Silver

Silver felt her face burn, as much with indignation as with irritation, but what had she expected? she derided herself: that just because it was convenient for her, despite his having shown her beyond any shadow of a doubt that he felt no desire for her, his flesh should suddenly and miraculously pulse and swell with excitement at her proximity?

Or was this simply his way of testing her, of making her prove that she had learned her lessons well? She reminded herself that if this were Charles she was with, she would not be able to have any qualms about her course of action.

But if she had been with Charles she would want to arouse him, to excite him, to overwhelm him with the intensity of his desire for her, and there could be no Charles until this final hurdle was cleared. So she turned to him and asked distastefully, ‘What exactly do you want me to do?’

‘Don’t for God’s sake speak to your potential victim like that, will you?’ he murmured drily. ‘You’ll terrify him into a state of permanent impotence. Actually I don’t want you to do anything other than come and lie here beside me… and on this occasion I think we can dispense with these,’ he added, reaching out and switching off the lights.

How had he known they were on? Silver wondered. In the past, while he was teaching her, he had refused her initial attempts to persuade him that she would prove a more apt pupil if she didn’t have to see what she was doing, and he had taunted her so unmercifully with her squeamishness that she had stopped asking.

So why now, of all times, did he offer her the panacea he had withheld from her before? Not for his own sake… his darkness was permanent.

For hers? Never! More likely because he sensed her tension and wanted to ease it, for his own sake as much as hers.

As she moved closer to him, the unexpectedness of his arm curling round her and drawing her down against his side until her flesh touched his startled her. Before, there had been no physical contact between them other than that which he had deemed necessary as part of her sexual education, no casual, almost comfortable embrace of the type they were sharing now, and it bewildered her, sending out conflicting messages which her brain couldn’t unravel.

There was the silky brush of skin against skin, sensually pleasing, as her own flesh already recognised, vaguely dangerous and forbidden in a way that was slightly exhilarating, and yet the casualness of his attitude towards her was the opposite of sensual; deprived of any sensuality or hint of desire, the firm pressure of his arm around her was more comradely than anything else, somehow or other defusing the situation of some of its terror. His hand rested against her waist, not caressing her or stroking her, simply touching her, so that her skin absorbed the sensation of it, noting the hardness of his fingers, their relaxed strength, their knowledge and experience.

Even though he was silent, there was no tension in his silence; rather, it was almost as though he was in some subtle way inviting her to share it, coaxing her to relax into it, although why she should have felt that she had no idea. She had the most peculiar urge to ask him what he was thinking about, something she had never done before nor ever imagined doing. She moved restlessly, and his hand slid to her hip, turning her with some slight pressure so that almost half the length of her body rested on him.

His hand still sat lightly on her, but now the pressure of his silent demand that she open her mind to him was so strong that she had to use all her own strength to resist it. His assault on her body she had expected… but this assault on her mind… She lay against him angrily, using all her concentration to fight free of the subtle lure he was throwing out to her, unaware of the slow drift of his hand against her skin as it stroked the warm flesh of her hip and the round curve of her buttock, slowly easing her into his own flesh so that each fierce beat of her angry heart and every quick, impassioned breath from her lungs reinforced for him the physical reality of her femininity.

If all else failed, Jake told himself cynically, he could always try blocking everything else out and remembering how it had been with Beth, but he didn’t want to do that. Partly because it would desecrate what had been, and partly… He swore explosively under his breath, at the same moment as Silver chose to wriggle protestingly against his touch, and, by some alchemy he wasn’t going to bother to even think about trying to analyse, the angry, resentful movement aroused him with unexpected intensity.

Silver gasped and then choked on her protest as he rolled her over on to her back, only just managing to stop herself from curling her body into an angry foetal ball of rejection and instead opening it to accommodate the unexpectedly heavy weight of him.

She wanted to scream at him to hurry and get it over with, and at the same time acknowledged that she could hardly behave in such an irrational way.

