spread wide across her face.
‘That’s wonderful! Fantastic! You can’t imagine the relief that makes me feel…’
But something was wrong.
Very wrong.
The smile slipped a bit, faded, as she realised that there was no answering lightening of Theo’s expression. Instead, his features remained set in the sombre, unyielding cast that they had displayed from the moment he had come into the room.
As sudden doubt crept into her mind and took an uncomfortable hold Skye felt her world tilt on its balance, swaying sickeningly.
‘You didn’t mean it?’ she questioned hesitantly.
‘Oh, yes, I meant it. I could hardly think otherwise—could I? After all, I am only too aware that there hadn’t been any man before me. You were a virgin that night.’
Another statement. A flat, blank-toned question that rocked her back in her seat, making her stare into his dark, shuttered face. Had she failed so completely in her attempt to look and act sophisticated and experienced?
‘I—what—you knew?’
The look Theo shot her was dark with cynical mockery. A black humour that wasn’t echoed in any lightening of his expression, not even the tiniest hint of a curve to his sensual mouth.
‘Oh, yes, I knew. Do you know what that did to me?’
‘You’re angry about that?’
She couldn’t understand his reaction, couldn’t understand what was going through his head at all, and the confusion and uncertainty made her too uncomfortable to sit still. Pushing herself to her feet, she prowled about the room, agonisingly conscious of those deep, dark eyes following her every move until she felt like some specimen under a microscope or a caged animal being closely observed by some coldly analytical scientist.
‘I don’t get it! I don’t understand at all! I—I thought it was a deep-seated male fantasy to be some woman’s first lover. To be the one who took her virginity…’
But she’d hit quite the wrong note there. In trying for a levity she was far from feeling, her words had had the effect of lighting the blue touch-paper and failing to stand well back while the whole multicoloured explosion roared into life right in her face.
Theo hurled himself to his feet in a movement that was so expressive of barely controlled violence that it had her stumbling back behind a chair for protection. His face was twisted into a savage scowl that added to her sense of fearful apprehension.
‘In a sordid one-night stand in a cheap hotel?’ he snarled viciously. ‘Oh, yeah—some fantasy! Your—a woman’s—first time should be something special—something to remember. Not just thrown away!’
He meant it! Skye could hardly believe what she was seeing. Theo truly meant this. It was in his eyes, in his voice.
‘Can’t you see?’ she pleaded with him. ‘That’s why I did it—why I was with you. I didn’t want your—my wedding night to be the first. That’s why I was there.’
She’d thought she could make things better by explaining, but to judge from the change of expression, the searing burn of those deep-set eyes, she’d only managed the exact opposite.
‘To throw it away on any man you met?’
He was taking it exactly the wrong way.
‘Not just any man…’
And it had been special, she told him in the privacy of her thoughts, not daring to let on just how special that night had been. It was bad enough knowing it herself, but if she admitted to even a tiny part of it then she knew that it would rip her to pieces inside.
‘Oh, don’t tell me that you met me and instantly knew I was the love of your life,’ Theo scorned.
‘No—I’m not saying that.’
‘I could have been just anyone.’
‘No!’ Never. ‘And the hotel wasn’t that cheap!’
Oh, why couldn’t she stop? It had been obvious from the start that her attempts to pretend that that night hadn’t mattered so much had failed painfully. Theo’s scowl, the way his black brows were drawn tightly together, the black eyes blazing beneath them were warning enough that she was blundering blindly into a dangerous minefield where at any moment things might blow up in her face. But still she couldn’t help herself. Couldn’t stop herself from blurting out totally inappropriate remarks that were only making matters worse.
‘It was to me!’
The savage declaration made her jump like a startled rabbit. In fact, that was exactly what she felt like as he came towards her—a small, frightened rabbit, transfixed in the beam of a car’s headlights, wishing desperately that she could move.
‘I did exactly what you wanted. Took you exactly where you asked. “A quiet, decent hotel”,’ Theo said, and Skye realised that he was quoting her exactly.
‘But, of course, I didn’t know who you were then. If I had, then I might have…’
Something about the icy glare he turned on her froze the words on her tongue, cutting them off completely. In dawning horror, she realised just what she was saying, the impression she was giving. A hot tide of red swept right across her face and her hands crept up to cover her mouth, trying to hold the dreadful words back.
But of course it was far too late.
‘If you’d known who I was then what, Skye?’ Theo pounced on the foolish sentence. ‘Would you have held out for more, is that it, hmm? Would you have insisted on a five-star place, or asked for more? Traded your virginity for a night in a penthouse suite, perhaps—or a little room service?’
‘I didn’t ask for anything from you!’
‘Only a night of meaningless sex with an anonymous man.’
‘Yes! Yes, that was exactly what I was looking for!’
Skye winced inside at the way that sounded. But she was beyond controlling her voice. Because the truth was that Theo was not reacting in any way as she had anticipated.
Not that she had ever anticipated meeting up with the man with whom she had spent that crazy night in London ever again! She had thought that her one night of breaking out into the freedom that soon would be lost to her for ever would be her secret, and hers alone. That it would be totally anonymous, and no one would know.
But there were two problems with that. One was that in no way at all could the sex have been described as ‘meaningless’. It had been wild; it had been wonderful. It had pitched her straight from blind innocence and ignorance into a world of sensation, of knowing—and of hunger.
It had been special—so very special.
And it had left an indelible mark on her for ever.
But at least she had managed to keep the anonymous part to exactly that. And as a result
