Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

It felt so disloyal, hurt too much, to have to admit that the love she knew she ought to feel for her mother simply wasn’t there and that she felt guilty—guilty because all she could feel was pity and compassion. But Caspar’s hand was already moving towards her breast. His body was already aroused.

His thumb stroked her nipple and in the darkness she tried to recapture her normal feeling of sensual delight at his touch. The first time they had made love she had wanted him so much, ached for him so much, that she had actually had a small orgasm whilst he had been kissing her breast, teasing first one and then the other erect nipple with the tip of his tongue. The gentle roughness of his teeth, the mind-blowing eruption inside her when he started to suck slowly on her nipple had been incredible sensations.

She had been mortified with embarrassment, but Caspar had simply laughed, teasing her that if that was her reaction to his sensual stimulation of her breast, he couldn’t wait to find out how she reacted when it was a far more intimate part of her body he was orally stimulating.

As it happened he had been right; he couldn’t wait and neither could she, but they had made up for their impetuosity later, and for the first time in her life Olivia discovered that it wasn’t only the man who derived pleasure from the warm caress of a woman’s mouth on his sex.

She had been a little hesitant at first to pleasure him in such a way, especially when her own body felt so languid, so deliriously satisfied, and so her touch had been a little cautious and uncertain.

Caspar hadn’t hurried her, though, or tried to force the pace of an intimacy she wasn’t ready for. Yet, if she was honest, she had rather enjoyed the sense of power their intimacy gave her, especially when she had felt him start to swell and harden as he responded to the gentle pressure of her mouth and the stroke of her tongue.

Totally absorbed in his reaction of what she was doing, it had been several minutes before she recognised not only the fact that she was squirming rather obviously on the bed but the reason why she was doing so, the reason why her breasts suddenly started to ache again, her nipples re-engorged, her chest was flushing with sensual heat.

When she did realise that the desire recharging her sexual batteries had nothing to do with anything that Caspar had done to arouse her and owed its being quite simply and rather shockingly to the fact that she was becoming sexually aroused by so intimately caressing him, she was so surprised that she released him and sat up abruptly.

‘What’s wrong?’ Caspar had asked her, sitting up himself and reaching out to take her in his arms. ‘If you don’t like it …’

Olivia had shaken her head. ‘No. No, it’s not that,’ she had told him.

‘Then what?’ Caspar had pressed her when she didn’t go on.

‘I … I want you,’ she had confessed huskily as she looked from his aroused body to his face and then betrayingly touched her fingertips to her own mouth, her face warming as she added, ‘Doing that … being so … I didn’t think … I never knew …’

Later Caspar had shown her that he was equally vulnerable to the sensual effect of that kind of intimacy when he laid her gently on the bed and even more gently moved apart her legs and then knelt between them, touching her, stroking her slowly, watching her eyes, holding her gaze so that he could see her reaction as he slowly lowered his head towards the soft, damp tangle of her pubic hair.

Olivia had closed her eyes, trying to suppress the moan of pleasure she could feel building in her throat as he slid his hands beneath her thighs, lifting her, tilting her, setting her legs over his shoulders as he started to explore the tender, sweet intimacy of her, unerringly finding the place where she was most sensitive, most responsive, and caressing it until she could no longer hold back her response.

But that had been then; this was now. Beneath the stimulation of his tongue, her nipple had started to stiffen, her body responding to him even if her mind was not.

Beneath her fingertips she could feel the crispness of his hair, but where normally she would have buried her hands in it to keep him, to hold him even closer to her body, tonight what she really wanted to do was to push him away. How could he not know … not sense that she simply wasn’t in the mood? Was he really so blind, so oblivious to her feelings, or did he simply not care? Was it more important for him to satisfy his own needs than hers?

The pressure of his mouth on her breast was increasing. He had moved their bodies closer together. She could feel his hardness pressing against her and for the first time in their relationship Olivia experienced a need to simply get their lovemaking over and done with as quickly as she possibly could.

Tonight the foreplay she normally loved and enjoyed so much was merely an unwanted and resented duty. Since his need for sex was quite obviously so all-consuming, all-important, far more important to him than what she might want or need and since he was so obviously ready, why didn’t he just go ahead and get it over with?

She moved impatiently against him and then ground her teeth as he misinterpreted her invitation and started to caress her with his hands, sliding them down over her hips, massaging her belly and then her buttocks in the way she normally enjoyed before sliding one hand between her thighs.

Olivia tensed and finally so did Caspar.

‘What is it?’ he asked her. ‘What’s wrong?’

So he’d finally noticed there was something wrong.

‘Nothing,’ she told him curtly, then added, ‘Look, Caspar, can we please get this over with? I’m tired and if you want sex as you obviously do …’

Olivia knew even as she was saying it how awful her words must sound but she just couldn’t help herself. Was it her fault that Caspar was so blind, so selfish that he couldn’t tell for himself that she just wasn’t in the mood, that what she wanted was to be held and comforted, to be listened to and not simply treated as a means by which he could relieve his sexual tension?

She could feel him watching her in the darkness and wasn’t surprised when he started to move away from her. Caspar had never been the kind of man to force unwanted sexual overtures. He had once told her that for him to enjoy sex, the pleasure had to be mutual, both partners giving and taking, both sharing the desire, the wanting, the arousal. But then just as she was about to turn over, he suddenly reached out and took hold of her, pinning her beneath him with a speed and strength that took her off guard, and when she looked up at him in stunned shock he told her angrily, ‘Very well, if that’s what you want …’

‘Caspar,’ Olivia started to protest but it was already too late. With the weight of his body keeping her pressed to the bed, he was already starting to enter her.

