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Джордан Пенни
Silver
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CHAPTER THREE
HER bedroom was simply furnished. Rag-rugs on the polished floorboards, a large double bed with bolster pillows and two huge quilts, a solid-looking chest of drawers in an unvarnished bleached wood that felt smooth and worn to the touch, and a wardrobe to match. The small shower-room was as basic and frugally furnished as the bedroom, but there was a Tightness about the plain white sanitaryware that was pleasing to the eye.
Silver showered, dismissing her longing to soak her tense muscles in a hot bath, and then moisturised her face completely. Annie had warned her that for some time to come her skin would be vulnerable. When she had finished she brushed her hair vigorously, her mouth curling into a crooked smile.
When she’d walked into Annie’s clinic her hair had been russet-brown. It was the shock of the series of operations she had put herself through that had turned it almost pure white.
The mirror gave back to her a perfect reflection. She studied it clinically, trying to see it as others would see it… as Charles would see it. Flawless skin… she had always had that before, though no one had ever really noticed. An elegant, straight nose; not for her the cutesy girlish bobs favoured by starlets. High cheekbones slanting under widely spaced eyes, small ears, a delicate jawline, a full mouth. That too had already been hers, although in the heavy, plain setting of her old face its fullness had appeared almost grotesque.
Standing naked in front of the mirror, Silver studied her body. No surgery had been needed here. Just diet and exercise—almost an entire year of it before this svelte, high-breasted figure had emerged from the smothering layers of fat.
Now she had a narrow ribcage and a tiny waist, curving hips and long, long legs.
She looked back into the past, seeing her reflection not as it was now, but as it had been then. She had started overeating as a teenager, partly in compensation for her own deep-seated insecurities, partly out of the guilt induced within her by her aunt.
The awareness that her beloved father, much as he’d loved her, would have preferred her to be a son wasn’t something which had grown on her slowly, but had been cruelly forced upon her by her cousin.
She shivered, remembering with devastating clarity the day her cousin had relentlessly and cruelly explained to her that for her father there could never be a son… someone who would carry on the family name, its titles and burdens… That she, as a daughter, could never inherit them, and that it was through her that her father had contracted the childhood disease which had led to his inability to father any more children.
Charles would inherit… Charles would become the fourteenth Earl of Rothwell on her father’s death… Charles, who if she was lucky might condescend to marry her. And so her insecurity had begun, her awareness of her lack of worthiness to be both her father’s only child and Charles’s wife… and with it her obesity.
How assiduously and malevolently her aunt had nurtured those insecurities. She could see it all so clearly now… as she had not been able to do then.
And Charles… how cleverly Charles had used his mother’s manipulation of her, charming her one moment, spurning her the next… offering her compassion and caring one day and replacing it with coldness and disdain another. And so it had gone on, the constant see-sawing of her emotions, so that her lack of self-worth and her vulnerability had grown at the same pace as her dependence on Charles.
She had totally believed her aunt when the latter had told her that it was her father’s wish that she marry Charles, never dreaming that she might have lied, and so she had grown through her teens adoring her Adonis-like cousin… loving him… wanting him… to such an extent that, when her father had finally begun to appear antagonistic toward Charles, when he had tried to caution her, she had refused to listen, believing herself to be deeply in love with her cousin.
It had been the only thing they had ever quarrelled about… Silver bit her lip, wondering whether, if he were alive now, her father would recognise anything of the daughter he had known in her, or would pass her by in the street as one of her godmothers had done in Gstaad last week.
She had loved her father so much; and she had indirectly been responsible for his death. She shivered suddenly. It wasn’t just a desire to make Charles pay for the hurt he had inflicted on her in rejecting her that was making her put herself through this… this self-torture. Motivating her just as strongly was her deep-rooted belief that justice must be done, that Charles must pay for the crime she knew he had committed. Charles had murdered her father, and, what was more, he had murdered him because he had known that her father stood between him and Rothwell, that the information her father had about Charles would ensure that she broke her engagement to him; and so Charles had killed him. How safe and secure he must feel now… As far as Charles was concerned, both of them were dead, her father and then apparently her. But she was going to rise again from the dead… not as the girl everyone thought had committed suicide, the plain and ugly Geraldine Frances—but as Silver. And she was going to teach him what it meant to love someone, to desire them and to believe those feelings were returned, and then to face rejection.
