“Why?” Emma taunted, defiant to the last. “I would have thought that you would like the sense of power that experience from being able to make others submit to your will.”
He smiled at her, brilliantly white teeth flashing, and she wanted to hate him in that moment, for having the power to subdue her, to charm her, and most unforgivable of all, to make her want what he was forcing on her.
“I can’t deny that I like it when you submit to my will, sweetheart… but you clearly don’t. Why did you leave me this morning?”
She stared at him blankly. “What?”
“This morning. After we were… together. You left me, without a word.”
“After you raped me,” Emma corrected, and yet even as she said them the words felt like a lie. “And as to the other – I went back to my room. I had to.”
“Why?”
“Well – I – Jordan – it wasn’t right – I mean -”
“You mean that if you had stayed, it would have looked like you were willing, and thus you would have been stripped of the ever so convenient excuse that I raped you. But its not true, is it Emma? I didn’t… not if you were willing. And as I remember… you were very willing.”
“I wasn’t!” she denied hotly.
“Oh?” Sensuously, he rubbed his body against her and for the first time, Emma was consciously aware that they were skin to skin, body to body, naked against eachother. He forced her legs slowly apart, until his hips rested in the cradle of her pelvis. “Are you quite sure?”
“Yes,” she said, rather weakly.
He plunged inside her.
She screamed, arching her breasts towards him, and he bent his head, clamping his teeth around one. She whimpered like a small, hurt animal, and he began thrusting, moving quickly, deeply inside her.
“Leave me, will you?” he growled, his hands gripping her hips tightly and lifting her towards him. “Run off on me, just like that, will you?” She gasped, exposed her throat to him and hungrily he bit into her, devouring at her neck. He slid deeper inside her, thrust harder. “Lie, will you? Deny this, deny what we have, will you? Well deny it all you want, my darling, but the fact remains that what we have is real… what I feel for you is real… and I know you’ll never admit it, but what you feel for me is real, too…”
She clamped hard around him and he erupted with a roar of ecstacy, his seed spurting deep inside her in hot bursts. He plunged deep inside her one last time, and she gave a scream of sheer, unadulterated pleasure, clamping hot and wetly around him, her hands, free at last from his bruising grip, free to wrap around his neck, to cling to him as the last vestiges of her orgasm drifted away.
“Don’t leave me again,” James murmured sleepily, when she made to move, to get out from under him. “Please don’t leave me again.”
And, cursing herself inwardly for her own weakness, Emma gave in, relaxing against the comforting heaviness of him atop her, closing her eyes as sleep claimed her, and feeling oddly safe.
When Emma woke again it was much later in the day – well past noon, to judge from the sun shining brightly through her drawn blinds. Yawning sleepily, she sat up, gazing around in bewilderment at the stained sheets for a moment, blinking. Memory rushed back and her face flushed – gritting her teeth, she climbed out of bed for the third time that morning. She did not question her hypocrisy, or the reason for her resentment, as she thought vengefully, don’t leave him, indeed. It was perfectly all right for him to leave her though.
She came down stairs half an hour later relatively refreshed but still very much in a quandery. She found Jordan sitting by himself in the morning parlour, eating from a plate of tiny sandwiches. He looked up as she approached. “Hello, sis,” he said cheerfully. “Had a late night, did you?”
“Yes,” Emma replied vaguely, feeling her face heat once again. She took a seat, then looked around in curiousity. “Where is everyone else?”
“Kit took them all hunting,” Jordan answered. “The Redwoods, you know. Fresh deer, apparently.”
“Ah,” Emma said, wrinkling her nose in distaste.
Jordan looked at her curiously. “Aren’t you feeling well, Emma?”
“Its just a bit of a headache,” Emma said hastily. “Nothing to worry about. Although,” she continued as a sudden flash of inspiration hit her, “Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad idea if I were to cut my visit just a little short, go home for the remainder of the houseparty. Just for a bit of a rest…”
Jordan bit his lip, eyed her worriedly. “Emma, if its Kit…”
Oh, it wasn’t Kit, Emma thought to herself rather hysterically. It had never been Kit, she realised abruptly. The man she had fallen in love with, the man she had believed to be Kit… that man had never existed. How could he have, when he was two people? Kit in daylight, and James at night…
“Its not that,” Emma said truthfully. “Its just that I’d really rather go home now…”
“I wouldn’t do that,” a voice said, surprising her from behind. She spun around, her face breaking into a smile at the sight of Lucien Tusane. Lucien, one of James and Kit’s best friends, had been a fount of support for her during the days after Kit’s defection. Word was that these days, he only spoke to one of the Brandeworth twins, and that one was definitely not Kit.
“Luc,” Emma said in pleasure. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“Arrived last night,” he answered briefly. “Might convey the wrong idea,” he continued, his dark grey eyes twinkling at her as he raked a careless hand through his tousled blond hair. “Give people the impression that you can’t handle being here – that you’re running away.”
Emma frowned at him in consternation as Jordan nodded thoughtfully. “Its true, Em,” he agreed. “Keep your pride, at least.”
Emma sighed in frustration. “I just want to go home!”
“Well, there is another way,” Luc put in. “If all you want is to simply leave this place.”
“Well…” Emma began.
“If we put it about that you and I are… you know, involved, it won’t raise too much speculation when we both disappear together… and that way, we both get what we want.”
“Ah,” Jordan said, a gleam in his eyes.