said before. Want what? She was afraid—of him and of everything he was making her feel in spite of herself.
“No!” Alexa heard herself moan softly in protest. “No…no more…please stop!”
“And why is it that women always cry ‘no’ when they really mean ‘yes’?” He reared himself up on one elbow to look down at her, and the meaning of his caustically uttered words acted like a glass of ice-cold water thrown in her face.
With a catlike swiftness that took him by surprise Alexa twisted away and sat back on her haunches as she glared down at him. “I suggest that you go find these women you are so familiar with who say no when they mean yes and do as you please with them! But as for me, I detest that insufferably superior attitude of yours, and you can…”
By now he had sat up too; and unfairly, she still could not read his shadowed face as he held her wrists for a moment and said: “Listen, moon maid…mermaid…witch…whatever you are. Why should we waste time on questions or arguments on a night like this? We’re strangers brought together by Fate and we’ll probably never meet again. But why not make the most of the present? I could not fall asleep tonight, for some reason, and so I decided to swim out here and try out the Governor’s pool, and I found you. And I want very much to make love to you, moon maid. Right here and right now.”
His hand reached out to touch her face, and Alexa flinched away nervously, never wanting to lose herself again under the touch of a stranger’s hands. Within an hour’s time he had used her far too familiarly and had turned her into a shameless wanton—a bold, reckless hussy. Her hair lay in tangled, sea-wet curls about her face and shoulders, and although she could not know it, the way in which she stared at him in startled silence reminded the man of a frightened doe—and was unaccountably annoying to him. Now what was she playing at? She had yielded, teased coquettishly and then yielded again before this latest display of temperament. How dare she suddenly glare at him as if he had mortally insulted her?
“For Christ’s sake! What is the matter with you now? Or is it that you dislike plain speaking? Should I have seduced you without words instead? When I first saw you, swimming naked under the moon so naturally, I had the feeling that you might be different. Why must you suddenly insist on playing a game of charades?”
Each contemptuous word was like a stone that had been flung at her, sinking into vulnerable, sensitive flesh. He thought…but of course he would think the worst, and no wonder. She had allowed him to think, all this time, that she was one more of the quick, easy conquests he was no doubt used to. How humiliating the thought was!
Almost unconsciously, Alexa’s small white teeth had begun to worry her lower lip, and her eyes had narrowed dangerously—both signs that would have made her Aunt Harriet watchful and that made him aware intuitively that he had said something to make her as furious as a spitting cat, suddenly. He watched her warily now, outwardly relaxed but half-expecting her to leap at him like the wild creature she had begun to remind him of at this moment, when only seconds before he could have sworn she was one of the few women who might appreciate honesty and openness in place of flattery and guile.
Breaking the tensely-stretched silence between them, he said quietly, “I have the impression that I’ve said something to make you angry, even if I did not mean to do so. What was it?”
Instead of mollifying her, his speech only seemed to make her even more angry, her lips drawing back from her gritted teeth as if she belonged, in fact, in the depths of some primeval forest—an animal as wild and as untamed as every other that lurked there.
“Why should your ‘plain speaking’ make me angry? Or your ‘seduction without words’? I wish you could repeat your speech so that I could learn it by heart! Is it one of your favorite gambits when you think you are dealing with some gullible female?”
Oh, hell! he thought disgustedly, all the more annoyed at himself for letting the advantage slip so easily into her grasp. He should have been more cautious, more careful with her; and most of all he would have liked to act the brutal savage and snatch her into his arms without thinking about seduction, wrestling her into submission while he kept kissing her into silence and caressed that magnificently long-limbed body of hers that gleamed like polished marble in the moonlight. Making her as wild with desire as he was, although he had sensed instinctively by now that it was too late for that. Damn!
“Do you make up a new speech for every occasion that arises?” Her overly honeyed voice cut through his thoughts, and he gave her a considering kind of look that made her scramble to her feet rather too hastily to match the air of cool, detached dignity she belatedly tried to portray. “Not that it matters…. It’s time I returned before I’m missed….” And where was Menika? She had been sleeping (supposedly) right there in the shadow of the tall hedge. Where had she gone? How much had she witnessed?
“Are you sure you don’t need an escort? A beautiful young woman can never be certain what kind of depraved monster she might run across on a night like this!”
“Thank you, if that was meant to be an offer; but I have a pistol,” Alexa said coldly. “And I am accounted an excellent shot by everyone who knows me. On the last hunt we were on I bagged the most game….” She wished that he would not watch her so intently as she attempted to knot the camboy around her waist while holding the pistol she’d grabbed up hastily from the folds of her discarded shawl in one hand. And fastening up tiny buttons across her breasts proved even more difficult under his interested survey.
“If you need any help I should be glad to oblige you…without any more attempts on your virtue I assure you. Pistols have always made me cautious.”
“I don’t need anything from you!” Alexa snapped waspishly, wishing he would not lie there so casually, as if he felt quite at home, and watch her in a suddenly detached fashion. And damn and double damn! The silly little buttons on her bodice wouldn’t fasten easily, and holding the pistol made it even more awkward. In fact, she had almost fired it accidentally a minute ago while trying to get one arm at a time into the short, tight sleeves. He could have tried to make a grab for it if he had really wanted to, she supposed resentfully, but quite clearly he had already decided she wasn’t worth either the effort or the risk. Forgetting herself, Alexa swore under her breath—one of the very worst oaths she had overheard.
“Are you sure you don’t need help? Or an escort? Unless, of course, you happen to have a jealous husband or lover waiting for you…?”
“That’s enough out of you!” Alexa said furiously, leveling her pistol at him, and angry enough to fire it too. “What I do and where I go is none of your business; and since you are an obvious trespasser, why don’t you go back to wherever you came from?”
“I suppose I might as well, since you are so plainly capable of looking after yourself.” His drawling voice sounded almost indifferent as he came easily to his feet without any signs of embarrassment and stretched, making Alexa remember guiltily a picture she had once seen—a painting of a naked man that Uncle John had told her was a reproduction of a sculpture by Michelangelo. There were the muscles rippling under smooth skin, the width of shoulders narrowing down to the hips. And she remembered unwillingly and far too well the hardness she had felt pressing along her thighs. Although she had not been told too much about what Harriet termed “certain unpleasant topics,” she had lived for most of her life on a plantation, and the South Indian laborers were remarkably open and uninhibited about every facet of their lives. Since she understood their language she had heard many things she had not quite understood until now. Until tonight…
“Good night, sweet moonwitch. Or should I say good morning? You really should hurry back before they send a search party out for you.”
She