But, over and above that, she was going to take away from Charles everything he thought he had gained by murdering her father. For that, any sacrifice, any self-torment could be endured.
Now no one would ever recognise her as Geraldine Frances…
She touched one high cheekbone with her fingertips, feeling the living skin. It frightened her sometimes to look into the mirror and see this unfamiliar mask, but she had to suppress that fear. This was what she had wanted, this porcelain perfection of feature… this almost unreal beauty…
She had been frightened this evening as well, when she’d realised how very easily she could fail this last test.
She shivered and pulled on her pyjamas. Cream satin, the fabric severely cut, almost masculinely so, flowed over her body, changing subtly so that it no longer appeared severe, but instead became subtly erotic. She had bought the pyjamas because she felt she was too tall for frilly feminine nightwear, and because she knew that the ancient flannelette nightwear she had worn since she was a teenager, comfortable though it was, could no longer be a part of her life.
Now, as she walked into her bedroom and the coolness of the satin stroked her skin, she remembered what Jake had said to her about wearing silk underwear beneath a pair of jeans and her body tensed angrily.
There had been a point this evening when she had been tempted to accuse him of deliberately drawing out her torture, but then she had remembered his cold distaste when she had first put her proposition to him and she had held back the bitter words, knowing that, no matter how much he disliked her, it wouldn’t make any sense for him to spend any longer with her than was necessary. And anyway, he had been right, she acknowledged drearily.
No matter how hard she tried to forget them, to tell herself that she was now a beautiful, desirable woman, her old inhibitions wouldn’t let go, grimly reinforcing the judgement of his hard, unyielding body, until the rhythm she was trying so desperately to maintain became the beat of painful music to the refrain that pounded over and over again through her mind. Words it would surely take many lifetimes to obliterate, words which she felt were carved upon her soul.
Charles’s words, cruel and condemning, bitter and hurtful… the words he had used to describe her to another woman.
She got into bed and lay there, knowing that she wasn’t going to be able to sleep.
She had been there just over half an hour when Jake knocked on her door and called her name, loud enough for her to hear, but not so loud that it would have woken her had she been asleep.
She was tempted to pretend that she was, but she stifled the pettish instinct, getting up instead and padding over to the door to open it.
‘What do you want?’ she asked him ungraciously.
He smiled mirthlessly. ‘Still sulking? You might be able to afford to waste your time, but I can’t.’
She turned her back on him and said curtly, ‘Save the lecture for tomorrow, would you, Jake? I want to go to sleep.’
‘And you shall. But not yet…’
She looked at him and read the inflexible purpose in the hard bones of his face. She should have anticipated this, and she berated herself mentally for believing that he would allow her to overrule him.
There were two courses open to her now: she could stand her ground and risk having him call the whole thing off, or she could give in.
Great as her desire was to defy him, she couldn’t let their personality clash come between her and the course she had set for herself.
He was looking at her, and despite his blindness the blue eyes were alive with intelligent awareness. That panicked her. She wanted to turn away from him so that he couldn’t look at her, even though she knew it was impossible for him to see her.
‘I’ll come back downstairs,’ she said woodenly.
‘A very wise decision.’ He held open the door, waiting for her. She wanted to protest that she would have to get dressed, and then thought of the intimacies she would have to endure before she was free and gave a faint sigh, preceding him through the door.
The stove was still burning, and she was glad of its warmth. The settee stood in front of her, an implacable reminder of her failure. She thought bitterly that she would never again feel quite the same about that particular piece of furniture.
‘Now,’ Jake instructed her coldly, ‘this time, try to use your intelligence. Think about what you’re doing… about the image you’re projecting. We haven’t been lovers yet, but all the signs are that we will be. The scene is set. It’s up to you to make the most of the opportunity I’m giving you. Remember, when I walk away from you tonight you want me to lie awake remembering the feel of you, the scent of you, aching for you. You want me to forget every other woman I’ve ever held…’
Silver shivered, bitterly aware of how very skilled he was, of how he was using his voice and his imagination, of how he was forcing her to confront her own failure and fears.
