by Susan Napier
'I… I just wasn't expecting…' She spread her hands vaguely.
'You thought I would cheerfully go to sleep, perhaps even arrange for my appetite to be satisfied, with never a thought for yours?' From his silky tone of voice, Clare wondered which particular appetite he was referring to, and she flushed at both the implication and the accuracy in his sarcasm. 'I really am an utterly selfish bastard, aren't I, Clare? Never a thought of anyone else but myself. Heavens, I'm amazed I actually possess any friends, the thoughtless way I carry on…'
'All right, all right, I'm sorry,' Clare burst out as she pushed the door closed with her back. 'What do you want me to do? Go down on my hands and knees?'
He smiled at her, eyes heavy lidded as he looked over the incongruous combination of her best silk blouse and the tight jeans encasing long, shapely legs. 'The idea has a certain appeal,' he murmured huskily. 'There are things you could do for me on your hands and knees that I find myself wanting very much.. '
Clare went from pink to scarlet. Even the most flirtatious guests she had fended off had never resorted to such explicit suggestion. She looked anywhere but into the now laughing dark eyes.
'Calm down, Clare, I was only teasing. My motives are… were…' he corrected himself with amusement, 'pure as the driven snow. I knew you'd be feeling wrung out, so I asked Grace to put something together for us.' He looked ruefully down at the laden trolley. 'She told me it served us right for trying to sneak out to 'that artsy-tartsy French joint'. This spread is her idea of rubbing it in.' He began to lift silver lids. 'We have crab timbales, cold babaco soup, venison, strawberry and cucumber salad, and little fruit tarts with whipped cream.'
'I think I'm going to faint,' groaned Clare, drawn like a magnet towards the delicious fragrances mingling above the warmed salvers. David had included a bottle of wine, and even two candlesticks, which he placed on the small table in the corner of the room, where she and Tim ate on the infrequent occasions that Clare cooked for them on the small range in her kitchenette. She fetched cutlery and napkins from the dresser drawer while David dished up. Far from a romantic, candlelight conversation, they were both so absorbed in the food that they hardly spoke until they had finished the main course.
'Feeling better?' David asked, his face half shadowed in the soft light.
'Yes, thank you,' said Clare meekly as she enjoyed the rich, full flavour of the Australian red wine he had chosen. She finished her glass and held it out for some more.
'Are you sure? On top of the night you've had, it might just finish you off.'
Clare had never pouted in her life, but she did so now. She felt full of warm contentment, a lazy sense of well-being that she wanted to sustain for as long as possible. 'I'm not a child, David. I can hold my liquor.'
'I'll drink to that,' he said drily, and poured her half a glass before finishing off the bottle himself. 'Why don't we sit by the fire to eat these tarts?'
Although the lodge was centrally heated, all the suites and public rooms had fireplaces that were kept burning, often day and night during the winter, not only to conserve the heat draw-off from the bore, but to provide the atmosphere that Miles wanted to engender.
'I couldn't eat another thing, but you go ahead,' said Clare, taking her half-glass of wine and sinking on to the wide, thick sheepskin which covered the floor in front of the stone fireplace. She wouldn't have bothered lighting it herself, but Shari had come in and done it for her, saying that since Clare was probably going to have a late night ministering to Tim, she might find the fire companionable. Actually, she had. Too restless and anxious to read, she had found sitting down staring into the flames very soothing.
David put three or four of the small tarts on a plate and joined her. He ate two and then licked his fingers. Clare smiled.
'What's funny?'
'Magic fingers.' She reminded him of the phrase he had used to Tim.
'And so they are. Would you like a personal demonstration?' He swivelled around until their faces were level, lying on his side, his body propped on his elbow as she leant back on her hands. He, too, had changed since their earlier encounter. He had on a black V-necked cashmere sweater that looked even softer than the sheepskin beneath her palms, and it had slid over on one shoulder, showing a strong ripple of muscle and a thick mat of hair on his chest—dark, like his head, with flecks of grey.
Clare swallowed. 'No, thank you… I told you I could hold my liquor,' she added smugly, when it appeared that she was safe, he wasn't going to lunge.
'You said you weren't a child, too. But when you smile like that…' He lifted a finger and touched her cheek very lightly. 'You dimple like a chubby baby, all sweet powdered innocence.'
For some reason that offended her, and she latched on to the only acceptable line of objection. 'I'm not chubby. Thin people can have dimples too, you know.'
'Mmm, but you're not thin.' He grinned. 'You're just chubby where it counts. And you have the most fantastic legs I have ever seen…like fluid muscle sheathed in cream satin, smooth and hard. What a waste to hide them in trousers.'
Instead of bristling at his chauvinism, Clare's inner warmth increased. She turned on her side to pick up her glass, taking the opportunity to ease back a few discreet inches, so that her leg no longer brushed his. 'I don't usually,' she admitted. 'I much prefer wearing skirts, but when you have a son, jeans are sometimes handy to have around…particularly when his digestion's uncertain!'
'It was the first thing I noticed about you.' David wasn't really listening. The finger that had explored her dimple was now tracing the outer seam of her jeans where it curved over her very unbaby-like hip. 'Your legs, wrapped around that ageing spiv.'
'I don't think Ray would appreciate being called either ageing or a spiv.'
