by Robyn Donald
As much as Rowan despised herself for the involuntary reaction that ricocheted through her, she couldn’t control it. Hastily she began stacking the plates.
Wolfe frowned. ‘Go and sit by the fire. I’ll take this stuff out.’
‘I’m fine,’ she said with a snap in her voice.
His hand closed around her wrist. ‘Rowan,’ he said, so quietly that ice scudded down her spine, ‘sit down by the fire. You don’t have to wait on me.’
Although he held her loosely, there was no denying the forcefulness in both his words and the loop of tanned fingers on her pale skin. To Rowan’s chagrin her breasts throbbed and a provocative fire beaded her nipples.
Furious, she glared up into his face, but words dried on her tongue the moment their eyes clashed. Tiny and scintillating, the metallic flecks in his seemed to dance in the densely coloured matrix of the iris. Something swift and fierce and aching clutched the pit of Rowan’s stomach before exploding like a supernova.
Twisting free as though she’d been scorched, she muttered, ‘I’m not sick.’
‘You’re not up to par yet,’ he said, letting her go to scoop up the dishes.
Rowan’s breath locked in her lungs. ‘I’m just a bit tired,’ she stated, backing away, her body taut with hidden anticipation.
It was headlong retreat, and he knew it. Without a further glance he carried the dishes through the door—probably, Rowan thought drearily, amused.
No, it wasn’t amusement she’d seen in his face. It had been desire, a dark flame that had stamped his autocratic features with primal hunger until he’d curbed it.
If only she could control her response so easily! Collapsing onto the sofa, she gulped in draughts of air as Lobo rubbed against her knee.
Nothing happened, she repeated like a mantra. You looked into his eyes, that’s all. He grabbed your wrist. And, although your skin is still burning as though he’s branded you, nothing happened.
If she said it often enough she might even convince herself it was true.
So why was her jaw so tightly clenched that the muscles in the back of her neck shouted a protest? And why did she feel that someone had applied a flame-thrower to the stuffing in her bones?
Lust, she thought, trying to be sophisticated about it—a simple matter of mindless, elemental chemistry. Instant and electrifying, it had overwhelmed her the instant she met Wolfe’s eyes at the exhibition, and she’d been tipped so far off-balance she still hadn’t recovered.
Except that if it was lust, why did she care so much what he thought of her?
Five minutes later, by the time Wolfe returned with coffee, crackers and cheese, she’d brought the fruit bowl across from the dining table, the small task lending her some composure. Her heart still thudded like a piston in her constricted chest, but at least her hand was steady when she accepted her cup, and she even managed a light, informal tone when she offered him fruit.
Wolfe surveyed the bowl of mandarins and oranges and oval shining tamarillos glowing as warmly as cabochon rubies. ‘Aren’t you going to have some?’
Her stomach knotted. ‘I’m not hungry.’
He gave her another of those assessing glances, then selected a mandarin and deftly peeled it. Lobo’s head came up, and after a speculative glance in the dog’s direction Wolfe flicked a segment at him. It landed on his front paw.
Lobo’s mouth visibly watered, but he sat staring at Rowan until she said, ‘Eat, Lobo.’ The small, brilliant crescent disappeared into the dog’s mouth so quickly it seemed like a conjurer’s trick.
Wolfe laughed quietly as a tail thumped the floor and Lobo did his best to look winsome. ‘Will he eat for anyone else?’
‘A few selected people.’ And now for Wolfe, probably.
He picked up his coffee and leaned back in the chair, subtly making it his. ‘Do you have to work at the café tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’
His smile had an element of cynicism in it. He knew she wasn’t going to proffer information. So, without finesse, he asked, ‘Do you really enjoy working there?’
Rowan stared at the coffee in her cup, noting with a detached eye the faint tremors across the dark surface. ‘I’ve told you, I like watching the people,’ she admitted cautiously. ‘And it gives me the afternoons and evenings for potting.’
‘So that’s your true career?’
She stated, ‘It’s not just a career, it’s the most important thing in the world to me.’
His brows lifted. ‘I see.’
