The Hidden Years by Penny Jordan Page B

reality by her innocence and her love.
    In the past, a lifetime ago, had she really been a girl
who had believed idiotically that the physical aspects of love were its
least important, that the physical consummation of love was something
unimportant and even faintly sordid, something to be endured rather
than enjoyed? If so, she was discovering how ignorant she had been, how
blind and unfit to be the recipient of the love of a man like Kit.
    That he needed her and that he was so open and urgent in
that need touched her with tenderness that bordered on the maternal.
When they were apart he would have these memories of her to bring him
safely back to her, and as he kissed her and held her against his body
she recognised that what she was experiencing now was a world away from
her girlish dreams of what love might be.
    How
could
it be wrong to experience
such pleasure…such joy…to feel her pulses leap as
Kit kissed her face and her throat, as his hands caressed her
sun-warmed body through her borrowed clothes?
    'You don't need this on, do you?'
    He was already unfastening the cardigan, exposing the
V-neckline of her dress and the softness of her skin. She tensed a
little suddenly, made nervous by the way he was looking at her and Kit,
who had thought himself long beyond ever allowing his reactions to
escape his own control, was almost angered by the sensation that coiled
through him as the sunlight slanted across her body and he saw quite
clearly through the thin cotton the shape and shadowing of her nipples.
He had already known that she was naked beneath her dress, but the
unexpected glimpse of her body through it was somehow more erotic, more
arousing than if he had been looking at her naked body, and, as he
removed the bulky cardigan from her stiff body, he was suddenly
possessed by a frenzy of need so sharply intense that almost before he
had finished his hands were gripping her waist, his head descending so
that his mouth could find the dark-fleshed peak and punish it for its
temerity in so arousing him.
    Lizzie had never felt a man's hands on her body so
intimately, never mind his mouth, and the sensation of Kit's teeth
savaging her flesh froze her into immobility, and alarm. It was far too
much, far too soon.
    As he felt her tension, her resistance, Kit cursed
silently. For a moment he had forgotten her lack of experience, but now
her body was forcibly reminding him of it, causing his own flesh to
ache with resentment. He was almost tempted to take hold of her and
make her body accept his, but she was so small, so delicately made that
he could hurt her easily if he did. There had been an innocent young
girl once before; a pretty little thing from the village. That had been
before he had learned not to play in his own backyard. Her father had
complained to his parents. His father had been furious with him. He had
been forced to buy her family off. It was a pity that this one happened
to know his cousin.
    If she chose to go running to Edward… Not that
there was a damn thing that Edward could do about it… Except
tell Lillian…
    His mouth had grown still on her body. Relief unlocked her
muscles into shaky weakness. She felt sick and tremulous. She had known
that men enjoyed touching a woman's breasts, but she had not
known… never dreamed…
    Despite the sunshine, and the musty scented warmth of the
summer-house, she suddenly felt so cold that her teeth had started to
chatter.
    He still wanted her, Kit recognised, and it wasn't too
late to retrieve the situation. 'I'm sorry, sweetheart,' he told her,
murmuring the words in her ear, so that she wouldn't see the lie for
what it was. 'But you know it really was your own fault.'
    When she tensed again, and turned towards him, her eyes
dark with confusion, he smiled ruefully at her. 'Coming out dressed
like that…tempting me like that…'
    Subtly, cleverly, he shifted the responsibility, the
blame, so that Lizzie, who had felt uncomfortable enough about her
appearance to