him inside her as much as he needed to be there, and yet—She bit into her lip until she tasted her own blood in her mouth as Rand lost patience with what he thought was her game and took matters into his own hands, grasping her hips to guide her down on to him, filling her, engorging her.
After the pain came the most incredible feelings, as if Rand filled every space inside her. She felt overwhelmed, as if she belonged to this man, as if she would always be a part of him now. The tears that ran down her cheeks now were of happiness.
And then the pleasure began, Rand showing her how to move above him to give them both the maximum fulfilment, his eyes gleaming their satisfaction as she gasped weakly at this assault on her aroused senses.
The pressure building within her made her feel like crying and laughing simultaneously, the tumult rising inside her thrilling and frightening her at the same time. What was it going to be like, this physical satisfaction singing along her veins and clamouring for release?
And then she knew. It was like nothing she had ever experienced before.
Warmth, and aching, and fire burst free from the core of their joined bodies, Rand's teeth rough against her breast as he lost control in the river of her convulsions, his hands clenched into her buttocks as he quivered again and again inside her in his own spasmodic release.
They had reached their pleasure in unison, and even in her ignorance Merlyn knew how unique that was in a relationship of familiarity let alone during a first encounter.
Her lips were moistly open, her breathing ragged, as she languorously kissed every inch of his face, from the dampness of his forehead, the tautness of his cheeks, to the pliancy of his mouth. They had shared something so beautiful Merlyn never wanted this moment of closeness to end.
And then she realised that Rand no longer seemed aware of her at all, that he wasn't even looking at her any more but at the fireplace—at the half-burnt photograph of his dead wife. There was a dull, lifeless expression in his eyes that told Merlyn none of his thoughts.
But she didn't need to know them, had known when she offered herself that she had just been fulfilling a need for him. It wasn't his fault that she had broken the rules and felt as if she never wanted to be parted from him again!
He turned back to her with darkened eyes, frowning heavily. ‘Did I do that to you?’ He gently touched the swollen tenderness of her bottom lip where she had bitten into it at the moment of his possession.
She ran her tongue along the jagged soreness. The bleeding seemed to have stopped now, most of the blood having fallen on Rand's shoulder. ‘No, I did,’ she dismissed, wondering how on earth she was supposed to untangle their bodies without embarrassing both of them.
Compassion softened the harshness of his face. ‘I never meant for that to happen, you know.'
Of course she knew! ‘Neither did I,’ she said huskily. ‘But it's done now.'
‘Yes,’ he rasped.
She swallowed hard. ‘I think I'd better go back to my room.'
‘Yes.'
Tears filled her eyes as he made no effort to release her. ‘Now,’ Merlyn urged desperately.
His gaze held hers as he slowly turned her on her side away from the fire so that she lay beside him, darkness enfolding her as his broad shoulders blocked out most of the glow given off by the flames. ‘I'm sorry,’ he said suddenly.
She drew in a ragged breath, feeling bereft now that his body was no longer joined to hers. ‘I came to you,’ she reminded him.
‘Because you pitied me—–'
‘No!'
He swung away from her to stand up and cross the room to once again stare broodingly into the fire. ‘It's the usual reaction when you find a man crying in front of you like a child!'
‘Rand—–'
‘Go back to your room—please,’ he encouraged with a harshness that brooked no argument.
She hadn't been able to help him at all. All she had been able to do was give him a few moments of forgetfulness in her arms and then more pain. He felt as if he had betrayed his wife; he didn't need to tell her that, she just knew.
Merlyn's bedroom looked just as she had left it, the bedside lamp still on, the bedclothes thrown back where she had hurried to see what was happening. But she had changed. Since her disillusionment with Mark she had avoided any real closeness to men. She went out with them, she had a good time, but at the end of the day she always went home alone. God knows she had had her chances for it not to be that way, Christopher Drake only the last in a long line of men who wanted her to share their bed. But she had never found any difficulty in resisting those physical entanglements that in the end brought nothing but heartache.
Until Rand Carmichael. But she had felt no hesitation as she went to him, had felt that it was meant to be, as if she had known that from the moment she first saw him. Could it be that she had been so deeply involved with her research of Suzie Forrester these past months that for a brief time she had thought she was her? But that was ridiculous. Wasn't it …?
* * *
Merlyn was already in the lounge when Rand came downstairs the next morning. She had found the broken glass gone from the hearth, the room looking innocent of the stormy lovemaking it had witnessed the evening before.
Merlyn wished she felt as innocent! Her body ached, the slight soreness she was experiencing not alleviated by the lengthy soak in the bath she had indulged in earlier. Her bottom lip was swollen and painful, and she felt altogether irritable. The only good thing about the day seemed to be that the rain had stopped falling some time in the night and with luck the water level on the ford would have gone down enough for her to get out of here. She was going to walk to the hotel if she still couldn't drive there; she certainly couldn't stay on here when she and Rand were so embarrassed about last night.
It was after nine when she heard him coming down the stairs, standing up to move nervously in front of one of the tall windows, the bright daylight behind her giving a golden halo to the red flame of her hair, her slender body warmed by fitting black denims and a royal-blue coloured jumper.
She looked warily at Rand as he hesitated just inside the doorway before fully entering the room, completing the task of tucking the black shirt he wore into the waistband of fitted grey trousers as he did so. Now that the confrontation had come, Merlyn didn't know what to say to him. What does a woman say to the complete stranger she made love with the night before! Although he hadn't seemed so much of a stranger then.
Rand was eyeing her just as warily. ‘Has Mrs Sutton arrived yet?’ he asked abruptly.
‘No one's arrived.’ She shook her head. She had been going to say they were still completely alone, but in the circumstances that didn't sound right at all.
He frowned. ‘I wonder—–'
Both of them were startled when the telephone began to ring, Rand striding across the room to answer it. Merlyn watched him beneath lowered lashes, still finding it incredible that she knew his body more intimately than she knew her own. Any magic that had taken place last night had to have been instigated by Rand!
‘Yes,’ he was
