An Interrupted Marriage (Silhouette Special Edition) (14 page)

The table had been covered with a cream cloth, and a single red candle in a crystal holder sat in its centre. One glass bowl held a lettuce salad, another sliced tomato and cucumber, and on a large serving plate Magnus had arranged cold ham, stuffed pork, and chicken liver paté. He’d found white china and stainless-steel cutlery, and two tall fluted glasses were filled with pale amber liquid, alive with tiny bubbles.

“I was about to call you,” Magnus said. “I don’t want the champagne going flat.”

She paused at the table and he took her arm and gently turned her to face him, letting his gaze take in her appearance. “You look lovely, Jade. And smell nice, too. Thank you for dressing up for me.”

He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “Sit down,” he invited, and pulled back a chair for her.

Her hand closed around the stem of her glass as he seated himself opposite her. The candle was a still, cold flame between them. Magnus lifted his glass to her and held her eyes until she picked up hers. “To our future,” he said, and added, almost as though he was making an effort to mouth the words, “and to forgetting the past.”

“Not all of it,” Jade replied steadily. “We share some good memories, Magnus.”

“Yes,” he said after a moment. “To the good memories, too.”

They sipped the wine, and Jade said, “It’s nice. Real champagne?”

“Not officially,” he told her. “It’s a New Zealand wine, so we aren’t allowed to call it that, although the process is the same.”

She sipped again, then put down the glass and helped herself to salad. Surprisingly, she found she was hungry.

After the main course, Magnus got up and served cheese and fresh fruit. “I don’t run to pudding, I’m afraid.”

“This is fine. It’s all I want, just now. You’ve excelled yourself, Magnus.” He poured her more wine, and she lifted her glass to him, smiling.

“Thank you. There was no real cooking involved, though.” He seated himself again, and looked at her across the table as she cut herself a piece of cheese riddled with small round holes. “You love that stuff, don’t you?”

“I do?” She looked up at him in surprise, then back at the piece of cheese. “What is it? I don’t recall picking it out today.”

There was a tiny silence before he replied, and she looked up at him, suddenly flustered. Then he said evenly, “No, I chose it with you in mind. Locally made Swiss-style. You used to buy it regularly at the supermarket in Warkworth.”

“I see.” She stared at it, willing herself to remember. Nothing. She might never have seen the stuff in her life. She tried to recall the packet, casting her mind back to the little shop they’d bought it in, Magnus saying casually, “We’ll have a couple of cheeses, shall we?” She’d agreed, thought he was buying what he fancied for himself, hadn’t really looked. At the time she’d been weighing the merits of the various pâtés on display.

“Well,” he said, “you’d better see if you still like it.”

Nothing to get upset about. She tried to smile, put a piece in her mouth and said, “It’s delicious.”

The moment passed, but she knew that she wasn’t the only one who’d experienced a renewal of tension. Magnus’s eyes had gone peculiarly opaque for a few seconds, and his hands, peeling a hard red apple, had temporarily stilled. Now he was concentrating on quartering the apple, stabbing the knife into the pieces one by one and lifting them to his mouth.

“Coffee?” he asked her. “Or we could go and have that spa and finish off the champagne there. I’ve got the water ready.”

It sounded deliciously wicked, Jade thought. “Should we?” she asked him. “Directly after eating?”

“Alternatively,” he suggested, “we could finish up the bottle outside, and open another to take to the spa room.”

Even more decadent. She smiled at him. “Let’s do that.”

They put away the remains of the food and cleaned up, then Magnus dragged some of the big floor cushions to the terrace that was built out over the bush-covered hillside, and poured the last of the sparkling wine.

“I can’t see the harbour,” Jade said. “There’s no moon.” It was fully dark now, and the sky was gradually filling with stars.

“Look again,” Magnus advised, and she peered into the blackness and said softly, “Oh....”

