The Reluctant Surrender Read online

  Giselle gave a small involuntary shiver, and Saul guessed why immediately.

  ‘You’re thinking of your own childhood?’

  ‘Yes,’ Giselle was forced to admit. ‘I was just thinking how hard it will be for Aldo and Natasha’s children.’

  ‘Because Natasha will neglect them emotionally?”

  ‘Yes. And…’ She paused, and Saul prompted her.

  ‘And?’

  Her voice very low and sad, Giselle told him, ‘And because they will have to bear the stigma of being tainted by their mother’s emotional instability and the fear that she might have passed it down to them. They will be judged because of that. People always make judgements.’

  ‘You sound as though you speak from personal experience?’

  It was too late now to recognise that she had come perilously close to a very dangerous place and to wish she had stayed silent.

  ‘I was judged because of the accident—because I lived and they…they didn’t.’ She forced herself to admit it. ‘By my father and I dare say others.’

  ‘Your father judged you?’ Saul stopped walking and turned to her. ‘Why should anyone judge you for something over which you had no control? You were a child.’

  It was too late to hold back the roaring, rolling tide of her pain now. It was engulfing her and sweeping her up into its shuddering darkness, making her feel like a child again—alone, abandoned, unwanted, guilty…

  They had reached the bedroom. Saul opened the door, surprising himself with his need to comfort her as he told her firmly, ‘You were not to blame. It wasn’t your fault.’

  It wasn’t your fault. She had hungered so much over the years to hear those words spoken to her, to feel that someone knew and understood her pain and wanted to help her. That they wouldn’t blame her or turn away from her. That they wouldn’t choose death rather than live with her. As her father had done.

  She had heard the whispers after his death, murmured behind the hands of well-meaning adults too consumed by their own curiosity and shock to realise that a seven-year-old child was perfectly capable of translating what they were saying when they commented that her father had had a heart attack because he hadn’t wanted to live after the deaths of her mother and her baby brother.

  She had understood what they were saying. She had understood too why her father had sent her away to live with her great-aunt. It was because he had known the truth. He had always blamed her. He had recognised her guilt and he had left her alone with it and her fear of it.

  Her father’s desertion of her had hurt her dreadfully and left her feeling that she had been a burden to him that he hadn’t wanted. A burden he had only been able to escape via death. She had known then that she must never burden anyone else with her love, just as she could never—

  Her body shuddered again, but this time Saul’s arms were around her. She didn’t want to think about the past—she didn’t walk to talk about it or be overshadowed by it. All she wanted was to be in this moment, in Saul’s arms. She lifted her face for his kiss.

  Saul kissed her, and kept on kissing her whilst he undressed her, and each slither of fabric sliding from her body made her feel as though she was shedding another unwanted layer of inhibition, in doing so setting free the passionate, sensual side of her nature that had for so long been repressed.

  Only in Saul’s arms, in Saul’s bed, did she really feel that she became herself and truly alive, that she reached and touched the true essence of herself. But she knew that her pleasure and its intensity could only be hers for a very short span of time. That meant not wasting a second of it—which was why her hands were urgent in their determination to undress him, as his were to undress her. Their journey towards the pure flesh-on-flesh contact they both craved was broken and delayed by shared kisses and caresses that had soft crooning sounds of pleasure murmuring from Giselle’s throat.

  Eventually they were free to touch and enjoy one another as they both ached to do. Giselle ran her fingertips the length of Saul’s erection and then tried to encircle it with her hand, lifting her awed and aroused gaze to meet the hot intensity of his when his width was too great for her to completely capture it in her hold. She could still caress him, and stroked the slick, hot, pliable flesh that covered the head of his erection with aching longing, feeling the moist heat swell within her own sex, already imagining the moment when his erection would stroke against her aroused and eager flesh, making it flower open for him whilst her muscles quivered in eager anticipation of his first longed-for thrust.

  She wouldn’t make it to the bed. She couldn’t wait that long. But Saul had anticipated her need and they were already on the bed, and he was lying on his back and lifting her over him so that she could take control of her own pleasure.

  She wanted desperately to rush and satisfy her hunger, but some age-old female instinct held her back, whispering to her that their shared pleasure would be all the greater for being taken slowly.

  And that instinct was right. To look into Saul’s eyes as she took him slowly into her, seeing how helpless he was in the face of his desire and her control of it, watching the longing and need he couldn’t hide from her as she moved down a little on him, and then stopped to rise up again, brought her such a rush of pleasure that it was almost as though she had orgasmed already.

  Her flesh quickened around Saul’s, her own hunger overpowering her desire to draw out their shared pleasure and make it last. Saul’s hands gripped her hips, holding her as he moved her up and down over his aroused flesh, slowly and deliberately, until the pleasure became a form of torment as she begged for more—deeper, harder.

  ‘Like this, you mean?’ he demanded, teasing her with a slower movement. ‘Or like this?’ He was holding her down on him now, thrusting fiercely and deeply into her, and the raw pleasure of it was making her cry out to him that she couldn’t bear it, and not to stop.

