her wrist-bones—so fragile that, if he were to curl his fingers around her wrist, he could break it as easily as he might snap a twig.
She gulped and swallowed, furious with herself for her idiotic flight of fantasy, almost snatching the shoes from him with an ungracious mutter of thanks.
Richard, keen to find Emma, had already gone inside, and she wished that his cousin would follow suit, she decided resentfully as she put the shoes on the terrace and then started to step into them.
As she slipped on the first one, the heel wobbled alarmingly and she kicked the other shoe over. Cursing the uneven paving of the terrace, she started to bend down to pick it up and then tensed as Luke Templecombe said coolly, ‘Allow me.’ He was already holding the shoe and there was nothing she could do other than grit her teeth and stoically concede defeat as he suggested mockingly, ‘I think it would be much simpler if you put your hand on my shoulder to steady yourself. The ground here is very uneven—hardly suitable for this kind of footgear, but then when ever did a woman consider suitability of prime importance when choosing what to wear?’
Natasha opened her mouth to deny his unfair comment, and then closed it again, her whole body going into shock as she felt his fingers close round her ankle.
‘Silk stockings,’ she heard him murmur, and then, unbelievably, his hand travelled up her leg, resting briefly on her knee before travelling expertly along her thigh, stopping on a level with the hem of her skirt.
For almost thirty seconds Natasha was too mortified to speak, to do anything other than tremble in furious indignation. When her parlysed vocal cords were working again, to her intense chagrin all she could manage was a very mundane and choked, ‘How dare you? What do you think you’re doing?’
‘I thought I was accepting the none too subtle invitation I was being given,’ he told her laconically. ‘No woman who wears black silk stockings and that kind of dress is doing so because she doesn’t want to be looked at and touched.’
Natasha was furious.
‘How dare you?’ she repeated, almost stammering in her rage. ‘I suppose you’re the kind of man who believes that women are never raped—that when they say no, they always mean yes. For your information, I am wearing this dress and these stockings, not for the disgusting reasons you have just suggested, but because—’
She stopped then, realising that she could not tell him exactly why she was dressed as she was. She looked wildly at him and saw that he was still watching her with cynical amusement, waiting for her to go on, and instead of completing her sentence she said thickly, ‘Oh, go to hell!’ and stormed rudely past him, ignoring the mocking laughter that followed her, so upset that she was physically trembling, that she wanted nothing more than to rip the dress from her skin and to consign it and the stockings to the fire, and then to bury her head under her bedclothes and give way to the relief of a prolonged bout of tears.
No one…no one had ever infuriated her like that, nor insulted her like that…no one had ever made her feel so many confusing or violent emotions within such a short space of time.
Emma had been right; the man was loathsome, abhorrent, dangerous…
Very dangerous, she acknowledged, giving a tiny shiver. Very, very dangerous indeed.
CHAPTER THREE
IT WAS the dress, Natasha told herself shakily half an hour later on her way back downstairs from her bedroom, to which retreat she had escaped to recover her poise and pull herself together.
It had to be the dress. It couldn’t be anything else. Surely nothing in her manner could possibly have given him the impression that she actually wanted…She swallowed hard, furious with herself for the shaky, nervous feeling invading the pit of her stomach—the feeling that said that underneath her anger, underneath her shock and fury had lain a very discernible and disturbing quicksilver flash of pleasure in the way his fingers had brushed her skin.
As she paused just inside the open drawing-room door, taking in the normality of the scene in front of her, it seemed impossible to believe it had actually happened.
The trouble with you, my girl, she told herself shakily, is that you’re too used to men regarding you as being as sexless as an elderly maiden aunt. Where’s your sense of humour? No doubt scores of women would have been highly flattered by his approach.
As she skirted the room, keeping a wary eye out for Luke Templecombe and wondering what on earth Richard’s mother was likely to say if she told her what had happened, she saw her cousin and Richard standing hand in hand gazing foolishly into one another’s eyes, the epitome of a young couple in love.
‘Stopped sulking, have you?’
She froze as the softly spoken words just brushed the tip of her ear. Intense waves of sensation washed right down over her body from that spot to the tips of her toes, making her want to curl them in protest.
She just—just—managed to stop herself from turning round, and instead gritted with acid sweetness, ‘I wasn’t aware that I was. If you’ll excuse me, I must go and help my mother.’
‘Not just yet.’
This time she couldn’t prevent herself from swinging round as she felt the now familiar sensation of those lean fingers clamping her wrist and holding her captive.
She panicked immediately, hissing furiously at him, ‘Will you let me go? What is it with you? Does it turn you on to…to force yourself on women?’
The smile he gave her was feral, making her shiver inwardly.
‘Does it give you a thrill to force yourself on men—visually, at least?’
Natasha discovered that she had clenched her fingers into a fist; she also discovered that nothing would have given her greater pleasure than to hit the hard male face staring into her own with the open palm of her hand—a discovery which shocked her into stunned silence. No man had ever made her feel like this…infuriated her like this…insulted her like this.
‘For your information, I am wearing this dress because I happen to like it,’ she lied flagrantly.
‘Do you, or is it the sensation of male eyes following your every movement that you like? Come on, be honest—no woman wears a dress like that unless she wants a man to look at her and be sexually aware of her.’
There was nothing she could say. In her heart of hearts, she knew what he was saying was perfectly true.
‘Admittedly I suppose it’s possible that a naïve woman might perhaps foolishly wear such a dress for one particular man, forgetting in the heat of her—er—desire that something intended to arouse only one particular male was likely to have the same effect on every male who sees her in it.’
Natasha stared at him and then said huskily, ‘If that’s meant to be an apology—’
‘It isn’t,’ came back the crisp response. ‘I don’t consider I have anything to apologise for.’
He had released her wrist and as she stepped back from him, rubbing her wrist as she glared at him, even though the pressure he had exerted had not hurt her at all, he bent his head and murmured softly against her ear, ‘Think yourself fortunate it was only your leg I touched. The combination of
