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‘What happened last night wasn’t... It didn’t...
I didn’t... I thought you were Chris... I was dreaming about him and when... You must have known that I thought you were him,’ she cried out defensively. ‘You must have known that I would never... That...’
She stopped abruptly as she saw the dangerous warning expression on James’s face, her stomach dropping sickeningly as she realised how angry he was.
‘Go on,’ he invited her softly. ‘You were saying that you thought I was Chris, that you were dreaming about Chris, but you weren’t asleep when we made love, were you, Poppy? You knew very well who it was, who was holding you... touching you, pleasuring you,’ he told her tauntingly, ‘even if you do claim now that you wanted it to be my brother...’
‘I... I believed that you were your brother,’ Poppy lied doggedly, driven into a corner by his refusal to allow her the secure defence she so desperately needed. ‘I wanted—’
‘You wanted me,’ James told her bluntly. ‘Even if you do prefer to lie to yourself now. You can deceive yourself all you like, Poppy, but you won’t deceive me... I was the one who—’
‘I was pretending that you were Chris,’ Poppy told him frantically, unable to listen to any more. ‘I—’
She stopped abruptly as she saw the ominous white line of fury deepen around James’s mouth, her stomach knotting into tight cords of anxious dread.
‘I see... You pretended I was Chris... You ?retended I was my brother, did you, my cheating little virgin...?’ His eyes dropped to her mouth and then lower, caressing the whole of her body in a hatefully knowing way that made her skin burn as though all the flames of hell were consuming it.
Her body trembled as he drawled, ‘But then, of course, you aren’t a virgin any longer, are you, Poppy?’ And he took her by surprise by roughly jerking her towards him, holding her by her upper arms, his body so close to her own that she could feel its angry heat, and she was shaken, driven into a state of shockingly unexpected, aching weakness.
Fighting to deny what her body was frantically trying to tell her, desperate to ignore the tormenting clamour of the need it refused to understand that it couldn’t be allowed even to feel, never mind acknowledge or openly demonstrate, she was barely aware of the furious tension in James’s voice and eyes as he told her savagely, ‘And I can tell you this much—no matter how much you might want to deny it now, it was me you wanted last night, Poppy, me you begged to hold you and touch you... to take you and fill you with my body, to—’
‘No...’ Poppy protested shrilly. ‘No, that’s not true... I thought you were someone else... It was Chris I wanted, not you...’ she told him piteously.
‘That wasn’t what you were saying last night,’ James reminded her brutally. “‘I want you... I want you...”’ he mimicked her breathlessly, making her cringe as he caught so devastatingly the note of aching hunger and need she clearly recognised as being her own.
‘You knew I thought you were Chris,’ she told him. ‘You must have done. You know how much I love him. You should have stopped... Why didn’t you?’
‘Why? Because I’m a man,’ he told her callously. ‘And when a woman makes herself available sexually to a man, comes on to him, urges him, pleads with him and begs him the way you were doing with me last night...’
He paused and looked at her, then told her grimly, ‘If you’re looking for an apology, Poppy, or even a defence, I’m afraid you’re not going to get one. I gave you what you asked for. What happened between us last night happened because—’
‘Because I believed you were your brother,’ Poppy interrupted him passionately.
‘No,’ James corrected her mercilessly. ‘You may have wanted me to be Chris... needed me to be him... but you certainly knew that I wasn’t. You knew—’
‘Stop it, stop it...’ Poppy demanded. ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more. I just want to forget that the whole thing happened,’ she told him sickly.
‘And you think I don’t?’ James challenged her brutally. ‘You think I like knowing that you used me as a substitute for my brother, that you vented on me all your pent-up, virginal frustration at not being able to have him?’
The way he was speaking to her shocked Poppy into white-faced silence. James might, in the past, have been unkind to her, might have been angry with her, but he had never, ever been so sexually explicit with her, nor so...so...
‘What, nothing to say for yourself?’ he demanded bitingly.
