I?’
His other hand caught her free wrist, holding it behind her back as he used his superior strength to propel her towards him. Centimetres from his body, Stephanie tensed her muscles, inwardly shrinking back, but the hard pressure of his arm against her waist and lower back forced her forward, until there was only the minutest gap between them.
She wanted to beg him to release her, to scream and cry for freedom, but something stronger than these instincts forced her to remain still.
‘Oh, you’re putting up a very good impression of not loathing touching me, but we both know the truth, don’t we?’
Stephanie had to lift her head to look at him. His eyes were as cold as slate, his mouth twisting in a bitter grimace she had never seen before.
‘Jake… please, why are you doing this?’ she whispered from a painfully constricted throat. ‘What have I done…?’
‘Nothing, Stephanie,’ he said sardonically, ‘nothing at all. That’s just it,’ he added under his breath, ‘you haven’t done a damn thing to try to rejoin the human race. What would I need to threaten to get you to touch me of your own free will, I wonder?’ he asked bitterly.
He saw the response in her eyes without her needing to voice it. ‘Two years we’ve known one another… two years, when I haven’t so much as laid a finger on you, and yet, even now, you shrink from me, as though I were some damned rapist.’
‘Jake, please…’
‘Jake, please…’ he mimicked savagely back. ‘Please what? Please don’t touch me? Please don’t let your body come anywhere near mine?’
‘Jake, why are you like this?’
‘Why don’t you ask yourself instead why you are the way you are?’ he said softly. ‘Why, you recoil from me if I so much as do this.’ His free hand stroked lightly down her spine, but the effect on Stephanie was electrifying. She tried to move away from the light caress, her frantic attempts to escape bringing her up against the hard leanness of Jake’s body. Beneath the palm she had thrust out to push him away, she could feel the heavy beat of his heart. The sensation was so unexpected and strange that, for a moment, she simply stood there, too confused even to think.
‘What’s the matter, Steph?’ Jake goaded. ‘Surprised to find out that, unlike you, I’m not made of stone?’
‘Jake, why are you being like this? I thought we were friends.’
‘Friends…’ he released her and raked angry fingers through his dark hair. ‘Yes, but only on your terms, isn’t that it? Tell me this, Stephanie, what kind of friendship is it that exists without trust?’
‘I do trust you!’
‘Do you?’ He gave her a hard, enigmatic stare. ‘Then prove it to me,’ he said softly. ‘Come over here, and kiss me.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Then I’ll just have to kiss you, won’t I?’ he said calmly, coming towards her. ‘Remember, Stephanie,’ he said as his fingers gripped her shoulders, ‘you said you trusted me.’
Stephanie made a sound deep in her throat, barely aware of the animal terror in it, as Jake slid his hands over her back, drawing her body against his. She could have broken away; some part of her was aware of that, just as it was aware that Jake wasn’t using any physical pressure to bring her body close to his, but his eyes seemed to hypnotise her, draining her of the will to resist. She stood within the circle of his arms like a plastic doll, rigid and tense with the enormity of what was happening. Never once, in the two years since her attack, had Jake behaved like this, and part of her couldn’t believe what he was doing now. The glitter in his eyes was that of a man starved too long of something he hungered desperately for—dimly she recognised that fact and then repudiated it, Jake was no sex-starved adolescent. So why was he doing this to her?
His hand spread out against her spine, anchoring her against his lean frame, making it impossible for her to recoil from the intimate contact he was forcing upon her. She could smell the sharp tangy scent of his aftershave, her flesh acutely conscious of the warmth of his beneath the formality of his evening clothes. Without wanting to, she became aware of him in a way she never had before, her heart thudding in a mixture of apprehension and shock. His free hand slid up her spine to tangle in the chestnut thickness of her hair. Her eyes, shocked and hurt, widened as Jake forced her to meet his.
‘Your eyes are the colour of emeralds,’ he murmured, ‘they always go green when you’re emotionally aroused.’
Stephanie jerked against the constraining pressure of his hand in her hair in objection to his choice of words, and then closed her eyes, tensing her whole body, willing him to kiss her if that was what he intended, and end her torment. Unwittingly, she had tensed her hands into small fists, and dark colour surged up under her pale skin as Jake whispered sardonically against her ear, ‘You’re supposed to reciprocate, not clench your fingers in anticipation of some dreadful ordeal. Relax. All I’m going to do is kiss you, Stephanie…’
‘I can’t.’
The husky admission was torn from her aching throat. She badly wanted to cry, not so much from terror now, but from shock and hurt. Why was Jake, the only person she had thought understood and appreciated how she felt, behaving like this? She could hardly equate the cold, mocking stranger he had turned into with the man she had called her friend.
‘Then I’ll just have to help you, won’t I?’ His dark head bent towards her and Stephanie closed her eyes, tensing herself to receive his kiss, her lips dry and stiff… She could feel the heat of Jake’s hand spread against the back of her skull and she jumped nervously when his thumb brushed softly against the delicate area behind her ear. Shivers of reaction spread through her body from that brief point of contact, detonating a trembling response she couldn’t conceal.
‘Jake, please don’t do this…’ The request was stammered and hoarse, her lips almost too stiff to form the words.
‘Open your mouth, Steph, so I can kiss you properly.’ That was his only response, and one that Stephanie knew nothing could make her obey. Strangely enough, her fear that being in Jake’s arms would bring back all her nightmare memories of her attack was unfounded. She was frightened, almost terrified out of her wits, but her fear had more to do with the fact that she found the sudden change in Jake totally incomprehensible than any confusion of his embrace with those she had endured at the hands of her attackers, and her biggest fear of all was that, once Jake kissed her, she would lose him as her friend. Why on earth should he want to kiss her in the first place? Even before her attack, she had been rather withdrawn with men, and never in a million years could she hope to compete with the sexual experience of the women Jake normally dated.
Her lips pressed tightly together to stop them trembling she almost gasped out loud as Jake’s tongue tip brushed seductively over their tense outlines. Quivers of sensation like light, electric shocks rippled through her sensitive skin. Like an arid desert, bursting into full bloom after an unexpected shower of rain, she could feel the tension retreating and her lips softening into compliance beneath the warmth of Jake’s tongue as it stroked them into bemused acceptance of his unspoken commands. Without her even giving it conscious thought, her lips parted, her dark lashes fluttered upwards for a stunned, disbelieving second as she looked into the molten greyness of Jake’s eyes and knew that this was actually happening; that her body was actually quivering heatedly in response to the light play of Jake’s thumb against