Where the stars ended must be the black line of the hills on the opposite shore, and below that, now and then came a fugitive gleam of silver. As her eyes became accustomed to the night, she could pick out the ragged edges of the bush, and discern the limits of the harbour, its quiet waters never completely still, the stars lighting a ripple here, a restless wavelet there, that glimmered for a moment and disappeared.

A cricket began singing, and a large huhu beetle whirred close to the window behind them and flicked for a few minutes up and down the pane, then blundered off into the night. Small moths silently flitted in and out of the faint light cast by the candle still burning on the dining table.

She sat on one of the cushions, her knees hunched in front of her, sipping the wine’s fresh, flowery flavour. Magnus lounged on two more cushions just behind and to one side of her. The night air was quite warm, a quiet breeze bringing the woody scent of manuka and, more faintly, something that might have been honeysuckle, on its gentle breath.

She heard the small sound of Magnus putting down his glass. A finger, cooled and moistened by the chilled wineglass, traced her spine from her nape to her waist, and he said reflectively, “I can’t decide whether I like the back of this dress most, or the front.”

Jade felt herself shiver with anticipation. She sat very still, her fingers clutching her glass. “Your finger’s cold,” she said.

He gave an almost soundless laugh, and shifted on the cushions so that he was sitting almost behind her. His shoulder was against hers, and the cool finger ran down the side of her neck and along her collarbone to the edge of the dress. “Are you going to finish that drink?”

“Maybe.” She took another sip. The glass was still half-f. As she lowered it, his fingers closed about hers, and he lifted the glass to his own mouth. Now it was three-quarters empty. “Greedy,” Jade said.

“Don’t complain,” he admonished her. “There’s plenty more.”

Then she felt his breath at her nape, followed by the warmth of his lips drifting down the path his finger had followed. She closed her eyes, her skin accepting the sensation, the prickling, melting delight. He moved again, his hand going about her waist as he urged her back against his chest. He was squatting on the cushions, his thighs cradling her. She gulped the rest of her wine, her hand closing convulsively on the stem of the glass as his fingers wandered across the skin of her back, and his teeth nibbled at her ear.

“What about that spa?” he whispered.

Jade swallowed. She felt boneless. Tiny thrills of pleasure were chasing over her body. “All right.”

He took the glass from her slackened grasp and helped her up. She was glad that it was dark. He gathered up the glasses in one hand, collected another chilled bottle from the kitchen, and led her through the dimness inside to the glassed area next to the bathroom. There, he flicked a switch and outside a concealed light came on, silhouetting dense ferns and shrubs that screened the room. The air was humid and the glass had misted, giving an ethereal quality to the greenery on the other side. The water in the blue-lined spa tub bubbled quietly.

Magnus said, “It’s only warm, not hot.”

He hadn’t switched on the centre light, and Jade was grateful for that. The outside light was enough, reflecting softly into the room. There were tiles on the floor and on the one wall that wasn’t glass, and several large folded towels sat on a chrome shelf.

Magnus said, “Do you want me to look away while you undress?”

Jade shook her head and, lifting her hands to the front of his shirt, she very deliberately began unbuttoning it.

He took a breath that lifted his chest, and stood rock-still while she finished the task. Then he moved, and flipped open the buttons of his cuffs, while she unbuckled his belt.

He shucked off the shirt, but when she fumbled for his zip, he said, “My turn.” And he reached around behind her and opened the short zip of her dress, then ran his hands slowly up her back and eased the dress off her shoulders, so that it slipped down over her arms and into a heap on the floor.

He undid his own zip and pulled off the pants, revealing a pair of underpants that barely covered his hips. Eyeing the equally brief lace-and-satin panties that Jade wore, he smiled tightly and said, “I will if you will.”

She stepped out of her sandals, kicking them aside, and took off the panties. In the soft, dim light she didn’t feel exposed, and the air was warm.

Magnus had climbed down into the pool and turned to help her, but she was already sliding in, subsiding on the moulded bench beside him. He poured more sparkling wine and handed her a glass, and sat back, sipping at his.

