CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER FIVE
I T WAS HARD to imagine this situation ending in any way that would preserve their friendship.
He wanted her—and that want had steel claws.
She wanted him—which in itself was an aphrodisiac. And she wasn’t hiding that want because she believed they were a couple, that he loved her, that she was safe.
Talk about a moral maze. He wouldn’t wish this situation on his worst enemy.
The consultant greeted them in Reception.
‘No, I haven’t remembered anything,’ Clemmie said, before the man had even finished shaking their hands. ‘Well, not much,’ she added, with a sideways glance at Joaquin. ‘Nothing significant.’
‘Don’t rush it.’
Clemmie clamped her lips over a rude response. She was fed up with being told not to rush it—she wanted to rush it.
‘Now, shall I talk you through the tests we are going to run?’
It was late afternoon before the tests were finished, and she was given a clean bill of health—along with some information that changed everything.
Joaquin was alongside her as they walked through the revolving glass doors and out into the pale winter sunshine together.
For how much longer that together would last, given the bombshell information that had just been dropped on her, remained to be seen.
Clemmie angled a sideways glance at the tall figure beside her and took a deep breath before asking brightly, ‘Did you manage to get any work done?’
During her trips to various departments she had caught glimpses of him sitting in an alcove, his laptop on his knee, apparently completely absorbed.
‘Work?’
‘I saw you were deep into it.’ She glanced at the laptop bag he carried.
‘Sure...most productive,’ he lied.
‘You drive back.’ She threw the keys and he automatically caught them. ‘I’m tired and we might hit rush hour.’
‘So how did it go?’ he asked, when they were seated side by side. ‘You have the results?’
She shrugged. ‘I have to wait for some of the blood test results, but everything else I passed with flying colours.’
‘Your memory?’
‘Except that one. And please don’t tell me not to push it.’
‘All right, I won’t,’ he responded. A voice in his head was telling him to proceed with caution. ‘Something is wrong?’ he asked.
She chewed on her full lower lip and didn’t deny it. Because something was very, very wrong...but what it was she didn’t know yet.
She had her theories, but mostly it boiled down to was it her or was it him?
‘I do not want to discuss it here. Let’s wait until we are back at Maplehurst.’
She thought for a moment that he was going to push her, but after studying her face for a long moment he just nodded.
She sat there immobile, and the longer her silence stretched the deeper into overdrive his imagination went. He didn’t say anything when she took out her phone, but when she had finished with it, and slid the phone back into her bag, she explained.
‘I was texting Mum. I had said I’d call in, but... Anyway, I’ve told her I’ve had the all-clear.’
‘Sure you don’t want to drop by?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m tired,’ she said gruffly. ‘I’ll see her tomorrow.’
Surging frustration gnawing him to the bone, Joaquin resisted the temptation to pull the car over and demand she tell him what the hell was the matter.
Ten minutes later they drove past the gatehouse. The lights were on.
‘I think Harry is meant to be arriving tomorrow. Mum will probably be glad I didn’t drop by. She’ll be cooking and cleaning.’
Halfway up the long drive to the house a fox ran across the road in front of them before disappearing into the woods. Clemmie didn’t even react to it.
Frustration and fear scraped his nerve-endings. Whatever she had learnt at the hospital must have been pretty devastating.
The sooner she told him, the sooner he could get her the help she needed.
‘Do you want a drink?’ Joaquin asked, studying the label on the bottle he’d pulled from a cupboard before pouring himself one. He had the feeling he might need it.
In the act of putting a match to the pile of kindling someone—probably her mum—had arranged in the fireplace, she shook her head.
‘I might make myself a cup of tea, though,’ she said as she straightened up, dusting her hands on her bottom as she watched the flames flare and take hold. ‘I might get changed too,’ she added, glancing down at her silk shirt and wide-legged linen trousers. The matching jacket lay over the back of the sofa.
He caught her arm. ‘Not now.’
She sighed and nodded, not pretending to misunderstand his meaning.
‘What is wrong? You can tell me anything—you know that.’
Anything beside the fact that she...
She blinked. She couldn’t say it—she couldn’t think it.
