Full Circle by Connie Monk Read Free Book Online

done this before and she did wish he’d stop so that they could settle into bed and do it properly. But perhaps this was part of being married. It wasn’t that she didn’t want them to know each other as if they were one person, really belonging – of course she did – but while he was down there on his knees she felt like a ‘thing’, not a person. Pushing herself on her elbows she sat up and then reached out so that she held his shoulders. Surely that would tell him she wanted him to come close.
    â€˜Come back. Let’s love properly. Keep the light on if you want to. I’ll shut my eyes.’
    She might as well have dowsed him with cold water. Getting up, he turned his back and reached for the light switch, then crossed the dark room to draw back the curtains and open the window while she got into bed, satisfied now that she could look forward to what would come next. When he got in by her side and she wriggled close she was surprised and hurt to find that his earlier passion had faded. She had failed him.
    â€˜Leo, it was just that you were so far away down there on your knees and I was getting so cold.’ She drew his hand to where a minute or so ago his mouth had been, pressing it tight against her as she moved her hips and arched her back. She knew that she had repaired the damage of her previous rejection. ‘I want to feel us so close we are one person. Please love me, Leo, please.’
    That night she had no desire to strive for any goal except to find her own reward in knowing that in her he had found his own fulfilment. A few minutes later as she settled comfortably for sleep she had no doubt that he did the same. But how could he when he knew there was something fundamentally important lacking? He was ashamed of the anger that filled him as he imagined the years ahead. He was ashamed of the thought that he had been a fool not to have been careful she didn’t get pregnant. His memory took him back to the evening of her birthday when he had taken her out to dinner. She had been as excited as a child at her first party, but a combination of champagne and wine had led her to make obvious what he had already known: he was the centre of her universe. He’d enjoyed the admiring glances of other diners, for surely she was the loveliest creature he had ever seen, her figure agile, her wavy hair such an unusual honey-brown colour with a tinge of gold in the sunlight and her features delicately perfect. Fringed with abnormally long lashes her dark blue eyes had begged him to love her. It would have taken a man with a stronger will than his to listen to the inner voice reminding him that in experience she was a child, a love-struck child with the body of a woman. He had taken her back to his flat and together they had listened to the hooters sounding as the nearby church clock struck midnight. The start of a New Year: 1957. He had known she was slightly drunk, for sober she would have held on to her reserve. Instead, with blatant lack of finesse, she had wordlessly played the temptress and on that night – no doubt thanks to her alcohol-produced lack of inhibitions – she had held nothing back. But the occasion had never been repeated. Was that the real Bella? Or had that been simply the result of birthday excitement, dining in the best restaurant in town, drinking her first champagne? Was the devoted, gentle girl who would always be there for him, not as a duty but because her joy came from making him happy, all he was ever to know? He vowed he would never hurt her; she was as good as she was beautiful and she would be his lifelong companion. Truly he loved her, but not in the way he had supposed a man would feel for his wife. And the thought came to him,
Not as Dad had for Violet
. He didn’t ask himself why he could think of what had been between his father and Violet without resentment; it had been something he had always accepted and understood, although it