The warmed water played over them, and she closed her eyes, enjoying the soothing, relaxing feeling. She sipped at her glass and let her mind float, trying to empty it of thought, of tension. When Magnus offered more wine, she shook her head and turned to place the glass on the tiled surround before closing her eyes again, resting her head against the side of the pool.

“Are you asleep?” Magnus asked, sounding faintly amused.

Without opening her eyes, she shook her head, barely moving it.

He said, “If we stay here much longer we’ll come out all shrivelled up.”

“Don’t care,” Jade murmured.

He laughed. “I’d forgotten your ability to immerse yourself in the pleasure of the moment.”

“Seems a suitable verb for this,” she said. Dimly she recalled him saying something of the sort a long time ago...in a sunlit field, while he trailed a finger along the line of her thigh after they’d made love.

He said now, his breath feathering her cheek, “And for this?”

Perhaps he remembered, too, for his hand was taking the same path again, and then his mouth was on hers, warm and tender and searching.

It seemed so utterly right—her mouth flowered beneath his, and his hand stroked her gently, gliding up over her hip, her ribcage, and settling softly on her breast, but only briefly, as though he didn’t want to hurry. A finger touched the tip, and moved to its mate, and she knew he must have recognised her immediate response. Then his hand was travelling upwards again, caressing her throat, curving about her chin as he lifted his mouth from hers and looked down at her, his eyes dark and questing. “Can I persuade you,” he asked her, “to go to bed?”

She needed no persuasion. She smiled into his eyes and got up, her back proud and straight as he watched her leave the pool, and without haste she pulled one of the towels from the shelf and draped it loosely round her body, turning to face him. “Come on, then,” she said.

He erupted from the pool in a wet, splashing vision of glorious manhood, and grabbed another towel, tucking it swiftly round his waist. Jade was already preceding him through the door, and when he got to the bedroom she was standing by the bed saying, “We’ll make the sheets wet.”

“No,” he said. “I’ll dry you.”

He bent to tug the covers back first, then stood up and took the towel she was holding round herself, and dried her face, her shoulders, her breasts, and the rest of her body, using slow, sensuous movements.

Then he stepped back, and she knew by the glitter in his eyes that he was aroused almost beyond bearing. His chest rose with a deep, shuddering breath. “I think I need a cold shower,” he muttered, swiping at his own face and body with the towel he’d used on her, his eyes devouring her, as if he couldn’t drag them away. “For God’s sake,” he groaned, “get into bed, Jade!”

She said, “If you come with me.” And stepped forward, deftly removing the towel he’d fastened around his waist.

He grabbed her hands, but too late. His teeth clenched, he said, “This isn’t...the way it’s supposed to be. I want—”

“I know what you want,” Jade told him. “I can see it. I know—” she placed her hand over his mouth as he started to speak again, his face contorted almost as if in pain “—you meant it to be slow and sweet and romantic, every moment savoured. But I can’t wait, either, Magnus. I want you inside me, now! Please—I need it as much as you do.”

He looked at her as though he couldn’t believe what she was saying, his face taut and his eyes burning.

She freed her hands and brought her body deliberately closer to him, her eyes half closing as she made contact with his, and he drew in a sharp, unsteady breath.
“All right!”
he said, his voice harsh as moving gravel. “You asked for it.”

He pushed her down to the mattress so that she was lying sideways across the turned-down cover, her legs only half on the bed, and he took her there, without preliminary and without mercy, in an out-of-control, mindless fury of dammed-up passion.

J
ade gasped, her body momentarily rigid against that first deep, hard thrust, and then it softened about him, and she wrapped her arms round his neck, brought her knees up to cradle his thighs within hers, and answered the hot, hurried rhythm of his headlong invasion.

