Penny Jordan - For One Night

At the first surge of his body within her own Diana was filled with a wild exultation. She moved instinctively beneath him, hearing the savagery of his indrawn breath, and glorying in the fierceness of his possession.

She didn’t experience any pain, contrary to everything she had ever anticipated; her virginity might never have existed, so joyfully did her body welcome his.

Together they strove to reach the shimmering pinnacle of human experience; together they shared the awesome reality of the apex of human desire, Marcus’s deep-throated cry of release mingling with her own husky sob of delight.

It was over. Diana lay, trying to steady her breathing, while the world righted itself around her. In the wake of physical satisfaction came exhaustion, so complete and so numbing that she was deeply asleep within seconds.

Marcus looked down at her broodingly. He had just experienced the most physically intense pleasure he had ever known with any woman, and she had fallen asleep!

Now for the first time, reality hit him. She had used him as a substitute for her dead lover. It was like being tipped into a pool of iced water. When he surfaced he felt totally disorientated. Man was the predator, the hunter, the user and abuser of the female sex, so why did he feel as though he was the one who had been used? Why did he have this disquieting fear that his life was never going to be the same again?

They had had sex, that was all. He didn’t even know her name … She had simply been a body—a very beautiful and sexy body—but a body nonetheless. He must be crazy to be lying here in this emotional stupor. He ought to be worrying about far more mundane things. He reached out, unable to stop himself from tucking a stray lock of amber hair behind her ear. In sleep she looked like a little girl.

She mumbled something and moved in her sleep. The sheet slipped and revealed one creamy, rose-tipped breast, still swollen and flushed from his caresses.

Suppressing a fierce shudder, Marcus covered her again, and then swung himself out of the bed. He never wore pyjamas, but there was a spare robe in the bathroom. He put it on, and then eyed the bedroom’s one easy chair in grim determination.

He had behaved foolishly enough for one night—he would spend the rest of it alone in that chair, otherwise God alone knew what might happen. He had been stupid enough as it was—insanely so. He ought to have thrown her out when he had had the opportunity. Against his will he remembered the look of aching desolation he had glimpsed in her eyes earlier. It must be hell to lose someone you loved to death. Who could blame her for wanting to hang on to life in the most basic way possible?

Neither of them were to blame for what had happened; another time, and things would have been different. They had come together as strangers, he thought broodingly, and that was the way they must part—for both their sakes. He had enough problems on his plate with the farm, without involving himself with a woman who was grieving for another man.

He would be gone before she woke up. They would never meet again. He knew his decision was the right one, but some part of him was reluctant to let her go. Some part of him wanted to hold on to her and …

And what?

And nothing, he told himself firmly.

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