Chapter Thirteen

CONNOR HADN’T GONE to bed. He was leaning on the stove, staring into a glass of something when Hetty came into the kitchen.

She felt awkward seeing him, as if he had read her thoughts, but tempted as she was to scoot back upstairs she couldn’t do it without looking a complete fool. ‘I’m just going to make some cocoa.’ Her voice sounded husky after the singing. She cleared her throat. ‘Do you want some?’ she added, trying to pretend that there was nothing between them except a little enmity.

He didn’t reply, so she took a half-empty bottle of milk from the fridge and tipped it into a pan from the drainer.

‘You don’t make cocoa like that.’

‘Oh?’

‘No. You mix the powder with boiling water until it makes a paste, and then add condensed milk and bring it to the boil. Preferably over a camp-fire.’

‘It sounds disgusting, and we haven’t got any condensed milk.’ A joke about the stove being perfectly straight flickered into her mind, but it wasn’t the moment for feeble puns.

‘You’d better make hot chocolate then. But not for me. It’s insipid after the real thing.’

Hetty wondered how on earth she had felt desire for this disagreeable man. ‘Would you mind moving, so I can put the pan on the stove?’

‘Why don’t you use the gas cooker?’

‘It’s extravagant to use that when the stove is going anyway. Besides, if I put this on the gas I’ll have to watch it like a hawk and I want to make a sandwich.’ He stayed where he was. ‘We only had bread and cheese for supper, you know.’

She waited another couple of seconds but then, when he still didn’t move, she went to move him out of the way bodily.

He caught hold of her wrist. ‘Don’t push me around.’

‘If you’d shift yourself I wouldn’t have to.’ She glared at him, milk-pan in her hand, extreme dislike in her heart.

Like territorial animals, neither of them would give an inch. She could feel her pulse leaping under the pressure of his fingers, although his hold wasn’t tight. He looked down at her, his mouth compressed with annoyance, his eyes narrowed. With his free hand, he took the saucepan from her and put it down without looking where it went. It landed at the back of the stove, leaning at a dangerous angle.

She took a breath to complain about his carelessness – but didn’t. Breathing was all she was up to, and that suddenly seemed quite difficult. In and out, she reminded herself. In and out. It’s quite simple, you’ve done it before.

The saucepan abandoned, he put his hand on the back of her head and pushed his fingers into her hair, still slightly damp from when she had washed it. She let herself sway towards him, although he was applying no pressure. Her nose landed on his breastbone. His sweater smelt of woodsmoke and was rough against her skin. A tiny piece of lichen had caught in the wool. She examined it closely.

After what felt like a lifetime, he released her wrist and lifted her chin. ‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ he murmured, and, very gently, lowered his mouth to her parted lips.

She closed her eyes and didn’t move. She just surrendered to the languor that swept over her as she felt his kiss, so chaste it barely counted as a kiss, merely the lightest brush of his lips against hers. From her lips he moved to her cheek, releasing her chin. At her cheekbone he closed his mouth and applied enough pressure for her to feel it.

She opened her eyes and saw that his were closed. He looked as if he were praying, his lashes a dark semi-circle on the sharp angle of his cheek. He seemed suddenly vulnerable, and, moved, she put her arms around him, hugging his large, rough torso. She heard his heart thumping and then his chest rumbled in protest.

‘Don’t do that.’ It was the growl of a bear, but he didn’t pull away.

She shifted so her feet fitted into the spaces between his, her body flush against his, and rested her head against his jumper. She could feel the muscles beneath the wool, hard and well-defined. It seemed a very long time since she had held a man in her arms. Alistair was much slenderer than Connor, and hadn’t gone in for hugging much.

Connor’s arms came round her now, and they remained together, him leaning back against the stove, Hetty leaning forward against him. For a long time neither of them moved, for a long time she didn’t want anything more. But his hands felt warm through her pyjama top and suddenly hugging wasn’t enough.

‘What about my hot chocolate?’ she breathed, when she had despaired of him doing anything other than just hold her.