Within seconds she felt an intense rush of pleasure beating at her senses, engulfing her from head to toe, radiating from that centre where Magnus had become a part of her, filling her with himself, making her whole again. She heard him cry out hoarsely, his voice agonised, animal. And her own voice echoing the cry, mingling with his, their mouths clashing as they instinctively, blindly searched for each other, for a way to share this ultimate experience in every way. She opened her mouth to him and took his tongue inside, felt his hands stroke and touch her all over, exciting her beyond bearing. Her body stiffened, and shuddered, and shuddered again, as his did the same, and her hands grappled at him, wanting him still closer, closer, inside her, around her, everywhere...

* * *

Minutes later she opened her eyes, and the room slowly swam into focus—the dark outlines of furniture, and the starlit window, and the white turned-down sheet that her head lay on. Magnus still sprawled on top of her, breathing unevenly as though he’d been running, his weight heavy now, his cheek against hers slicked with a film of sweat.

Jade moved her head a little, trying to see his face.

“Oh, God!” he muttered. “I didn’t mean—”

“Shh!” Jade lifted a hand and placed her fingers over his mouth again. “It’s all right. We both wanted it.”

For a moment longer he was still, then he rolled off her and sat up, his shoulders hunched. “You
enjoyed
it?”

“I thought you’d have noticed,” Jade said. “It’s been a long time for me, too, you know.”

He took an unsteady breath, momentarily dropping his head into his spread hands. Then he lifted it and said, “Can I get anything for you?”

“Some tissues.”

He brought them to her, and she crawled under the covers and moved over to make room for him. But he stood by the bed, saying with sudden urgency, “Jade!”

“What is it?”

“I didn’t—I didn’t think to use anything. Had you taken care of it—I know you visited a chemist?”

“No,” she said. “No, I don’t want to, Magnus.”

For several seconds he was silent. Then he came down onto the bed, half sitting, his hand resting on the mattress on her other side so that he could dimly see her face. “You want a baby?”

“I know you said that you don’t.” Her voice held doubt, uncertainty.

Slowly he replied, “I didn’t say that. I said we should wait.”

“How long do we wait this time, Magnus? You said we have a marriage to rebuild, but don’t we need to show some faith in it? It’s not conditional, not on my part, anyway—”

“Nor mine.” His eyes were piercing, searching hers. He said slowly, “Do you feel ready to have my child?”

“Yes! Yes—I want it, Magnus—very much!”

“Medically, there’s no reason you shouldn’t—”

Jade shook her head. “None.”

“Well....” His hand touched her face, his fingers outlining her lips, then trailing down to her shoulder. He caressed her arm that was holding the sheet over her breasts. “If it’s what you want....”

His hand wandered, encountering the sheet and exploring beneath it. Her eyelids fluttered, her lips parting as he touched her, and he bent to put his mouth to hers. The sheet slipped as she raised her hand, touching him in turn, her fingers gliding over his shoulders, stroking the once-familiar softness of his hair.

He lifted his mouth from hers, shifting to slide under the sheets beside her, and she nestled close to him and sighed.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She raised a hand to stroke it over his chest, and around his shoulders. “This is...so nice. Being together again, like this.”

“I’ll try to make it that way,” he promised. His hand shaped her hip, found her thigh and returned to her waist, her midriff, the yielding firmness of her breasts.

This time he deliberately made the pace slow, languorous, paying attention to every part of her body in turn, keeping his kisses light at first, only allowing them to deepen gradually, attuned to her quickened breathing, the small, gasping sounds that she made, the way her lips parted in invitation, and her body moved under his ministrations.

She knew he was holding back—holding her back, too—determined to make this time different, an unhurried building of exquisite sensation, a progression of delight from one plane to another, and to another.

Perhaps it didn’t last quite as long as he’d intended, because there came a point when their mutual impatience overcame every intention, and they melded together in an equally blinding, intense and eventually shattering climax.

The aftermath this time was even more enervating, and when they had reluctantly parted, Jade simply turned her head against his shoulder, laid her hand on his warm chest, and fell asleep.

