room, and if I’m going to have to share with one of you, I think I prefer you to Alex. You could, of course, always leave,” he taunted. His fingers were on the buttons of the checked plaid shirt he was wearing, and Catriona stared desperately at the door, bitterly regretting her fastidious refusal to sleep in her underwear. In that at least she would have been able to leave the bed and grab her clothes. Even sleeping downstairs in a chair would be preferable to sharing a bed with this man!
“What’s the matter?” he jeered as she remained immobile.
She wasn’t going to ask him to leave so that she could get dressed—he would probably refuse anyway and take delight in humiliating her by doing so. Her face burned as she dwelt on having to endure him watching her dress.
“If you had the slightest scrap of decency you would leave this room right now,” she announced in freezing accents, trying to read his reaction to her words.
It shocked her with its comprehensive grasp of her feelings. “But then men like me don’t have, do they?” he demanded softly. “At least not in your eyes. What is it with you?”
Catriona moved slightly, the moonlight briefly touching her hair, turning it silver. His eyes followed the movement, widening slightly.
“So it’s you…” he drawled in recognition. “I saw you in the bar….”
“And I saw you,” Catriona whipped back. “And you’re quite right, I don’t like men like you. I detest them, and everything they stand for.” Her lip curled faintly as she forgot her fear. “You’re quite safe with me—I wouldn’t touch you for all the oil in the North Sea!”
He was pulling off his shirt, and his hands stilled, his eyes like jade as they held hers, compelling them to witness the undeniable maleness of his hair toughened chest as the shirt was discarded.
“Is that a fact?”
“I can’t stay here with you,” Catriona protested, forgetting her earlier determination not to plead with him. “Just let me get dressed and….”
“And get the manager, who’ll turf me out of my room, and no doubt accuse me of seducing you into the bargain. No way,” he told her curtly. “You’re staying right there. Unless of course you’re brave enough to get out of that bed and get the key?”
He knew she couldn’t, Catriona admitted wrathfully as he turned his back on her and calmly turned on the basin tap. If only he had been going to have a bath, she could have left while he was gone. The suspicion that he was deliberately punishing her by remaining would not be denied. He could have as little desire to share the bed with her as she did with him, but he had sensed her fear, beneath her anger, and meant to punish her by arousing it still further. Her shocked ears caught the unmistakable sound of more clothes being removed, and the wardrobe she had left untouched was opened and a case dragged out.
“Seems to me whoever was supposed to tell me that you had my room also forgot to get my luggage removed,” he drawled coolly from the other side of the bed. “Unless you were lying all along?”
“No….”
This time she made no attempt to conceal her panic, rolling as close to the edge of the bed as she could as she felt it depress with his weight. Her heart was thudding like a sledgehammer, and she had never felt less like sleep. Her companion turned over and she froze, unaware of the small protest she had uttered until his fingers grasped her chin, sending shocked fear washing over her.
“Something tells me you’ve never done this before,” he murmured, in a voice which, for the first time, held a thread of humour. “Would I be right?”
More right than he knew, Catriona acknowledged wryly. She hadn’t slept with any man yet, never mind one who was a complete stranger, and even though she prided herself on being a modern girl, his presence overwhelmed her, conscious as she was of his unembarrassed nudity, so totally and frankly male.
As she fought against the panic his touch had aroused, Catriona heard him add softly,
“Too scared to reply?”
Her tense muscles gave him the answer she was incapable of speaking, and she thought she heard him sigh as his thumb stroked softly along her gritted jaw bone.
“You’re quite safe,” he assured her gravely. “I’m not about to ravish you. All I want is a decent night’s sleep. We’ve been out on the rigs for the last five days, in a force nine gale, and believe me,” he told her frankly, “even if I wanted to I doubt I could summon the energy to teach you how to make love.”
“I don’t need anyone to teach me!” Catriona choked back, furious with both him and herself. By rights they shouldn’t be having this conversation. They were complete strangers.
He laughed and she felt the sound shake his body—a body which she was acutely conscious was as naked as her own—and colour flamed momentarily along her cheekbones, curiosity mingling with outrage, a strange desire to know more about this man who treated their presence in bed together as though it were of no more moment than a casual chance meeting at a bus stop.
“Don’t touch me!” she demanded, jerking away from the hand which cupped her chin, gasping with pain as hard fingers suddenly seized her wrists, pulling her against the male body she had mentally been contemplating, its weight pinning her back against the mattress as cool masculine lips feathered lightly against the full softness of her own.
Catriona knew enough about men to know there was nothing of passion in the kiss. It was firm, experienced, and totally platonic, just as the male contours of the body now dominating her own were completely and absolutely devoid of sexual intensity. Before she could protest she was released to listen in bitter chagrin to the male voice whispering in her ear.
“You see? And now that I’ve disposed of your girlish fears perhaps we can both get some sleep.”
There was a pause while she struggled to formulate a suitably crushing response, and then he added suavely, “Disappointed?”
The sardonic question released her anger to spill out over him in heated denial. Disappointed? She glared at him with loathing. Never in a thousand years! How could he have inflicted such humiliation upon her? And yet at the back of her mind was an emotion, far too tenuous to be given a name, which niggled tormentingly.
“Now go to sleep,” she was instructed in much the same tones one might use to an erring child, and much to her own astonishment she found that her eyes were closing; the sleep she had denied she would ever experience washed over her in waves.
Some time during the night those same waves were transformed to the beating fury of the North Sea which had destroyed her parents’ sailing dinghy and robbed them of life, and her cries of protest were drowned out by the roaring sound of the water, until as always she found sanctuary in Magnus’s protective arms and the storm was spent.
When she awoke she was alone in the bed, no trace of its other occupant visible anywhere in the room, and on trembling legs Catriona sped to the door, making sure it was locked and leaving her key in the lock while she washed and dressed hurriedly, trying not to remember the events of the previous night.
How dared he think she had actually been waiting for him! She pulled her jeans on viciously, breaking a nail, and cursing as she searched for an emery board. When you lose your temper it always rebounds on you, her mother had told her when she was a child, and surveying
