Part 9 (1/2)
He held her closer, resting his jaw against the top of her head, closing his eyes against the acid burn of his own tears. Not tears for himself--he didn't deserve them--but for her.
He tried not to think about how it could have been... how she might have turned to him, how they could have been united by a close bond of friends.h.i.+p and understanding, even if she could never have loved him.
Or maybe even that might have happened as well... Maybe she might even have trusted him enough to let him show her what the physical expression of love and desire between two people really should be.
He felt his muscles tense his desire for her--no longer an old hunger, but a sharp, immediate need.
He was old enough now to know that his love for her would never disappear... never change, and he knew enough of his own nature to accept that he was not the kind of man who could ever inflict on someone else, even if they never actually realised it, the role of being second best. Better to remain on his own than do that.
He looked down at the silky russet wing of hair that concealed Rosie's face.
He had hurt her, almost destroyed her. He, not Ritchie. It had been his reaction, his imagined judgement of her ... his imagined contempt for her that she remembered far more clearly than Ritchie's offence.
She was still trembling, but she had stopped crying... stopped talking.
Exhausted, Rosie lay against Jake's chest. She could feel the heavy,slightly uneven thud of his heartbeat, smell the special personal scentof his body warmth. Instinctively she nestled closer to him, comfortedby it.
She had got it wrong, Jake had told her. He had never blamed her, never felt contemptuous of her, and instinctively she had known that he was telling her the truth.
With that knowledge, with that barrier between them removed, had come an overwhelming need to talk about the past, to let the emotions she had kept dammed up inside her spill out.
Now she felt drained and shaky, light- bodied and empty, cleansed of all her corrosive, bitter memories. She lay in his arms, too weak to move, her physical actions still governed by her emotional needs, and the strongest of all those was her need to be close to him, to just lie here and be held by him, safe, protected, comforted, her pain shared and understood.
She closed her eyes sleepily and then opened them reluctantly as Jake said her name, lifting her head to look at him.
He watched her sombrely, and then lifted his hand to gently move her hair off her face, tucking it behind her ear.
Abruptly she remembered the way he had kissed her outside the Simpsons'
house, and automatically her glance slid to his mouth, her own lips parting, her lungs expanding as she had to gulp in air.
No one else had ever kissed her like that, made her feel like that, made her forget everything but the sweet intensity of the pleasure curling slowly through her.
Jake bent his head and her heart started to hammer frantically fast.
Was he going to kiss her again? Would it feel the same this time?
Would she...?
She touched her lips nervously with her tongue, wetting their dryness, her body tensing as she heard the way he said her name.
Somewhere within her a stern voice warned her that she was being deliberately, dangerously provocative, but she didn't want to listen to it. She wanted him to kiss her, she recognised with a fierce lurch of
her heart. She wanted him to hold her, to touch her, to... Impulsively she reached out and touched him, placing her palm against his jaw. Her breathing quickened with the sudden sensual awareness that flooded her.
”Rosie.”
His voice sounded different as he said her name, thickened, slurred. He turned his head so that his lips touched her palm, caressing it.
A deep shudder went through her, her eyes unwittingly imploring as she reached up to wards him.
”Rosie...”
He had intended to protest, to stop her, to explain to her that what was happening to her was just an automatic physical reaction to the emotional turmoil she had just experienced, but instead, as she reached up to him and he felt her breath against his mouth, he ignored what conscience told him he should do and instead stroked her parted lips with his tongue, tasting the richness of the wine she had drunk, feeling the way her mouth and then her whole body quivered openly in response to him, feeling the way his own body responded as though galvanized by a surge of sensation he was to tally powerless to control.
He heard the soft murmur she made in her throat as he kissed her, felt the soft, vulnerable warmth of her body as she pressed closer to him, and knew that she was not really aware of what she was doing.
His hands touched her face, exploring its delicacy, tracing the shape of her ear, the line of her neck, feeling her shudder violently be neath his touch, and was helpless to prevent himself from deepening his kiss in response to that shudder, tasting her with his tongue, feeling her brief, hesitant shock before she melted against him, opening her mouth fully to him, her hands moving urgently over his back, so obviously impatient with his s.h.i.+rt and the bar rier it made between her touch and his flesh that he tugged it out of the way himself, whispering against her mouth how much he wanted her to touch him, and how much he wanted to touch her.
Jake wanted to touch her... Rosie tensed and opened her eyes.
Her hands were pressed flat against the hard, warm flesh of his back, her mouth was soft and swollen from his kiss the kiss she had silently implored him to give her.
She was trembling violently, aware of so many conflicting emotions that she could scarcely make sense of what she was feeling.
”Touch me,” Jake had told her, and then he had told her as well how much he wanted to touch her.
Now he was holding her, his mouth gently caressing her throat, his hands... She shuddered as she realised how close his hands were to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. All she had to do was to move very slightly and then he would be touching them.
Would the fingertips which had traced the bones of her face so delicately and sensuously arouse the same pleasure within her if they touched her b.r.e.a.s.t.s?
Her body's response to her thoughts made her catch her breath in shock as she felt the fierce pulse of desire that arced through her.
”Rosie ... what is it? What's wrong?”
Unable to answer him, she wrapped herself around him, clinging shakily to him, half exalted by what she was feeling and half afraid, but not challenging the extra ordinariness of what was happening, or the fact that it should be this man who was causing her to feel like this, to experience desire and need, to suddenly know that behind the fear and selfloathing of herself as a woman lay a sensuality that was strong and powerful enough to sweep aside and overcome all the trauma of the past if she let it.
”Rosie...”
She felt Jake hold her, move her, as though he were going to push her gently away from him, but, as his hands slid against the silk of her dress and came into contact with the soft fullness of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, he went very still.