by Robyn Donald
‘…see you tomorrow morning,’ he said abruptly.
The click of the French door followed; she heard someone tramping along the verandah and down the steps, and the sound of a car engine. A moment later the verandah light died, and darkness enveloped her again.
Pushing the door open, she said, ‘He must have tiptoed along the verandah. I would have heard him otherwise.’
In a voice rigid with anger, Clay said, ‘I told you to stay out of this.’
‘It was Phil, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
She stepped into the room, her heart banging with unnecessary fuss. ‘What was he doing here?’
Clay said, ‘Looking for you, poor devil.’
‘What do you mean?’ Natalia asked stupidly, stretching her eyes wide open to search the darkened room for him. ‘How did he know I wasn’t at home?’
‘He saw that the fencing had gone, so he raced back to make sure you were all right. When he realised you weren’t there he came here.’ He spoke almost indifferently.
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Because he assumed you’d be sleeping with me, I presume,’ he answered on a cool, judicial note.
Frowning, she said, ‘It seems odd. What did you tell him?’
‘The truth. That when you realised the capsicums had been vandalised you decided to spend the night here.’ He spoke evenly, yet there were undercurrents in his voice, in his words—undercurrents she was too tired to decipher.
He went on, ‘If Phil is stalking you, I want to know so that I can do something about it.’
‘Clay, I’m really not up to melodrama in the middle of the night.’ Her voice wavered. ‘Of course Phil’s not stalking me. I told you, I hadn’t seen him for weeks until you came.’
‘And showed my interest so openly that the news must have been around the district by lunchtime the next day.’
Natalia shook her head. ‘Phil’s not like that.’ Sudden, furious tears stung her eyes. ‘Oh, why did you have to come here? We were all fine before you arrived in Bowden.’
His laughter grated. ‘Were you? Get back to bed, I’ll sort it out in the morning.’
Chagrined, she fought back her humiliating weepiness. ‘I didn’t realise you’d taken the duvet off your bed for me. It’s much warmer here than in your room—you take the duvet and give me the coat, or whatever it is you’ve got on your bed.’
Charged with tension, the silence raised each tiny hair on her skin. Then he said quietly, ‘Natalia, will you please just shut up?’
‘But—’
‘Because all I can think of is you under me, and no sleep for either of us during the rest of the night.’
Her heart slammed in her chest. Shakily, stupidly, she said, ‘That’s all I can think of too.’
After a taut moment he said in an almost soundless voice, ‘Are you scared of me?’
‘No.’ If she had any sense of self-preservation she’d be running—but then, if she had any sense of self-preservation she’d never have given him the opening.
He said, ‘You can just sleep with me if you want to, without making love.’
Because he couldn’t see her, she let her lips stretch in a painful travesty of a smile. ‘Do you think that’s possible?’
Another silence, until he said with silky precision, ‘I could try.’
‘I don’t want you to.’ Natalia turned eagerly into the arms that caught her and pulled her against his lean strength. Her quick hands slipped across the coiled, tense muscles of his bare shoulders to link around his neck as she lifted her head for his kiss.
After the hungry need of the last one, she was surprised when his mouth touched hers with tender attention, the primitive urgency leashed. For the moment, she thought. Only for the moment…
And then the moment was over, and she was lost in a heady desire that stripped every civilised response from her, leaving her captive to a wildfire sexuality sprung from some unknown source. Using only the language of the senses, Clay demanded surrender, and she met his demand with her own, pressing herself against him with an imperative craving that should have shocked her. It didn’t—nothing could shock her now.
A rough noise caught in his throat. Natalia opened her mouth to his, taking as he took, exploring as he explored. Driving need burned away the last barriers—the ones she hadn’t even known existed—until all she could feel, all she could taste, all she could smell was Clay.
How long was it before he broke the kiss? She didn’t know, but her murmured protest brought a low, breathy laugh from him. ‘I could spend all night kissing you like this, but let’s go to bed first,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
From that first meeting he’d challenged her with his virile masculine authority; now was the pay-off, and she wasn’t going to retreat. Strangely, the destruction of everything she’d worked for these past years gave her the freedom to capitulate.
