fiancé’s brother for something quite ludicrous, and embarrassed us both. You’re despicable! I think you’d better leave. You can make whatever excuses you like to my parents, I don’t care, but I hope I never have to speak to you again!’
She whirled on her heel to make her grand exit, but almost against his will, his arm came out barring her way, and when she turned in the other direction he stepped into her path. There was a look of torment in his face, his mouth twisting with self-derision, and then he reached for her, his hands curving around her nape, compelling her firmly towards him.
‘God, Helen…’ he muttered with a groan, and all her talk of despising him went for nothing beneath the demanding possession of his mouth.
Her head swam with the first touch of his lips. It was all one with the caressing compulsion of his hands on her neck, his thumbs probing the hollows behind her ears, his fingertips exploring the source of her spinal cord. Her hands were crushed between them and when she moved her fingers they encountered an unbuttoned opening in his shirt and curled inside. His skin was warm and roughened with hair, and when she separated more of the buttons from their holes she felt the responsive constriction of his muscles.
His mouth left hers to seek the hollow of her neck, and his hands slid down her spine to her hips, drawing her close against the hardening muscles of his thighs. She had never been so close to a man’s body before, but instead of wanting to pull away, she pressed herself to him, arching her body and creating an intimacy between them that destroyed any hope of dismissing this embrace as the casual result of enforced proximity. They were both fully aware of what they were doing, and his tortured breathing was the only sound she could hear.
It was his hands on her upper arms that finally separated them, forcing her back from him while he still had the strength to do so. Her eyes, seeking his face, could see the actual physical control he was exerting and the strain it was putting upon him.
‘You’re crazy, do you know that?’ he demanded, pushing back his hair with an unsteady hand, but when she made a sound of protest and swayed towards him again, he turned his back on her and put the expanse of her father’s desk between them. ‘Stop it, Helen!’ he ordered tautly. ‘We can’t do this. My God, anybody could have come in and found us!’ He broke off, shaking his head disbelievingly. Then he went on: ‘That sister of yours, for example. How do you think she would have felt if she had come in? How would she have reacted finding her sister in another man’s arms only two days before the wedding!’
Helen drew a deep breath and endeavoured to recover her composure, but it wasn’t easy. He was right, she told herself dully, so why didn’t she feel ashamed? Why wasn’t she tearing her hair out, or dressing herself in the mental equivalent of sackcloth and ashes? Why hadn’t she been the one to draw back, instead of him?
She trembled. She had always controlled the situation with Barry. She had never let his lovemaking get beyond certain limits. But Morgan wasn’t Barry, and that was the trouble. With Morgan, she didn’t want to draw back, she wanted to go on and on, giving herself to him, caring little for things like modesty or self-respect, only wanting to please him as he was pleasing her…
Shades of that school friend’s advice, she thought sickly. So much for her bland statements about inadequacy. What price virginity now? She pressed her palms down on to the cool surface of the desk. She was crazy. It was true. Because even now, with half the width of the room between them, she felt nothing but regret that he hadn’t gone further…
‘Helen…’ He was looking at her as he fastened the buttons of his shirt she had opened. ‘Helen!’ He sighed. ‘Oh, what’s the use of denying it? I was as much to blame as you were, but hell, you invited it!’
She moved her shoulders in a little helpless gesture. ‘I know.’
‘What do you mean—you know?’ He expelled his breath noisily. ‘Helen, what can I say? What can I do to show you that I mean it when I say I’m sorry? God help me, I’m sorry.’
She wiped her damp palms down the seams of her silk pants. ‘I—don’t want you to be sorry,’ she said carefully, aware of his harsh incredulity. ‘That—that’s what I mean.’
His eyes were narrowed until they were almost slits beneath his lowering brows. ‘What did you say?’
‘You heard me,’ she insisted, her fingers opening and closing against her thighs. ‘Why do you sound so surprised? Do you think I go in for this sort of thing? Do you think I’d let any man hold me as you have just held me? Do you imagine I’ve let Barry get that close to me?’
‘And haven’t you?’
‘No!’ Her lips trembled with indignation. ‘I—I told you once before that—that I—–’
‘—that you don’t sleep around, I remember.’ Morgan’s response was curt. ‘All right, all right. So what am I to gather from that? That I broke some of the rules?’
‘Rules?’
Helen’s voice broke on the word and now she turned her back on him, snatching a tissue out of the box on her father’s desk and dabbing furiously at her eyes. She mustn’t cry, she told herself desperately, not now, not when, as he said, their parents or Jennifer could come in at any moment.
‘Helen…’ He said her name close by her ear and she realised with a start that he had come to stand right behind her. ‘Helen,’ he said again, and there was the same note of anguish in his voice that she had heard before. ‘Don’t make me hate myself any more than I do already.’
Her breathing was coming in short, uneven gasps, but she tipped her head back to rest against his chest, and with a groan of defeat his arms slid round her waist, propelling her back against him. Her body moulded itself to his almost as if it had been designed for just that purpose, and he buried his face in the curtain of silky hair that curled into her nape. His hands moved carelessly upward, over her ribcage to the buttoned neckline of her shirt, sliding inside almost possessively to close over the ripe fullness of her breasts. They surged against his fingers and she felt the unsteady draught of his breath against her neck as his tongue stroked the erratic pulse that fluttered below her jawline. His own heart was pounding behind her and the throbbing demands of his body were no longer in any doubt.
He was twisting her round in his arms to seek the parted sweetness of her lips with his mouth when they heard voices coming along the passage. Almost immediately she was free to do what she could to restore her clothes to order, while Morgan placed himself protectively in front of her, tightening his tie with something less than detachment.
Mrs Raynor came into the room first, followed by Mr and Mrs Fox, with Mr Raynor bringing up the rear. Fortunately, Jennifer was not with them to comment on Helen’s hectically flushed cheeks, or to ask why her mouth was bare of all lipstick, but Mrs Raynor looked at her daughter rather doubtfully, before asking what Morgan had thought of the book.
Morgan, at least, appeared unperturbed. ‘I found it very interesting,’ he replied, and only Helen knew that his smile was a trifle forced. ‘Er—Helen tells me you’re interested in the dark continent, Mr Raynor.’
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