Past and Present - A Modern Day Romance of North & South

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - LOVE AND LONGING

He watched, utterly mesmerised, as a multitude of expressions danced in quick succession across her face, her striking hazel eyes opening wider, her provocative mouth, just now so malleable and passionate beneath his, falling slightly agape, even as her bottom lip began to tremble as she registered the words that had risen up from the burning depths of his heart to scorch the air between them.

“You look surprised,” he mused softly, his gaze searing hers, not once breaking the electrically charged communion between them. He ran his eloquent fingers through her mussed hair, gently disentangling it, feeling her body shudder unequivocally beneath his touch.

“I didn’t expect you to say something like that,” she admitted, her colour heightening. She laughed lightly, a little self-consciously. “You took my breath away.”

“You take mine away every time I’m with you.” He brushed the back of his hand across her cheek very gently, sliding his fingers to the nape of her neck where they circled and stroked with seductive slowness against her velvet skin.

In silence she placed her hand atop his shirt, pressing her palm flush against his chest, moving with excruciating languor towards his shoulder, the action so unbelievably erotic that he had to cover her hand with his, stopping its stealthy movements before he lost complete control. Without a word, he held her delicate fingers against him long enough for her to feel the tumultuous vibrations of his heart before raising them to his lips to kiss them one by one with deliberately suppressed ardour.

His eyes melted into hers, so much conveyed without words. It would be so easy to ease her down, to undo one by one the buttons of her blouse…to forget where they were and all the responsibilities that they so easily managed to eclipse whenever they were together. He loved her. Yet he needed her to be comfortable: with him, with what was happening between them.

“I’m not going to force you into anything, Margaret. I hope you know that,” he said with so much seriousness of tone that she raised her index finger to his lips and stopped him before he could continue further, her eyes conveying to him her implicit understanding.

“I know,” she said. “Just hold me.”

Willingly he did as she asked, relishing the developing intimacy between them as they settled back against the arm of the Chesterton together, her head resting against his chest in quiet repose. He could wait for her; wait until she was ready, he told himself. He was not about to rush her blindly into something she didn’t want, however much he wanted her. He stroked her back with absent-minded pleasure, just luxuriating in the nearness of her and the warmth that diffused the air around them.

How long they stayed that way, nestled together in contentment, he could not have told. Time seemed utterly irrelevant. Not even the phone rang to commandeer his attention, the reception staff, mindful of Steven’s accident, making sure that none but the most urgent calls were put through, just as he’d instructed Helena that morning. He had been left in peace for most of the day and he was pleased of it, even more so now because it gave him this precious time with Margaret.

He couldn’t think of his life now without her being a part of it. He couldn’t imagine not seeing her as she went about her work, her dulcet voice capable of lifting his spirits just at its very sound, her perfume with its exotic scent trailing in her wake as she walked by, surrounding her like a fragrant cloud that he wanted to lose himself in, even as he was intoxicatingly engulfed now.

“You look quite dishevelled, Miss Hale,” he said, glancing down at her after some time of comfortable silence, stroking her wayward hair in an ineffectual bid to smooth its lustrous length a little, his scorching gaze roving over her rather rumpled blouse that had borne the earlier assault of his hands. “But still very beautiful.”

“I might say the same about you, Mr Thornton,” she replied with an affectionate smile, snuggling closer and closing her eyes in blissful contentment.

***

“I think I’d better go and pick the post up off the floor,” Margaret said some while later, finally and reluctantly rousing herself from where she was nestled comfortably in the circle of John’s arms. The last thing she wanted to do was to have to move away from him and to break the cosy familiarity they had managed to discover so perfectly together and yet she knew that, however much she longed for it, they couldn’t remain as they were forever. The world would not let them. Sooner or later it would intrude.

John, it appeared, was just as disinclined to burst the bubble they were floating in. “I don’t know whether I can allow that,” he replied in a sensual whisper, his arm tightening about her waist as though to keep her in this idyllic state of imprisonment just a little longer.

“If the door opens now it’ll all crease up and be ruined,” she began as she endeavoured, somewhat half-heartedly, to extract herself from his embrace.

He held onto her tighter, allowing her no escape, his head lowering so that his lips brushed softly against her ear. “We’d better hope the door doesn’t open then.”

“If you sign them I can drop them off at the post box on my way home,” she went on, her body, following its own rules, seeking to cleave with his as he coaxed her back towards the dreamy state she had just now been in.

His lips found her mouth, his kiss slow and seductive. “I’m not sure I want you to go home.”

“I can’t stay here forever.”

His head jerked abruptly back at her words, his eyes narrowing. “Why not? It’s where I want you to be – and where I think you want to be.”

“I do,” she admitted quietly, her fingers trailing the length of his strong neck.

“Then don’t go home. I don’t think I could stand to watch you walk out of that door just yet.”

“Do you always get your own way, Mr Thornton?” she asked, her eyes challenging him to reveal a truth she already knew.

“Most of the time, Miss Hale – except with you, as you well know.”

She smiled, nodding thoughtfully. “Well if you let me go and rescue the post, I promise I’ll stay for a bit longer.”

“And if I don’t let you get the post?” he countered.

“Is that a challenge?” Her eyes sparkled back at him.

“What would you do if it was?”

“I suppose I’d have to go home - even though I’d hate to leave you.”