‘I’ve ached for you ever since I saw you.’ He gave a low, dangerous laugh. ‘The first time I took you home I couldn’t unlock your door because my hands were shaking.’
‘Truly?’ she asked huskily. ‘I was so embarrassed, because mine were trembling.’
‘I know. It gave me hope.’
‘Of what?’
He laughed again. ‘Of taking you on a huge bed with exotic hangings to match your beauty, on satin and silk and fur,’ he said. ‘The bed here is a very poor substitute.’
‘It’s yours; that’s all that matters.’ Her acceptant hands slipped to narrow male hips covered only by thin cotton.
He said, ‘You deserve pearls to caress that ivory skin, emeralds as brilliant as your eyes, but I can only offer you a bed in a tumbledown house that—’
‘Clay, I want you—just you,’ she interrupted swiftly. His unusual diffidence startled her—and pleased her as much as his admission of wanting her, of aching for her. It made them equal, because she too had lain awake at night, an unwilling captive to the crazy, erotic dreams of passion.
Scooping the duvet and the sheets from the sofa, he said, ‘Bring the pillows.’
Natalia picked them up; together she and Clay walked through the damp chill of the hallway to his bedroom, cool also, and with the faint musty scent of all old, neglected houses.
Once in the bedroom he switched on the lamp beside the bed. Her gaze flew to the dressing gown spread out across the bed; she said huskily, ‘You must have been freezing.’
‘The thought of you curled up on my sofa was enough to keep me warm.’ His voice deepened, softened. ‘Hot.’
Apart from the black boxer shorts, he was naked. Clutching the pillows, Natalia stared at him with eyes that widened as they scanned his face, his chest and shoulders, gleaming gold in the lamplight, and the long, heavily muscled legs. She swallowed. ‘I doubt it.’
‘Believe it,’ he said. ‘But you’re shivering.’
‘It’s not from the cold.’
Laughing low in his throat, he pulled the dressing gown off the bed. Natalia dumped the pillows and took the edge of the sheet he flicked out across the bed. Her hands shook as she helped him. The mundane task should have eased some of the tension, but she found herself indulging in a fleeting, wistful fantasy where they did this each morning…
Enough of that, she told herself caustically. This house—this room—might be old and damp and as bare as hers, but there was an enormous difference between Clay Beauchamp and a woman who had just lost everything.
For a moment her hands stilled. Then she set her jaw and straightened the duvet.
Across the too-personal expanse of bed he looked at her. The lamp picked out the angular framework of his face, touched with a loving light the darkly gold skin, the shimmering eyes, the black brows and heavy lashes, the hard, chiselled mouth, the cleft in his chin, and the thin pale line of the scar.
He said, ‘I suppose every lover you’ve had has told you how beautiful you are.’
‘Have all your lovers told you how magnificent you are?�
�� Natalia didn’t try to hide the snap in her words; she hated the thought of any other women who had looked at him with eyes as covetous as hers.
His brows lifted. ‘An occasional one,’ he admitted. ‘Shall we start again? When I first saw you I thought you were the most exciting woman I’d ever seen.’ His mouth tilted into a lopsided smile. ‘I haven’t changed my mind.’
Stomach clenching, Natalia watched him walk around towards her.
‘You light up my world,’ he said with ragged emphasis. His hands closed on her shoulders, turning her so that she faced away from him. Against her tingling neck his mouth was possessive, as possessive as the hands that moved to the button on her pyjamas. ‘I won’t hurt you, Natalia,’ he said while the buttons fell open.
She was only just realising how much he could hurt her. And that it was too late to change her mind now, too late to be sensible—even if she wanted to be.
‘I know,’ she said. Her voice sounded thin and unsure and stupidly young. ‘Clay, I haven’t—I’m not protected.’
