in Rourke’s brown eyes, because it was before he’d lost one of them, as the front door closed behind her mother. He’d moved toward her with intent, for the first time since she’d known how she felt about him.
Without a word, he’d lifted her off the floor in his strong arms and his mouth had settled with exquisite tenderness on her trembling lips.
He brushed them softly with his and smiled when she looked at him from wide blue eyes. “You’ve never done this,” he whispered.
She shook her head.
“Lucky, lucky me,” he whispered back, and bent again to her lips. “Don’t be afraid, Tat. I won’t hurt you. I promise.”
He’d spread her out on the couch while he unbuttoned the silk shirt he was wearing and pulled it out of his slacks. She watched him like a cat, with wide-eyed wonder.
He slipped out of his shoes and slid alongside her on the long leather couch.
“Mama,” she whispered worriedly. “She won’t be gone long...”
“I’ll hear her,” he promised.
While she was worrying, his big hands went to the wide straps that held up the dress and slid them with sensual mastery right down over her soft little breasts. She opened her mouth to protest and his mouth went down right on one breast and began to suckle it.
She had to bite her lip almost through to keep back the helpless cry of pleasure as she felt desire for the first time in her life. It was more than desire. She arched up to his lips, clutched at the back of his head, where the hair was thick, and tried to bring his mouth even closer. The suction increased suddenly and she threw back her head, arched her back and climaxed in his arms.
She cried then. It shocked her that she was abnormal. But Rourke had only laughed, softly, with pure delight, and comforted her. She loved him, he whispered, that was why. It made her extremely sensitive to his lovemaking.
Her eyes had opened wide as his body slowly overwhelmed hers. He let her feel the slow, building tension of his body, let her feel it swell against her flat belly. That, too, he whispered, was the most natural thing in the world. And how would she like to feel it inside her?
She flushed, but his mouth covered hers and she shivered, her legs parting as he moved between them, her voice breaking as she encouraged him. She felt his hands under her dress, moving the lacy little briefs down, touching her in a place and a way she’d never been touched in her life. And all the while, he fed on her breasts, working the hard crowns with his tongue. She was pleading then, begging him. His hand moved between them in a heated rush as he felt for the zipper and tugged at it with something like desperation...
And they’d heard the door open and her mother’s footsteps.
Barely in time, they were dressed and apparently putting decorations on the tree when she walked in. But Clarisse’s mother could see quite easily what had been going on. She hadn’t approved—that was obvious. She’d lectured her daughter after Rourke had left, minutes later, without a word to Clarisse or even a backward glance. That man, Maria said coldly, had a string of lovers, and he was not adding her precious chaste daughter to them! She would make sure of it.
Clarisse didn’t think of Rourke that way. Not until Rourke had been wounded soon afterward in a conflict that cost him his eye and almost his life. She’d flown to Nairobi and sat by his bedside for days, nursing him, forcing him to live, to cope with the loss of the eye. His reaction to her had been heartbreaking. He’d been ice-cold, withdrawn. He acted as if he hated her. The minute he was allowed to leave the hospital, he took an old girlfriend home with him and didn’t even thank Clarisse for being there when he needed her most.
But that was only the beginning. Later that year, he flatly refused her invitation to a party in Manuas. Even then, she didn’t get the idea. He stopped answering her letters and refused to pick up the phone if she was on the other end.
Not until the next time they met, at some fund-raiser in Washington, DC, when he was so cold and mocking about her behavior that she was certain he hated her. He called her an immoral little tramp who was any man’s. Nothing had ever hurt so much. He was the only man she’d ever been intimate with. Had her behavior with him made him think that she was any man’s, that she was immoral? Was that why he suddenly hated her? She hadn’t known. She hadn’t understood. But his hateful attitude had caused her to avoid him, off and on, ever since.
But every time there was a tragedy in her life, he was there. It had never made sense. Now, perhaps, it did. He’d wanted her beyond bearing and he’d heard gossip that they were related. She couldn’t help wondering if her mother had anything to do with that gossip. Then she swept aside the suspicion. The mother she loved would never have been that cruel, even to save her daughter’s innocence. Of that she was certain.
Perhaps K.C. had told Rourke something. He seemed to like Clarisse, but perhaps he had someone else in mind for his employee—or his son, some people said. Rourke and K.C. were so alike that she’d wondered for years if they weren’t related.
Well, it didn’t matter now. Rourke was not going to take her to bed and walk away. Whatever she had to do to protect herself, even if it meant marrying Ruy, she would do.
She loved Rourke far too much. She’d just gone on the endangered list, if he’d meant what he said. So she had to start making plans. She didn’t love the Manaus physician, but he was kind and she could live with him as long as there were no physical demands. It would protect her from Rourke, who would never coerce a woman into forsaking her marriage vows. He was quite old-fashioned in that sense. There had never been a single instance when he’d been seen with a married woman, not even one who was separated from her husband. He was, in his own way, something of a Puritan.
Besides all that, she thought that it had just been the alcohol talking. Rourke had been very inebriated. Probably he was just teasing her, as he had for years.
* * *
She thought that until she answered a knock at the door that evening and found an amused, blond man leaning on the door frame facing her.
She caught her breath.
“And you thought I didn’t mean it,” he mused, smiling through bloodshot eyes. “Come dancing, Tat.”
She was all at sea. “We danced last night,” she began.
He smiled. “There’s a Latin Club in town. It just opened.” He leaned toward her. “I can do the tango.”
She flushed. It was her favorite dance. She’d been dancing it with a handsome Latin at a club in Osaka, Japan, one night when she’d gone to a society wedding to which Rourke was also invited. The club was where the crowd had gone for supper after a rehearsal dinner. Rourke had shown up there with a date. He hadn’t danced with Clarisse, of course; he was his usual mocking, sarcastic self. But he drew his date onto the dance floor and Clarisse watched with wide-eyed wonder as he held the audience enthralled with his skill. She thought she’d never seen anyone dance like that in her life. He hadn’t said a single word to Clarisse, much less danced with her.
“Come on. Give in,” he teased. “You know you want to.”
“I was going to watch television...”
“Put on something sexy and come dancing. You can watch television when you’re alone.”
She
