The Hidden Years

Dizzy with the tumult of sensations inside her, Lizzie could only cling to him, innocently offering herself to him, wanting only to please him.

When he released her, she felt disorientated and bereft.

‘Which way is it…this place?’ Kit was demanding, hoarsely.

As she pointed in the direction of the glade, Lizzy realised guiltily that Mary’s shoes were going to be ruined. They had to cross two fields and then fight their way down the overgrown pathway to get to the glade and Mary’s courts were not designed for such stuff.

Neither, it seemed, were Kit’s flannels and blazer. He frowned impatiently when the brambles caught in the fabric, and complained that she might have warned him what to expect. His irritation jarred a little but Lizzie dismissed those feelings.

The path seemed more overgrown than it had been the last time she had visited the glade a few weeks ago, but at last she could see the glint of sunlight on water through the tangled undergrowth and branches and when at last they broke through into the silence of the sun-dappled clearing she asked breathlessly, ‘Will this be all right?’

‘Well, we certainly won’t be disturbed,’ Kit told her, examining their surroundings, and walking towards the dilapidated summer-house. Personally he would have preferred the comfort of a double bed, but beggars couldn’t be choosers and the woman running the boarding-house where he was staying had made it plain that she did not allow her guests to bring in ‘friends’.

‘Pity you didn’t think to bring a rug,’ Kit added as he studied their surroundings.

‘But it is private, isn’t it?’ Lizzie asked him anxiously, suddenly desperate to placate him and win some word of approval, knowing that she was somehow responsible for that frown of displeasure which had banished the warmth of his smile and hating herself for it.

‘Oh, it is private,’ Kit agreed, and suddenly he was smiling at her again so that her heart and body were flooded with warmth and love. She went eagerly towards him, feeling as though she had stepped into heaven itself when he took hold of her arm and led her inside the summer-house, and then turned her more fully into his arms.

Even with familiarity the sensation of his tongue moving erotically within her mouth didn’t lose its power to make her body ache and melt, Lizzie recognised, thrilled by the way Kit was moving against her, silently telling her how much he loved and wanted her.

‘You know how much I want you, don’t you?’ he told her thickly. She trembled, too full of emotion to speak, tremulously eager to show him how much she loved him…how much she needed him. She was still so bemused by it all, still caught up in the miracle of it all, totally blinded to reality by her innocence and her love.

In the past, a lifetime ago, had she really been a girl who had believed idiotically that the physical aspects of love were its least important, that the physical consummation of love was something unimportant and even faintly sordid, something to be endured rather than enjoyed? If so, she was discovering how ignorant she had been, how blind and unfit to be the recipient of the love of a man like Kit.

That he needed her and that he was so open and urgent in that need touched her with tenderness that bordered on the maternal. When they were apart he would have these memories of her to bring him safely back to her, and as he kissed her and held her against his body she recognised that what she was experiencing now was a world away from her girlish dreams of what love might be.

How could it be wrong to experience such pleasure…such joy…to feel her pulses leap as Kit kissed her face and her throat, as his hands caressed her sun-warmed body through her borrowed clothes?

‘You don’t need this on, do you?’

He was already unfastening the cardigan, exposing the V-neckline of her dress and the softness of her skin. She tensed a little suddenly, made nervous by the way he was looking at her and Kit, who had thought himself long beyond ever allowing his reactions to escape his own control, was almost angered by the sensation that coiled through him as the sunlight slanted across her body and he saw quite clearly through the thin cotton the shape and shadowing of her nipples. He had already known that she was naked beneath her dress, but the unexpected glimpse of her body through it was somehow more erotic, more arousing than if he had been looking at her naked body, and, as he removed the bulky cardigan from her stiff body, he was suddenly possessed by a frenzy of need so sharply intense that almost before he had finished his hands were gripping her waist, his head descending so that his mouth could find the dark-fleshed peak and punish it for its temerity in so arousing him.

Lizzie had never felt a man’s hands on her body so intimately, never mind his mouth, and the sensation of Kit’s teeth savaging her flesh froze her into immobility, and alarm. It was far too much, far too soon.

As he felt her tension, her resistance, Kit cursed silently. For a moment he had forgotten her lack of experience, but now her body was forcibly reminding him of it, causing his own flesh to ache with resentment. He was almost tempted to take hold of her and make her body accept his, but she was so small, so delicately made that he could hurt her easily if he did. There had been an innocent young girl once before; a pretty little thing from the village. That had been before he had learned not to play in his own backyard. Her father had complained to his parents. His father had been furious with him. He had been forced to buy her family off. It was a pity that this one happened to know his cousin.

If she chose to go running to Edward… Not that there was a damn thing that Edward could do about it… Except tell Lillian…

His mouth had grown still on her body. Relief unlocked her muscles into shaky weakness. She felt sick and tremulous. She had known that men enjoyed touching a woman’s breasts, but she had not known…never dreamed…

Despite the sunshine, and the musty scented warmth of the summer-house, she suddenly felt so cold that her teeth had started to chatter.

