Sinful Nights (29 page)

‘Are you all right?’

Now she could hear something in his voice, concern and something else she couldn’t name, that made it rough and slightly husky. She could tell that he was frowning without looking up at him, and guessed that he was aware of her tension; of the way she tried to escape his touch.

‘Fine,’ she lied, giving him a brittle, tight smile. ‘I think I’ll go up …’ She squirmed away from him, hoping he would move, but he kept his hands either side of her on the chair arms.

‘Something
is
wrong. What is it, Lissa?’ He turned away from her abruptly, but she was too tense to get up. ‘It’s too late now for second thoughts; for wishing that I was Greaves.’

‘I don’t …’ The denial was blurted out before she could retract it, and she felt a curious twist of emotion curl through her heart as he frowned down at her; a combination of fear and an excitement she could not analyse; a tiny thrill of apprehension.

‘No? But you did shrink away from me,’ he told her softly. ‘Why, Lissa? Oh I know there’s always been a degree of antagonism between us, but you’re not naive, you know as well as I do that it’s an antagonism sparked by mutual desire.’ He looked grimly at her, and continued
before she could speak. ‘Neither of us might be proud of desiring the other, but I know if we’re honest that neither of us could deny it.’

He caught the small sound she choked back and stared at her, watching the colour drain out of her face.

‘Lissa, for God’s sake.’ He sounded more angry than concerned and Lissa flinched back from him as he added, ‘Let’s stop the play-acting shall we? A physical relationship between us was part and parcel of the deal when you agreed to marry me. You knew that …’

‘Are you trying to tell me you married me solely because you wanted to go to bed with me?’ Lissa was proud of the cool way she threw the taunt at him.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. You know damn well I didn’t. After all why the hell should I go to such lengths to secure something other men—plenty of other men have had for …’ He caught her hand just before it connected with his jaw, gripping her wrist so tightly that it hurt. ‘Cut out the injured innocent bit, Lissa … it doesn’t suit you.’

She was practically trembling with rage and yes with pain too, hating him for what he was saying to her; for revealing to her how he really viewed her. It was intolerable, unbearable … and to think she had contemplated telling him the truth! She could not endure to stay here a moment longer … The girls … all the logical calm thinking she had done during the day were forgotten … Nothing was more important than escaping from Joel and the agony he was causing her.

‘Let me go.’ She rubbed her aching wrists, as he
released her, scrambling off the chair and moving on shaking legs towards the door.

‘Lissa …’

‘Don’t touch me!’ Her throat was so tight with pain she could barely speak, her voice a husky whisper of torment. ‘Don’t come anywhere near me! I’m leaving, now … this minute. I …’ To her bitter humiliation tears clogged her throat, filling her eyes, and threatening to flood humiliatingly from her eyes. She felt so weak and alone … desperate for some haven in which to hide away from him, and yet knowing she had none.

‘Lissa!’ He ignored her demands, striding towards her, catching hold of her arm with strong fingers. Panic exploded through her in wave after wave of sheer terror. She was back at the party, fifteen again, only this time Joel wasn’t just looking at her, he was touching her, hurting her physically as well as mentally. She gave a thin, high scream of pain, grateful for the deep heavy black void that opened up to receive her and grant her oblivion.

L
ISSA OPENED HER EYES
reluctantly and stared round the shadowed bedroom. Where was she? Suddenly she remembered and she shuddered. This was Joel’s room. No,
their
room, she corrected herself, bitterly. He must have brought her here after … after she’d fainted. She must get away … She must escape before he hurt her any more. She sat up groggily, swinging her feet to the floor.

‘Lissa!

The peremptory command in his voice as Joel
walked into the room froze her. He was carrying a tray with a cup of tea on it.

‘Drink this.’ He put the cup down on the bedside table nearest to her, ‘And then you and I are going to talk.’ He looked so grimly angry that Lissa started to tremble; her teeth chattering together as wave after wave of fear shuddered through her. She heard Joel swear and saw him come towards her, holding out her hands to ward him off. And then suddenly and unnervingly she was crying … deep, wrenching sobs that hurt her chest and made her whole body shake.

