Reclaiming His Wife

They had sandwiches for lunch with the tinned salmon Jared had bought in town, then they boiled more water to wash up and were glad to get back into the warm sitting room where Jared heaped more wood on to the fire, and where, for the rest of the afternoon, they talked and read. Taylor couldn’t remember afterwards exactly what they talked about. Current affairs. The state of the nation. Global warming.

It was easy not to be too worried about global warming, she thought, when the temperature was ten degrees below outside and you were wondering whether the candles were going to last out until the power was restored. But the discussion was stimulating nevertheless, like their discussions in the early days always had been, and it was all right if they kept to safe, impersonal subjects. She could go along with that.

When dusk fell they lit a couple of the candles and drew the curtains to shut out the winter’s night.

They cooked potatoes for supper on the open fire, listening to them sizzle, inhaling their increasingly delicious aroma as they cooked. Then they cut wedges of crumbling cheese and buttered the soft white flesh of the halved potatoes, watching them run golden with black flecks from the melted butter and the crisp, disintegrating layers of the charcoaled skins.

Jared produced a red wine that was too cold at first but which grew warmer standing, uncorked, on the hearth.

‘The snow ploughs were out in the valley.’ Glass in hand, he had just dropped down to join her in front of the fire, having finished his meal on the settee. She had been too snug to move from the rug, and now she wished she had.

‘I know.’ She had seen them, way down on the flat white plane that formed the very mouth of Borrowdale, or at least seen the work that they were doing, watched over by the harsh faces of the imposing fells.

‘It could be days before they get to us up here.’

She looked at him quickly. Her eyes were dark and guarded.

‘What are you thinking?’ In the flickering candlelight his mouth took on a sardonic curve. ‘That it couldn’t have worked out better if I’d planned it?’

She shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. ‘You’re so scheming, Jared, it wouldn’t have surprised me if you had.’

He had shaved finally, earlier in the day, but now that dark shadow was appearing again around his mouth and jaw so that in the subdued and dancing light his features took on an almost formidable attraction, as menacing as the cruel heights of the scree-scarred fells.

‘Believe me. Improvising round a camp-fire wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,’ he told her, pushing a charred log back into the flames with the poker and a scintillating spray of sparks.

‘What exactly did you plan?’

Pursing his lips, he set the glass he had just drained down on the hearth beside her. ‘To wine and dine you in the best hotels Cumbria has to offer. For you to enjoy your holiday.’

Taylor cocked her head to one side, her eyes still wary. ‘Why? To try to tempt me into coming back to you?’

He shrugged. ‘Let’s just say for old times’ sake if you prefer.’

For old times’ sake…

Broodingly her gaze roamed over the mason-cut stone of the fire surround, lifting to the old clock ticking peacefully away in the centre of the mantelpiece. Beside it, on either side, antique figurines and plates bore testimony to a gentler age—a slower, less materialistic world. Like those framed drawings she had penned and he had hung in the recesses bore testimony to a happier time, Taylor thought with a sudden wave of nostalgia for those days washing over her with such unexpected force that determinedly she uttered, trying to stay afloat, ‘No, not for old times’ sake. Anyway, we were always fighting.’

‘Not always,’ he said softly.

She couldn’t look at him, knowing she would see in his eyes the same fervent emotion that thickened his voice. But, try though she did, she couldn’t stamp out the memories of her own traitorous desires. They sprung out at her, sensual and erotic, from the darkest corners of her mind, of wild, uninhibited nights when, scored by his verbal lashings she had turned away from him in bed, only to be dragged unceremoniously into his arms where hurt, anger and pain had turned to lust as dark and desperate as their rows had been. Because how could it have been anything but lust—on either of their parts—when it had been born out of such bitter words and scarring accusations? she wondered, shamed now even to think how wantonly she had abandoned herself to him.

‘That’s all in the past,’ she said and got quickly to her feet. Warmed by wine and the fire she felt a little bit woozy. ‘I think I’ll go to bed,’ she told him, collecting up some of the dishes to take them outside.