‘After all the tests I asked the doctor about...’ She gave a self-conscious little shrug. ‘I asked him about birth control, and he said...he said—’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said that it was sensible of me to think about such things before beginning a sexual relationship.’ She watched his face for reaction. ‘I said that obviously I was already in a sexual relationship.’ She sucked in a deep, sustaining breath. ‘And then he said...’
Joaquin’s patience snapped. He was thinking the worst by this point—not that he even knew what that was. But with this sort of build-up he was imagining something devastating.
‘He said what?’
‘That I wasn’t. He said...’
‘Get to the point, Clemmie.’
‘He told me I was still a virgin.’
Her eyes were trained on her feet as she spoke, but she was aware of Joaquin across the room, downing the contents of the glass he held.
‘It was a bit of a shock.’
Joaquin laughed. Shock didn’t really cover what he was feeling—what had glued his feet to the floor. The idea that all the passion he had always sensed in her was untapped...
‘So, this was news to you?’
‘Well, I knew I once was, obviously.’
He watched a thoughtful expression drift across her solemn face.
‘I suppose that’s one of the reasons that I was upset. I couldn’t remember my first time. I just assumed that...’ She had assumed that her first time had been with Joaquin, and somehow that had felt right...like the last piece in a puzzle slotting into place. She extended her finger to look at the dull glitter of the multiple stones. ‘Well, we’re engaged. And sex is usually pre-ring, not post.’
She looked at Joaquin, who had been standing still, as he slammed his glass down on a table and flopped into a chair with less than his usual inherent elegance. There was a stunned expression on his face as he leaned back, dragging both hands through the dark hair that had begun to curl on the back of his neck.
‘I really thought I was beyond being shocked, but you...’
His eyes drifted to her lips, to their full, passionate curve, and he shook his head. He had always prided himself on never making assumptions, but in his defence even to imagine that a woman with that mouth being untouched ...
‘So, I need to know,’ she told him.
He watched as she straightened her spine and lifted her chin, delivering to him a Bring it on, I can take it stare. The extraordinary colour of her eyes was emphasised by the dark smudges beneath them.
‘Is it me?’ she asked. Twin circles of colour stood out like flags on her smooth cheeks.
‘Is that a trick question?’
She slung him a frustrated look and gritted her teeth. ‘I’ve never been very... Well, not very sexy ,’ she admitted bluntly. Her eyes narrowed when he gave a short laugh. ‘You think that’s amusing?’ she asked, her throat aching and scratchy with hurt.
Thinking of the testosterone-charged fire in his groin, he shook his head before stretching his legs out in front of him and linking his hands behind his head.
It was an indolent pose that sent her resentment spiralling.
‘Sorry...a private joke,’ he said.
‘Were we about to split up when all this happened?’ she hypothesised, thinking that if this was the Joaquin she had got engaged to she was surprised it had lasted at all.
‘That was never discussed.’
‘Am I frigid?’
She ticked the question off on one finger, as though it was high on the list of possibilities she had been compiling. Then she paused and cleared her throat, flashing him an apologetic look from under her lashes.
‘Or is it you...? Do you have issues?’
Too stunned by her revelation to halt her stream of wild speculation, he stood there barely registering the comforting pressure of the small hand that had come to rest on his arm as she’d produced her last theory.
‘If it is you...’ Her lashes came down in a luxuriant protective sweep as she probed delicately. ‘There is nothing to be ashamed of—’
‘Virgin?’
Joaquin spoke the word with the inflection of someone pronouncing a word that had no meaning. Then he shook his head as if he was just waking up, messing up his hair as it he dragged his hand back and forth across his scalp.
‘You are a virgin? How? ’ he demanded. ‘Is that even possible? All this rubbish about you not being sexy and asking if you’re frigid... You wonder why I laughed? Seriously— how are you a virgin?’
‘Well, I kind of hoped you would have the answer to that one. I assumed that... Well... I thought it was a subject that would have come up between us.’ She looked down at the ring weighing down her finger and tacked on drily, ‘Considering.’
What had they spoken about? It would seem they’d had plenty of time for talking, because they clearly hadn’t been doing anything else, she thought bitterly—which left open only that explanation that still didn’t seem possible to her.
‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Joaquin,’ she said gently. ‘It happens to a lot of men.’
Joaquin shook himself free of his contemplation of her mouth as it finally dawned on him what she was suggesting. He laughed again.
‘This is not a joke, Joaquin.’
‘That is true. I have been called many things in my life, but impotent...?’ Only Clemmie . ‘And how would you know what happens to lots of men?’
The cruel taunt sent a rush of heat under her skin.
‘There’s no need to be so defensive,’ she countered spikily.
Of all the options, this seemed the most likely. She might never have set the world alight with her sexuality, but she didn’t have any hang-ups, and her virginity had zero to do with moral principles. Frankly, anyone who could look at Joaquin and think Let’s wait for a ring had to have serious issues!
‘Defensive? You’re the one changing the subject.’
She slung him a frustrated glare and suddenly felt in danger of forgetting what the subject was as his dark, heavy-lidded eyes slid downwards over her body, making her nipples tingle and burn.
Mortified that she had no control over her physical response, that her body seemed to have been highjacked by lust, she compressed her lips. ‘It’s better to discuss problems.’
‘I don’t consider your virginity to be a problem, as such. A mystery, maybe?’
‘We are not talking about my vir—Don’t change the subject.’
‘I thought that was the subject.’
With one elegant motion he surged to his feet, and a moment later was standing close enough for her to feel the warmth of his body as he towered above her.
‘You’re feeling insecure because we have not consummated our—?’
She gave her head a tiny shake and pressed the flat of her hand to his lips to still the flow of words. When, a self-conscious moment later, she tried to withdraw it, his fingers curled like warm steel around her wrist, holding her hand against his lips for a long, lingering moment.
Fighting the hypnotic pull of his dark eyes, she tugged again and pressed her free hand to her chest, against her pounding heart.
Joaquin turned on his heel and put himself out of grabbing distance before he twisted back to face her.
‘Don’t deflect,’ she hit back waspishly. ‘I am not insecure—though I do think it might have been simpler all round if you had discovered you didn’t fancy me before you put a ring on my finger! That’s it, isn’t it?’ she accused, thinking that sometimes the simplest explanation was the most accurate.
He just isn’t into you, Clemmie.
A spasm of exasperation washed over his perfect features. ‘Will you stop putting words in my mouth?’
Of course now she couldn’t stop staring at his mouth.
Her face was so expressive that he could almost hear her thoughts. His eyes darkened, the pupils expanding to almost obliterate the chocolate-brown of the iris. The pounding of blood in his eardrums was echoed by the pounding elsewhere in his body.
He recognised the natural physical response of his body when a beautiful, desirable woman made it clear she wanted him to kiss her. It was a dance he had enjoyed before, and it was always an extra turn-on when a woman was bold enough to let him know what she wanted.
But this was not any beautiful, desirable woman, he reminded himself. This was Clemmie, which made the rules of engagement different—or should have.
At some point the rules had changed.
They had an intimate bond that he had never experienced with another woman...an intimate bond without sexual intimacy. Which was why it had lasted.
Were there any rules?
Her eyes widened as Joaquin crossed the room, his purposeful panther-like stride bringing him to her side in seconds.
‘Do us both a favour and quit with the conspiracy theories and the casting aspersions on a Spanish man’s machismo.’ He tilted his head to one side, considering the face turned up to him. ‘Or was it meant to be a challenge? I enjoy a challenge...’ he purred.
‘Challenge...?’ she parroted faintly. His proximity was having a powerfully mind-numbing effect on her.
Or it could be the after effects of her concussion.
She clung to this hope in the face of the strong kicks of lust in her belly and lower.
‘A challenge to prove myself to you?’ he asked.
It struck Clemmie forcibly that he was not looking or acting like a man who felt his machismo threatened. And then he took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, leaving her no option but to tilt her head back to look up into his face. Then she wished she hadn’t. Because the nebulous thing that was prowling deep in the darkness of his darkly lashed eyes made her insides dissolve.
They had shared so much, but now—inexplicably—he seemed like a stranger. This was not the Joaquin she joked with, the man she debated issues they disagreed on with, from the profound to the just silly... But then how could anyone not like vinegar on their chips?