The fire crackled and spat as another wave of rain exploded onto the corrugated iron roof. Unable to read anything in Wolfe’s guarded face, Rowan took refuge in her coffee, drinking it quickly. She covered a yawn as she set down her cup. ‘You’re right,’ she admitted. ‘I’m not up to par yet. I’ll get you a toothbrush and some toothpaste and do the dishes, then I’ll go to bed.’
He ran a reflective hand over his jaw. A strange sensation loosened Rowan’s sinews and bones and it felt as though her temperature shot skywards. Perhaps, she thought hopefully, I’m getting a fever rather than making an idiot of myself over him.
‘Do you have a spare razor?’ he said.
‘Disposable ones,’ she told him, daring him to ask who they were for. ‘I’ll put them on the bathroom bench with the toothbrush and toothpaste.’
With automatic courtesy he stood as she got up, but she felt his intent, speculative regard follow her and Lobo through the door.
It took only a moment to leave the necessary toiletries in the bathroom; by the time she came out her defences were slammed back into place and double-locked.
Wolfe was walking silently down the hall towards her. After a searching look he said, ‘You look exhausted. Go to bed—I’ll deal with the dishes.’
With sudden, unexpected insight she sensed that beneath that iron self-control churned violent, consuming emotions; the knowledge undermined her resistance and desperately excited her.
‘Thank you,’ she said in a muted voice.
He said abruptly, as though driven to it, ‘Rowan, tell me what happened to Tony. Otherwise he’ll always be between us.’
Her breath locked in her throat. ‘What do you mean?’
Her life was now unbelievably complicated because of the man who stood there looking at her with enigmatic eyes in which all emotions were drowned by the depth of colour. He wasn’t promising anything—and she couldn’t give him what he wanted, not even with that half-suggestion, that hint that perhaps they might have some sort of future, tempting her with forbidden strength.
Wearily she said, ‘There’s nothing more I can tell you.’
She expected a flash of anger, perhaps even more threats, but his lashes covered his eyes for a second and when they lifted she saw no more than a glimmering green opacity, burnished and depthless. ‘A pity. Goodnight, Rowan.’ His voice was toneless, without inflection.
‘Yes,’ she said, adding with a rush, ‘Goodnight.’
Clutching her dignity around her, she hurried through her evening ritual in the bathroom, warily listening to Wolfe’s movements in the kitchen. It was a huge relief to firmly close the door of her bedroom.
Eventually she drifted into a light, restless sleep, but when Lobo broke into ferocious barking she woke in stark panic, her eyes staring painfully through the thick darkness, her skin pulled tight as her heart pounded unevenly in her throat.
Such was her stupor that she had to think before she identified Wolfe’s voice through the din of Lobo’s warning.
‘What’s going on?’ she demanded, scrambling out of bed and racing out into the hall.
Judging by the noise, Lobo was facing the verandah door. She blinked several times until she could discern Wolfe’s dark silhouette between her and the dog. His curt command stopped Lobo’s truculent defiance of whatever was outside, but at the sound of Rowan’s voice the dog began again, loud barks that filled the hall and rang in her ears.
‘No!’ Rowan commanded, trying to push past the m
an who blocked her way.
In one smooth movement Wolfe grabbed her and yanked her behind the broad shield of his body. ‘Stay there,’ he ordered almost soundlessly. ‘I heard something outside.’
Lobo subsided into a state of hyper-awareness, growling deep in his throat, his attention fixed on the door and whatever was beyond it.
Shaken, Rowan responded, ‘It could be anything—a stoat, or a rat running across the verandah. Even a seabird blown in by the wind. Lobo’s fiercely territorial.’
‘It goes with the name,’ Wolfe said almost soundlessly. ‘It wasn’t an animal.’
Her eyes, adjusting to the darkness, took in the classical masculine outline in front of her—the wedge of shoulders and chest narrowing to lean waist and hips—dimly illuminated by the dying glow of the embers in the sitting room. Like her, Wolfe hadn’t paused to grab a dressing gown, but, unlike her, he wore no other clothes. She registered the musky scent of male, clean and potent.