‘Don’t jump down my throat when I suggest this, but why don’t you share my room?’ he said. ‘It’s not warm by any means but the fire’s heated the chimney-breast and at least it’s taken the chill off the air. Your room was like an icebox when I went in there this afternoon.’

His offer was tempting. So was the desire to give in to the pangs of wanting that just being with him had stirred in her ever since he had ploughed back into her life. But pride, or common sense, or whatever it was prevailed and she said primly, ‘No thanks. I’ll be perfectly all right where I am.’

‘Suit yourself,’ he said noncommittally and, picking up the bottle, poured a little more wine into his glass, his movements measured and steady, Taylor noted, as though he couldn’t have cared one way or the other.

He was right about the bedroom though, she realised a little later after cleaning her teeth by candlelight in the equally cold bathroom. It was positively freezing!

She could see her breath on the air in the flickering yellow light as she hurriedly undressed and pulled on her short and less than substantial tunic of a nightdress.

Pale lemon, with a deep V-neck, cap sleeves and cutaway sides that left much of her thighs bare, it was something she had packed for a centrally heated bedroom, not the toe-nipping jaws of near Arctic conditions!

Blowing out the candle, she scrambled quickly into bed and, pulling the heavy duvet up around her, curled up into a tight ball. She lay like that for a long time with her teeth chattering, hoping to get warm, until her feet grew so numb she was forced to move to try rubbing them together. The bottom of the bed was freezing and her feet were like two blocks of ice!

Sometime later she heard Jared come up to bed. Always one to sleep with her bedroom door open, Taylor watched the flickering light of the candle he carried sending eerie shadows across her bedroom walls. Then he went into his own room and closed the door, plunging her into darkness once more.

‘Pig,’ she murmured under her breath, knowing he wouldn’t be shivering like she was. He scarcely felt the cold beneath all that sinewy muscle and he could easily have offered to have taken her room when he had informed her of how cold it was. Instead of which he had expected that she would lightly take herself off to bed with him!

Restlessly she turned over, tugging the duvet grudgingly around her. She heard Jared moving about in the room across the landing; water running in the en suite, then the sound of the big bed creaking as he got in.

She didn’t know how long she lay there awake and shivering, certainly long after he had fallen asleep, she was sure. At one point, jumping out, she groped around in the darkness and the wardrobe for her grey overcoat and threw that down on the bed. She had to warm up soon, she thought, or she’d die of hypothermia!

More than once, worn down by circumstances and the strain of the past two days, she felt sleep start to claim her, only to find herself awake a few moments later, still shivering with the cold.

Wanting to use the bathroom, she lay there for some time, growing more and more awake while she tried to summon up the courage to get out of bed. Eventually, telling herself things weren’t going to get any better no matter how long she lay there, she scrambled out and raced to the bathroom, darting back only to misjudge in the darkness the exact length of the ottoman that stood at the foot of the bed.

Stubbing her toe on one corner, she stumbled against it with an almighty clunk and then, hopping painfully, managed to grope her way along the duvet and dived back into bed, shuddering not only from the cold, now, but also from her numb and bruised toe.

Facing the window, with her eyelids screwed tightly shut against all the discomfort, she wasn’t aware of anything else until she heard Jared ask deeply from the doorway, ‘What is it? What the devil’s going on? Are you all right?’

‘No.’ Her teeth were chattering so much she could barely speak. ‘I can’t stop shivering,’ she admitted, past caring now.

‘You little fool.’ A few swift strides brought him across the room.

Without wasting any time he was ripping back the duvet.

‘Come here,’ he growled, sliding in beside her, and with that he was pulling her into his arms.

CHAPTER SIX

HIS body was hard and warm as he turned her into him, its merciful heat enveloping her, seeping through into every last shivering cell.

If he had been wearing a T-shirt when he had come in, then he must have pulled it off to give her the maximum benefit of his body temperature, Taylor thought with a violent shudder, crushed against the crisp dark hair that furred the deep contours of his chest.

He was wearing shorts in some soft, stretchy fabric that left no mystery about his potent manhood, and she could feel the roughness of his hair-covered legs as they entwined with the smooth cool silk of hers.

‘That better?’ he asked hoarsely.

