put his arm around her shoulder and steered her towards the door. ‘You can think of some other dark creatures to compare me to. Maybe something that lives under a rock.’
Of course she took him literally and started to think of actual creatures that lived under rocks before she realised that was not what was required. ‘Not for one second will I compare you to a centipede or a slug.’
‘And I so appreciate that,’ he said. ‘Vampires and bats have a certain black glamour that slugs definitely do not.’
They laughed again as he walked her, with his arm still around her shoulders, into the house. Lights switched on automatically ahead of them but she immediately felt oppressed by the stillness, the vague mustiness of unlived-in rooms. She wanted to extend her time with him this evening but not here, not in this place so marked by tragedy and loss and dreams unfulfilled.
‘Did you...are you going to bed now?’ she asked, immediately wishing she’d said sleep and not bed with all its unspoken connotations.
‘No. You?’ He tightened his grip on her shoulder.
She shook her head. ‘I’m still way too wired up from the party. Can I...can I interest you in a herbal tea or coffee—I don’t drink coffee at night but you might want coffee—and perhaps a muffin? I baked banana muffins the other day and have them in the freezer. I just have to heat—’
Those dark brows drew together. ‘Did you say banana muffins?’
She nodded, wishing now she hadn’t brought up the subject. Not when she never wanted to admit how she had snuck into his house in her pyjamas and spied on him as he’d worked out.
‘Strange, that,’ he said. ‘I thought I could smell banana muffins in my kitchen. That inter-connecting door is meant to be odour, sound and light-proof.’
She froze. ‘Maybe...maybe you’d better get the door checked—the seals might need attention,’ she finally managed to get out.
‘I will,’ he said.
‘Let’s go through,’ she said.
‘I don’t have a key. The apartment is your private place.’ She’d wondered if he’d maintained access to the apartment, was glad that he hadn’t.
‘I... I have the key on the key ring in my purse,’ she said.
The apartment seemed a sanctuary but somehow smaller with Declan’s tall, broad-shouldered presence taking up so much room. She stood near him in the living room, suddenly very conscious that they were alone in complete privacy.
A meaningless fling. The words echoed through her head and her body tingled in all sorts of places at the thought of what that might entail. He hadn’t offered one, why shouldn’t she?
Not meaningless but without commitment—commitment she very much doubted Declan was prepared to make, despite the kind words he’d said about her lighting his darkness. She wanted him so much.
She turned to face him, thrilled to the desire for her she saw smouldering in his eyes. Her shawl was long gone and she knew from all the compliments she’d fielded at the party that she quite possibly looked the best she ever had in the blue dress.
But she’d been the one to deny the possibility of a fling. She would have to be the one to suggest it. She took the few steps needed to close the distance between them. She wound her arms around his neck, drew his face close and kissed him, her lips parted in a sensual invitation he accepted with a hard, hungry possession.
Pleasure and anticipation throbbed through her as she welcomed his mouth, his tongue, his passion. His hands slid around to her back, hard and exciting on her bare skin. She slid her hands from his neck so she could push off his jacket, tug his T-shirt from his belt with impatient fingers, splay her hands flat against the warm, solid muscle of his chest, feel the rapid thudding of his heart.
Her breath was coming in short, ragged gasps echoed by his. She wanted him so badly it was an ache. Every physical instinct she had screamed at her to proceed. To let Declan caress her—and her caress him back. To rid themselves of their clothes. To stagger into the bedroom locked in each other’s arms and fall together on the bed. To bring each other’s body to the peaks of ultimate pleasure.
But her instincts for common sense, for self-preservation, overrode them and begged her to stop this before it went any further. It was too soon—not just for her but for him.
She’d never been one for sex without emotion, without love. And she sensed that would never develop if the physical took over while the emotional lagged so far behind. Oh, but she wanted him so much she burned with it.
But as his hand grazed the side of her breasts, as her nipples tightened to hard points and hunger for him throbbed through her body she knew she couldn’t go through with a fling of any kind. That way lay certain heartbreak and she should have realised it before it got this far.
Meaningless would never be for her, no matter how you masked it.
She broke away from the kiss, panting. It was an effort to speak. ‘Declan. No. I mean... I mean... I mean stop.’ That sounded like such a cliché. ‘I don’t want you to think I’m a...a tease but I can’t go further than this. I thought I could. I want you. Want you more than I could ever have imagined but—’
He pulled away immediately, his breathing ragged and harsh. ‘But you’re not ready.’
She struggled for the right words. ‘Are you? I would make love with you in a heartbeat but I don’t think either of us is ready for that...that complication. Not now. Not yet. Some time I hope if you...when we...’ She did not want him to think she was assuming they would work towards being a couple—though there was nothing she wanted more.
He paced the width of the room and she could see it was an effort for him to restore his equilibrium. ‘You’re right. It’s too soon. I’m only just getting used to the thought of another woman—you—in my life. I don’t want to hurt you.’
He took the few strides necessary to bring him back to her. Then groaned in a wrenching anguish of frustration that called to her too and planted a hard, hungry kiss on her mouth. ‘But be in no doubt how much I want you. How difficult it is for me to stop.’
This was a man who knew how to love. She was prepared to wait until he felt able to love again. No matter how long that took.
She stepped back before her resolve broke and she flung herself at him and begged him for anything he was prepared to give. Another deep breath restored the beating of her heart to something less erratic.
‘How...how about that muffin?’ she asked, desperate to change the subject.
‘Satisfy a different kind of hunger, you mean,’ he said with a wry twist of that mouth she wanted so much to kiss and kiss and kiss again.
‘That’s one way of putting it,’ she said.
* * *
Declan watched Shelley move around the small kitchen with the same efficiency of movement she gave to her work. A warrior who could cook—and cook well. She’d put the frozen muffin in the microwave and a delicious—and familiar—aroma was wafting its way to his nose. He was hungry.
