Eventually. And that was the open wound she would take with her from this encounter. The bitter knowledge that she hadn’t fought tooth and nail against the ultimate surrender. That the marks she’d inflicted on his body were the result of passion, not self-defence.
She hadn’t even managed the frozen submission she’d planned as her last line of retreat. And now it was much too late.
She took a last glance at herself, and turned away, knowing that she couldn’t simply walk back naked into the bedroom. Without mental or emotional connection between them, his dark scrutiny would be a stinging embarrassment, she thought, as she trod over to the fitted unit beside the basin, and opened the bottom drawer.
The neatly folded cotton housecoat that lay there was quite the oldest garment she possessed. High-necked and demure, it had been at school with her, and its pattern of tiny rosebuds had almost faded away with repeated launderings over the years. Hanging on to it was sheer sentiment, but it had the virtue of being opaque—a veil for her to hide behind as she went to him.
He was lying on his back, arms folded behind his head, staring up at the ceiling as she walked towards the bed, and she noticed that he’d tidied the pillows, and drawn the sheet up to waist level. He turned to look at her, and she saw his eyes widen, and braced herself for some numbing piece of sarcasm.
But when he spoke his voice was almost reflective. ‘So now I know how you looked when you were a little girl, Harriet mou.’
She gave him a quick, startled glance, then turned her back while she removed the soft folds, then slid under the covering sheet. And waited, nerves jangling, for him to reach for her.
‘Expecting another seduction, matia mou?’ He broke the silence at last, just as her inner tension was nearing screaming point. ‘Because it is not going to happen.’ And as she twisted round to stare at him he added, ‘This time, I wish you to make love to me.’
‘Oh, God, no—no …’
She only realised she’d spoken the thought aloud when she saw his mouth twist in a wry smile.
He shook his head. ‘Why, Harriet?’ He made her name sound like a caress. ‘Don’t you like being in bed with me—just a little?’
There was no need to answer. And no point in trying to lie either. The sudden blaze of colour warming her face was betrayal enough. And the helpless clench of desire deep inside her.
‘I enjoyed having you touch me,’ he went on softly. ‘It’s a pleasure I wish to be repeated. And you seemed to like it too, my shy bride, so why don’t you come much—much closer, and kiss me?’
She obeyed slowly, helplessly, moving across the space that divided them, until she felt the warmth of him against her, and the tingling thrill of response in her own skin.
She swallowed, her heart thudding, then leaned over him, her hair spilling around him in a fragrant cloud, as she let the rosy peaks of her breasts brush his chest, deliberately tantalising the flat male nipples. She heard him catch his breath.
He said huskily, ‘Harriet, my sweet one—agapi mou.’
And she paused, her mouth a fraction from his.
‘But I don’t love you,’ she whispered fiercely back to him. ‘And I never will.’
Harriet awoke slowly, pushing herself up through the layers of sleep like a swimmer surfacing from the dark depths of a timeless sea, and finding sunlight. She waited for the usual stress to kick in, but it was strangely absent. Instead, she felt totally relaxed, her whole body toned—suffused with unaccustomed well-being.
Realising, as she forced open her weighted eyelids, that she was actually smiling.
And then she remembered …
She shot upright, gasping, clutching the sheet to her breasts, staring dazedly down at the empty bed beside her, heart hammering. Wondering for an instant if her imagination had been playing tricks on her—if she’d simply dreamt it—all of it.
But the voluptuous tenderness between her thighs soon disabused her of that notion. She had to face the fact that she’d spent most of the previous night having sex, with an increasing hunger and lack of inhibition that made her quail as she recalled it now in daylight.
Unable, it seemed, to get enough of him, she thought, turning over to bury her burning face in her pillow. Or to give enough either …
I wish you to make love to me.
And she’d done so, following instincts she barely understood, hesitant, even gauche at first, but learning quickly, guided by Roan’s glance, his whispered word, even an indrawn breath. Discovering intimacies she could never have imagined she’d permit, let alone enjoy.
Until, at the last, she’d found herself astride him, absorbing him with exquisite totality, her body bent in an arc of pleasure as she pursued, with him, yet another release that was as savage as it was mutual.
They’d finally fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion, still entwined. Harriet could remember waking around dawn, and finding she was sprawled across him, imprisoned by his arm, her cheek pressed against the heavy beat of his heart. And when she’d tried gingerly to move to a more decorous distance, Roan had muttered something sleepily in his own language, his grasp tightening around her. So she’d stayed, and slept again.
Yet he’d had no problem extricating himself, it seemed. And she’d been too dead to the world to notice. Had expected to find him there, holding her, when she woke. Had wanted him to be there …
Now, there was an admission.
She sat up again, pushing back her tumble of hair, listening for the sound of the shower, trying to detect a hint of coffee in the air— any indication that he was still around. Somewhere. But there was only silence, and the sunlight pressing against the blinds far more brightly than it should have done.
Biting her lip, Harriet glanced at the bedside clock and stifled a yelp. He’d gone, and so had half the morning, which meant that for the first time she was going to be horrifyingly late for work.
She stood under the shower, letting the water stream over her body, touching every part of her that his hands—his mouth—had caressed. Rinsing away the carnation-scented lather, remembering its fragrance on his skin, and now she’d breathed it—licked at it. Remembering altogether too much, she thought breathlessly, bracing a hand against the tiled wall for support because her legs were shaking under her again. And these memories had to be dealt with—barred—if she was ever to know any peace again.
As she went to discard her used towel in the linen basket, she saw a glimmer of peach satin, and realised he’d collected her pyjamas from the floor, as if he knew she only wore things once before laundering. Although, in this case, she’d hardly had the chance to wear them at all.
She hunted discontentedly along the rail in her wardrobe, wishing there was something else to choose apart from black, black and yet more black. ‘Those shapeless garments,’ he’d called them, and much good they’d done her.
Now there seemed little point in persevering with her camouflage, and it would have been nice to wear something light and bright—something that floated—on this glorious sunlit morning.
Then