It was. She couldn’t tell him how much, and all she could do was groan her gratitude from within his powerful embrace.

His broad back felt like warm velvet beneath her clinging fingers, and she could feel the play of powerful muscle beneath the smooth skin. He smelt good too, of cedar and a familiar underlying musk that had her nostrils dilating, greedy for as much of his warm scent as they could hold.

‘You shouldn’t have got that cold.’ His tone was lightly abrasive. ‘You should have come in and told me.’

‘You were asleep,’ she argued by means of a feeble excuse. Already she was feeling better. His body was like a furnace and the bed was becoming nicely warm at last.

‘No, I wasn’t.’

Wasn’t he? Against the warm satin of his shoulder, her brow puckered. Why not? What had kept him awake? ‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’

She felt the deep wall of his chest expand slightly. ‘Evidently not,’ he scolded, releasing a curiously ragged breath.

A small satisfied sigh escaped Taylor. She had stopped shivering at last. In fact, she was virtually glowing now.

‘Warmer?’ His voice was a lilting caress against her hair.

She murmured an affirmation, and suddenly realised that it wasn’t just his proximity that was warming her blood. Inside her something stirred, something born out of hunger and denial that her body recognised, and to which it was responding, seemingly with a will of its own.

From somewhere in the depths of her consciousness a little voice was struggling to be heard, but her ears were deaf to its futile warning.

She caught the shuddering breath that Jared drew and at the same time became aware of her own shallow breathing, knew that he had to have noticed it too.

Way down in the centre of her abdomen she felt the deep throb of desire, felt its molten message pierce her loins, her aching flesh, the tightening aureoles of her small breasts.

Pulled by something beyond her own volition, she moved restlessly against him, her legs unconsciously massaging the coarse length of his, her body thrilling to the full exciting knowledge of his arousal.

‘Taylor…’ It sounded like a growl, or a hopeless plea, she wasn’t sure which. She only knew that whatever she was feeling, he was feeling it too.

She could almost touch the leashed power of his aggressive virility, the tight-wire tension that packed every nerve and sinew of his body.

For a fraction of a second, her self-preservation shrieked at her to draw back, but it was already too late.

As he groaned, then pushed her on to her back, her senses were already leaping to meet their own destruction and when his mouth came down over hers she arched towards him with a stifled cry, lost in a conflagration of her own need.

Oh, dear heaven! How had she lived without this!

The stubble of his jaw was abrasive on her skin, rough and unbearably arousing, while their mouths blended, breathless and devouring, demanding a deeper knowledge of the other that each knew could only be reached in the most elemental way.

Shudders racked her body as his hard hands slid under the soft fabric of her tunic, seeking, claiming, kneading the slender curves of her eager hips. His massaging fingers moved to splay across the small span of her waist, and Taylor caught her breath as they slid along her ribcage to trace, with tantalising skill, the outer edges of her breasts.

He was and always had been a consummate lover, knowing exactly when to make her wait and when to grant her pleasure. But now she sucked in a breath, moving convulsively against him. How could he deny her when she wanted him so much!

‘Oh God…’ he breathed as though she strained his self-control, and slid his hands over her breasts now as reverently as if he were fondling priceless treasures.

‘Jared…’ It was a small sobbed sound, torn from her as he slid down and pushed back her tunic so that his mouth could close over one breast, his fingers caressing and moulding and teasing the other into throbbing tumescence before his mouth claimed that one too, drawing it into its erotically suckling warmth, sending an agony of exquisite pleasure down through her lower body.

Her fingers were luxuriating in the thickness of his hair, both hands eagerly caressing him, reacquainting themselves with the curve of his head, the coarser hair that formed his sideburns, the hard, exciting structure of his cheek and jaw.

Little murmurs of pleasure escaped her as his lips and hands rediscovered her, spasms bringing her straining against him—this man of whom she could never have enough—inviting, accepting him as sole licensee of her body.

She could feel the fullness of his arousal pressing against her beneath the soft shorts and she wanted to be rid of the barrier, wanted him inside of her, guiding her, controlling her, taking her with him to some other place, some other part of the universe that no one else could share.