She wanted to scream at him that it was no use, that she couldn’t do it, but her stubbornness wouldn’t let her. She had come too far, sacrificed too much.
As she stood there, curling her fingers into tight, hard balls of tension, he said coolly, ‘Stop trying to think of me as him. That immediately sets up barriers you can’t overcome. He’s too important to you. Try instead to imagine me simply as man… all mankind… not a person with characteristics you may or may not like, but merely a symbol of maleness to your femaleness.’
She wanted to tell him that he was wrong about Charles, but she suspected he would know that he wasn’t, so instead she closed her eyes and willed herself to blank out his features, to see him simply as a body, a set of reflexes which she had to activate.
Into the darkness, he added, ‘If it’s the basic pattern of movements that worries you, try improvising slightly. Let your instincts guide you and not your brain.’
What instincts? she longed to demand bitterly. Haven’t you realised yet that I don’t have those kinds of instincts? If I did I wouldn’t need you! But she knew that to lose her temper would achieve nothing. He wasn’t responsible for the past; he was nothing in her life, simply a cipher… a necessary staging post through which she must pass on her self-selected route.
She breathed deeply and evenly, steadying her nerves, and then went over to him, dropping into the now familiar position. He reached for her, and she saw the frown touch his forehead as his fingers slid over satin, but he made no comment, simply disengaging one hand and then the other, so that he could slide his hands up her bare arms beneath the sleeves of her pyjama jacket.
She stiffened instinctively as her body touched his, forgetting for a moment the purpose of his touch—she hadn’t realised how different it would feel to lie against him without the constricting layers of clothes—and then she forced herself to ignore her own reactions and to concentrate instead on his. If she could feel his body so much more intensely through the satin of her pyjamas, then surely he must be correspondingly aware of hers: of the sleek, subtle movement of the fluid fabric as it flowed over her skin. That was what she should be like, she told herself: fluid, amorphous, clinging, silken, inviting his touch, teasing him with her very lack of substance; making him aware of her every subtle movement.
Her hands were on his chest and, as she willed her flesh and bones to mould themselves to his, she smoothed her palms over his shirt-front, levering her torso away from him, the better to allow her hips to sink into him. Think of it as a dance, she told herself, a subtle, dangerous dance which only one of us can control, and as she moved her hips a small, forgotten memory came back to her, a laughing conversation she had overheard between two girls at a party, and she broke the cold dominion of his kiss with the soft pressure of her mouth, mimicking the slow movement of her hips, her mouth open and moist.
Unexpectedly, his throat muscles clenched and then his fingers circled her wrist as though he was going to push her away.
She felt anger and disappointment, bitterness at yet another failure followed by a savage determination to force some reaction for him. She pulled her wrist free and held his face in her hands the way he had done hers, driven by her need to prove to him what she could do, opening her mouth on his, flattening her torso against him, moving her whole body against him, willing him to react, to give her the words of praise she so desperately craved, and when he didn’t she used her teeth sharply against his bottom lip, caught up in a fierce, furious rage of resentment, her hands leaving his face to curl into bitter fists which she beat frantically against his shoulders as she spat furiously, ‘It’s no good! I can’t do it. I’ll never be able to do it.’ Tears of temper and failure burned her throat and eyes.
He fended her off easily, holding her away from him and then shaking her firmly to silence her, saying calmly, ‘That’s enough. And you’re wrong.’
It didn’t penetrate at first, and then, when it did, she went rigid. ‘Wrong?’ She stared at his face, looking for signs of deception, of pity, but there were none. ‘Why didn’t you say something, then, instead of letting me…?’
‘I was about to,’ he told her, extremely drily. ‘But you didn’t seem to want to listen.’
She was almost afraid to believe it. She watched him suspiciously, half afraid he was just playing a cruel joke on her.
‘I’m not lying to you,’ he told her calmly, reading her mind, easing her on to the sofa beside him and then reaching for her hand.
When he placed it against his body and she realised why she tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let her.