Her body, she recognised, must have been more aroused, more responsive than she had thought because it was certainly accepting him easily enough now, despite her efforts to tense her muscles against him.

‘I thought you wanted me to get it over with,’ Caspar reminded her grimly as he felt her efforts to resist him.

He had started moving faster, harder, and to her shock Olivia realised that a part of her was almost enjoying the knowledge that she had made him angry. It seemed as though in pushing him into anger she could allow herself to acknowledge her own sensual and sexual needs.

She stiffened as she found that her body was quite definitely starting to respond to the fiercely rhythmic thrust of Caspar’s within it. She wanted to push him away, to stop him doing what he was doing, to reach out and scratch him with her nails, bite him with her teeth, fight against his sexual possession of her and at the same time … at the same time …

She gave a sharp gasp as the first fluttering contraction of her orgasm caught her off guard and then it was too late, much too late for her to do anything but wrap herself around him and call out his name as the intensity of her own need swamped and engulfed her.

They had never used sex as a means of hurting one another before, not physically and certainly not emotionally, but they had done last night. After it was over she had turned her back on Caspar, feigning sleep when he had tentatively touched her and whispered her name.

After a while she had felt him move away and turn his back to her whilst she had stayed stiffly where she was, aching to be able to turn to him and be taken in his arms and yet too angry … too hurt to allow herself to tell him so.

When she had woken up this morning, Caspar was already in the bathroom. They had been treating one another with guarded politeness all day. Stubbornly Olivia told herself that Caspar was the one in the wrong and not her. He should have known how she was feeling; he should have seen … understood. She was disturbingly conscious of a growing feeling of alienation between them, a reluctance on her part to feel able to confide fully in him, to tell him about the hours she lay awake at night, worrying not just about her father but also about her mother, listening for the betraying sound of her mother creeping downstairs to repeat the self-destructive binging and vomiting cycle of behaviour that she had witnessed before the party.

Now she smiled tiredly as Jon came over to join her and Saul. Of all of them Jon was the one who was taking her father’s illness the hardest, Olivia suspected. After all, not only was he her father’s twin brother and bound to be psychologically affected by his heart attack, he was also the one who had to bear the brunt of the family’s panic and fear, especially her mother’s and his own father’s. In her mother’s case, that fear had been displayed in bouts of hysterical tears and a need to cling to him both physically and emotionally, which must be hard enough for him to bear, but when it came to her grandfather … Judgementally Olivia glanced across the room to where her grandfather was sitting.

Perhaps he didn’t mean to give the impression that he wished it had been Jon who had been stricken with a heart attack and not David … that if he had to lose one of his sons he would prefer it to be Jon and not David. But, nevertheless, that was the impression he had given and Jon must have inevitably been hurt by such accusations—despite his enviable stoicism and quiet acceptance of his father’s angry claims that it was due to his own failure to shoulder his fair share of the burden of running the practice that David had been overworked to the extent that his heart had damaged by the strain.

‘Livvy and I were just wondering how you are going to manage with the practice,’ Saul commented. ‘I imagine your best option would be to get a locum in and—’

‘No.’ The swiftness with which Jon rejected Saul’s suggestion surprised Olivia. His voice, normally gentle and controlled, had been almost harsh. ‘I … I haven’t had time to come to any decision about the practice as yet,’ Jon told them stiffly as Olivia and Saul instinctively exchanged surprised glances. Such vehemence and intensity were so foreign to Jon’s nature that it had caught them both off guard a little.

‘But you will have to make a decision soon,’ Jenny interposed quietly from her seat near by. ‘You can’t possibly run the practice on your own. There’s far too much work and besides—’

‘Besides what?’ Jon challenged her, ignoring Olivia and Saul’s presence as he turned round to face his wife, his voice and eyes suddenly sharply bitter. ‘Besides what?’ he demanded again. ‘Besides I’m not David and therefore not capable of running the practice by myself?’

‘Jon. You know I didn’t mean anything of the kind,’ Jenny reproached him. He had changed so much over these past few days that sometimes she hardly recognised him. She knew how much pressure he was under, how anxious and concerned he was for David … how caught up with supporting not just Tiggy but his father, as well; and she sensed how hurt he must have been by Ben’s obvious belief that he was not capable of stepping into David’s shoes. But it was impossible for him to do two men’s work indefinitely and that was all that she had been going to say.

‘I could help out for a while….’

As soon as she had said the words, Olivia wondered what on earth had possessed her. She was already committed to going to America with Caspar. All their plans had been made.

‘Oh, Livvy, could you? But what about your own job?’ Jenny exclaimed in obvious relief.

Olivia was conscious of Caspar listening to her and watching her from the other side of the room. Hillary was at his side, a place she was frequently to be found of late, she reflected a little bitterly. As Hillary reached up and whispered something to him, Olivia’s chin tilted stubbornly.

It was too late for her to retract what she had said now and besides … ‘I’m … I’m between jobs at the moment,’ she told her aunt quite truthfully. ‘I … I haven’t got round to telling the family yet, but I actually handed in my notice at work some time ago, so there’s no reason why I shouldn’t step into Dad’s shoes and help out at the practice for a little while at least.’

‘Could you, Livvy. That would be marvellous, wouldn’t it, Jon?’ Jenny exclaimed as she turned to her husband. ‘It would—’

‘What’s this, what’s this?’ Ben was demanding, having obviously been told by Max what was going on.

‘Livvy’s just offered to help out at the practice until David’s well enough to go back to work,’ Jenny explained to her father-in-law.

‘To do what? She can’t! She’s only a girl and she’s not—’