For Better For Worse. PENNY JORDAN

wryly as he slid his fingers into the thick dark mass of curls haloing her face, only now, in these their most intimate moments, that her normal exuberance was calmed and tamed, to reveal her vulnerability and sensuality.

      ‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ he told her as he felt her hand slide downwards over his body.

      Zoe laughed, turning her face into the curve of his throat and kissing him lovingly.

      She laughed again as she heard him groan and felt him turn his body in towards her, his actions running directly counter to his words.

      It had always been like this between them right from the very start, Ben, cautious, concerned, wanting to hold back; take time and to be sure; she…

      She made a voluptuous sound of appreciation against his skin as her fingers closed gently round him.

      …She impatient, impulsive, knowing almost from the first moment they had met that she wanted him.

      She felt him move against her, his body aroused, hard; she caressed him slowly, enjoying her own body’s response to him, the taut, heavy feeling in her breasts; the sensitivity of her nipples especially when she rubbed herself rhythmically against his chest, the small betraying, knowing pulse that grew insistently urgent as she let herself absorb the hot silky texture of his skin, anticipating the pleasure that lay ahead, the pleasures they had already known.

      Ben wrapped his arms around her, kissing the top of her head and then, when she lifted her face to look at him, her mouth.

      His skin smelled of warmth and sleep and the faintly acrid scent of his sweat, and that special unmistakable scent that was his alone and which as always she found unbearably erotic. She wondered if her scent affected him in the same way. Ben didn’t like talking about sex. In the northern city in which he had grown up, boys… men grew up with an attitude towards sex which was very different from the ones she had absorbed from her own middle-class parents.

      And yet Ben was an unbelievably tender and caring lover, almost as though, if he was unable to talk to her about this most intimate side of their lives together, then at least he could make up for his inhibitions by showing her all he felt.

      They knew each other well enough now, had been together long enough to recognise without words each other’s signs of arousal, each other’s sexual needs, and yet each time they made love it was different… special… familiar and yet still, for Zoe, achingly pleasurable.

      Now, when Ben kissed her, he did so lingeringly, slowly, taking his time, as though the intimate caresses of their mouths were a total act of physical communication and satisfaction on their own, and not merely a preliminary act to his physical possession of her.

      No, if anything she was the one who was the more impatient.

      Not that there was any doubt that Ben wanted her, she acknowledged in satisfaction as she stroked her thumb along the underside of the rigid shaft of his penis and felt him shudder against her, his muscles tensing as his teeth tugged on her bottom lip.

      She felt his hand touch her breast, cupping it, and she moved against him, enjoying the delicate friction of his palm against her nipple. Soon he would bend his head and kiss her throat, her shoulder and then her breast itself, taking his time, lingering over each caress, while she felt the urgent thud of his heartbeat against her body and savoured the delicious tension of her own growing need to feel his mouth against her nipple, tugging on the small hard peak of flesh.

      Languorously she stroked her hands over his stomach and hips, sliding them down over his buttocks, caressing him lazily until she felt the sharp pins and needles of pleasure exploding inside her as his tongue rubbed over her nipple. Her fingers tightened on his skin, his mouth opened over her nipple. She shuddered in pleasure as the hot fierce surge of her own arousal overwhelmed her.

      ‘Now, Ben,’ she told him thickly. ‘Now… now… now. I want you now…’

      Half an hour later, when the sharp summons of the telephone broke into the luxurious pleasure of their shared post-coital relaxation, Zoe told Ben lazily, ‘It’s your turn.’

      ‘Why on earth can’t we get a telephone by the bed?’ Ben grumbled as he pushed back the duvet and reached for and pulled on a clean pair of underpants.

      ‘Because you said we couldn’t afford one,’ Zoe reminded him, watching him with unashamed pleasure.

      He had a wonderful body, lean and powerfully male without being over-muscled. His arms and chest were taut with sinewy strength, his stomach flat and hard. She gave a small convulsive movement of sheer sensuality, remembering the sensation of the soft dark hair that grew on his body against her fingertips; fine and silky over his chest and stomach, it darkened and thickened into a heavier stomach-tensing line of more intense growth along the centre of his body, spreading wider and thicker above the base of his penis.

      Idly she wondered if he derived as much pleasure in looking at her body, in thinking about it, in contrasting its femininity with his own masculinity, as she did his.

      She was lucky in that, despite the exuberant thickness and wildness of the brunette curls that more than one envious friend had not been able to believe were actually natural and not the result of some expensive and enviable perm, the hair on her body was confined to a neatly demure triangle of soft hair that started just below the pretty mole where her body started to swell into sensual womanhood.

      Thanks to her parents, she had no hang-ups about either her body or her sexuality. Unlike Ben.

      She remembered how surprised she had been the first time they had made love and he had insisted on undressing in the dark, and even then on leaving on his underpants until they were actually in bed.

      It had been many weeks before she had persuaded him to allow her to see him naked and in the daylight, and even more before she had ventured to tease him gently for his shyness.

      What he had said in response to her then had for the first time in her life left her unable to make any verbal reply, unable to do anything other than smother back the anguish aching in her throat.

      With five children, boys and girls, sharing one bedroom and two beds, such modesty was essential and necessary, especially when you were the eldest, especially when you were a particularly well developed teenage boy, especially when you had a gut-deep protective instinct towards your younger siblings which you had never been able to put into words but which led you to be fiercely protective, not so much of your own privacy, but of their innocence.

      She had never teased him about his need for modesty again, just as she had never retaliated on those occasions when she’d grimaced in disgust over the tacky grubbiness of their rented flat with its damp patches on the walls, its bath which no matter how often she cleaned it never really seemed to her as though it was clean, and he turned on her and told her grimly that where he came from and to his family the privacy of the flat they shared would be considered a real luxury.

      Most of the time, because there was just the two of them, because Ben had done his early training under one of the best chefs in the world and because that training had encompassed far, far more than the art of buying, preparing and serving good food, she was not conscious of any social differences between them and she was certainly not concerned about them. But Ben was.

      She heard him pick up the receiver and say their number, and then, when he didn’t call out to her, she snuggled back under the duvet.

      They still had the whole day ahead of them and it would be fun to coax him into coming back to bed. She rolled over on to her stomach, smiling in reminiscent pleasure as she felt the soft pulsing echo of her orgasm.

      It was five minutes before Ben came back. When he did and she saw his face, all thoughts of teasing him back into bed vanished. She sat up immediately, the duvet sliding unregarded off her body.

      ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

      ‘I don’t know. That was Ma on the phone. She wants me to go up there.’

      ‘To Manchester?’

      ‘There’s