This was a dark, dangerous and exciting stranger.
I am Clemmie, short for Clementine—my mum couldn’t stop eating them when she was pregnant. Who are you?
If she’d said it out loud he would have been justified in thinking she had lost her mind—and maybe she had? Bombarded by his overwhelming maleness at a cellular level, she quivered—and drew in a sharp breath as he dragged his knuckles gently across the softness of her cheek, making a detour around a bruise. The contact felt like raw electricity prickling along her nerve-endings, disconnecting her body from her brain.
The attraction of not being in control had always eluded Clemmie. She considered it a form of insanity, and it was scary to know that at this moment she was on the brink of embracing that particular form of insanity. But there was another part of her that wanted to retreat behind the safe security of her emotional excess filter.
Her nostrils quivered as she breathed in the scent of him greedily. Her eyelashes fluttered like trapped butterflies against the curve of her cheek as she put a fight against the sensory overload.
‘I wasn’t... I’m not...’ she protested weakly, forcing the words past the aching occlusion in her throat. Her attempt at a laugh failed on every level, emerging as a strangled croak. ‘I have a concussion...’ she reminded him.
The glitter in his eyes damped down a few degrees. ‘I thought they gave you a clean bill of health?’
The concern in his voice wrapped inside its interrogative harshness was at some level even more dangerous to her state of mind than the idea that he was going to kiss her... It made her ache for something and she didn’t know what she yearned for.
‘They did,’ she admitted, fighting a sudden strong urge to burst into tears.
‘Truth? Or is this you being stoic?’ he asked, sounding scornful of this tendency.
‘I’m fine...a bit sore. I don’t even have a headache.’ She sketched a smile. ‘But the day isn’t over yet.’
‘So, you were suggesting that I have a problem?’ he framed, and a mixture of hauteur and amusement quivered across his firm, fascinating lips.
Clemmie was rapidly ditching that particular theory.
She had always been aware of the inherent sensuality he possessed...the aura of maleness he exuded. You’d have to be dead not to. But it wasn’t until this moment that she realised she had never experienced its full force—only a diluted just friends version.
She had been shielded. And now she wasn’t. It was as if someone had just opened the door on a flaming furnace. She was no longer warm, but burning.
‘You’re right,’ he murmured. ‘I do have a problem. I have a very big problem.’
His devilish white grin flashed and she could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek as he leaned down.
‘But not the one you are talking about...’
He had been shifting his stance in slow increments as he spoke, moving closer, and he was close enough now for her to feel not just the heat of his lean, hard body but the quivering tension that was coming off him in waves, making her think of a stallion being held back at the starting line, all hard sinew and rippling muscles, strength and power restrained— just .
The perfect symmetry of his face, its slashing angles and hollows, all blurred as she was hit by a wave of dizziness. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears, its dull pounding like waves crashing and retreating onto a rocky shore, an elemental sound she had always found soothing.
Except Clemmie didn’t feel soothed.
She felt out of her skin, simultaneously excited and scared.
His fierce, blatantly carnal smile sent her insides into meltdown. Her heart continued to hammer. Her legs felt as though they did not belong to her.
‘Point p-proved...’ she stuttered out.
‘What point would that be?’
She shook her head. She had never seen that look of hard intent on his face before. A look that stretched the golden skin tight across his perfect bones and emphasised the sharp carved angles.
Joaquin didn’t need to prove a thing. This was not about his fractured ego. It was about need. The sort of need that for the first time in his life sidestepped logic. The tabloid frenzy that frequently surrounded his love life made him the first to admit that love had nothing to do with it! But he was not indiscriminate. Aside from natural lust, there was always an element of cold logic to his choice of partners.
His parents’ marriage, and the total lack of honesty involved, had given him a pathological loathing of hypocrisy and keeping up appearances. Even less cynically based marriages seemed to him ultimately to become prisons as the chemistry that had brought two people together faded, all too frequently turned to bitterness and dislike or even—in many ways worse—indifference.
He had never bedded a woman who expected more than he was willing to give. They didn’t want a piece of him. They were not interested in what made him tick. They wanted sex and the boost to their profile that being seen with him would give them.
