have walked down the lane and seen her standing there.
Almost as though he knew what she was thinking, he added softly, ‘Don’t worry about it. The lane only goes as far as my property and no one other than me uses it at this time of the morning.’
‘I wasn’t worried.’
His intimation galled her, all the more so because he had guessed so accurately at her thoughts. That was another intrusion that she resented. He had no right to read her mind so easily; Rick had been the only man she permitted to do that. It was all wrong that this arrogant, over-confident man should be alive and healthy while Rick … A sob of resentment rose in her throat. She had felt like this before, but only in the first weeks after Rick’s death, illogically resenting that other young men should be alive while he was dead—but that feeling had faded in time. It disturbed her that this man should be the means of resurrecting it, and she glared up at him, willing him to release her and go away.
‘Not exactly friendly, are you?’ he murmered wryly, watching the emotions chase one another across her face. ‘I wonder why?’
‘Perhaps because I don’t like you,’ retorted Sara waspishly.
The dark eyebrows rose. His hair was almost black and very thick. It was also too long, she thought disparagingly.
‘Really? But you don’t know me, do you?’
His good-humoured amusement increased her sense of ill-usage.
‘I don’t want to know you,’ she told him through gritted teeth, ‘and if you would kindly release my arm …’
‘In a moment.’
He wasn’t amused now. In fact, there was a distinctly disturbing glint in his eyes, a warning that his temper was not perhaps as equable as she had first supposed.
He moved towards her, crowding her against the pool so that she could not escape, the fingers of his free hand drifting lightly along her arm. She shivered beneath the light caress, watching his eyes darken with sexual awareness as his head bent towards her.
He was going to kiss her, she recognised disbelievingly, hardly able to understand what was happening. But it was happening. His parted lips were touching hers, coaxing and very, very experienced.
She wanted to reject him and pull away, but frighteningly, her body wouldn’t respond to her will. And worse, it did respond to the sexual expertise it was being subjected to.
Her lips seemed to melt and flower against the seductive male warmth of his, rivers of heat flooding through her veins as his arms went round her to draw against his body.
She could feel the hard jut of his hips through the thinness of her nightdress, and the powerful movements of his chest against her breasts as he breathed deeply.
His hands moulded the contours of her back, resting momentarily on her waist and then moving lower as he made a small sound of satisfaction against her mouth.
Rick was the only man with whom she had experienced passion, with whom she had wanted to taste all the heady delights of fulfilment, but he had been snatched away from her before their love had been consummated, and incredibly, shockingly, her body now seemed intent on relieving all the frustrations of that denial with the man who now held her in his arms.
She heard him mutter something against her mouth as his teasing caress turned into a passionate assault, and then he raised his head to look down into her bemused and vulnerable eyes, his own dark with a desire that her body recognised and welcomed even as her mind and heart repudiated it.
‘Well, well. It seems both of us got more than we bargained for,’ he told her frankly, his voice rough and slightly unsteady.
Too shocked to make any response, Sara could only stare at him, watching in dumb disbelief as he raised one hand from her body to stroke a calloused fingertip along her moist mouth. His other hand still held her against him, and as he traced the outline of her lips he moved against her, making her intimately aware of his arousal.
It stunned her, both that he could be so easily aroused and that he should make no effort to conceal it. She had been right to tell Sam that she would not like him, she thought feverishly. It was obvious. The casual attitude to sex which his behaviour betrayed was, to her, thoroughly contemptible.
As she opened her mouth to tell him what she thought of him, his hand slid down her body, caressing first her throat and then the smooth curve of her shoulder, pushing aside the wide neck of her nightdress to expose the rounded gleam of her arm.
His mouth touched the pale flesh his hand had just revealed and the words of denial were choked in her throat as her body quivered in response.
His hand moved to her breast, sliding aside the cotton barrier to reveal its pink-tipped fullness to his gaze.
A dark flush of colour flooded his face, his body tense as his fingers cupped the flesh that had previously only known Rick’s caress. Mentally she was filled with a sickening sense of defilement, but physically … Sara caught her breath on a gasp of mingled shock and excitement as the dark head bent towards her breast and she felt the warm mouth take the place of his caressing fingers. The shudder that went through her made her whole body sag weakly against him, every nerve ending concentrating on the intense physical pleasure aroused by the heated movement of his tongue and mouth against her sensitive flesh.
‘No … No … please don’t …’
The sobbed words were torn from her throat, tears she wasn’t aware of shedding lying damply on her skin.
The look in his eyes as he reluctantly released her breast, only to cover the still moist nipple with the caressing heat of his palm, made her shiver violently.
‘I want you.’ He said it harshly, as though in some way he found the words as shocking as she did, the look in his eyes suggesting that he was as shocked by the violent passion that had errupted between them as she was herself, but she knew that that could not be so. After all he was the one who had initiated what had happened.
‘I want you.’ He repeated the words in a slurred, unsteady voice, a blank, almost dazed look in his eyes as he pressed his body into hers, his hips moving restlessly against her.
‘I want you!’
He said it more softly this time, bending his mouth towards her own, but the brief respite from the sorcery of his touch had been enough to bring Sara back to sanity. She was appalled by what had happened—that she had actually allowed this hateful man intimacies which before had been permitted to Rick alone—and even harder to accept was the fact that part of her at least had actually enjoyed and wanted the heat of his mouth against her skin. And if she was truthful, wasn’t there still a nagging ache deep inside her in rebellious response to the frantic movement of his aroused body against her own?
Shocked by this self-admission, she stepped back from him, an expression of disgust curling her mouth.
His eyes focused on her face, the pupils almost black and very brilliant. He looked like someone coming out of a drug-induced stupor, she thought bitterly as she watched shock and recognition of what he had done vie for prominence in his expression.
‘I …’ He shook his head as though trying to clear it, and Sara knew that whatever he was going to say, she didn’t want to hear it.
Logically