‘Stop that,’ he told her curtly. ‘You’re going to have to do far more than touch a man with such shrinking reluctance if you’re going to play the seductress.’
She had known, of course, only somehow, contemplating the intimacies she would have to endure, the skills she would have to learn, hadn’t seemed quite the same as it did now, with her hand forced to lie against the hard pulse that betrayed his arousal.
‘Now,’ he told her quietly as he released her hand, ‘having got this far, we might as well make full use of what you’ve achieved. To arouse a man is easy,’ he told her, ignoring her angry muttered protest. Easy, was it? She didn’t think so. ‘To sustain that arousal, and then to turn mere arousal into desire, and desire into obsession, is something else. So you’ve aroused your victim, shown him that you’re capable of exciting his desire. Now you’ve got to show him how much you want that desire. You’ve got to flatter him into thinking he’s the only man to arouse you to that intensity of desire…’
‘Can’t I just tell him that?’ Silver demanded truculently.
‘You can… and in fact you should, but not at this stage; we’ll get round to that later. For now you just concentrate on convincing him that he’s the ultimate in macho virility.’
He waited for a few seconds, and then said crisply, ‘Think, Silver. You’ve got what you wanted. He’s aroused but he’s vulnerable; the true seductress knows that men don’t like feeling vulnerable. Now you’ve got to restore his pride. You’ve got to convince him that you’re vulnerable. Think,’ he reiterated impatiently. ‘Think of what you’d want him to do if you did actually want him.’
His words rang warning bells in her brain.
‘I’m the one seducing him, not the other way round,’ she reminded him coldly.
‘Yes, and one of the most effective means of seduction is to appear seduced oneself. It’s a simple, basic precept. You arouse him; you pretend to be aroused in turn; you apologise and tell him that you don’t normally react like that. His ego loves the flattery, and immediately, because of your apparent desire for him, you become more desirable to him.
‘I presume you don’t know how to simulate desire. Hence your truculence? It isn’t that difficult…’ His voice was extremely dry. ‘All you have to do is to kiss me as you were doing before…’ She was glad he couldn’t see her face.
‘While you’re doing it, you can take hold of my hand and put it on your breast, or, if I’m already touching you there, you can press yourself against me and make some pretty little moaning sounds. If you can manage to tremble as well, that’s even better. If I don’t take the hint then and start undressing you, you can whisper in my ear how much you’d like to have my mouth against your breast. Think you can manage any of that?’
The question trapped her. She wanted to hurl a denial at him, and yet she sensed that he was deliberately testing her… seeing how serious, how committed she was to the course she had chosen. If she backed out now, she would only have it all to go through again with someone else. At least Jake couldn’t see her. At least he was clinical and detached from her… even in his arousal.
She thought of all the answers she could give him and opted for the one that was honest.
‘I don’t know,’ she told him.
‘Well, shall we see if we can find out?’
She paused, nodded, and then realised that he couldn’t see her and said brusquely, ‘Yes.’
‘Right, then, let’s give it a try.’
She was becoming more adept at summoning up her will-power and focusing her concentration. Perhaps the enforced constant repetition had something to do with it as well, she reflected, acknowledging as she moved towards him how familiar the sensation of Jake’s body against her own had become.
She kissed him as he had told her to, telling herself it was only like climbing a mountain, or skiing down a dangerous slope. It was only another goal she had to reach. She moved, surprised by how easily her muscles slipped into the provocative rhythm, flesh against flesh, muscle against muscle, her softness against his hardness, part and counterpart, two skilfully designed components that, once put together… and then she realised that the reason her body was moving so easily and fluently was that Jake’s was moving with it, helping her… encouraging her.
It was the first time he had done anything other than remain like solid stone, and she felt the same thrill she had that day on the ski-slopes: that surge of knowledge that she would win, that nothing could stand in her way.
Jake was helping her, not so much in accolade to her burgeoning skill, but in a silent acknowledgement that she would succeed… a subtle carrot dangled after the painful sting of the stick.
He broke the kiss and said against her mouth, ‘Stop daydreaming, Silver… My hand, remember?’