He sighed resignedly, relaxing his arm so that she could get up. She stood there before him, brushing her hands over her clothes, still trembling at the remembrance of his touch. She’d never known anything like it. As she glanced up she saw that he was watching her intently, following her movements, drinking her in without any effort to conceal the fact or his desire for her. A shiver of pleasure rippled through her in echoing response. Never had a man made her feel so wanted! It was almost enough to make her hurl herself back into his arms again, to just forget everything else, to drown in the moment.

Forcing her feet to move, she turned and went to retrieve the scattered post from the carpet before taking it to John’s desk and laying it in a neat pile on his blotter. He was still watching her. Silent, dark, brooding: her perfect stranger. She smiled at the memory, of the first glimpse of him she’d had when he’d walked up the street completely oblivious to her watching him. She could never have guessed that she’d be with him now.

“Why are you smiling so secretively?” Her smile deepened as she wondered whether to tell him. “Well?” he asked, stretching up and walking with predatory intent towards her.

And so she told him, rather self-consciously, of her first sight of him, of how she had watched him walk into Blues and had wanted, more than anything, to run after him. As he came to a standstill before her his expression went from bewilderment to amusement to disappointment. When she had finished he told her that he wished she’d have followed him in and introduced herself.

“You’d have thought I was mad!” she replied indignantly at this last remark and he laughed back at her, all his cares and worries seemingly shed, dissolving like snow.

“Maybe,” he acknowledged pensively as his mirth faded. He slipped his arms about her waist, his voice dropping to that seductive velvety intonation that made her whole body shake with delicious anticipation. “As it was, I had to wait until you found me in the stillroom with Steven that day.”

Steven, she thought, as the present came rushing back from the outer borders of her mind. Fran. The accident. And John tearing off to the hospital and looking as bleak as if he had heard a death knell calling out for him. The events of last night surfaced again, reminding her of the way John had frozen her out when he’d spoken to his mother, the coldness that had scuttled through her to have to witness it and know that he was still hiding a part of himself away.

“What was your childhood like?” she asked suddenly, meeting his eyes with a mute imploring that cut deeper than a wish to hear mere generalisation.

His body stiffened instantly. She saw it happening, felt the tension spread through the muscles of his arms beneath her fingers. “It was normal. Like most people’s,” he said, his tone growing defensive.

His arms fell away from her, so easily putting that distance between them once more, as he walked away to go and sit down at his desk and look through the post she’d laid there just a few moments before, even though she knew that he wasn’t reading one word on the page. “It was happy. Much as yours was, I would think.”

“What about your father?”

“My father died when I was eighteen.”

“It must have been awful.”

“It was.”

“Do you miss him?”

“I try not to think about it.” His words were guarded, shot through with the pain of having to recount what had happened so long ago. He didn’t look up at her. His attention remained vigorously trained upon the letter before him.

“It’s all locked away inside you still isn’t it? I can tell by the way you’re talking to me now.”

“If you’re so perceptive of my feelings on the subject then you’ll know that I don’t want to discuss it.”

Well aware that she was venturing upon extremely unstable territory, Margaret moved slowly around the desk to stand behind his chair, plunging her fingers into the thick black depths of his hair, kneading his scalp in a soothingly sensual rhythm.

“Did you love him?” She closed her eyes briefly, stealing herself for the torrent that would follow such a personal question, only to find that into her sightless world came the sound of his breath sucking in, the noise of his chair squeaking quietly as he turned, her fingers losing his hair but finding instead the strong, masculine contours of his face.

“Open your eyes, Margaret.” She did as he asked, the command in his voice bringing her eyes up to his. He silently manoeuvred her pliant and already overtly sensitised body so that she was leaning against his desk and he was standing over her, standing so close that it made her heart quake. She expected to see defensive anger in his eyes, the same shuttered blinds that he could almost sub-consciously draw across them, but what she saw was open need, a longing to give release to those feelings he bolted away so fastidiously.

“I will listen,” she whispered.

A heavy sigh, almost one of resignation, passed his lips. “I don’t know how to begin.”

“Did you love him? Was he a good man?”

John shook his head, seeing, as he did so, her steely determination to whittle away some of his reserve. It lingered there in her somewhat unnervingly intent gaze. “When I was a child he was the best father I could have hoped for, but he was essentially a weak man.” He saw her silent question. “But, yes, I did love him.”

She smiled up at him, the fact that he’d said anything at all touching her deeply. “Thank you,” she said. “It means a lot to me that you told me that.”

“Come here.” His tone, so deep and coaxing, settled over her like velvet. She wrapped her arms about his neck and surrendered to his mouth as its initially soft and tempered kiss blossomed into something so much deeper and intense, a kiss that was as much about love as a need to try and expunge the past and grapple for a better future.

The flame sparked and caught, began to radiate.

“I feel like I’m drowning,” Margaret murmured, her voice a weak gasp as the attraction that pulled them together grew stronger. Oh God, he was so close! She could feel herself responding innately to him, to every nuance of his body’s movements.

“I think we both are,” he groaned in a muffled tone as their lips caressed and their tongues interwove with exquisite longing.

She raked her fingers across his back making him moan with pleasure, the pressure she exacted becoming firmer, more demanding, wanting to explore further, to find the skin that lay beneath the fabric of his shirt, to possess it and delight in it.

“Are you happy?” she asked through little sighs of intoxicated desire.

“I’m happy with you.”

“Even though we always argue?”