‘I... It wasn’t like that,’ Poppy protested, ashenfaced. ‘You’re making it sound as though...as though I was the one... as though it was me who...’
‘Well, wasn’t it?’ James asked her. ‘You say you want to forget the whole thing happened. Well, let’s just hope that we’ll both be allowed to do just that...’
The note of warning in his voice made Poppy raise her head and look at him directly for the first time since he had entered the room.
His eyes were as cold as the Arctic Ocean and just as cruelly destructive.
‘What... what do you mean?’ she asked him nervously.
‘Use your head, Poppy,’ James advised her grimly. ‘Last night, at your insistence, we made... had sex, and surely even you aren’t naive enough to have forgotten that there could be... consequences of our... intimacy?’
‘Consequences...’ Poppy faltered in a stricken voice as she realised what he meant. ‘No,’ she protested in panic. ‘There couldn’t... We couldn’t...’
‘Oh yes, there could,’ James corrected her roughly, ‘and we most certainly did, if my memory serves me right. And, whilst I’ve never had occasion to put them to the test, I have no reason to doubt the efficiency of my reproductive organs and last night they—’
‘Stop it... stop it...’ Poppy begged torturedly, covering her face with her hands as she sobbed. ‘You’re just trying to frighten me. I can’t be... You can’t have...’
She heard James laughing savagely at her as she uncovered her face to look at him, his mouth twisted in contempt.
‘How modest,’ he jeered. ‘You can’t even bring yourself to say the words, can you? How modest... how proper... and, my God, how inappropriate ... Shall I tell you what you said to me last night, what you asked me for?’ he demanded mercilessly. ‘Shall I repeat for you the words you said to me... the way you urged me, begged me to fill you with—?’
‘No... no...’ Poppy moaned. ‘I keep telling you it was a mistake...’
‘A mistake?’ James shook his head. ‘Oh, no...it wasn’t a mistake,’ he told her, ‘it was your mistake, Poppy. Your mistake.’
He released her so unexpectedly that she staggered slightly, her legs shockingly weak, but when James would have reached out to steady her she pushed him away angrily, fighting to suppress the tears she desperately needed to cry.
‘I don’t know how I could ever have believed that you were Chris,’ Poppy cried out in anguish. ‘You are nothing like him—nothing. Chris is kind and gentle; he’s... he would never—’
‘Never what?’ James interrupted her savagely. ‘Never arouse you the way I did, never make you want him the way you wanted me, never make you feel, experience, know what it really is to be a woman? Is that what you were going to say, Poppy?’
‘No,’ she denied vehemently.
‘No,’ James agreed crushingly. ‘You aren’t capable of being that honest with yourself, are you? You prefer the delusion of your cosy, pretty, girlish dream. Well, try being even more honest with yourself, Poppy. Try telling yourself that if you had been in bed with Chris the reason you would have woken up this morning still in your virginally intact state would have been, quite simply, because he didn’t want you.’
‘And you did,’ Poppy challenged him shakily, desperately trying to use her anger to protect herself from the pain of acknowledging the truth of his words.
‘I wanted a woman,’ James told her cruelly, ‘and you made yourself available. I’m not the man to look a gift-horse in the mouth...’
‘You do surprise me,’ Poppy flashed back with heavy sarcasm. ‘I never thought of you as a man who’d be satisfied with a woman who really wanted another man...’
‘Who says I was satisfied?’ James taunted her. ‘If you really think that your immature, adolescent fumblings came anywhere near to giving me satisfaction, you’ve got a hell of a lot to learn—only next time don’t expect me to do the teaching.’
‘Don’t worry, I shan’t,’ Poppy told him furiously, but inside her anger was already draining away, leaving her feeling sick and empty and not just shamed by her inexplicable behaviour in bed with James, but also vulnerably conscious of the sexual inexperience he had mocked her for.
She longed for the ability to make some witty, crushing remark—the kind of remark she could imagine her friend Star making, which would leave her the victor of their verbal confrontation—but Poppy knew that she simply didn’t have either the strength or the energy to find one.