She had been so carried away by her own euphoria that she had forgotten. And now her mood was broken. Her body tensed. She felt awkward and uncertain, but she knew that Jake wouldn’t allow her to back out. If she flunked it this time he would make her go over it again and again until she got it, just as he had done earlier, and so she made her body relax, trying to envisage it as fluid satin as she had done before, trying to imagine it as settling smoothly over Jake’s body, remembering that it was her task to arouse him as she closed her eyes and kissed him, curling her fingers round his wrist as she lifted his hand to her breast.
Charles had never touched her body, and she had learned why. He had found her too repulsive. Just for a second she saw herself as she had been then: ungainly, overweight, insecure, and painfully shy.
She was none of these things now. She had a body now that was sleek and streamlined, her flesh smooth and silky.
She now had the kind of body that any man would want to touch.
As she registered the contact of Jake’s hand on her body, long, lean fingers splayed out across her satin pyjama jacket, radiating heat through the fabric and on to her skin, she wondered if she would ever totally manage to vanquish the past and the woman she had been then.
Against her ear Jake’s voice warned, ‘Remember, you’re supposed to want this. You’re supposed to be making me feel I’m driving you wild.’
Driving her wild. He was—wild with anger and tension and insecurity and a dozen or more other negative emotions she thought she had already put behind her.
There was no pressure in the touch of his hand, no more intimacy or awareness than if he had simply been touching her arm to help her across a street.
But she was aware of him; aware of the heat and alienness of him where his hand covered her; aware of the softness of her own body, of the curve of her breasts and the sensitivity of her nipples where the satin touched them.
She shuddered as she felt Jake’s chest expand with impatience.
‘Don’t think about me,’ he commanded her harshly, withdrawing his hand. ‘Don’t think about me… don’t think about anyone; think only of yourself, of what you’re projecting… of what you want to achieve. You’re so goal-orientated; think of this as a goal you have to achieve, let your senses monitor the degree of your success or lack of it… Let them tell you how the man touching you is feeling. Desire is a very sensitive emotion; only by understanding that will you be able to truly control and manipulate a man’s sexual reaction to you.’
Silver had stopped listening to him; he was pressing her too hard, demanding too much of her too soon, and she thought she knew the reason why. He was so anxious to be rid of her and get his money that he was trying to set a pace it was impossible for her to match.
‘Listen to me, damn you!’ he swore at her suddenly.
Suddenly her control snapped.
‘I’m not like you,’ she told him angrily. ‘I’m not so used to casual sexual intimacy that it doesn’t matter to me who…’
She gasped with pain as his fingers bit deeply into the soft flesh of her upper arms.
‘You know nothing about me,’ he told her tersely. ‘Nothing. If you’ve changed your mind and want to bring this whole thing to an end, then say so, and stop trying to manufacture an excuse.’ His mouth twisted and he released her, adding unexpectedly, ‘And, for your information, I do not use and never have used sex indiscriminately. Nor have I ever used it as a weapon,’ he told her devastatingly. ‘What is it you really want from this man, Silver? You told Annie you wanted revenge—–’
Her mouth tightening, Silver interrupted angrily, ‘She had no right to tell you that.’
‘She was concerned about you. Annie’s like that. She can’t stop herself from caring, from becoming involved. A human weakness I doubt you’d understand.’
Almost she told him, and then she stopped herself just in time, sensing the cleverly baited trap. It would be madness to allow this man to know too much about her… to witness her vulnerabilities.
‘Why?’ he probed, ignoring her tension. ‘Why all this…?’ His hand touched her face fleetingly.
‘I have my reasons,’ she told him freezingly.
‘A woman spurned,’ he mocked. ‘What really motivates you, do you know? Anger… hatred… love…?’
Silver shuddered, the fine hairs on her arms rising warningly. He was too aware, too sensitive in some way to her most private thoughts and feelings. It was almost as though he himself knew what it was to be driven… to be possessed… obsessed almost. And as for that last softly spoken challenge… Please God she no longer felt any love for Charles. Hatred, anger, yes… she needed them just as much as she needed her driving hunger for retribution…
‘What is it exactly you hope to achieve?’ Jake pressed, and then added, ‘Oh, I know what your physical goal is, but what satisfaction do you expect to gain from achieving it?’