‘Damn your hot chocolate.’ This time his lips weren’t gentle and they landed full on her waiting mouth.

Her senses, held in check for so long, leapt to meet his kiss, which was hard and angry. She had her own axe to grind and kissed him back just as fiercely. Then old grievances were forgotten as passion took over.

Hetty’s neck and back were arching under his onslaught, she swayed slightly and he felt it, and straightened up. Terrified lest he decide the kissing was over, she pushed her hands under his sweater and shirt and found his waist, then the part where his belt and trousers gaped from the small of his back. She took a firm hold of his belt, making it difficult for him to run away, but he was still too far away from her, and her neck was still at a horrible angle.

‘I’m terribly uncomfortable. Let’s go into the sitting room,’ she suggested when he stopped for breath. She was panting slightly.

Her suggestion brought him to his senses. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. We shouldn’t be doing this at all, let alone horizontally.’

‘But we are, so we might as well do it in comfort. Unless you don’t want to?’ She hadn’t realized coquetry was in her nature until that moment. Up to then, it hadn’t needed to be. Now, she looked up at him, her eyes wide with innocent pleading, one hand creeping up to caress the back of his neck.

He grunted, caught her wandering hand, and frogmarched her along the passage to the sitting room, where the fire was finally going well.

He stopped in the doorway. ‘Seriously, Hetty . . .’

Hetty took hold of his hand this time and pulled him to the sofa. ‘I’ve spent too much time being serious lately. Let’s be silly.’ She sat down and tugged at his hand.

Connor let out a long-held-on-to breath, and with it went a lot of good resolutions.

Hetty found the Connor who wasn’t inhibited by scruples very different as a lover. He picked her up and sat her on his lap, organizing her body so her head rested in the crook of his arm, her bottom was comfortably on his lap, and her feet were on the sofa, clear of the draughts. Then he turned his attention to the matter in hand.

She had been kissed before, lots of times, but with Alistair it had always been the preliminary for sex. Connor kissed with surprising dedication and thoroughness. This was the main course, not the appetizer.

Hetty’s insides began to melt almost immediately as his teeth grazed the tender inside of her mouth, and his tongue drew hers into loving interaction.

She sighed when he drew away and dotted little kisses tenderly about her face and neck. She inhaled the musky, sexy smell of him, which owed more to nature than Yves Saint Laurent and further inflamed her increasing passion. She willed him to lower his head a bit and kiss the little vee of skin that was all her pyjamas revealed. But he wouldn’t go below her tartan collar.

She couldn’t complain of neglect, though. His mouth was creating a wave of sensation that none of Alistair’s fancy techniques had produced. She would have been content just to lie there on the sofa being kissed for ever. Almost.

His fingers dangled beneath her collar at the back of her neck, finding the little short hairs and causing them to stir. Having done that, they found their way round the front, and he stroked the little hollow behind her ear, her lobe, wandering down towards her collar-bone. There he stopped, touching nothing that wasn’t exposed, uncovering nothing that was not already revealed to him.

Perhaps it didn’t matter. Everywhere became an erogenous zone under his roughened fingertips. But it was too tantalizing.

She placed his hand over her breast in a way that caused one of his fingers to land under the lapel of her pyjama top. He didn’t pull away immediately, but he wouldn’t let her move it further. He distracted her with kisses and then removed his hand, transferring it to her right foot.

Here, he allowed his fingers enough liberty to creep up her pyjama trousers to her ankle-bone, encircling it with delicate caresses until she squirmed with a half-ticklish pleasure, which seemed to penetrate all the most intimate parts of her body.

Although his hands on her feet did have magic properties, there were other points on her body which would have appreciated such dedicated attention.

‘I wouldn’t think you were raping me if you undid my pyjamas. In fact, I think I’d quite like it.’

‘I can’t. I promised Samuel I wouldn’t seduce you. I only have so much self-control.’

So did Hetty, and all this restraint, though admirable, was starting to get on her nerves. ‘Just a couple of buttons wouldn’t hurt, surely?’

