady feeling of power racing through her body ensured that she didn’t care.
‘You’re a woman, aren’t you?’ Simon’s voice was still thick, but now it was underlined with a vague derision that chilled her. As they swam back to shore she pushed it aside. Simon loved her; she knew that … It could only be a matter of time before he asked her to marry him. As she walked across the hot sand she remembered that she had heard him say on more than one occasion that he had no intention of tying himself down, but that was before he had fallen in love with her, she had assured herself comfortably. Of course he would want to marry her. They could find somewhere to live locally; Simon would write, and she would be his devoted wife. She preened herself mentally, seeing herself in three or four years to come … a baby … perhaps even two … Simon … and a placid, happy existence …
Dear God, Christy thought, groaning to herself as the music stopped. What a naïve idiot she had been. Anyone less cut out for domestic bliss than Simon would have been impossible to find. But all the guilt wasn’t hers. Yes, she had been foolish to delude herself into believing that Simon wanted to marry her, but he had had the experience, even then, to know what was happening to her. He could surely have gently but firmly nipped her feelings in the bud then, instead of letting them flower … instead of encouraging them to flower, and then savagely destroying her? She saw with hindsight that it was almost as though he had hated her, and yet why? All she had been guilty of was falling in love with him. She had not chased him; she hadn’t had the experience for that, and if he had not kissed her … touched her … she would surely never have realised how she felt about him. But he had kissed her … and touched her …
After their swim they had sunbathed. Christy, already healthily tanned, had not bothered to cover herself with any cream. She didn’t need it, but Simon had insisted that he did—a ploy which she should have recognised immediately for what it was.
Willingly she had taken the plastic bottle he gave her, pouring a little of the oil into her palm while he lay on his stomach his head lying on his forearms. She had kneeled beside him, spreading the oil carefully across his shoulders, stroking it in with fingertips that soon became blissfully addicted to the sensation of warm male skin beneath them. Her whole body seemed to tingle as she worked her way over his back, and then at his insistence, his legs. The sensation of the fine dark hairs beneath her fingers was an unfamiliar one, and yet strangely exciting, her pulses reacting as violently as a fairground dipper ride. The pressure of Simon’s hand on her thigh as he raised himself up on his side made her insides melt in a curious surge of heat.
‘Now my chest,’ he commanded softly, and although she had begun to tell him that it was pointless oiling his chest since she had just done his back, the words died unspoken, as he cupped her hands together, and poured the oil into them, guiding her palms against his skin.
The boys she had seen on the beach did not have bodies like Simon’s. It was hard and entirely masculine shadowed by dark body hair which she had always mentally thought distasteful when seen on men on television or films, but which now when touched unleashed a deep-seated excitement that made her insides churn. She had reached his waist before Simon stopped her, pulling her down into his arms, covering her mouth with his own, while it was still parted in a rounded ‘oh’ of surprise.
‘No, don’t close it,’ he muttered to her, stroking her lips with his tongue, and biting gently at her lower one until her senses were inflamed completely beyond her ability to control.
Her mind registered the husky timbre of his voice when he said softly, ‘I don’t think you need this do you?’ his hands sliding down the straps of her swimsuit, but until she felt the harsh rasp of his body hair against her breasts she wasn’t aware of their import, and by then it was too late to protest—she no longer wanted to do so. Her breasts, so full and firm; and always secretly slightly resented in her own heart of hearts, because they were so blatantly curvaceous, seemed to have been designed especially to fill Simon’s hands. Under his skilled caress she felt them swell slightly, her nipples so tight and hard that they almost hurt. It was a totally unexpected sensation, something she had read about but never realised could be completely devastating. She made a small sound at the back of her throat, and as though he understood what she was feeling, Simon had gentled her with soft murmurs, stretching his body so that she was pressed along the length of it. ‘I know … I know …’ he whispered huskily, ‘Feel what you’re doing to me, too.’
The fiercely aroused throb of his body against hers was exciting and yet frightening too. Wild emotions clutched at the pit of her stomach making her ache to move closer to him, to explore the pleasures she had read about and not as yet