Revenge is Sweet: Getting Even

Damned right she would!

Not that you could live your life solely on the basis that it might not last beyond the day, because hopefully it would—and all actions had their repercussions.

But what of passion, and living life to the full? Was she sentencing herself to a life without either? Hadn’t that been one of the reasons why she had left Cornwall in the first place? To escape from the drab, monotonous existence which her mother had embraced if not eagerly, then resignedly?

What if she never fell in love? Never met the man with whom she hoped to settle down in quiet obscurity, to rear children and grow vegetables? Or should that be the other way round? she mused.

In that case she would never experience the joys of love. Lola sighed. And was it so very wrong to want to experience them? Even if it was only once? Wasn’t sex supposed to be a gift from God?

‘Geraint!’ she called out, without any conscious intention of doing so. ‘Geraint!’

He stopped, but seemed to take for ever to turn round again, and when he did his face was as cool and as expressionless as if it had been sculpted from marble. ‘Yes, Lola?’ he queried dispassionately. ‘What is it?’

Lola lost herself in that sweeping grey stare, knowing suddenly that all her moral agonising had been for nothing. Because she truly believed that sex, when defined by love, was not wrong at all. And she realised that somehow, on a primitive level at once too simple and too sophisticated for her understanding, that crazily, stupidly, ridiculously, she had fallen in love with Geraint Howell-Williams.

‘Don’t go, Geraint,’ she whispered helplessly into the fraught silence. ‘I don’t want you to go.’

She sensed some inner tussle as his face hardened, and then suddenly he was beside her again, his eyes narrowed and searching as they swept over her, as if he was expecting her to change her mind.

But Lola had no intention of changing her mind, and even if this was the craziest thing she had ever done she seemed powerless to stop herself.

‘Lola,’ he said quietly, and she shook her head despairingly even as her heart thrilled at the way he said her name.

‘And I don’t even know anything about you!’ she wailed, as if that mattered.

The stormy grey eyes were turned on her in a steady stare and a hint of amusement lit their depths.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Everything!’ she declared fervently.

‘What’s everything?’ he laughed.

‘Oh, you know! The things you like to do. . .’ She began to blush at the look on his face.

‘Shh,’ he instructed gently, lifting his hand to slowly pull out the tortoiseshell clasp which secured her hair, so that it tumbled in glossy profusion around the pale oval of her face.

‘I will tell you everything—anything,’ he stated unevenly. ‘Anything at all. But not now. Not when my eyes are dazzled by your beauty. . . my nostrils filled with your scent. . . my body aching to hold you in my arms once more, sweet, sweet Lola. . .’

It was a combination of the things he was saying and the passionate way he was saying them which made Lola want to throw caution to the wind.

She needed him now, more than she had ever needed anything in her life before. And explanations and life-stories could wait.

She swayed against him and he caught her instantly, clasping her close to his chest. ‘Oh, Geraint,’ she sighed brokenly into his neck, neither knowing nor caring whether this was a decision she would regret for the rest of her life. ‘Please make love to me!’