Intelligence told her that it would all be much easier if she could instruct her tense muscles to relax, but some instincts were too ingrained for intelligence, and when Jake withdrew slightly from her she realised he was as aware of her tension as she was herself.

‘All this would be a lot easier if you let me help you to relax first,’ he told her calmly.

Silver stared up into his eyes, marvelling at his ability to remain so calm. She knew exactly what he meant; he had already told her, in explicit and sometimes pithy detail that warned her that in some way he enjoyed her mental and emotional shrinking from what he was saying, that everything he was teaching her to do to him could be reversed to exactly the same effect, and that she would have a much deeper and more instinctive awareness of how to manipulate male arousal if she had experienced her own female arousal first.

But she had told him it wasn’t necessary. And she still considered that it wasn’t.

Because she was afraid of that experience… Even more afraid than she was of his physical possession?

The answer was there in the sharp, shrill denial that came instinctively to her lips.

‘No!’ she spat at him. ‘I don’t want you to do anything other than get this whole damned thing over with.’

For the first time, she sensed his self-control slip. One brief burn of anger beneath the cold clarity of his eyes, one hard tensing of muscles as her frailer flesh took the weight of his body, and she almost gave in and told him she’d changed her mind.

Only pride stopped her. Pride and a certain desperate awareness that if she once allowed him to arouse her to desire, she would somehow have lost a very important part of herself to him… A part of herself that could never be recovered… Her emotional virginity, perhaps? She scorned herself for the thought, and then heard him say grimly, ‘Very well, then, if that’s the way you want it.’

And then she felt his hands on her body, moving her, positioning her as he loomed over her, suddenly dark and alien. She held her breath and forgot to tense her muscles against him, so that his first thrust carried him into her and caused her only to gasp a little at the unexpected ease of it, only to discover as he moved again and then again that she had been too confident too soon, and that the pain that now shot through her was everything she had imagined it would be and more: sharp, tearing, inescapable, filling her so that she cried out and twisted beneath him, dragging her nails against his skin as she fought for release and wasn’t granted it.

The pain went on and on as he drove further into her, ignoring her cries… ignoring her demands, ignoring everything but the goal he had set himself.

And then, miraculously, when she had thought it would last forever, it was over and she was free to curl herself into a ball of fading scalding agony, sick and dizzy with relief, so that she was barely aware of him leaving the bed and going into the bathroom until he came back wearing his bathrobe, holding a glass of water and a small white tablet.

‘I’m sorry it was so bad,’ he told her coolly. ‘But it’s over now and it won’t ever bother you again. Sit up and take this…’

‘What is it?’ she asked him, eyeing the tablet warily, but for some reason she couldn’t understand obeying his command to uncurl her body and crawl into a sitting position. She winced as she did so, still sore and tender inside, even though the pain had abated.

‘Pain-killer,’ he told her. ‘I need them sometimes. It won’t harm you. You’re going to bleed for a while, I suspect. If you’re still bleeding in the morning…’ He frowned and Silver looked away from him, even though he couldn’t see her flush of embarrassment.

She looked at him and for the first time said quietly, ‘Thank you…’

An odd expression crossed his face. One she couldn’t define at all.

He looked down at her almost broodingly, and she wondered what was going on behind the implacable hardness of his face… what thoughts were locked away in that over-alert and too perceptive mind. He had known her fear, felt it, touched it, tasted it; she had given him a unique weapon against herself and yet he had not used it.

And now, when another man might have experienced discomfort, impatience, embarrassment or just the sheer plain desire to turn his back on the whole incident and on her, he was still standing beside her, his fingers resting lightly against her inner wrist, monitoring the feverish race of her pulse.

The deep understanding which had led him not to betray either surprise or anger, the compassion which had given her the pain-killer, his calm, matter-of-fact awareness of the possible physical consequence of the tearing of that too-protective unwanted veil of flesh, betrayed a much deeper awareness of her than she had known.

