It seemed like years ago, not hours, since she had eaten that early lunch at the hotel.
‘For food or love?’ he asked huskily, watching the rise and fall of her breasts.
‘Food!’ she angrily turned her back on him.
‘Shame.’ He sounded amused. ‘I would willingly have forgone my food to have satisfied my other appetite. At the moment I think that one is more in need. A year is a long time to go without a woman.’
‘For a man like you I’m sure it is,’ Sabina snapped waspishly.
His fingers clamped about her wrist, pulling her round to face him, very close in the confines of the dimly lit kitchen. ‘A man like me?’ he ground out.
‘Well, I—– You—you’re obviously a very virile man.’
‘Oh yes,’ he breathed huskily, ‘I’m virile. At the moment, very much so.’
She knew that, his body hard against hers, his thighs leaping with desire. ‘Could I get on with the cooking now?’ She was too aware of his sensual mouth on a level with her eyes, of the way her body was reacting to his.
He instantly released her. ‘Go ahead. You’ll have to excuse my keeping touching you—I’ve been away from a beautiful woman too long.’
‘Why—I’m sorry,’ she said hastily as his expression darkened. ‘I—I won’t ask again.’
‘Make sure you don’t,’ he snapped, leaving her.
Dinner was a quiet affair, Sabina wrapped up in her own thoughts, her host seeming to be the same. Satan had appeared halfway through the meal, sitting patiently on a third chair about the old-fashioned table, those slitted green eyes watching every morsel of food that entered their mouths.
‘Doesn’t he have his own food?’ Sabina was beginning to feel uncomfortable under that watchful stare, especially as the cat seemed to resent her eating the food.
Her host patted the black cat, tickling it behind the ears. A loud purr sounded in the silence. ‘Of course he has his own food, he just prefers ours. You’re almost human, aren’t you, boy?’
Quite frankly the black cat frightened Sabina, not because of its size, in fact it was only a small cat compared to some she had seen, but because of the venom in its green eyes every time it looked at her, a look almost of jealousy.
Once again she felt tired; the walk in the mist and rain after her bicycle tyre went flat had made her feel more exhausted than she had the previous evening. But she didn’t want this man to know how tired she was, didn’t want him to suggest that they go upstairs and share that bed.
‘I’ve put your gear upstairs,’ he remarked as if reading her thoughts.
‘My bicycle has a puncture.’ She hastily spoke of something else.
He nodded. ‘I’ll take a look at that tomorrow, if the mist clears.’
‘Are we far from the road here?’
‘Thinking of walking?’
She shrugged. ‘If my bicycle can’t be mended I just may have to.’
‘We’re about two miles from the road you left.’
‘Only two miles?’ she gasped. ‘But it took me hours!’
‘And it exhausted you.’ He stood up. ‘Time for bed.’
‘No!’ Panic filled her. ‘I mean—I—I’m really not tired.’
‘Liar!’ he said softly. ‘Your eyelids have been drooping for the past hour. Come on,’ he put out a hand to pull her to her feet, ‘a good night’s sleep will do you good.’
That was the last thing she would get, spending the night with this man. He had already shown her, more than once, that her type of beauty appealed to him—‘a weakness for blondes’, he had called it. And she had no guarantee he wouldn’t try to make love to her, not when he had apparently denied himself female company for so long. She had no guarantee she would be able to deny him either.
She ignored his outstretched hand. ‘I’m not sleepy yet. You go up. I—I’ll join you later.’
‘No fear, little lady.’ He bent down and swung her up into his arms. ‘You just may be an innocent holiday-maker, but then again you might be a reporter, and until I’ve made my mind up either way, where I go you go, and vice versa.’
‘Everywhere?’ Her arms clung around his neck of their own volition, even more aware of the magnetic attraction he held for her this close to him. He didn’t smell of body lotion or aftershave as Nicholas did, he smelt of good honest sweat, and an even more basic smell, a male smell that excited and aroused her. His eyes darkened as he looked at her, as if he were aware of the disturbed state of her emotions. Consequently her next words came out sharply, almost defensively. ‘I take it this cottage does have somewhere I can wash and—and change into my nightclothes?’
‘Oh yes,’ he smiled at her bad humour. ‘That’s why there’s only one bedroom. I had the other converted into a bathroom.’
‘How nice!’ She hoped her sarcasm wasn’t lost on him. She could tell by the tightening of his beautifully shaped mouth that it wasn’t.
‘Be glad that I did,’ he rasped. ‘Otherwise you might find yourself sitting in an iron tub before the fire right now.’
Sabina gasped, and held her tongue, knowing that she was pushing him to the borderline of his temper.
He carried her up the narrow stairway, kicking open the wooden door directly opposite the top of the stairs, dropping her down on to the bed before turning to switch on the lamp next to the bed. Not that this small light made a lot of difference to the visibility in the room; her host appeared more menacing than ever.
She gave a startled gasp as something touched her hand, turning to see Satan curled up on her sleeping bag. She moved hurriedly away in case the cat struck out at her for the second time today. ‘I hope you’ll get him off there before I get back,’
‘Get back from where?’ he raised his eyebrows.
Sabina got her pyjamas out of her saddlebag. ‘I’m going to the bathroom,’ she informed him crossly. ‘And I don’t want to have to fight your cat for my part of the bed.’ Goodness knows it was going to be bad enough sleeping there without that!
‘Don’t worry,’ he taunted. ‘I’d rather have you share my bed any day—or night.’
She fled, her face bright red with embarrassment. This was terrible, stuck here in the middle of nowhere with a man she didn’t even know the name of, a man who feared reporters. No, feared was the wrong word, he despised them, hated them. But why? Why did he—–
‘Miss Smith?’ A loud knock sounded on the door behind her. ‘I want to use the bathroom, so unless you want to share that with me too, I should hurry up and get out of there.’
She had already noted that there was no lock on the door, so she quickly put on her