Wildfire sensation rioted along every nerve in her body. Taking a hurried step back, she said huskily, ‘He quite often barks at nothing.’
‘He’s not barking at nothing now. I’ll go out and—’
‘No!’ Prey to so many emotions she couldn’t disentangle them, she drew in a ragged breath. ‘He’s calmed down. Whatever it was has gone.’
When Wolfe didn’t move she had a sudden feeling of suffocation, of threat. Swallowing surreptitiously to ease an arid throat, she went on, ‘We’ll check tomorrow morning.’
The oppressive tension eased slightly. Yet Wolfe still waited with a lethal stillness that had something predatory, almost inhumanly patient about it, and although Lobo was no longer growling, she sensed his alertness.
Rowan said, ‘I think we should get back to bed.’
Another gust of wind roared in over the pohutukawas, rattling the windows, keening around the corners. Rowan had half turned when a huge noise engulfed them, groaning, rushing—almost screaming—followed by a thump that came up through the floor.
Lobo went berserk, and Rowan made for the door, only to be brought up short by Wolfe’s grip on her arm.
‘Stay right there,’ he commanded. ‘That sounded like a tree. It’s too dangerous to go outside.’
‘A tree?’ She noted with irony that Wolfe had been promoted to head of the pack in Lobo’s mind—as soon as he spoke, Lobo stopped barking.
In the sudden silence as the wind sank into stillness she said thinly, ‘It’s probably the old oak. Jim was going to help me cut it down, and—well, Jim’s a dear, but fishing comes first.’
Wolfe’s grip relaxed, but he didn’t release her. ‘How close is it to the house? Could any stray branch hit the roof?’
‘No,’ she said quickly, staving off any suggestion that he go outside and check. Another squall announced its arrival with a howl and a hiss of rain. She finished edgily, ‘The branch I was worried about was on the far side. I’m not going outside in that, and there’s no need for you to, either.’
Desperate to get away, she turned too abruptly in the darkness. Her head swam, and she put out her hand to find the wall. It met bare skin lightly dusted with hair. She froze, her whole being concentrated in her fingertips, dangerously sensitive to the smooth, taut bulge of muscle and the heat of Wolfe’s fine-grained skin.
Get out of here, she ordered herself, but hunger ambushed her, fierce and wild, and she thought despairingly, When he accepts that he can’t force me to tell him about Tony he’ll go, and this fever and urgency is all I’ll have to remember, because in this we’re equal—reluctant prisoners…
‘Wolfe,’ she whispered, all thought submerged in the acute pleasure that rioted through her.
‘What?’
But he knew. She’d have stepped back and gone to her bedroom as some dim spark of reason told her she should—right now!—if she hadn’t recognised the primal understanding beneath the challenge in his tone.
He was just as affected by the slow glide of her fingertips across his skin as she was; she felt his chest rise and fall when he dragged an ungentle breath into his lungs.
Rowan had craved this moment every second of the past long weeks since they’d made love—an innocent joining, because then neither had known of the tragic link between them.
That innocence was important to her, although she couldn’t remember why. Fragments of disconnected thoughts tumbled lazily in her head as she traced his shoulder to the swell of his upper arm.
‘Do you work out?’ she asked in a drowsy voice.
His low laughter accused her of cowardice. ‘Do you care?’
‘No,’ she said, surrendering to temptation with a long, slow sigh. She held up her face and touched her tongue to his throat, tasting him with a heated abandon that held a touch of shyness. If the light had been on she wouldn’t have dared—but here in the friendly darkness she could break free of her fears and forebodings.
‘I don’t care about anything,’ she whispered into his mouth. God help her, at that moment it was the truth.
Wolfe couldn’t control the odd sound from his throat, half-purr, half-growl, nor could he withhold the kiss she was angling for.
Even though he knew she was probably trying to distract him with sex, his arms clamped around her slender, fragrant body. The thin cotton of her nightshirt didn’t give her any protection at all from his aroused body, but she didn’t seem to want any. She swayed into him, yielding to his mouth with a seductive, dangerous ardour that swamped his brain with fumes of drugging sexuality.