* * *

She woke feeling cold, and discovered that Magnus had turned in his sleep and taken the blanket with him, leaving her with barely half the sheet. She shivered, and smiled at his oblivious back, carefully retrieved some of the blanket and moved close to him, fitting her body against the contours of his. Softly, she danced small kisses along the line of his shoulder, and insinuated her arm about his waist, her fingers floating against his skin.

She knew by the change in his breathing that he’d awakened, but when he turned suddenly, his arms going about her, he had his eyes closed. He lay still for a few moments, and then said, “Tell me I’m not dreaming.”

“You’re not dreaming,” she said, and gently bit his earlobe.

“Dreams lie,” he said strangely, his voice husky and slurred, and Jade thought that he was, after all, half-asleep.

“I’m not a dream,” she assured him. “And I’m not lying.”

She kissed his closed eyelids, and they didn’t open. She touched his mouth with her hand, loving the masculine contours of it, and then pressed her lips to his, coaxing them open.

He turned on his back, bringing her with him, still kissing. His hand came up to massage her nape, tugging a little at her hair. She shifted her legs, straddling one of his, and he ran a hand over her from shoulder to knee and then up to hold her more firmly against him, setting her blood pounding.

He turned further, so that they lay on their sides, and their mouths broke apart, and she saw his eyes open at last, his gaze locked to hers. Then he moved again and she was on her back, looking up at him as he lay poised over her. He lowered his head to her mouth, and just before their lips met he said something else, under his breath. It sounded like, “You’re a liar, but not a dream.”

She couldn’t have heard right, or else he was still not fully awake. Although his body was telling her that it needed no more arousing. Aroused herself by the unmistakable evidence of his virility, she made an inviting movement against him with her hips, and he surfaced from the kiss, gasping. “If you do that again,” he said, his eyes brilliant and dark, “I won’t be answerable for the consequences.”

“Oh?” She directed a distinctly brazen look at him, and very deliberately did it again.

A harsh sound escaped his throat. “Jade—”

“Magnus?” She stared boldly into his eyes.

“You want me again?” he demanded. “So quickly?”

“I want you,” she confirmed. “Again. Quickly. Now.”

He took a great, audible breath, adjusted his legs between hers and obliged, surely and deeply.

Jade’s head went back on the pillow, her lips parted in a sigh of relief and pleasure. “
Thank you,
Magnus. I love you.”

His eyes were blazing. Their bodies were moving in unison, singing ancient songs of joy.
“I love you!”
He sounded as though the words were torn from him.
“Nothing else matters!”

* * *

They got up late and lingered over breakfast, Jade wearing only her green robe over a pair of panties, Magnus dressed in a casual shirt and trousers.

Jade nibbled dreamily at fruit and toast, watching Magnus eat bacon and eggs washed down with coffee. She’d got up to cook them for him while he showered.

She loved the sure movements of his hands, the way his throat rose from the collar of his shirt, the dark crescent of his lashes lying on his cheek as he lifted his cup and finished off the coffee.

“I’ll pour you some more,” she offered, getting up.

“No.” He retained his hold on the cup as he placed it on the table. “I’ve had enough.” He was looking at her in a way that made her uneasy, as if she were a puzzle he was trying to solve.

“What’s the matter?” she asked him.

Magnus shook his head. “What could be the matter,” he said, “after last night? And this morning.”

Perhaps she imagined the note of irony in his tone. He held her eyes for a moment, a strangely set smile on his face, and then got up, packing his dishes together. “What would you like to do today?”

“I feel lazy. I’d like to read, admire the view, maybe visit the water-hole again later, when it gets hot. Unless you have other plans?”

He didn’t rise to the bait. “Sounds fine to me,” he said easily. “Leave the dishes,” he added as she made to start washing. “I’ll do them, if you want to get dressed.”

She went back to the bedroom, smiling ruefully as she surveyed the state of the bed, which had a well-used look. After she’d showered she would change the sheets and make it decent again.