Silver almost wished she hadn’t allowed him to see that shudder of sensation which had made him take his hands from her body. In its own way this was an almost equally painful form of torture—this probing into her mind, her feelings. Physically, at least most of the time, she could hide her reactions from him, but mentally, emotionally… he was far too good at finding her weak points and playing on them.
Holding up her head, she said coolly, ‘The Chinese have a saying: “There is nothing so amusing as to see an enemy fall from a high roof.” I intend to make sure Charles falls from a very high roof indeed.’
‘You intend to see that he falls… or do you mean that you intend to make sure he does, by giving him a push? Be careful,’ he warned her firmly. ‘The Chinese have another saying: “He who seeks revenge must dig two graves”…’ He paused deliberately, and Silver had the uncanny sensation of feeling her resolve waver. It was like discovering that what she had thought to be absolutely solid ground had suddenly turned to something treacherous, without substance, and she fought against it in panic almost as though she was in fact losing her balance and being sucked into something dangerous and unstable.
‘Oh, and by the way,’ Jake told her softly, ‘you got your quotation wrong. In actual fact it goes: “There is nothing so amusing as to see a friend fall from a high roof.” A very cynical race, the Chinese, but perhaps the mistake was Freudian in origin and you aren’t sure whether he is your enemy or your friend. Is it revenge you want, Silver, or is it something else?’
‘What are you trying to say?’ she demanded, fighting back her panic. This was worse, much worse than the physical intimacy which had sent her flying headlong down this perilous path.
‘I’m just trying to warn you about the pitfalls you’re going to encounter…’
She laughed then, a too high, too sharp sound that grated warningly against her own ears, betraying her panic and her fear; and if her laughter betrayed those emotions to her, how much more must it betray to Jake’s far more astute ears?
‘Why?’ she demanded acidly. ‘I’ve hired you to teach me about seduction, Jake, not morality. Anyway, what makes you such an expert? You don’t know how I feel or why…’
‘Wrong.’
He said it so blandly, so emotionlessly that it was a few seconds before she realised just what the word meant.
She blinked, and then focused on him. His face was stern in repose, unyielding, his mouth controlled, everything about him so diametrically opposed to all that the word cloaked that she thought for a moment that he was lying to her.
‘I know exactly what motivates you, Silver, exactly what you’re feeling, and I can tell you this: you’re going to have to be far more resolute, far more determined, far more single-minded if you want to succeed. Revenge, just like any other human emotion, is a two-edged sword, as dangerous to the person who wields it as the person it is wielded against. This man you’re so determined to destroy… do you really think he’s going to calmly allow you to destroy him… that he won’t try to destroy you in turn?’
‘I’m not a fool, Jake.’
‘No, you’re a spoilt and wealthy young woman, who obviously believes that her wealth can buy her anything and everything she wants,’ he responded equably.
The unfairness of his allegation momentarily robbed Silver of her ability to retaliate.
‘You’re wrong,’ she told him emotionally, forgetting the warnings she had already given herself about lowering her defences with him. ‘I may be rich, but as for being spoilt… Materially, perhaps, but emotionally… apart from my father, I doubt that anyone has ever given a thought to my emotional needs… love—–’
‘Love?’ Jake interrupted, taunting her. ‘I thought it was revenge you wanted.’
‘It is!’ She realised that her hands were balled into fists and that her temper was dangerously close to breaching her self-control. Taking a steadying breath, she demanded less emotively, ‘What are you trying to do, Jake?’
There was a small pause and then he said quietly, ‘What I’m trying to do is to make you face up to reality. You think you’re invulnerable, but you’re not… you’re far too easily swayed by your emotions.’
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ she told him abruptly. She turned away from him dismissively, but he forestalled her, taking hold of her in a grip she couldn’t break.
‘No,’ he told her quietly, ‘that isn’t the way it’s done, sulking like a child when things don’t go as you want them to. You’ve got to learn to make your own weaknesses work for you… to use them and to conceal them—and conceal them well—but first you’ve got to learn to recognise and acknowledge them. Now, if you’ve got over your little tantrum, we’ll start again.’