‘You know perfectly well it wouldn’t end with a couple of buttons. I promised Samuel.’

Hetty muttered a curse in the direction of her sick relation. ‘It’s all right. I didn’t promise him anything – except to look after the house. I could seduce you.’

Connor regarded her for what seemed like an age, and then a slow, infinitely sexy smile started at the crooked corner of his mouth and spread until he was grinning. ‘Go on then. If you dare.’

Any remaining doubts she had were banished by this last utterance. She had never taken the initiative in lovemaking before, and had certainly never planned a seduction, but she felt quite certain that she dared. The only question was, where? She felt sure if she and Connor moved, she would lose her nerve, and he would discover more of the scruples with which he was so amply supplied.

‘Get up a minute.’ She tugged at his jumper. ‘I need to make a few adjustments.’

He got up and watched as Hetty pulled the sofa cushions on to the floor and arranged them into a mattress. She took the rug that lay over the back of the sofa and spread it on the cushions. Then she lit the candles that Phyllis had put in the candlesticks, strictly for decoration. Hetty dismissed the momentary flicker of guilt that thoughts of Phyllis caused, and continued her preparations. She gathered all the loose cushions from all the surrounding furniture and piled them around the makeshift bed.

‘There,’ she said when she had finished. ‘What about that?’

‘It would be more comfortable on a bed. Why don’t we go upstairs?’

If she told him how she felt about moving, he would think she had changed her mind and back out.

‘Mine’s only a single. Much narrower than this.’

He nodded. ‘And I can’t possibly take you to Samuel’s bed. We’ll have to make do on the floor.’

He seemed to sense that her bravado had been leaking from her as she gathered cushions, and drew her gently down to join him, as he knelt on them. He took her face in his hands and kissed her.

‘Are you sure about this?’

Hetty nodded. ‘Quite sure.’

At first he kissed her with all the gentleness he had shown at the beginning, but as she relaxed he led her back to the passion she had felt earlier. Their kneeling figures threw huge shadows on the walls until she pulled him down on top of her and tugged at his clothes.

When he was stripped to the waist, each muscle and rib shadowed in the firelight, she moistened her lips, yearning to feel his skin against hers, with no cloth or buttons between them. Her pyjamas were still done up to the neck.

‘You could undo my top,’ she said, remembering that last time she suggested it he had refused.

She thought he was going to refuse again, he looked at her for such a long time. ‘You undo it,’ he said eventually. ‘You’re the one in charge.’

She took up his challenge and pushed him down so she was kneeling above him. She almost tore her buttons off in her haste to rid herself of her jacket, and then thought that she should have undone each one with tantalizing slowness, making him wait for the sight of her breasts.

But her assertive gesture made her feel powerful, exciting her and him. She felt in control, of her pleasure and his. She leant forward to brush her nipples slowly across his chest. Now, she would make him wait.

He groaned.

‘Am I hurting you?’ She thought she must be kneeling on some part of him.

‘No,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Just don’t stop.’

After a while, he took one of her nipples into his mouth, the other he caressed with his hand. It was her turn to groan, and she slumped down beside him, surrendering herself to every sensation their bodies could give each other. She sighed with satisfaction when he pulled off her pyjama bottoms and she was naked at last.

A little later he raised his head and took hold of her hands, which were fumbling with his belt buckle. ‘What are we going to do about contraception? Are you on the pill?’

She blushed to think that contraception hadn’t occurred to her until he mentioned it. One of the first positive things she did after Alistair’s betrayal was to flush away three months’ supply.

‘You haven’t got any condoms, I suppose?’ he asked.

‘Of course not!’ She was indignant. ‘Why should I have?’

He gave a shuddering sigh. ‘It was a long shot.’

‘What about you? Haven’t you got anything?’

‘No! I promised not to lay a finger on you, remember?’

‘But you might have laid a finger on someone else. Samuel didn’t ask you to take a vow of chastity, did he?’