  And he didn’t—not even when she orgasmed. He took her through it, carrying her on upwards whilst her body collapsed and clung, and she was wrung with orgasm after orgasm until finally he took the last of her pleasure from her and filled her with his own release.

  Too exhausted to move, Giselle lay against his body as an unwanted realisation washed over her. She was in love with Saul. Panic exploded inside her. No. That mustn’t happen. She mustn’t love Saul. The most terrible pain was gripping her—the pain of having a protective veil ripped from her to reveal the edges of a wound that went so deep she knew she hadn’t even begun to feel its real pain yet.

  She loved Saul. No! Yes, she did. Of course she did. And he wanted her. Wanted her—that was all. This intimacy between them wouldn’t and couldn’t last, but for now he was here, and for now she could and would give thanks for that.

  ‘I’m going to put on weight if we keep doing this,’ Giselle mock-complained to Saul three hours later, as she sat up in bed greedily eating the smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels he had brought her when they’d realised they had well and truly missed dinner.

  ‘Mmm? Then I’ll have to come up with a way of making sure that you work it off,’ Saul teased her.

  He had been thinking about her all the time they’d been apart earlier in the day, longing impatiently to be with her—something he had never experienced before. That alone should have been enough to worry him, but strangely when he was with Giselle all he seemed able to think about was her. There’d be time enough when they returned to London for him to put things in their proper perspective and to end what should never really have begun.

  But it had begun, and was he absolutely sure that he could end it? Of course he was. Commitment wasn’t on his agenda. But then neither had Giselle herself been on his agenda when they had first met. That was different, Saul told himself impatiently. Commitment and Giselle went into different compartments in his life. So why was he thinking about them together?

  Saul removed the plate from the bed, and then reached for Giselle’s hand, drawing her close to him.

  Chapter
Eleven

  THEY were returning to London this afternoon, Saul having cancelled their visit to the island because he needed to set up some meetings with regard to Aldo’s financial affairs. Now, this morning, Giselle was exploring the old city in the May sunshine and trying to tell herself that she would be able to find the strength to live without Saul in her life. She knew she would have to.

  She had it all planned. When he told her it was over, she was going to give in her notice and put her flat up for sale. She would buy a small house in Yorkshire and then she could look after her great-aunt herself. Far away from London and looking after her great-aunt she wouldn’t be able to weaken and make a fool of herself by begging Saul to take her back to his bed. Because she had fallen in love with him. Despair shuddered through her. How easily she had given in to temptation and broken her self-imposed rules. But all was not lost. Saul did not love her. They would part. She could still keep the promise she had made to herself.

  The narrow streets of the old town twisted and turned, the upper windows of the old medieval three- and four-storey houses almost touching one another across them. Some of them were built into the city walls, and others clung to a jumble of alleyways, their black and white façades stooping beneath the weight of their heavy slate roofs.

  Saul couldn’t concentrate on the complex financial data on the computer screen in front of him. He couldn’t concentrate on anything other than Giselle, he recognised grimly. And that meant…? It meant nothing other than that for now he wanted her in his life and his bed. For now. Until they both agreed that whatever was currently burning in them was reduced to ashes and they were free to go their separate ways.

  He tried to go back to his work, but the ache inside him refused to be ignored. He wanted to be with Giselle. He knew she was spending the morning exploring the old city. He wanted to be with her. Not just in bed with her, but with her. He wanted to see her expression as she explored his home city. He wanted to see it through her eyes. He wanted…

  Cursing beneath his breath, he switched off his laptop and stood up. It shouldn’t be hard to find her. The old city wasn’t very large, and he knew every single winding inch of its narrow streets.

  Once he was outside he started to walk briskly, and then more swiftly as the urgency within him grew.

  When he finally saw her she was half the length of a street away from him, poised on the pavement of one of the busier streets, just where it opened out into the town square. She was standing completely still, her gaze apparently fixed on the opposite side of the road. At first Saul thought she must be waiting to cross it, and then he realised that she was watching a young mother who was trying to cope with a buggy with a baby in it and an impatient toddler, who was trying to push the buggy and refusing to take her hand.

  Saul started to make his way towards her.

  Giselle had seen the young mother with her two children as she herself was just about to cross the unexpectedly busy road, with traffic moving at speed, full-pelt towards the square.

  The little boy had grabbed the handle of the buggy and was trying to push it, whilst his harassed mother remonstrated with him, insisting that he hold her hand. Giselle knew the words she would be saying—after all, they were engraved on her own heart, in her own mother’s voice.

  ‘Hold on to the pram. Hold my hand. Don’t let go. Don’t pull. Don’t…’

  The child was trying to pull free of his mother’s hand. She turned away from the buggy to remonstrate with him for another minute, and…

  Careless of her own safety, Giselle plunged into the seething traffic, oblivious to the sound of car horns and the warning shouts of drivers, only one thought in her mind as time swung backwards for her and she stepped through its open door into her own past.

  She must save them. She must save all of them—not just herself.

  What was Giselle doing, running blindly into the traffic like that? She was going to be killed.