When he managed to summon enough determination to break the kiss, Wolfe kissed her throat, and then nipped her earlobe. She responded with a gasping little sound that stoked the fire in him.
No other woman, he thought desperately, trying to clear his head of her sweetly carnal scent, had ever been able to do this to him. Damn it, why couldn’t he remember that she was the enemy…?
The words he’d used before echoed in his ears: Tell me what happened to Tony. Otherwise he’ll always be between us…
He’d almost reached her then; he knew it. She’d looked at him with something like hope, before returning the usual evasive answer. Perhaps this shy, clever come-on was an attempt to follow up his admission that he wanted her.
Did she think she could use sex to persuade him that there were better things to do than finding out who’d killed Tony?
Her skin tasted like honey and wine mixed with a tang that was all her own. In spite of everything, Wolfe admitted with a slow, consuming anger, he still wanted her with a ferocity that hadn’t died in the intervening weeks.
Well, two could play at using sex. Lifting his head, he slid a hand over the warm, expectant curve of her breast, moulding it with a sensuous expertise, coldly pleased at her shaken breath and the sudden fluttering down of her lashes.
That first mating had been gentle; as soon as he’d realised she was a virgin an inexplicable pleasure and awe had tempered his strength. Now he wanted her to match him with the same gut-twisting fierceness. He wanted to take her to bed and spend hours stamping his possession on her, making her so much his that she’d never be able to look at another man with that lying desire in her eyes.
With sudden cruelty he kissed her again.
This time she yielded fully, opening her mouth to the erotic exploration of his, exploring in her turn, and Wolfe forgot that he was playing for high stakes.
Some time during that kiss he picked her up and carried her into the nearest bedroom, kicking the door shut in Lobo’s face. Slowly he slid her down his aroused body, smiling in the darkness as she flowed over him. His fingers slid her shirt up and over her head while he lowered her onto the bed and followed her down.
Rowan expected it to be like the first time, but Wolfe had other ideas. He didn’t speak, but as the rain thundered on the roof he taught her more about her body than she had ever known, taught her that pleasure was a serious concept worthy of the utmost time and effort.
His hands were skilful and sure and
gentle as they rediscovered her, yet they trembled when she modelled her caresses on his. She learned to expect the exquisite sensations when his mouth explored her breasts, learned that they were compounded when he kissed the rest of her skin, stoking the fires until she twisted and moaned against him, her hands greedy and demanding as she explored his body, her voice caught in the back of her throat.
And then, when she was moaning his name in an urgent, erotic plea, he said harshly, ‘It’s not going to work, Rowan. I don’t know how far you’re prepared to go—but I’m not prepared to risk making you pregnant. And, however often we make love, I’m not going to let you off the hook until I find out how Tony died.’
Crashing down from a sexual high, Rowan froze for a shocked, humiliated moment, before scrabbling off the side of the bed.
He didn’t try to keep her there. Instead he lay on his side as she fumbled for her shirt.
‘It’s probably on the floor somewhere,’ he drawled, and turned.
‘I’ve got it,’ she said, raw with shame and already halfway to the door.
He laughed, and said an insolent ‘Goodnight’ as she fled.
Lobo met her outside, but she closed her door against him. Back in her empty room, in her cold bed, shivering with lonely humiliation, she seethed silently as the wind faded and the rain began to ease.
She hated Wolfe Talamantes—loathed him!—so how on earth had she fallen in love with him? And when? He’d done nothing but make love to her with bewildering ardour, and threaten her.
OK, so he’d cared for her when she’d fallen into the water, but that wasn’t enough to wreak this bewildering, embarrassing change in her emotions.
She had no specific moment to go back to and say, Before that I didn’t love him, and now I do. His impact on her had been like lightning, like a thunderclap, so dramatic that she’d thought it nothing more than potent sexual sorcery, fool’s gold against the real ore.
But now, when it was too late, she understood the truth. All the time she’d been fencing with him, fascinated, exhilarated and scared, her heart had been betraying her into love. She’d never be the same again.
She woke late to a complete change of weather—a perfect Sunday morning.