Penny Jordan - The Hidden Years

‘There is a place,’ she told him huskily. ‘It’s just inside the hospital grounds, but no one ever goes there. We’ll have to walk, though.’

The place she had in mind was a small, neglected summer-house in an overgrown glade, hidden deep in the tangled undergrowth of the neglected grounds. Even the path to it was overgrown with saplings and brambles. She had discovered it by accident and often went there when she wanted privacy. She had half contemplated taking Edward there, knowing he would enjoy it as she had… She had seen the first primroses flower there on the banks of its quiet pool, followed by wild bluebells, but the difficulties of pushing Edward’s chair down the overgrown and soft earth path had made her decide against suggesting such an outing. Now she was fiercely glad, because now it would be their secret place, known to them alone…a sacred temple to their love.

Kit parked his car at the end of the lane. When he lifted her out of her seat Lizzie clung shyly to him, blushing as he looked down at her mouth. The red lipstick was gone now, but her lips glowed with their own colour, softened and swollen from his earlier kiss.

‘Mm…innocent little thing, aren’t you…? Not that I mind.’ His hands slid down her back, past her waist and over her buttocks, squeezing them as he lifted her into his own body and moved urgently against her.

Dizzy with the tumult of sensations inside her, Lizzie could only cling to him, innocently offering herself to him, wanting only to please him.

When he released her, she felt disorientated and bereft.

‘Which way is it…this place?’ Kit was demanding, hoarsely.

As she pointed in the direction of the glade, Lizzy realised guiltily that Mary’s shoes were going to be ruined. They had to cross two fields and then fight their way down the overgrown pathway to get to the glade and Mary’s courts were not designed for such stuff.

Neither, it seemed, were Kit’s flannels and blazer. He frowned impatiently when the brambles caught in the fabric, and complained that she might have warned him what to expect. His irritation jarred a little but Lizzie dismissed those feelings.

The path seemed more overgrown than it had been the last time she had visited the glade a few weeks ago, but at last she could see the glint of sunlight on water through the tangled undergrowth and branches and when at last they broke through into the silence of the sun-dappled clearing she asked breathlessly, ‘Will this be all right?’

‘Well, we certainly won’t be disturbed,’ Kit told her, examining their surroundings, and walking towards the dilapidated summer-house. Personally he would have preferred the comfort of a double bed, but beggars couldn’t be choosers and the woman running the boarding-house where he was staying had made it plain that she did not allow her guests to bring in ‘friends’.

‘Pity you didn’t think to bring a rug,’ Kit added as he studied their surroundings.

‘But it is private, isn’t it?’ Lizzie asked him anxiously, suddenly desperate to placate him and win some word of approval, knowing that she was somehow responsible for that frown of displeasure which had banished the warmth of his smile and hating herself for it.

‘Oh, it is private,’ Kit agreed, and suddenly he was smiling at her again so that her heart and body were flooded with warmth and love. She went eagerly towards him, feeling as though she had stepped into heaven itself when he took hold of her arm and led her inside the summer-house, and then turned her more fully into his arms.

Even with familiarity the sensation of his tongue moving erotically within her mouth didn’t lose its power to make her body ache and melt, Lizzie recognised, thrilled by the way Kit was moving against her, silently telling her how much he loved and wanted her.

‘You know how much I want you, don’t you?’ he told her thickly. She trembled, too full of emotion to speak, tremulously eager to show him how much she loved him…how much she needed him. She was still so bemused by it all, still caught up in the miracle of it all, totally blinded to 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.’