  Saul reacted automatically, driven by the greatest fear known to man—that of losing that which they loved above all things. He barely registered what his own reaction meant as he plunged after her, covering the distance with superhuman speed, snatching her almost from beneath the wheels of an oncoming car and dragging her to the safety of the pavement.

  ‘What were you doing? Trying to kill yourself?’

  Giselle could feel the angry thud of Saul’s heart against her own chest. She could hear the voices of the concerned onlookers who had seen what had happened and were now pressing in on them to ask if she was all right. But those things were at a distance from her. All she could think of, all she could ask was, ‘The buggy—the baby…is it all right?’

  Saul looked down into her pale tense face, and then glanced across the road.

  ‘All three of them are fine,’ he told her truthfully.

  All three of them. All three of them, but not all three of her family. Not all three of them. They had not been fine. She had saved herself, but she had let her mother and her baby brother die. She had sent them to their deaths. She had…

  A terrible dry sob tore at her throat.

  ‘I killed them. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have let go of the pram. I should have saved them or died with them.’ She was not looking at him, Saul saw, his heart turning over inside his chest, but past him.

  ‘Giselle?’

  Immediately she focused on him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she told him politely—as politely as though he was a stranger, he recognized.

  Suddenly he was desperate to make her look at him and be with him—to make her…To make her what? Recognise what he had just recognised when he had feared that he might lose her, and to tell him as he wanted to tell her that she was his life and he never wanted to let her out of his sight again? Was this love? This feeling that a part of you lay open and bleeding with a wound that could only be healed by complete fusion with another person, a special person, one’s perfect other half? If it was, no wonder he had feared it. It was so huge, so all-encompassing, so fearsome, that any human could be forgiven for trembling when confronted by its might. He wanted to tell Giselle what he had discovered, but now was not the time when she was so obviously suffering from shock.

  ‘I’m taking you back to the palace,’ he told her, ‘and then I’m going to call a doctor.’

  ‘No.’ Giselle stopped him. ‘No. I don’t need a doctor. I’m perfectly all right.’

  It wasn’t true, of course, and she could see from Saul’s grim expression that he didn’t believe her.

  Saul looked across at the bed where Giselle lay, fully dressed and fast asleep. She had been trembling violently and convulsively by the time he had got her back to the palace, and she had made no demur when he had insisted on pouring her a brandy and making her drink it, and had passively acquiesced when he’d suggested that she should lie down and rest.

  Her near accident had obviously and naturally shocked her. It had shocked him. He could still hear the protesting squeal of the tyres and brakes on the cars that had thankfully managed to avoid hitting her.

  On the bed, Giselle moved restlessly in her brandy-induced sleep, a protesting ‘No!’ wrenched from her throat, followed by an almost violent movement of her limbs, as though she was trying to run, and then she screamed.

  ‘Mummy, no!’

  Her agonized cry was filled with such terror that the sound of it ripped at Saul’s heart and took him to his feet. He reached the bed just as she opened her eyes and struggled to sit up.

  She had had the nightmare again—the first time for years—and this time it had seemed so real, every detail so clear and sharp. She had even been able to smell the rain mingling with her mother’s scent, and then the smell of the blood—blood everywhere—on her clothes and on her hands. She looked down at them and then closed her eyes, agonised tears seeping from them to burn her face in the same way that the acid of her guilt was burning into her soul.

  ‘Giselle?’ She felt Saul reach for her and take her in his a
rms. ‘Talk to me,’ he commanded. ‘Tell me what’s wrong.’

  Giselle opened her eyes again. She was too weary to fight to protect herself and conceal her guilt any longer. She was going to lose Saul anyway, so what did it matter if she had to look at him and see the disgust in his eyes?

  She exhaled in defeat.

  ‘It was the mother—the mother with the buggy and the little boy. They reminded me…I thought…’

  Her voice was so low that Saul had to strain to hear what she was saying.

  ‘I should have stopped them. I shouldn’t have let go of my mother’s hand and the pram. If I hadn’t…’

  She was talking about her childhood, Saul realised, beginning to understand that in some way seeing that mother with her buggy and her young child must have reminded her of the terrible accident that had robbed her of her own mother and baby brother.

  ‘I should have died with them. That’s what my father thought. That’s why he sent me away instead of letting me stay with him. He couldn’t bear the sight of me because I didn’t save them. He knew I should have died with them.’

  Saul was appalled.

  ‘No, Giselle,’ he assured her, wrapping his arms round her. ‘No. That’s not true.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Giselle insisted. ‘It was my fault. If I’d held on to them…But I didn’t. I pulled away. I let go and they died. Mummy was angry with me because I hadn’t wanted to go out. It was dark and raining, but she said we needed to go out because Thomas wouldn’t stop crying. She told me to put Thomas in his pram, and then she said that we’d walk to the park and I could go on the swings. But then when we were nearly at the park she changed her mind and said that we were going to cross the road instead. She told me to hold her hand, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to go to the park like she had promised. She grabbed hold of my arm, but I pulled free, and then she started to cross the road. I screamed at her to stop because there was a lorry coming, but she wouldn’t, and then…and then it was too late. It was my fault they were killed.’