He could see the logic of that and even admire it.
Clemmie belonged to a different part of his life. Their shared past was not something that could be replicated. The only honourable thing he had ever done in his life was not acknowledging the physical attraction between them, let alone following through with it. It had been his way of protecting her and preserving their friendship.
He had always known the danger of blurring the line between friendship and sex: once you stepped over that line there was no going back.
But now, pumped up and frustrated, he knew the hormonal heat in his blood was in charge, and the danger warnings were silenced as he began to rationalise the situation. There could be an afterwards ... Once the attraction faded there would be a route back to friendship. It just required their keeping things realistic.
The thing he was keeping in the back of his mind was still not front and foremost, and the option of not acknowledging this had been taken away. Nothing could muffle the screaming fact that he wanted this—he wanted her .
Once acknowledged and given oxygen, that want, that primal need, grew exponentially with each passing heartbeat. Heartbeats were the only time scale that made any sense in this sense-free zone. He breathed in the fragrance of her hair, wanting to bury his face in the soft, fiery mesh. The warning bell in his head was playing to a deaf audience. There was a hungry clamour singing through his blood, urging him to touch her.
A part of him recognised that it was crazy to feed this hunger, but his imagination was embracing the crazy even as it moved beyond touching, conjuring an image of him lying between her legs, watching her face, feeling her slim legs wrap around him, pulling him into her warmth...
She read the challenge in his deep-set eyes. It was mingled with something that seemed close to compulsion as he placed a hand on the small of her back, before stepping in to seal their bodies from the waist down, thigh to thigh.
‘All right,’ she croaked, striving for irony as wave after debilitating wave of warmth fluttered through her belly and her knees began to sag. ‘Point proved. You are all man—no doubts at all.’
She was saved from crumbling ignominiously at his feet by the tightening of his hand on her waist. She gasped, her eyes squeezing tight shut, as she felt the carnal imprint of his erection grinding into the softness of her belly.
What would it feel like to have her tingling breasts crushed against his chest, skin to skin?
She clenched her hands into white-knuckled fists to prevent them crawling around his neck and finding out.
‘I haven’t proved my point. Not yet,’ he slurred softly as he angled her face up to his.
His expression was intent as he moved his thumb, allowing it to trace the plump, quivering outline of her lips as he captured her wide green eyes.
Transfixed, Clemmie could only stare into his face. She forgot how to breathe as his eyes grew dark and deep, silver shards lighting the darkness drew her in, captured and held her. The air around them seemed hotter, matching the dancing flames in the stone inglenook fireplace.
She melted into him, aware of the hard maleness of his body as he dragged her closer, his hands sliding into her hair, dragging her head back and exposing the long line of her neck as he kissed his way down the elegant column until he reached the blue-veined pulse throbbing at the base.
Then he reclaimed her mouth. Clemmie was barely aware that the hands at her waist had lifted her until she found herself sitting on the table, with Joaquin standing between her thighs.
She gasped as he stepped in closer.
His grip on her waist loosened as he swore, misinterpreting her gasp. ‘I knew you were lying...’
‘I wasn’t lying. It only hurts when I move my head too quickly. Or breathe. Just joking,’ she added quickly, afraid that he might not kiss her. At that moment she wanted his kiss more than she wanted to breathe.
Oxygen was in very short supply.
So was sanity!
The first brush of his lips across her own was soft, almost a whisper, and then the darkness in his eyes intensified. She wanted to look away, but she was drawn in as he covered her lips with his. She reacted to the skilled sensual intrusion of his tongue with a low moan as the tenderness flicked into hard hunger, demanding a passionate response. The shocking liquid heat between her legs made her squirm against the hardness of his thigh, moaning as she kissed him back.
There is no right, said the voice in his head as he hesitated. There is no wrong.
There is. She thinks we are in a relationship.
There is no tomorrow or yesterday.
Above the primal roar in his blood a small, sane corner of his brain awoke.
Tomorrow she’ll hate you for this lie—and this is all a lie. She thinks you are together. You might be a scoundrel, but you have never lied to a woman—and this is Clemmie.
It felt right. But it wasn’t. Not on any level.