‘It’s all right.’ Unwillingly she looked down, trembling at the tawny male hands that cupped her breasts as though they were rare and precious to him. The tantalising contrast between their callused warmth and the chill air across her pale skin twisted a knot of excitement deep inside her.
‘Tell me now if a condom’s not enough,’ he said, a jagged note beneath the words exciting her.
Condoms were not infallible; there was a chance of pregnancy, and even now he was giving her the opportunity to turn back. How different from Dean Jamieson’s greedy desire…
Clay’s child. Natalia froze, then relaxed. ‘It’s enough.’ Two words, but they spelled surrender and hope and an unspoken commitment.
‘Then turn to me.’
Helplessly, a prisoner of the rising tide of passion, she swivelled in his arms, somehow ending up without her pyjama jacket. His eyes were narrowed and crystalline, a dusky flush outlining the bold sweep of his cheekbones as his gaze smouldered over her.
She curbed her instinctive attempt to hide what he had exposed. Although colour flamed from her breasts to her face she held her head high.
“‘But beauty’s self she is, When all her robes are gone.”’ he quoted in an impeded voice, his arms contracting around her, his faint, elemental male scent overwhelming her.
As hunger tore the last fragment of common sense free, whirling it along the current of passion like a leaf in a flood, Natalia shuddered, abandoned to a sensuous magic she’d never known before.
CHAPTER EIGHT
KISSING her deeply, Clay picked her up and lifted her into the bed; she gasped at the chill of the sheets against her back, and shut her eyes as strong hands slid her pyjama bottoms down. A moment later he was naked beside her, holding her in his arms, his mouth buried in her hair.
Then he kissed her throat, and while she was still shaking at the splendour of his lips on her skin he began to suckle at her breast.
She heard herself moan, heard the catch in his breathing, braced herself against the drumming of her heart in her ears. Behind her closed lids darkness surrounded her like a lover, intensifying each sensation, focusing her entirely on the sensuous torment of his mouth.
Lax, boneless, she whispered, ‘Too much.’
‘Not enough.’ His breath washed over the moistened, acutely sensitive areola. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of you. I like being touched too, Natalia.’
She pressed her palm above his heart, exulting at the uneven thunder against it. Did she do that to him, or would it beat so erratically, so fiercely, for any woman?
Probably, she thought, trying to retain some remnant of intelligence. Why should she think she was special amongst his lovers? Of course he’d said so—and for this night, this moment, she’d believe him.
Forcing her eyes slightly open, she traced the arrogant line of his jawbone—rough silk beneath her fingertips—the cord of his neck, the iron flex and curve of his upper arm, the soft tuft in his armpit, the tiny points of his nipples, while the insistent tug of his mouth ravished her into another plane of existence where all she could do was feel.
‘That’s enough,’ he growled suddenly, and when she froze he added with brutal directness, ‘I overestimated my self-control. When you look at me so ravenously from those slanted green eyes it goes out the window. All I want to do is bury myself in you and lose myself there.’
One lean, knowledgeable hand slid to her hip, and then to the small indentation of her navel; astonished, Natalia discovered that it too was sensitive, with a direct line to her innermost core. His hand was sure and gentle, relentless, inexorable, his mouth equally searching and unsparing.
Twisting beneath his primal ravishment, she touched him as he touched her, until he caught her hands in one of his and pulled them above her head, anchoring them to the pillow. ‘Wait,’ he said, and then he moved over her.
Natalia was ready—she knew she was ready: her every pulse clamorous and urgent, her body already slick with anticipation—but for a moment her breath stilled in her throat. Straining upwards, her hips thrust against his, seeking, yearning, demanding the strength and power there.
‘Yes,’ he said between his teeth, and drove home, filling her, consuming her, uniting with her in the most primitive of all embraces.
She said his name, her voice high and stark and compulsive, and he withdrew slightly before driving home again, establishing a rhythm, slow at first and then—as they began to spin together in the ecstatic, merciless dance of the senses—faster and faster, until at last she was hurled by unbearable pleasure into some rapturous world where all that mattered was Clay and this violent, stormy enchantment.
