had cruelly and selfishly taken advantage of her by using her naïvety and insecurity to trap her into a marriage which had robbed her of any right to discover her own sexuality.
‘How old were you when you and John married?’ he asked her gently.
‘Twenty-two,’ Claire told him.
Twenty-two. His heart ached for her.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she cried out fiercely when she saw his face. ‘I don’t want your pity. I wanted to marry John… I wanted…’
‘To deny your sexuality. Yes, I know,’ Brad said.
‘Some people… some women just aren’t very highly sexually motivated,’ Claire protested defensively. ‘They just don’t feel…’
‘Some women… some men are born with only a very low sex drive,’ Brad agreed, ‘but you aren’t one of them,’ he told her positively.
Claire stared at him, her eyes rounding, her face starting to flush slightly.
‘How can you say that?’ she protested. ‘You don’t know—’
‘Oh, I know,’ Brad interrupted. ‘I know very well because of this…’
And then, before she could really grasp what was happening, he had tightened his hold around her, one hand behind her head, and fastened his mouth gently over hers in the lightest and most delicate of kisses until the tantalising brush of his mouth against her own made her reach up instinctively to pull him down closer so that her lips could touch his fully, her body melting in liquid pleasure into his as he started to kiss her properly.
How could she ever have believed that she didn’t want this? Claire marvelled dizzily as her body threw off the shackles of self-restraint and fear and gloried unashamedly in its need to press even closer to Brad’s.
It was like taking off dark sunglasses and suddenly being dazzled by the brilliance of the sun, Claire decided in dazed euphoria as her senses revelled in their untrammelled freedom to indulge themselves.
The sound of Brad’s breathing, heavy and uneven, the smell of his skin, the heat of his body… Greedily Claire’s senses absorbed each new, sensual discovery, each new, sensual pleasure, whilst her mouth clung hungrily to his, willingly obeying his tongue’s urgent demand for her to part her closed lips to allow it to dart inside with quick, urgent strokes.
She could feel the harshness of Brad’s chest against her breasts as he started to breathe more deeply. The stiffness of the cloth separating their bodies chaffed their unfamiliar tenderness.
She could feel the difference, the arousal in her breasts, her nipples, her whole body, Claire realised.
And she could feel too the arousal in Brad’s. But where once the knowledge of a man’s arousal had filled her with revulsion and fear now her body shivered with heady, feminine triumph at her ability to cause such a reaction.
The discovery of her own sensuality and of Brad’s reaction to it was like drinking a heady aphrodisiac. She almost felt drunk on the effects of what she was experiencing, Claire recognised in a daze of pleasure as, without even knowing what she was doing, she rubbed her body provocatively against Brad’s, opening her eyes to gaze drowsily into his, her pupils so dilated that Brad caught his breath in an instantaneous and intense surge of sexual urgency.
She didn’t know what she was doing, he suspected as he fought to control his own searingly intense desire. Not to herself and certainly not to him. Oh, she knew that he was aroused but she didn’t know, had no way of knowing, just how out of character it was for him to be so vulnerable to sexual desire or just how fiercely intense that desire was.
She was still looking up at him, her mouth open over his, her teeth tugging sensually at his bottom lip, and he wondered what she would say if he told her how damned close he was to making the most primitive and urgent sensual use of the table only inches behind them.
And somehow he knew that the way he was feeling right now, the way she was unconsciously telling him what she was feeling… satisfying each other once wasn’t going to be enough. No way was it going to be enough.
As he tried to stifle the groan of longing that her teasingly erotic movements against his body were causing, he caught sight of the kitchen clock and cursed under his breath as he saw the time.
The office was twenty minutes’ drive away and he had an appointment in exactly half an hour with a potential customer.
‘Claire…’ He whispered her name into her mouth, watching in aching regret as he saw her eyes start to cloud. ‘Claire… I’ve got to go,’ he murmured softly.
He’d got to go… But he couldn’t go… She needed him, wanted him.
‘No…’ Claire started to protest huskily, and then abruptly she realised what she was doing, what she was saying, the enormity of her own behaviour. Scarlet-faced with mortification, she pulled away from him, unable even to look at him, never mind actually meet his eyes as she heard him explaining that he had an appointment but that he would get back just as soon as he could.
‘There was no need for you to… to do what you just did,’ she told him in a suffocated voice. ‘I know you feel sorry for me and that…’
Brad cursed silently, realising what she was thinking and what she was probably feeling. She thought that he had made love to her out of pity.
‘Claire—’
‘I suppose it must be quite a change for a man like you. I suppose I’ve got a certain curiosity value, if nothing else. After all, there can’t be many women of thirty-four in this day and age who don’t… who’ve never…’
‘Claire, don’t,’ he begged her. ‘You’re wrong. It wasn’t—’
‘They used to be good music-hall fodder, didn’t they—middle-aged virgins, repressed, dried up, fossilized…?’
He could hear in her voice the tears she wouldn’t let fall and he ached to reach out and take hold of her, but she was already stepping back from him, her eyes wild and angry, warning him not to come any closer.
‘This is all my own fault,’ Claire told him bitterly. ‘I should never have given in to Irene and agreed to let you stay here. I never wanted—’ She stopped but Brad knew what she had been going to say.
‘You never wanted me here in the first place,’ he guessed wryly.
‘Why can’t you all leave me alone to live my life the way I want to?’ she demanded fiercely. ‘You… Irene… even Sally with that ridiculous trick to force us to catch her bouquet. As though anyone gives any credence to that ridiculous superstition these days…’
‘What superstition?’ Brad asked her curiously.
‘The one that says the girl who catches the bride’s bouquet will be the next to marry,’ Claire told him angrily. ‘Sally arranged it so that both of her bridesmaids and I were tricked into catching it. She even put something about it on her postcard.’
The postcard… Suddenly Brad understood. So that was what the reference to Claire having a part-share in a man had meant.