‘ Shush … shush … it’s all right …’ Unbelievably being rocked in Joel’s arm, with the warm pressure of his body against her own, created inside her an intense sensation of security and comfort. She wanted to cling to him Lissa realised numbly, to burrow against him and let the soft words he was murmuring soothe and relax her. But it was
Joel
who had provoked the emotional storm now racking her; Joel with his cruel jibing tongue who was responsible for her pain. It was also Joel who was easing it, she acknowledged hazily, Joel was making her feel cherished and cared for.

By the time the tearing sobs were under control she had recovered enough to want to pull away from him, deeply embarrassed and confused by her own behaviour, but Joel wouldn’t let her, subsiding on to the side of the bed, and taking her with him, still holding her in his arms.

‘Now,’ he said quietly, ‘I want to know what all that was about.’

Lissa managed a tight smile. ‘Oh just another trick
in my repertoire,’ she told him brittley. ‘Very effective isn’t it?’

For a long moment he simply looked at her, and then he said quietly, ‘Extremely effective; so much so that I find it impossible to believe it was fabricated. And so no doubt you are going to tell me, was your faint.’ He watched the colour run up under her skin and said sardonically, ‘Exactly.

‘I’ve seen fear before, Lissa, and I’ve seen panic, and I know when they’re genuine. What I don’t know is why
I
should invoke them so forcefully in you.’

Now there was no going back. She would have to tell him, Lissa knew, and coupled with apprehension and reluctance was also relief. She wanted to tell him; she wanted to be rid of the emotional burden she was carrying.

Lifting her head she answered simply, ‘Because you want us to be lovers,’ and was rewarded by a physical reaction every bit as violent in its own way as her own had been. Dark colour burned up under his skin, stretching it somehow until it was pulled sharply over his cheek bones. His eyes glittered darkly with a mixture of anger and something else she couldn’t put a name to, his fingers curling round her wrist as he said grimly, ‘You have a hell of a way of putting a man down, Lissa. I won’t ask what it is that bars me from joining the ranks of those fortunate enough to enjoy your favours—I dare not …’

‘No … no … you don’t understand,’ Lissa interrupted impetuously, determined now that she had committed herself to honesty to go through with it. ‘It isn’t you …
at least, it is, but … Oh look, Joel, let me go right back to the beginning.’

He released her wrist, and watched grimly as she moved back from him, putting a distance between them.

‘I can’t let you be my lover … or indeed any man be my lover because … because I … find the thought of sex … What I’m trying to tell you is that I’m … I’m frigid,’ she said flatly at last. ‘I’ve never had sex with anyone, Joel,’ she told him forcing herself to look at him and forestalling what she knew he must be going to say by saying quickly, ‘Yes, I know you must find that hard to believe but it’s true. That night, that party, when I was fifteen … that was the first time …’ She swallowed, trying to concentrate on a piece of wallpaper safely taking her eyes away from Joel’s and allowing her to continue her story without having to look at him and see how he was reacting.

‘Nothing really happened … just a little very light petting …’

‘Your father told me you were wildly promiscuous,’ Joel broke in curtly. ‘Are you trying to tell me …’

‘My father and I didn’t get on … I was extremely rebellious … but never in that way. My parents disapproved of my crowd of friends. I’d been forbidden to go out that night … but I disobeyed them—for the first and last time,’ she added wryly. ‘My father was an extremely strict man. Amanda knew how to get round him, but I didn’t have the knack. You see,’ she said with painful honesty, ‘I was never what he wanted in a daughter, I wasn’t blonde and small and cuddly like my mother and Amanda and … Oh well, no doubt much of it was
my fault, because I never tried to conform to what he wanted me to do … You see I wanted him … both of them to love me for what I was … not as another Amanda, but you know how teenagers are, I couldn’t articulate any of this to them. My father disapproved of teenagers anyway … Every time he read about teenage misdemeanours in the press he used to go on about it … I wasn’t promiscuous at all … I suspect he confused you with what he no doubt described as my appalling behaviour; he did rather have a tendency for exaggeration. Of course the fact that I’d disobeyed him and then been found by him in the circumstances that I was … It was all quite innocent really, but he would never believe that …’

‘I had no idea.’ Joel was frowning now. ‘He’d described you to my parents as extremely rebellious and wild. When he asked me to come with him and fetch you back from that party, I naturally assumed …’

‘The worst!’ Lissa supplied briefly. ‘Yes … I can understand that.’