He felt the tiny shudder that rippled across her skin and was momentarily caught off guard by an unexpected twist of fellow feeling, of sympathy almost… sympathy for this woman…
Moralising, he taunted himself. Was what she was doing so very different from what he himself was doing? Both of them were motivated by the same need… but that was the only similarity between them. She wanted to hurt and destroy a man who had rejected her, while he… As he felt the floodgates to his memories tremble beneath the force of his own pain he clamped back on his thoughts…
He had come so close to achieving his goal, only to discover that while he turned his back his entire world had been destroyed. Now he sought vengeance against those who had wrought that destruction. One of the men was dead already, murdered by a rival drug baron, in a bomb blast before Jake could intervene. Two of the others were in American gaols, awaiting sentence. It was the fourth and so far unknown member of the quartet, who had been responsible for the destruction of the one person who had mattered to him, whom he now sought… All he knew was that the man was based in London, but where and who he was were things he still needed to discover, and the only way he was going to discover them was with Silver’s money, which was why…
Which was why he could not afford to allow himself the luxury of feeling anything for her… especially not sympathy.
‘Now, if you’re ready, we’ll start again,’ he told her curtly.
That betraying shudder had left her feeling cold and afraid.
It seemed to Silver that it was a long, long time before she heard Jake saying coolly, ‘That’s better, but there’s still a lot of mileage left for improvement. Remember, you’re seducing me while allowing me to think you’re out of your mind with wanting me. Try and co-ordinate everything now,’ he instructed her. ‘Here.’ He tapped her bottom briefly. ‘And here.’ He repeated the brief instructive gesture alongside her ribcage. ‘Another little theatrical shudder, a soft moan or two, and then we’ll call it quits for tonight.’
Silver wondered what he’d say if she told him the truth—that the shudder hadn’t been faked and that it hadn’t been caused by desire. She thanked God he couldn’t read minds.
She felt physically and mentally exhausted, drained of the desire to do anything other than match his exacting standards as quickly as she could so that she could be released from this purgatory to go back to bed.
She moved automatically, mentally registering surprise at how easy the rhythm was now becoming. He moved against her, helping her. He was probably as eager to get the whole thing over as she was herself. She didn’t kiss him; it was too much of an effort to concentrate on everything else. She wasn’t sure she could manage to fake a shudder, and tried thinking about walking barefoot on ice or something equally shiver-inducing, but Jake’s free hand touched the base of her spine, pressing her against his body and moving her so that as she automatically moved her hips in the rhythm he had taught her she felt his arousal, and the shudder she had been fighting for came naturally. Like a perfectly synchronised pattern of actions, his hand tightened fractionally on her breast, his thumb rubbing over the nipple so that her throat-muscles contracted in shock, and without even knowing she was doing it she produced the requisite moan… of protest, not desire… but that didn’t seem to matter because Jake turned his head and said into her ear, ‘Good, that’s better.’ And then to her shock he nipped ungently at her soft earlobe and transferred his hand from her spine to her nape, covering her mouth with his own. When she stiffened, he didn’t release her, but moved his hand from her breast to her hip, tapping the bone almost painfully smartly and then gripping it, reminding her that she had stopped moving. Holding her immobile, he moved his own body against her, forcing her to follow its movements and not letting go until he was satisfied with the way she matched its rhythm.
Against her mouth, he said grimly, ‘Now, this time, let’s try and get it all together, shall we?’
And then he bit sharply at her bottom lip so that she opened her mouth in protest.
His tongue thrust sinuously against her own, matching the movement of his body; his hand returned to her breast, cupping it and then stroking it, the intimacy catching her off guard so that for a moment she panicked and started to freeze, until her mind cancelled the warning signals from her body and told it that it had nothing to fear, and that this was simply a necessary part of what she must endure.
She tried to recapture the sense of power she had known earlier—the sense of her own infinite superiority as a woman, of being able to control and arouse this man—but the powerful movements of his body were beginning to intimidate her. She mustn’t let that happen. She must remember that she was the one in control. His thumb touched her nipple, his nail slowly drawing a circle against its satin-covered areola. She shuddered and remembered in time her instructions, dragging her mouth from his to press it against his throat as she made a whimpering sound into his skin.
