After all, wasn’t it true that there were people, women in the main, who seemed to love self-destructively over and over again?
Her head was starting to pound as the tension in her muscles locked her veins. She went into her bedroom, quickly stripping down to her underwear, force of habit making her fold her discarded clothes before curling up on top of the duvet.
It was hot up here in the bedroom, vague sounds from outside drifting in through the open window, its curtains closed against the bright sunlight.
The tablets were slow to take effect, and for a long time Lacey seemed to drift in and out of an uneasy sleep permeated by sharply focused memories of the past, of Lewis.
She fought against them, a frown marring the smoothness of her forehead, her body tensing in rejection of what she knew subconsciously lay waiting for her if she succumbed to the lure of her dreams. In them she could walk through a doorway that led back to the past; in them she could relive those precious shared hours when she had believed herself loved, cherished, desired; but beyond her dreams and their brief panacea lay reality and pain.
Nevertheless when the pills finally took effect she instinctively turned to one side, as though curving her body into that of an unseen partner who shared her bed.
Memories drifted in and out of her mind, whispering silken promises, and her body started to relax. Once many, many years ago she and Lewis had shared a long sunny afternoon in bed together.
It had been a Saturday. He had been at work in the morning and had returned in time for lunch. She had been working in the garden and had gone upstairs to shower and change. He had followed her, walking into the bathroom just as she was emerging from the shower, whatever he had been about to ask her forgotten as he’d watched the way the small beads of moisture rolled down over her skin.
She had looked at him and known with a tiny thrill of feminine elation just what was going through his mind. She had been proud of her body then, proud of her ability to arouse him, innocently believing in the fiction of their love.
She had deliberately, provocatively almost, let the towel slip from her hands and walked towards him.
He smelled of heat and the dry dustiness of an office environment, these scents clinging to his skin, mingling with its unmistakable maleness so that she received a faintly shocking charge of erotic awareness in the contrasting hot, alien scent of man and the outside world, and her own clean, cool, enclosed woman smell.
‘What would you like for lunch?’
She looked at his mouth as she asked the question, her voice carefully neutral but her body openly displaying that the preparation of a meal was the last thing on her mind.
He, as she had known he would, reached for her, running his hands quickly over her still damp skin, and then less quickly as he held her slightly away from him, repaying her teasing with a little deliberate torment of his own, while he pretended to consider her question.
But all the time she was aware of his arousal, of her own growing, heady awareness that she only had to reach out and touch him, that she only had to lean forward and stroke his mouth with the tip of her tongue…
It shocked her a little that she should feel this heady, almost wanton pleasure in her sleek feminine nakedness, her skin cool and soft, while beneath her fingertips, beneath the crisp cotton of his white shirt sleeves his body burned with heat and the restless, surging male urgency which she was deliberately trying to incite.
Shamefully she knew how much she liked to tease him like this, to revel in the security their relationship gave her, his love gave her, to torment him a little so that he fought to hold on to his self-control.
He was never violent with her, never aggressive, never anything other than a generous, almost protective lover, who always seemed to place her own needs above his own; and yet sometimes, when she opened her eyes and looked into his, she saw such an intensity of passion there, such a fierce heat of desire that her heart and her body would clench on a tight wave of awe and excitement that such an ordinary person as herself could arouse him to such emotions.
The sex lessons she had received at school, even the overheard conversations of other girls as she’d grown older, had warned her that it might not be possible for her to feel like this, to derive so much sensual and emotional pleasure from seeing and feeling the intensity of his need for her.
Although she had never told him so, never voiced such deep emotions out loud, the fact that he was prepared to betray to her how much he loved and wanted her, the fact that he allowed her to see how vulnerable she could make him, made her feel stronger, happier than she had ever believed she could feel, banishing all the years when she had been alone, afraid that no one would ever love her, suffering the fears only known to those who, from whatever cause, had suffered the loss of parental love while very young.
Now, as he touched her, her body trembled, vibrating almost to the sensitivity of his touch.
As he started to draw her closer to him, she whispered against his mouth, ‘Careful, I’ll make your clothes damp.’
‘Then I’d better just take them off, hadn’t I?’
It was a familiar game, one Lacey enjoyed playing, dragging it out a little further as she protested untruthfully, ‘But what about lunch? I’m hungry…’
‘You want to get dressed?’
His hand was cupping her breast. The previous weekend he had been putting a new fence around the garden, and his skin was still callused from the outdoor work. She liked the sensation of his hard skin against her softness, rubbing herself sinuously against him to increase the sensation of pleasure, while responding, ‘Mm…I suppose I should.’
His shirt was unfastened at the neck, and if she stood on tiptoe she could just about manage to kiss his throat, letting her lips absorb the hot, salty taste of his skin. She loved the scent and taste of him—it was something that was uniquely his, something that clung to his clothes, to their bed, causing her often when he wasn’t there to stroke her fingers against a shirt he had worn, a pillow on which he had slept.
He often told her that she was unbelievably sensual, and when he said it his eyes would darken with a passion that told her how much he enjoyed that aspect of her personality. An aspect which until she had met him she had never even known existed, and one which even now she kept closely guarded, secret, something she shared with him and him alone. It was as though their love gave her the freedom, the confidence to step outside the image she showed the world to share with him and shower on him all the gifts of her womanhood.
Now, as she kissed and licked his throat, she felt the familiar tension hardening his muscles, caught the familiar small sound he made in his throat, knew with eager joy that soon Lewis would pick her up and carry her over to their bed and that, once there, he would stroke her, kiss her, pleasure her until she was crying out to him, pleading with him for the ultimate expression of his desire, his love…but someone was knocking on the door, the sound overriding her urgent pleas.
Lacey came out of her dream, her body trembling and drenched in sweat, to the realisation that someone actually was knocking on her front door.