Such Sweet Poison/Blind Passion

by Anne Mather

  Morgan poured Scotch for himself, a generous measure which he threw to the back of his throat. Catherine was sure he couldn’t have tasted it, but that didn’t stop him pouring himself another before turning to face her again.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said, gesturing with his glass. ‘As you’re here, the least we can be is civil.’

  Catherine hesitated, and then cautiously seated herself on the edge of a buttoned armchair. Now that she was here, she didn’t know how to handle it, and it crossed her mind, belatedly, that he might not have been alone. She should have phoned, she thought unhappily. After all, as far as she knew, Morgan hadn’t intended to see her again. She had allowed a totally unsolicited sense of responsibility for him to get the better of her common sense.

  ‘Now,’ he said, propping his hips against a mahogany bureau, ‘Do you want to tell me what you’re doing here?’

  Catherine looked up at him uneasily. She had expected that he would sit down, too, but, although he hadn’t, she didn’t feel capable of getting up again. Instead, she found her eyes moving over him almost hungrily, noticing how his navy-blue bathrobe accentuated his dark masculinity. She knew it was ridiculous, but she hadn’t realised until now how much she had needed to see him, and the urge to tell him was only barely controllable.

  Something of what she was feeling must have showed in her eyes, however, for with an oath Morgan moved away from her. ‘Don’t,’ he said roughly, and she didn’t need any more elaboration to know what he meant. ‘You’re wasting your time.’

  Catherine got up then, feeling as if she were some particularly obnoxious kind of insect, and he had just put his foot on her. The heat in her stomach gave way to an unnatural sense of chill, and, even though she swallowed the remaining Scotch in her glass, in an effort to stop the blood from congealing in her veins, she doubted she would ever feel warm again.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, putting down her glass and making for the door. ‘I shouldn’t have come here.’

  ‘Why did you?’

  His question deserved an answer, and although Catherine didn’t feel much like giving one she paused in the doorway and looked back at him. ‘I wanted to see you,’ she said flatly. She touched her spectacles. ‘Stupid, wasn’t it?’

  Morgan regarded her through narrowed eyes. ‘Why?’ he enquired harshly. ‘Because you feel safe with me now?’

  Catherine blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Oh, don’t pretend you haven’t been asking Kay questions about me! I wouldn’t answer you, so you got Kay to tell you. I guess you two had a real good bitch about poor old Morgan!’

  ‘That’s not true!’ Catherine turned back into the room. ‘I didn’t ask Kay anything. She—she insisted on telling me.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really.’ Catherine tucked her hair behind her ear with a nervous hand. ‘What do you think I am?’

  ‘I guess it’s more a question of what you think I am,’ retorted Morgan, pouring himself a third measure of Scotch. ‘Damn it—I am what I am. It doesn’t really matter how you found out.’

  Catherine stared at him. ‘Found out what? That you served in Vietnam? That you were captured by the Vietcong? So what? It’s not something to be ashamed of.’

  Morgan’s lips took on a cynical twist. ‘The ubiquitous do-gooder!’ he taunted scathingly. Do you know how sick I am of understanding women?’

  Catherine flinched, but she refused to let him have the last word. ‘Better a do-gooder than someone who pities himself,’ she retorted, standing her ground, even when he left the tray of drinks and came towards her. ‘You can’t offend me, Mr Lynch.’ She took a steadying breath. ‘You—might make me feel sorry for you—’

  ‘I don’t need anyone to feel sorry for me,’ he snarled, halting in front of her, and, although she had spoken confidently enough, Catherine was practically shaking in her boots.

  ‘Then stop—stop behaving as if you were the only veteran with—with—’

  ‘With what?’ He thrust his face close to hers, and she could smell the scent of whisky on his breath.

  ‘With—problems,’ she finished, in a small voice, and Morgan closed his eyes.

  At once, Catherine wanted to cut out her tongue. She hated saying these things to him; she hated hurting him. Dear God, she had thought she would have done anything to try and make things easier for him, and she hated the thought that he might think she was simply curious.