The pressure of his hand increased, something she hadn’t expected. The movement of his thumb against the satin and the satin against her breast was abrasive in a way that made her skin tauten and swell. His hips lifted and thrust against her, his legs parting so that she slid between them. His hand slid down her back to the base of her spine, pressing her into his body.
Against her ear, he reminded her, ‘You haven’t finished yet. Tell me you want me, remember?’
For a moment her mind was blank. She couldn’t think for her awareness of his arousal, and then, when she did remember what she still had to do, her control faltered.
Think of him as Charles, she told herself fiercely. Think of Charles wanting you… Think of triumph. And before that image could fade she slid her hands over the strong column of his neck and into his hair, and arched her body upwards while she pushed his head down.
‘The words… remember the words…’
The words. I mustn’t forget the words, she thought frantically, otherwise it will all have to be done again, and as she moved she pressed her lips against his ear and said quickly, ‘T-t-touch me. I—I want to feel your mouth against my—my skin…’
She felt the heat of his breath in the V of her pyjama jacket and for a moment she thought he was actually going to prolong the lesson and take it a stage further, but to her relief he didn’t. He lifted his head as he eased her away from him so that she could sink on to the floor and gather her knees up protectively against her body, wrapping her arms round them as she waited for his verdict.
‘Not totally convincing,’ he told her drily, ‘but not a total disaster either. Now we both know just how much work we have to do, on a scale of nought to ten.
‘Tomorrow we’ll take a different look at what being seductive involves. A woman can be just as alluring fully dressed as she can in a situation like this evening’s, but that involves knowing a lot more about the male body and its responses than you know at the moment.
‘Starting from tomorrow, we’ll go through what turns a man on. As an example, just now, instead of asking me to touch you, you could have opened my shirt and teased my nipples with your mouth…’ He got up, stretching his body until Silver heard the bones crack, and then, as he walked towards the kitchen, added unemotionally, ‘Licking, sucking, even biting would have been an extremely seductive way of showing me exactly what you wanted, and of course it would have had the added benefit from your point of view of increasing my arousal.’
He stopped by the door to the kitchen and added, ‘I’m not going to offer you any supper. You’ve got some homework to do.’
He reached down to the wooden dresser set into the wall and removed a pile of books.
‘Sex manuals,’ he told her drily. ‘Read them.’
‘I already have,’ Silver told him flatly.
‘Well, now you can read them again,’ he told her inexorably. ‘You’ve got a week to read them in, and at the end of that week I’ll be giving you a set of questions to answer on them.’
‘What?’ Silver couldn’t believe it. ‘I’ve already told you, sex manuals can’t give me the expertise I need. If they could, I wouldn’t be here with you,’ she added bitterly.
‘Maybe not, but you’re still going to read them.’
Angrily Silver contemplated leaving the books where he had put them on the top of the dresser, but she owned that she was really too exhausted to get involved in a lengthy argument. She could take them upstairs; she need not actually read them… and if he thought she was going to answer his damned questions…
‘Amazing,’ he said quietly behind her when she turned her back on him. ‘I can feel your anger from here, and yet I can hold you against my body and feel nothing. Try projecting as much energy into feeling desire as you do into feeling rage,’ he instructed her. ‘It would be a far more worthwhile expenditure of energy.’
‘I don’t want to feel desire,’ she gritted at him. ‘I don’t need to feel it…’
‘If you honestly believe that, then nothing I can teach you will be of the slightest benefit to you,’ he told her coldly, ‘and you’re wasting my time as well as your own. Stop behaving like a petulant child, Silver. You’re the one who wanted this, and you’re paying me two million pounds to get it. If you’re not prepared to take this thing seriously, then you might as well walk out of here now and save us both a lot of aggravation.’
Biting her lip, Silver walked away from him without making any response.
Later, as she lay in bed, she acknowledged the point he had made. She must learn to adopt some of his own cool ability to distance himself emotionally. This time here with him was a chasm she had to cross, no matter how painful or frightening that crossing. There was no way she could just close her eyes and will herself over it, no matter how much she might ache to be safely on the other side.
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