He followed her immediately, flinging his head back, his breathing harsh as his arms tightened around her and he too reached a shuddering climax.
With the waves of her own peak still shimmering through her, Natalia lay spread beneath him in voluptuous abandon, her lungs pumping breath into her, the thudding of her heart gradually easing. Sweaty, sated, she wondered hazily whether life held anything more.
Eventually Clay moved. She murmured, and he said, ‘It’s all right, I’m not going away.’
Taking her with him, he rolled over and tucked her into his side with her cheek on his shoulder. Too exhausted to speak, she kissed the skin there. His chest expanded, and he laughed as he took her chin in his hand and tipped her face upwards.
‘So those eyes are natural—no green contact lenses,’ he said drily.
Why had she thought that making love would have the same effect on him as it did on her?
‘No contact lenses,’ she said, seeking out the cleft in his chin with a lazy forefinger. ‘My eyes are the same colour as my father’s.’
‘Did you get those seductive eyelids from him too?’ He kissed her lashes closed.
‘No, they’re my mother’s.’
Her body stirred, and the remorseless tides of hunger and desire began to pulse once more as his mouth roved her face.
But Clay pulled away, put out an arm and turned off the lamp. ‘Sleep now,’ he commanded quietly.
Natalia woke to an empty room and the sound of voices on the verandah. Clay—and Phil. On the end of the bed were the clothes she’d packed so quickly the previous night.
It seemed weeks ago.
Hastily, stealthily, she got out of bed and into the jeans and shirt, wincing at the tell-tale stiffness of muscles rarely used. The voices faded, and she wondered whether she should just leave—slip down the road and set about organising her affairs.
No, pride forbade it. She wasn’t ashamed of making love with Clay and she wasn’t going to sneak off as though she’d done something humiliating or illegal. After pulling the bedclothes back to air, she cleaned her teeth and washed her face in the chilly bathroom, then returned to the bedroom to make the bed.
She was standing at the window, one finger tracing the cracked lines of paint, when Clay said from the door, ‘You can come out n
ow. He’s gone.’
‘Phil?’
‘Yes.’ He didn’t look like the lover of the night before; his face was grim and the bones stood out prominently. ‘I sent him into Bowden. Do you want some breakfast?’
‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘I need to get back home.’
‘I’ll take you.’
Without looking at him, she nodded, picked up the parcel she’d made of her discarded clothes and walked towards the door. He didn’t move; she stopped, and looked up into an unyielding face.
‘Having second thoughts?’ he asked.
‘It’s too late for that.’
‘Far too late.’ Anger prowled a second in the golden depths of his eyes, was banished. He bent and kissed her, hard and fiercely, a brand on her mouth, staking a claim. ‘It’s done now,’ he said. ‘I sent Phil away because I knew you wouldn’t want him to find you here, but I don’t care who knows that we’re lovers.’
‘Neither do I.’ It was almost true.
A lean finger lifted her chin. ‘Don’t worry about anything,’ he said.
How easy for him to say that! Her lashes drooped.
‘And don’t look at me like that unless you want to find yourself back in that bed,’ he said, his mouth compressing.
Her startled glance brought a humourless laugh. ‘No, I thought not,’ he said obliquely. ‘We’ve got a fair amount to do today. Let’s go.’
In the car she asked, ‘Have you heard from the police yet?’
‘No.’ He steered down the road, hands steady, confident on the wheel. ‘What are your plans?’
After one famished look Natalia kept her eyes well away from those hands. Her skin still sang to their mastery, glowing at the memory.
She said stonily, ‘I’ll have to ring Mr and Mrs Ogilvie—the people who hold the mortgage—and tell them what’s happened.’
‘And then?’
‘I’ll see if I can organise another loan.’
‘You won’t,’ he said brutally.
‘I know, but I have to try.’
After a short silence he said, ‘Yes, I suppose you do.’