  ‘Morgan…’

  Acting purely on impulse, she put her fingers up to his face, cupping it between her hands, and bringing her mouth to his. His eyes opened then, the dark pupils dilating as they bored into hers. He didn’t move, however. He merely stood there, letting Catherine run her nervous tongue over his lips.

  And then, when her failing confidence reminded her that she was no good at this sort of thing, and she would have drawn back, his hands slid inside the neck of her jacket, and closed about her throat.

  She wasn’t scared. Amazingly, considering her awareness of his strength, the knowledge that he could snap her neck as easily as he might break a twig didn’t frighten her. On the contrary, the feel of those hard hands around her throat was wonderfully familiar. And she swayed against him.

  ‘Cat,’ he said, and now his tone was thick with emotion, ‘this is not a good idea.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Unzipping her jacket, she dropped it off her shoulders, and slipped her arms around his neck. ‘Kiss me, Morgan. Please!’

  She would never have believed she could act so shamelessly, but she was beyond the point of worrying about her reputation. She had rejected any modesty by coming here, and, if begging him to touch her was unsophisticated, then so be it.

  ‘You—don’t—understand,’ he said in a strangled voice, but when he looked down at the dusky hollow between her breasts she saw only raw need in his eyes. He wanted her; she knew it, and almost as an afterthought she realised she wanted him. Until then, it had been his pain, his anguish, she had been trying to assuage. Oh, she had wanted him to kiss her, to touch her, but anything else had been purely incidental. Making love with Neil had taught her that foreplay was everything, and what came after had mostly been an anticlimax. Indeed, she had come to the conclusion that a woman’s expectations, and their lack of realisation, formed the origin of that word. The occasions when she had felt some satisfaction had been few and far between. But this was nothing like anything she had felt before. Now, she was experiencing a totally different feeling. Every nerve in her body was alive and tingling with the awareness of Morgan’s lean muscled frame, and a moist ache invaded her lower limbs.

  ‘Don’t talk ****’ he said savagely, using an expletive she had never realised could have such a sexual connotation, his hands on her hips burning through the fine material of her trousers. His hands were sure and sensuous, the soft jersey only a small barrier to his hard fingers.

  With undisguised urgency he covered her lips with his, and Catherine’s mouth opened beneath his demanding tongue. She wanted his tongue in her mouth, she thought mindlessly. She wanted to feel him, and taste him, and her own tongue joined his in a sensual imitation of possession.

  Her hands gripped the damp hair at his nape, and then slipped inside his bathrobe to caress the warm-scented skin of his shoulders. She hadn’t known a man’s skin could be so smooth and silky, and when he released her mouth she turned her lips against his neck. She wanted to kiss him all over, she thought fancifully, as his harsh breathing moistened her ear. He was so beautiful, so beautifully male, and the hot core inside her throbbed in anticipation.

  Her hands trembling a little, she allowed her fingers to slide down the lapels of his bathrobe, parting the material as they went, and exposing his chest to her lips. His chest was broad and muscled, and only slightly spread with curling dark hair. Like his arms and legs, it was deeply tanned, but the tips of hair were bleached a lighter shade.

  However, when her exploration reached the knotted belt at his waist, his fingers came to grip he
rs with grim determination. ‘No,’ he said, in a hoarse, unnatural tone, and she looked up to find his face was pale and streaked with sweat.

  ‘Morgan?’ she questioned uncomprehendingly, still not willing to believe he meant to stop her, but, with a constricted sound, he put her away from him. Half turning away from her, he wrapped the folds of the bathrobe more closely about him, and Catherine was left feeling like an unsuccessful courtesan.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his voice sounding as if it had been dredged up from some place deep inside him. ‘That—shouldn’t have happened.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  IF SHE HADN’T felt so utterly humiliated, Catherine could have laughed. Wasn’t it usually the woman who said that? Instead of which, she was the one who had been made to feel as if she had taken unwelcome liberties.

  Finding her spectacles on the chair, she pushed them on to her nose. Not that it wouldn’t have been easier to leave them off, she thought. Without her spectacles, everything beyond a certain distance developed a slight haze around it, and just now she would have preferred that imprecise aspect. The last thing she wanted to see was Morgan’s contempt, and, keeping her eyes averted, she bent and picked up her jacket.