She grappled with his waistband, slid her hand beneath it and felt the tightening flesh of a firm buttock. But then he reached down and helped her, pulling the garment free, then tugged her tunic over her head so that they were lying naked together.

The air in the room was like ice on her sensitised body, but that didn’t matter any more. Heat seared her as he came back down to her, causing her to gasp from the electrifying sensation of his warm nakedness.

This was where she belonged! This was where she had always belonged, she told herself feverishly, with no thought for tomorrow. In this man’s arms. In his bed. Giving as much as he demanded of her. And taking too. Taking in turn.

With his lower body pressed against hers, tantalising her with the promise of unbearable pleasure, he lay propped up on his elbows, hesitating, as though gripped by a moment’s doubt, like an undeserving soul unsure whether to take or turn away from the unexpected gift of heaven.

In the darkness, desperately Taylor’s eyes sought his.

Was he harbouring second thoughts? He couldn’t be. She was his and there was nothing she could do about it except take him into her, she reasoned blindly, thrusting her pelvis towards his.

As if that one action had snapped his self-control, he was pushing hard into her, the sudden and rapturous reality of his filling her drawing guttural sobs from her throat.

She was moving with him, joining him in a rhythm that was theirs and had only ever been theirs alone. She felt him sink deeper into her and she moved to accommodate him, winding her legs around him and gripping him hard, locking him to her in a dizzying, primeval rhapsody of the senses.

He groaned, robbed of his powers to do anything but lose himself to the generously offered gift of her femininity. But she had already begun to climax from the powerful thrusts of his body, and she felt the moist warmth of his flowing into her, first as an aphrodisiac, increasing her pleasure, then as a soothing balm after the fierce and throbbing contractions of her own body.

The next thing she knew it was morning. Sunlight was streaming in through a chink in the curtains and Jared’s side of the bed was empty.

The cold struck home as she slipped an arm out of the bed, and she quickly retracted it, reminded all too shockingly that she was naked.

Shame stung her more than the icy temperature in the room. Why had she let him? Let herself? she wondered despairingly. Why, whenever he was around, could she never constrain herself? Retain any self-control? She gritted her teeth, angry with herself. How could she have behaved so recklessly, when nothing had been resolved between them, and the only reason for his coming here had been to seduce her back into his bed—into his life—regardless of what she wanted? Of what was best for her?

Even now, lying here with regret and shame as her bed partners, her swollen breasts were tingling from the memory of his kneading hands, the sensual throb at the core of her femininity from just thinking about him assuring her that if he came in now her body would open to him again as a flower opens to the sun, welcoming him into her; that she could only ever be whole and fully alive with this man as her lover.

She got up quickly, slung on her dressing gown and darted into the bathroom, ignoring the biting chill while she forced herself to wash in the bitterly cold water.

Downstairs, dressed in a black polo-necked sweater, thick shirt and jeans, she had started washing the dishes from the previous night with water from the kettle she had found already singing on the fire when the back door opened with a blast of cold air and Jared stood there, kicking snow off his boots.

‘Morning,’ he greeted her somewhat cautiously, coming in.

‘Morning,’ Taylor returned quietly, with half a glance over her shoulder, unable to look at him, not only because she felt too ashamed, but also because, if she had, she knew exactly what she would have seen. A dark, unshaven Jared sporting that brutish man-of-the-fells image in his thick country clothes and padded body warmer, and she was having enough difficulty keeping her anxiety over the previous night reined in, without letting him see how potently she was affected by him as well.

‘The power’s still off, as you’ve probably gathered.’ He was opening a cupboard, putting something away. ‘And there’s no sign of a thaw.’

Taylor swirled hot suds around a plate with the washing-up brush. ‘No.’ The residue of last night’s feast had set hard on the china, refusing to be erased. Like their lovemaking, she thought, keeping her head down and scrubbing hard.

‘At least we haven’t had any fresh snowfall.’

‘Haven’t we?’ She sounded disenchanted but she couldn’t help it.

After a marked hesitation, he said, ‘Did you put the kettle back on to boil?’