‘You’ll want to sleep alone,’ he commented now, and then, when she started to move, his fingers curled round her wrist, making her yield to their pressure.

‘No… you stay here. I’ll sleep in your bed tonight.’ His mouth curled and then softened into an incredibly illuminating smile, one she had never seen curve his mouth before, and for a heart-stopping moment she was breathless and motionless beneath its potency, dazzled by its lure and promise. And then it vanished and his mouth was the cynical curl of contempt with which she was so familiar as he added drily, ‘I trust that you don’t go to bed wearing that appalling perfume.’

‘It isn’t appalling. It’s very expensive, and I happen to like it,’ she told him fiercely, hating herself for the odd sensations she had just experienced, wanting to push them out of her mind and bury them deep where she would never have to face them again. They were too disturbing, too distressing, especially now, when not just her body but her mind as well felt drained of all energy and will to combat anything.

‘Liar,’ he derided her softly. ‘It isn’t you at all. You should wear something sharp and fresh, something that smells of young fresh grass after spring rain… something subtle and tormenting—–’ He broke off suddenly, and Silver knew instinctively that he had spoken words he had not intended to say.

‘We both need to get some sleep,’ he told her curtly. ‘But if you need me for… anything during the night…’

She shot up in bed, simultaneously reaching for the sheet to cover her body—a wasted gesture since he couldn’t see it—and wincing sharply with the pain that splintered inside her, so that he heard her sharp indrawn breath. Then she realised that he had not been taunting her with sexual innuendo, as she had thought, but had simply meant if she was in any physical discomfort.

She had spent enough dreary hours recovering from the pain of her own operations to know why he should be so aware of how long and dark those nights could be when the physical body was tormented by its ills and the pain stretched out tentacle-like fingers, which it hooked into vulnerable flesh and raked it into an agony that never seemed to subside.

‘This tablet should do the trick if it’s one of Annie’s wonder pills,’ she told him gruffly, not knowing why now, after all that had happened, she should feel awkward and embarrassed by his detached concern… why the mere thought of having to ask him for comfort and relief of any kind should make her skin go hot and cold and her mind shudder back from the edge of some unsuspected chasm which lured her to its edge even while she cringed back from it.

She wanted him to leave so that she could go into the bathroom and clean her body, not of his touch, which at all times had been minimal and clinical, but of the evidence of her own humanity and weakness. But he stayed where he was, hovering over her like a dark eagle while she swallowed the pill and drank the water, and even after that, until the pain started to subside and her eyes started to close.

They parted the next morning, outside the bank, where Silver formally handed over to him his money and where they faced one another gravely, still two antagonists. Her body felt stiff and slightly sore, but there was no bleeding and she knew with inner conviction that she would soon heal.

As he took the money he said firmly, ‘I won’t wish you good luck. I know you believe you’re right in what you’re doing, but I can tell you that you’re not. Unfortunately, by the time you come to that realisation yourself, it will be too late. It’s one of life’s more bitter truisms that we can’t learn from the experience of others.

‘I, too, have had my time of black despair, my thirst for destruction, my need to reach out and contaminate with my hatred those who contaminated me and mine with theirs; I, too, have known what it means to set myself above the law and consider myself justified in doing so.

‘Revenge is a drug; once it gets hold of you it doesn’t let go, it pervades your whole life.’

He couldn’t have said anything more calculated to strengthen her hand.

‘That might be your experience, it won’t necessarily be mine. My father taught me to shoot when I was twelve years old,’ Silver told him thinly, angry with him that he should choose now of all times to give her an unwanted moral lecture. ‘Always shoot to kill, he told me. And always kill cleanly…’

He smiled at her then, mocking her with his soul-deep awareness of her thoughts as he said softly, ‘Yes, but mutilation has such a subtle appeal, doesn’t it? What point is there in inflicting a wound if the victim doesn’t feel it… and it is mutilation you thirst for, isn’t it, Silver? Mutilation and destruction…’