Connor pulled himself up so he was sitting on his heels. ‘No, but I really didn’t foresee myself having any sort of affair while I was in England. And they’re not the sort of things I buy just in case.’

‘Oh.’

‘It’s too late for the pubs to still be open, or I’d raid a machine.’

‘You mean – we have to stop?’

‘We can’t have unprotected sex. I’d never forgive myself, and Samuel would disinherit me.’

She dismissed the thought that this might have its advantages – for the house anyway. Briefly she imagined herself telling Peter and Phyllis that the reason the house was no longer under threat was because Connor had made her pregnant and been struck out of Samuel’s will. Would they think she’d sacrificed her virtue in a noble cause? Or that she was a slut?

She turned her mind back to the insoluble problem. She felt bereft, unbearably cheated. She knew she would never have the courage to do anything like this again, and he wouldn’t touch her because of his stupid promise.

‘We couldn’t just – take a chance?’

‘No.’

He certainly wasn’t going to let her take it, even if she was foolish enough to risk it. ‘Could you just hold me?’ She knew she sounded pathetic, but she couldn’t bear the thought of them putting their clothes back on and going up to their cold, separate beds.

‘I can do a little better than that.’ He lay her gently back down, pulled her to him and kissed her until she had forgotten her disappointment. Then with gentle, subtle fingers, he found her secret places and tended them until at last she shuddered to a climax. Afterwards he held her shaking body, pulling the blanket round her so she wouldn’t feel cold.

She bit back her tears, unbearably moved by his tenderness. Even her limited experience told her that he’d been exceptionally unselfish, that he must be aching with unfulfilled desire. But he just murmured into her hair and, later, found her pyjamas.

‘Come on,’ he said eventually, when he’d put his shirt and sweater back on, ‘I’ll take you up to bed.’

‘I feel so guilty. I seduced you against your will, and we couldn’t even make love properly.’

‘I was very willing. If I hadn’t been you wouldn’t have got past first base, I assure you.’

‘I’ve never known what the bases are – do you?’

He chuckled. ‘One day I’ll show you.’

‘I do feel so bad.’

‘Because of what happened?’

‘Because of what didn’t happen. I should have thought about contraception. It’s so unfair for you.’

‘It’s just as much my fault. I thought about contraception when I first sent you off to bed. If I’d mentioned it then, you wouldn’t have come near me.’

‘But you didn’t.’

He shook his head. ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Now, come along upstairs.’

She got stiffly to her feet. ‘I’ll have to sort out the room. If Phyllis sees it like this –’

‘She’ll know what we’ve been up to. Don’t worry, you go to bed. I’ll tidy up.’

She placed her hand shyly on his chest. ‘Will you come in and say good-night?’

He gave another shuddering sigh. ‘If you’re not asleep. Now off you go. I’ve only got so much will-power.’

Hetty went quickly to the door, and paused on the threshold. ‘You won’t forget the dogs, will you?’

‘Just go!’

She heard him come up to bed, go to the bathroom, pause at her door and then go to his own room. She knew he probably realized she wasn’t asleep, but he didn’t come in.

She hoped it was himself he didn’t trust, but she had a horrid feeling that it was her. He had shown such incredible restraint, when she was showing none, would have taken any risk. Her feelings for him were so uncontrolled. With Alistair she had put herself on the pill, had waited until she was fully protected, and even then insisted that Alistair wore a condom.

He had complained that it was belt and braces – she had told him firmly that the pill didn’t prevent infection. She could hear herself now, sounding sensible to the point of prissiness. At the time she had wondered at Alistair even suggesting a condom might not be necessary, but then remembered that he knew she was a virgin. He had nothing to risk. She had everything.

With Connor it had all been the other way round. She had been the initiator right from the beginning, and he had held her off as hard as he could. For her sake.

It took all her will-power not to wait until he was asleep and creep into his bed. Not for the sex they hadn’t shared, but for the closeness, the tenderness that they had. Her last conscious thought was that she was in danger of falling in love with Conan the Barbarian.