‘So, given, that at fifteen you were innocent of the crimes attributed to you, I don’t see …’ He frowned and then said slowly, ‘Lissa, are you trying to tell me that you’re still a virgin?’

‘I’m afraid so … Oh, not by choice,’ she assured him grimly. ‘Being virginal at fifteen is one thing, being in the same state at twenty-three is quite definitely another, but …’ She got up off the bed, and paced the floor tensely, now that she was faced with telling him, at a loss to know how to.

‘But
what
, Lissa?’ It was plain that Joel was completely
bemused, ‘And don’t try telling me that it is through lack of opportunity.’

‘No, not that,’ Lissa agreed drily, ‘but because of what happened at that party I seem to have developed a mental block where sex is concerned. No matter how much I might think I want to make love when it comes to it I can’t, because all I see is …’

‘Your father’s angry, disapproving face,’ Joel guessed tersely, his mouth compressing grimly. ‘Yes, I can understand that.’

Just for one cowardly moment Lissa was tempted to agree and let matters go at that. Her heart was thumping crazily with a mixture of adrenalin and reaction. She wanted to take the way out Joel was unknowingly offering her, but something, some stubborn quirk of pride would not let her, and so instead she shook her head.

‘No?’ Joel frowned. ‘Then what? Tell me, Lissa? What?’ he demanded getting up and taking hold of her. ‘What?’ he repeated, watching as she touched her tongue to dry, stiff lips.

‘You,’ she choked out at last, refusing to look at him, her body tensing against his grip as she pulled instinctively away, fearing his reaction, dreading that if she did look at him she would see in his eyes the contempt that had haunted her dreams for so long. ‘I see you,’ she repeated instead in a low, tormented voice, ‘and you look at me with such contempt and dislike that I …’ She started to shake again, dimly aware of Joel cursing as he released her.

‘Me? Lissa, look at me!’ His hands gripping her face forced her to do as he wished. He was nearly as pale
as she was herself but this was a different pallor, and Lissa shrank beneath the raw fury she could see glittering in his eyes until he said tersely, ‘No, Lissa … Don’t be frightened.’

‘I shouldn’t have told you.’ She was mortified now by what she had revealed to him, unable to fully comprehend the reasons for the emotional outburst which she knew had been the release valve, allowing her to tell him the truth.

‘But you have.’ He looked at her in silence for several seconds, and then said abruptly, ‘Is that why you agreed to marry me? As some sort of punishment … Or at least is that part of the reason?’

He was far too astute, Lissa thought hollowly. ‘Initially,’ she agreed, in an expressionless voice. She felt far too drained to endure any more emotions. ‘But only because you had made me so very angry. Once my anger had cooled I wanted to retract, but then there were the girls to consider … I thought it would pay you back, you see,’ she said simply, ‘but of course once my temper had gone I realised how stupid I was being … After all, it wasn’t even your fault that I …’

‘No … it wasn’t
my
fault at all,’ Joel agreed harshly. ‘No …
I
can’t be blamed for condemning you out of hand, can I, Lissa? After all,
I
wasn’t fifteen, was I? I was well into my twenties … and naturally it is perfectly understandable that I should have destroyed the fragile illusions of someone little more than a child … that I should have accepted someone else’s valuation of you without forming my own. No, of course
I
can’t
be blamed. Like hell I can’t,’ he added bitterly, turning away from her. ‘Like hell.’

For a moment there was silence, while Lissa struggled to come to terms with Joel’s savage reaction to her disclosures. She had seen him exhibit tenderness and concern for his nieces; and she had known there was a gentler side to him, but she had never expected this devastating reaction to her revelations; this rage of anger directed against himself.

At last he said curtly, ‘And so what now? Do you want the marriage annulled? It could be.’

Did she? With a sudden, stifling leap of her heart Lissa knew she did not without quite knowing why. All she could manage to say was a rather unsteady, ‘Do you?’

‘What does that mean?’ Joel questioned. ‘That you wish to stay married to me perhaps, but in name only, because of the girls?’

Gratefully Lissa seized on the opening he had given her. ‘Yes …’ she agreed quickly. ‘Yes … I couldn’t bear to lose them now. I feel that they need both of us, Joel, just as you said but of course, now that you know that … that I … that … ’