* * *

Later in the day they went to the water-hole, and this time neither of them bothered with swimsuits. Magnus didn’t pull her down on the hard grey rock afterwards, but he spread their towels on the grass in the shade of the trees and made leisurely, delicious love to her, completely wiping out the disturbing memory of the strange, bitter little contretemps of the previous day.

And in bed that night they made love again, a lingering, tender journey of rediscovery.

* * *

Only twice in that week did they take the car from the garage—to have a look at some historic battle sites of the nineteenth-century wars between Maori warriors and Queen Victoria’s army, and to replenish their supplies.

They walked along bush tracks and the lonely country road, and watched the ever-changing view of harbour and bush and sky. Talked, but not of Jade’s illness or Magnus’s family. Read quite a lot, lying side by side on the deck or in the bed, sharing quotes from their respective books, as they’d sometimes done a long time ago—but they’d never had such long stretches of time before.

They swam, used the spa and made love. Sometimes it was fierce and explosive, although never as wildly turbulent as on that first evening, and sometimes it was tender and lazily erotic.

Magnus seemed determined to make up for the physical deprivation they’d both suffered not only in quantity but quality. He was inventive and adventurous, and so bent on giving Jade pleasure in every way imaginable that once, when they were still in bed at nearly midday, she teased him about wanting to make her a slave of love.

He didn’t smile. He lifted his head, momentarily distracted from his total concentration on what he was doing to her body, and his eyes gleamed at her so that for an instant she was reminded of some untamed animal, as he said quite seriously, “If that’s what it takes to bind you to me.”

“Magnus!” she said, half-shocked, yet unable to stifle a thrill of primitive satisfaction. “There’s more to loving than sex.”

“So?” he murmured, holding her eyes and touching her in a new way. “Tell me about it.”

“Magnus!”
It was part protest, part plea. She writhed in his hold, biting her lip to stop a cry of sheer ecstasy. “You can’t—”

“Can’t what?” His voice asked in her ear, as her eyes closed and her mouth parted, gasping. “Do this to you? But you like it, don’t you, darling? You want more?”

“I—no!
Yes!
“ Her head turned frantically towards him. She felt as though she were on the brink of a mountain, about to fly straight up to the sky. And only he could take her there, and guide her safely back to earth.

“Yes?” he said. She heard the deep, rasping note in his voice and knew that he was near the brink, too.

“Yes,”
she breathed,
“yes, please yes!”
And her hand raked into his hair, her mouth frenziedly searching for his. “Kiss me, Magnus, please—”

He did, as she drowned in sensation, released from the sweet, raging torment at last. And she surfaced drowsily minutes later, her body glistening with a fine sheen, her limbs lethargic and pleasantly aching, her eyes heavy.

“Sometimes,” she said tiredly, “I think it’s too much.”

Magnus gave a small, breathy laugh. “Are you saying you don’t like it?”

She could hardly claim that, when she’d just been sobbing with sheer rapture in his arms. She shook her head. How could she explain that despite that, deep down was a small, ineradicable core of unease?

Maybe she had some unacknowledged guilt feelings about sex? She didn’t think she was a prude, but her experience had hardly been extensive. Perhaps she secretly resented Magnus’s apparent familiarity with the refinements of lovemaking. She said, “Where did you learn to—do things like that?”

He laughed. “Imagination is a great teacher.”

“You haven’t done them all with other women?”

He was quiet, the hand idly stroking her hip still for a few seconds. “No,” he said finally. His eyes had turned dark and brooding, and he opened his lips as though about to ask her something, but then he moved suddenly, rolling away from her to leave the bed and gather up his discarded clothes before making for the bathroom.

* * *

On their final morning Magnus brought her breakfast in bed, and after clearing away the dishes took her in his arms and made love to her one more time, with exquisite thoroughness.

While he packed their bags into the car later, Jade wandered out to the terrace, to take a last, regretful look at the view. In the daytime the harbour glinted in the sunlight, and whispers of white cloud skimmed the distant hilltops.