‘Yes,’ she answered, wondering why he appeared so coldly matter-of-fact. Was he recriminating himself for what had happened last night? Was he regretting it too?

Behind her the cupboard door banged. ‘Did you sleep well?’

Taylor scrubbed at the caked potato more violently. ‘Yes.’

‘No more problems with being cold?’

Was he kidding?

‘No,’ she said tautly, her actions mirroring her agitation. Well, how else was she expected to feel? Last night they had both behaved recklessly and he wasn’t even mentioning it, which made the whole thing even more disconcerting.

‘For heaven’s sake, save your energy,’ he said, suddenly sounding impatient, ‘and leave that blasted plate to soak.’

She dropped it abruptly. It made a dull clunk as it hit the bottom of the sink.

‘What’s wrong?’ He was opening the cutlery drawer, making its contents rattle as he rammed it closed again. His voice wasn’t too gentle. ‘Worried you might be pregnant?’

She winced, because of course the thought had crossed her mind but it wasn’t just that. She hadn’t agreed to go back with him because, as far as she was concerned, nothing had changed. He would still love Alicia, no matter how much he convinced himself he couldn’t have her—that it was over. It was another man’s wife he really wanted to be the woman at his side. But last night, just as in the past, when he made love to her, she couldn’t think straight; tried to make herself believe that she meant more to him than just a substitute for someone else. Last night had been no exception because he had made love to her as though his heart and mind were free for him to do so—unreservedly and uninhibitedly—and she had let him, practically instigating it, while knowing that sooner rather than later they would become just another statistic in the eternal line of broken marriages, because she could never go back to him to be what she had been to him before, just a convenient little stand-in for somebody else.

And now, of course, because of her foolish and utterly thoughtless behaviour, there was the worry, as he’d said, that she could be pregnant…

‘It shouldn’t have happened,’ she demurred, staring at the cup she was washing without even seeing it.

‘That’s obvious,’ he said brusquely, behind her.

‘I don’t want to be pregnant,’ she protested, fighting the idea, her deep buried fears surfacing above everything else.

‘No,’ he breathed heavily in acceptance. ‘You made your opinions and objections clear enough while we were living together. I should have known better. I could easily have used something. But then neither of us was in the mood for rational thinking, were we? Well, what’s done is done, Taylor. We can’t put the clock back. And if you are carrying my child, I’m sure you’ll work something out where it doesn’t inconvenience you too much.’

‘Like I did the last time?’ She spun round to face him with the washing-up brush in her hand, soapsuds flying everywhere. Her teeth were clenched from the pain of remembering, her green eyes over-bright with bitter emotion. ‘Isn’t that what you accused me of? Getting rid of our unborn child?’

‘No!’ He was dragging a hand across his cheek, wiping away suds from where she had splashed him. Soapy water ran down the dark shiny front of his body warmer. ‘I never said that.’

‘No? Only that losing our baby was exactly what I wanted!’

With his wide shoulders held rigid, jaw locked tight, there was a bleak look about him as though remembering pained him too.

‘It was a… natural… assumption…’ he said, picking his words carefully ‘… in view of the way you were… the way you seemed to have no time for…’ He broke off on a heavily drawn breath. ‘For heaven’s sake, Taylor! Do I have to spell it out?’

No, he didn’t, she thought, turning around again, her brush toying absently with the winking bubbles in the bowl.

Throughout her short marriage, she had shied away from any contact with babies, refusing to show any interest in them; wanting one so desperately she couldn’t bear to inflame the need. Jared had scorned her lack of maternal instinct, but he had been unaware of her fears, taking her attitude as a total disregard—if not distaste—for children and motherhood, which was why he had been so derisive when he had seen her with Josh.

Her pregnancy had been the result of an impassioned row, a making up during which, just as the previous night, neither had had the will nor the inclination to consider protection. She remembered the first tentative excitement she had experienced—the joy even—when she had first suspected that she was going to have a baby; then, when it was confirmed, the fear. She became withdrawn and introverted. Moody, too, she accepted with a mental grimace. So it probably wasn’t that surprising that he had picked up on those vibes; why he thought she was no less than relieved when he came home from that ten-day conference and she told him that she had miscarried.