He still wanted her, Kit recognised, and it wasn’t too late to retrieve the situation. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart,’ he told her, murmuring the words in her ear, so that she wouldn’t see the lie for what it was. ‘But you know it really was your own fault.’

When she tensed again, and turned towards him, her eyes dark with confusion, he smiled ruefully at her. ‘Coming out dressed like that…tempting me like that…’

Subtly, cleverly, he shifted the responsibility, the blame, so that Lizzie, who had felt uncomfortable enough about her appearance to start with, now flushed dark red and bit nervously at her bottom lip.

‘I’m sorry if I frightened you,’ Kit told her, smiling at her as he saw her reaction. He could perhaps turn the situation to his advantage.

‘I didn’t know…I didn’t realise,’ Lizzie was apologising abjectly. ‘I—’

‘I know… I know…’ Kit took her back in his arms, stroking her hair. ‘The trouble is I want you so very much, and you don’t have the experience…’

Immediately Lizzie tensed again, hearing the reproach in his voice, wincing beneath the implied criticism.

‘Let’s try again, shall we?’ Kit suggested, and her heart bounded with the relief of knowing that despite her deficiencies he still wanted her.

Shyly she nodded her head, blushing harder when he added, ‘Let’s take this off, then, shall we?’

His fingers were already deftly unfastening the buttons on her dress, freeing her breasts to his eyes and his hands.

He wasn’t going to make the same mistake this time, Kit told himself, and besides, a little holding back now, a little coaxing and persuading, would pay him handsome dividends later. What he had already seen of her body was making him urgently eager to possess her. She felt so small and soft beneath his hands, so vulnerable, her bones so fragile that he could almost believe he could break them. Would she be as small inside as her body seemed to suggest, would she…?

‘Perfect…you’re so perfect,’ he told her thickly as he caressed her bare breasts with his hands, silencing the hesitant protest he sensed she was about to make by kissing her.

As he kissed her the memory of her earlier fear faded; there was, Lizzie recognised tremulously, something sharply pleasurable about the way he was touching her, something which, if she allowed it to grow, she sensed would lead her into a whole new world of experiences and feelings. But what she was doing was wrong, she reminded herself…this kind of intimacy…

As Kit stopped kissing her mouth and started instead to kiss the soft flesh of her throat, her thoughts became muddled and confused, impossible to hold on to in the flood of sensation that swept through her body. This time Kit held his desire in check, caressing her slowly and lingeringly until at last his mouth was once again on her breasts.

Immediately she froze, but he refused to let her push him away, whispering against her skin, ‘Did I hurt you, my sweet? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. Here, let me kiss it better.’

She was still too tense, too shocked really to enjoy what he was doing to her, her mind too full of Aunt Vi’s teachings and warnings for them to be totally ignored. And yet…and yet, dimly, distantly, she sensed that there was a pleasure to be found in this shockingly intimate exploration of her body, if only her darling Kit had the patience to lead her to it gently and tenderly.

But tenderness and gentleness, never mind patience, were virtues that were unknown to Kit Danvers—already he was growing impatient, bored with such juvenile caresses. He pushed up her skirt, and put his hand on her thigh, sliding it upwards until he reached her knickers.

Immediately fresh tension gripped her—her upbringing, Aunt Vi’s strictures, warning against the instincts struggling for life inside her.

Kit was kissing her again, and, untutored though it was, somehow her body recognised the selfishness in his touch, the determination and the greed, and her tension increased.

‘If you loved me you’d let me,’ Kit was telling her angrily. ‘I thought you and I had something special.’

If it weren’t that the very innocence that was irritating him so much now was also exciting him, arousing him in a way he had not experienced in a very long time, he would already have lost interest in her and abandoned her, but for all her reluctance, her fear, indeed almost because of them, he felt his desire sharpen.

‘I want you, Lizzie…let me show you how much. Let me show you how good it can be,’ he coaxed her, kissing her again, ignoring her tension, ignoring the tremors that made her thigh muscles quiver.

‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he told her, ‘I only want to show you how good it’s going to be between us… You do love me, don’t you…?’

What could she say? Of course she loved him.

‘Yes,’ she whispered helplessly.

‘Then let me touch you…let me love you. You’re not one of those women who can’t please a man, are you?’ Kit asked her, abruptly changing tack and making a fresh shiver of fear ice along her spine. Of course she wasn’t what he was suggesting…was she? Confused thoughts jumbled in her brain. She did love him, she knew that; so why did she feel this hesitation…this fear? Why, when she had enjoyed his kisses so much, did she feel this apprehension at his more intimate touch?

She heard the hospital village clock tolling the hour. Four o’clock already, and she was due back on the ward at five.

Mingling with her panic was a sense of relief…of escape almost, as she pushed desperately against Kit’s imprisoning arms and told him huskily, ‘I must go… I’m due back at work at five.’