  She hadn’t brought a handbag. Just her purse, which was safely zipped inside her pocket, and, trailing the jacket behind her, she walked out of the room. If she could just make it out of the building, she told herself encouragingly. She refused to let that supercilious commissionaire see that she was crying.

  She didn’t even make it to the lift. She was reaching for the Yale lock on the outer door when Morgan’s hand reached past her head, to prevent her from opening it. ‘Don’t go,’ he said, his lips against her hair, and she swung round and slumped back against the panels, her eyes raw with unshed tears. ‘Don’t go,’ he said again, and when she gazed up at him in total confusion he bent his head and gave her a lingering kiss.

  She tried not to respond to him. She had already had one disappointment, and she didn’t think she could take another. It was too bewildering, too shattering, too much of everything she had sworn to avoid. Getting involved could be painful; with Morgan, it was downright dangerous. He made her do things she had never done before; made her feel things she had never felt before; and he made her want something she was very much afraid she could never have.

  But Morgan’s lips were too demanding—too persuasive—to resist, and, once again, she felt her defences tumbling. He had only to touch her, and the blood ran like liquid fire through her veins. With a little moan of protest, she wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back, and Morgan bent and put one arm behind her knees and swung her off her feet.

  Keeping his mouth on hers, he carried her up the stairs, but Catherine was too bemused to notice where he was taking her. Her only contribution was to remove her spectacles again, and they dropped from her hand, to land unnoticed on the bottom stair.

  She opened her eyes when she felt the soft texture of silk at her back. The short, wraparound sweater had bared her midriff, and she felt the cool sheets against her spine. Morgan had laid her on an enormous bed—his bed, she surmised, with a frisson of excitement—and he came down on it beside her, stifling any comment she might have made beneath the urgent pressure of his lips.

  She wanted to protest that she was still wearing her boots, and that their soles might soil the satin quilt that her outstretched hands had encountered, but such mundane considerations were soon outweighed by other, more important matters. Morgan’s mouth had moved from hers to slide down the slender column of her throat, and her skin burned where his lips touched.

  She was sure she must look a blotchy mess, but Morgan only murmured, ‘Beautiful,’ as he cupped her breasts in his hands, and brought one burgeoning nipple to his mouth. The hard little peak surged against the taut cloth, and it was an immense relief when he slipped his hand inside her sweater and her bra, and freed the swollen flesh.

  ‘How does this thing come off?’ he mumbled, her nipple in his mouth, and Catherine fumbled behind her to release the woollen ties.

  Once she was without her sweater, and the lacy scrap of bra, Morgan took full advantage of her responsive breasts, caressing them sensuously, and suckling at each of them in turn. To Catherine, who had never experienced this kind of excitement before, every tug of his tongue or teeth caused a sharp pain in the pit of her stomach. It was not an unpleasant pain; in fact, it was excessively enjoyable, and she moved against him urgently, arching her back to bring her into closer contact with his lean body. But Morgan resisted her efforts to wind her legs about him. Pressing her back again, his hands found the zipper of her tight trousers and, opening it, he began to peel them down over her hips.

  Her boots were discarded without her needing to say anything, dropping on to the floor at the foot of the bed with a distinctive thud. Then her trousers followed them, and Morgan’s teeth skimmed the elasticated waist of her panties.

  Catherine felt as if she was burning up. Every inch of her body was sensitised to the sensual brush of his lips, all her nerves straining to meet his every demand. With infinite patience, Morgan used his teeth to tug her panties away, his lips seeking the dusky curls at the junction of her legs, while his fingers completed the process. Then, when her nervous fingers dug protestingly into his shoulders, he slid back over her, his mouth finding hers once again.

  ‘Good?’ he murmured, and Catherine nodded vigorously.

