this.
Held fast in his arms, Melanie quivered nervously. He was going to kiss her; she knew it. She also knew she ought to stop him, but how could she? What was her puny strength against the hard bulk of his body?
The grey glance still held her own, inducing an almost trance-like state of stillness within her body.
She felt the warmth of his breath caress her cheek, and a rush of goose-pimples raced down her body.
She quivered once as his mouth touched hers, her body stiffening as her mind summoned all its feminine defences, desperately sensing an enemy more dangerous than any it had yet known, but her body was deaf to all the warnings of her brain.
He kissed her slowly and lingeringly, bemusing her so thoroughly that she wasn’t even aware of him gradually lowering her so that her feet could once more touch the floor, thus freeing his hands to cup her face and her arms to instinctively and betrayingly creep round his neck, her heart pounding suffocatingly, as his tongue tip stroked her trembling lips. The hand cupping her jaw held her still beneath his sensual assault, while its partner slid down her back, firmly moulding her against body.
Paul had kissed her. Several times and very passionately, or so she had thought, and there had been other kisses before that, but none like this; and for all the fact that there was none of the urgency, the greed of Paul’s kisses in this man’s almost detached possession of her mouth, she was still aware of a reaction within herself that was far, far more intense and dangerous that any emotion Paul had ever made her feel.
In fact, when he eventually started to release her mouth, her lips actually seemed to cling to his. And she knew that he was aware of it too because he made a sound beneath his breath which might have been irritation or which might have been amusement.
Thankfully whatever it was it brought her sharply back to reality in time to remove her arms from around his neck before he had to forcibly do it for her. However, when he stepped back from her, to her consternation she discovered that her body seemed to actively miss the hard pressure of his.
While she was still trying to come to terms with what had happened he stepped past her to examine her wallpapering, commenting almost brusquely, ‘You know, these ladders aren’t really safe. Some lightweight aluminium ones would be far better. Think what could have happened if you had fallen and I hadn’t been here to catch you.’
If he hadn’t been there she wouldn’t have fallen off the ladders in the first place, Melanie told herself sturdily. Now that he wasn’t touching her any more she was rapidly returning to sanity, to the awareness that he was a stranger who had invaded the privacy of her home, uninvited, and that, for all that her feminine awareness of him urged her to think differently, he could be dangerous.
‘Umm…’ he added, moving closer to the wall on which she was working. ‘It looks to me as though you could do with a plumb-line!’
‘A plumb-line?’ She stared at him.
‘Mm. If you’ve got a piece of string and some chalk I’ll show you what I mean.’
He turned round then and smiled at her, a warm gentle smile that made her heart turn over.
‘I am sorry,’ he apologised. ‘You must be wondering who on earth I am and what I’m doing barging in on you like this. I’ve just moved into the cottage at the bottom of the lane, only to discover that none of the services seem to have been switched on. I was hoping I could use your phone to make a couple of calls. My name’s Luke, by the way.’
‘Luke,’ Melanie repeated, automatically reaching out to shake the hand he had extended to her.
His grip was firm without being painful, the palm of his hand slightly callused as though he worked outside, and yet, for all the casualness of his jeans and shirt, there was an air about him which suggested that he was a man used more to giving orders than following them. But then, what did she know about men? Melanie derided herself a little forlornly.
‘Luke?’ she queried a little more firmly, determined to let him know that she wasn’t a complete fool.
‘Luke Chalmers,’ he told her easily, adding softly, ‘I hope you aren’t too angry with me for taking advantage of the opportunity that fate so generously gave me.’
Angry! Her heart skipped a beat. Anger wasn’t exactly how she would describe her confused and chaotic emotions, but from somewhere she found the presence of mind to respond drily, ‘Do you make a habit of going round demanding forfeits from women you don’t know?’
‘Only when they’re as beautiful and tempting as you,’ he told her gravely. ‘And that, fortunately, is very rare. So rare in fact that I’ve never known it to happen before.’
Her heart was thumping frantically again. She felt as though she was suddenly caught up in a new game—a game that was both wildly exciting and frighteningly dangerous.
‘You wanted to use the phone,’ she reminded him breathlessly. ‘It’s downstairs. I’ll show you.’
As she walked past him he caught hold of her arm, his fingers sliding almost caressingly over the softness of its inner flesh so that she quivered. His fingers encircled her wrist, holding her in bondage while his free hand moved up to her face.
He wasn’t going to kiss her again was he? He wasn’t going to repeat that mind-blowing, devastating caress? No, he wasn’t, it seemed. He reached out and removed something from her face, causing her to gasp a little as she felt a sharp sting of pain. She looked at him in surprise as he held a small snippet of her wallpaper between his fingers.
‘I believe that in the eighteenth century ladies used to stick false beauty-spots to their faces in order to draw attention to their eyes and mouth, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen wallpaper being used for the same purpose.
‘What a pity it was so close to your cheekbone and not your mouth,’ he added sultrily, ‘otherwise I might have been tempted to demand another forfeit.’
Melanie thought of all the sensible and authoritative things she ought to have said in response to this outrageous piece of male flirtation, but oddly all she could do was to gaze mutely at him, while inside she prayed desperately that he wouldn’t read into her silence the compliant eagerness of her body that he should adopt just such a course.
What on earth was happening to her? After Paul she had surely learned her lesson; had surely realised that it was idiotic to trust men so quickly, that it was dangerous to continue to believe in her childhood dreams and fantasies of finding love and living happily ever after.
‘The phone,’ she reminded him weakly. ‘It’s downstairs.’
‘Ah, yes, the phone,’ he agreed gravely. So gravely that she half suspected that he might be laughing at her. The thought made her face sting with embarrassed colour. Well, if he was she surely deserved it, allowing him to take advantage of her like that…allowing him to kiss her…to…to what?
Her bruised heart ached in panicky reaction to her susceptibility to him, reminding her of her vulnerability…reminding her of the close escape she had had from Paul’s deceit.
The telephone was in the sitting-room. She escorted him to it and then left him alone, retreating to the kitchen. When he rejoined her she would show him by her dignified silence, by her cool remoteness that whatever might have happened upstairs she