  ‘Good,’ she echoed, finding it difficult to say anything, with his hand between her legs bringing her to the brink of a frenzied spasm. ‘Mor-gan,’ she choked, trying to tell him she wanted to share this with him, but it was too late. She was beyond reason, beyond restraint, spinning out of control over the precipice of her emotions…

  ***

  She came down to earth all too soon, to find Morgan lying on his back beside her. Like hers, his skin was damp and cool, but she didn’t need a lot of experience to know that he had not shared her delight. The pleasure he had given her had been entirely one-sided, and she blinked her eyes bewilderedly, as she struggled up on to one elbow. Why had he done what he did? she wondered, looking down into his face with troubled eyes. His eyes were closed, but she could tell he was not asleep. He was breathing too quickly for that, his chest rising and falling beneath the loosely drawn folds of his bathrobe. She could have sworn he had wanted her. Had she done something wrong?

  ‘Morgan,’ she breathed now, bending her head and touching her lips to the warm hollow of his neck. ‘Morgan—what’s wrong?’

  He opened his eyes then, and, although she had been afraid that he might be angry with her, his expression was warmly indulgent. ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ he said, though there was some tension in his tone. ‘Are you all right?’

  Catherine caught her lower lip between her teeth. ‘Why did you do it?’ she exclaimed, in stead of answering him. ‘Why didn’t you…?’ She pressed her lips together. ‘I wanted you inside me, when—’

  Morgan’s expression darkened. ‘Didn’t I please you?’

  ‘Of course you pleased me.’ Catherine smoothed back the damp hair from his forehead. ‘But you could have pleased me a lot more—’

  ‘No, I couldn’t.’ Morgan rolled away from her, and sat up, drawing one leg towards his chest, and resting his chin on his knee. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I don’t—that is—’ He broke off for a moment, and then continued harshly, ‘I’m useless to a woman!’

  Catherine stared at him. ‘I—don’t believe that.’

  ‘It’s true.’ Morgan gave her a cool, indifferent stare. ‘It’s not something I’d lie about, believe me!’

  Catherine moved her head from side to side. ‘But—there must be something you can do—?’

  ‘No.’ Morgan was adamant. ‘I’m sorry you had to find out this way, but there it is.’ He paused. ‘But I’d be grateful if you didn’t broadcast the news. I don’t have much, but I do have a little pride.’

  ‘Oh, Morgan!’

&n
bsp; Catherine scrambled on to her knees, and would have put her arms around him and hugged him, but he held her off. ‘Don’t,’ he said quellingly, and now there was no warmth in his gaze. ‘I don’t want your sympathy. I don’t need it. I’m lucky, really. I still have my health, and strength, and all my faculties, such as they are. Believe me, not everyone’s so lucky.’

  Catherine shivered. ‘Oh, Morgan!’

  ‘Don’t look at me like that!’ With a muffled oath, he swung off the bed, crossing the room to stand with his back to her, at the windows. ‘I think you’d better go,’ he said heavily. ‘I’ll call you a cab.’

  Catherine hesitated. ‘Can’t we talk about this?’

  ‘What’s there to say?’ He didn’t turn.

  ‘Well…’ Catherine stared helplessly around her. ‘Is there nothing I can do to help you?’

  ‘There’s nothing anyone can do to help me,’ replied Morgan flatly. ‘Do you think they haven’t tried?’

  ‘No, but…’ Catherine slid to the edge of the bed now, realising how unselfconscious she was of her nakedness with him. ‘I could try to help.’

  ‘How?’ He spun around then, staring at her with impatient eyes, and Catherine’s brief spell of positive thinking evaporated. With fumbling hands she searched for her bra and panties, half turning away from him as she did so, to avoid his contemptuous gaze.

  ‘Here,’ he said, his voice sounding immeasurably closer, and she glanced behind her to find him squatting beside the bed. He was holding her flimsy scraps of underwear out to her, and, taking them from him, she endeavoured to put them on. But her hands betrayed her once again, and, although she managed to step into her panties, Morgan was obliged to fasten her bra for her.

  ‘What a novelty,’ he said drily, handing her her sweater. ‘A man usually takes a woman’s clothes off. He doesn’t help her to put them on again. But then, I’m not a man, am I?’ he added, getting to his feet, and returning to his stance at the windows.

  ‘Well, I’m not a woman!’ blurted Catherine tremulously, and again he turned to give her a scathing glance.