David ignored her second attempt to deflect him. 'I couldn't help imagining you gripping me like that, holding me between your thighs. It excited me to picture you like that. And then you stung me out of my erotic fantasies by dismissing me like some slimy foot-in-the-door salesman. I planned right then and there that you weren't going to get away with it. Of course, I told myself that it was for Tim's sake, but all through my tour I had dreams about your lovely strong legs…'
She was staring at him, wide-eyed, little lights from the fire dancing in the grey depths, and he smiled. 'Do I sound like a fetishist? I never was before, but then you make me feel all sorts of things I never felt before.'
'Like what?' Clare whispered, trembling on the verge of discovery. She felt his hand slide back and forth along her thigh.
'Like the agony of self-denial. Here we are, having an intimate conversation in front of a roaring fire, filled with food, wine and desire, and yet I can't make love to you.'
Clare's eyes widened further still. 'W… why not?'
His hand tightened on her hip. 'While you're vulnerable with worry over Tim? While you're a little drunk and a lot weary? When your son may interrupt us at any moment? That's not what I want.'
'What do you want?' Clare asked huskily.
'That's the hell of it—I don't know.' He drank, recklessly, then discarded his glass on the hearth, not taking his eyes off her flushed arousal. 'Yes, I do. I want to see what you're wearing under those clothes. Ever since I saw that lacy thing you wear to bed, I've ached to know what other sexy secrets your cool modesty conceals.'
Clare's recklessness matched his. Her fingers went to the pearl buttons on the loose blouse and she undid them, slowly, one by one. David froze, scarcely breathing, as though afraid that any overt response would send her fleeing back to common sense. His restraint was justified. Clare couldn't really believe that it was her behaving so wantonly, so out of character, actually teasing a man with her body. The fact that he had said they couldn't make love only increased her excitement, made it safe to be wanton…
What she wore tonight had rather shocked her when she had first seen it, but since Miles had presented it to her she had seen similar garments appear on the racks of even chain
store lingerie departments, although of much inferior quality. And the fact that it was plain white had made her feel less wicked. It was a basque, with a row of tiny hooks up the back that it had taken a while to master, very flattering in the way that it scooped her breasts and followed the sweep of her waist to a saucy little frill on the hips. Clare didn't take her blouse off completely, she wasn't that bold, and when she had pulled the tail of her blouse out of her jeans and unbuttoned the last pearl she stopped. Her hands were beginning to shake too much anyway, from the sweet, hot darkness of David's eyes.
She moistened her dry lips, unnerved by his silence, and was bewildered when David suddenly rolled away with a groan, presenting her with a broad dark back.
'David? What's the matter?' For a moment she thought that he was ill. She scooted over to kneel in front of him uncertainly. 'David?' She bent to try and see his face, almost buried in the sheepskin, bracing a hand on the curve of his waist. He jumped as if he had been shot, and groaned again when he rolled on to his back and saw her bent over him, the creamy curve of her breasts pressing dangerously against the fragile barrier of French lace.
'Oh, Clare, you're killing me.' His hands moved up stiffly, as if against his will, to cup her shoulders under the loose sleeves of her blouse, thumbs moving over the soft skin as he dragged her down towards him. 'I promised myself I wasn't going to touch you. Why didn't you refuse me?' he demanded thickly.
Clare's breasts pinkened under his agonised admiration. A quick, sweeping glance over his body, and she had tingled with the knowledge of how much he wanted her. Now desire threatened to overwhelm his self-conscious nobility, and she didn't know whether to be scared or glad.
'I wanted it, too,' she admitted breathlessly.
'You shouldn't,' he told her, watching helplessly as his hands moved down to the glossy satin curve of her breasts, tracing the lucky freckles that kissed her creamy skin to their hiding-place in her generous cleavage. Her breasts seemed to rise against his fingers, trapping them in their shadowed valley. 'You know what I am, what my life is like. Are you prepared to let me do this in the knowledge of all our differences? Knowing that I can't possibly be comfortably slotted into your secure little world?' His eyes rose to hers, narrowing. 'Or is that precisely why you're inviting me to make love to you? Because you know I won't be here in a week? Are you just looking for a passing prince to reawaken your sexuality, someone who won't cause complications afterwards?'
Oh, if only he knew! She wanted to say, I'm doing this because I love you and I want you to love me in the only way you can. But she couldn't say that. Although his ego might be bruised at thinking of himself as just a passing phase in her life, it was better than him knowing the truth. The worldly, sophisticated musician had already known the one and only great love of his life, now immortalised in memory. No living woman could ever match up to that perfect memory, and he wasn't looking. He would run a mile if she said the words, so naive, so demanding. To tell someone that you loved them in the knowledge that that love wasn't returned was little short of blackmail. Clare must bear that burden herself. It was no fault of David's. His had been seduction, pure and simple, no hiding behind false promises or vague hints of a possible future together.
'Clare?' David's face had darkened as he watched her mental retreat. His hands slid from her breasts to tightly encompass her waist. 'I won't be used just to satisfy your sexual curiosity. I don't want to be compared to your sainted Lee…'
Clare tossed her head, the movement making her breasts sway provocatively above her lightly boned waist. 'And I don't want to be compared with your Nina…'
'I would never do that. I told you, my marriage is over, gone. I've had other women since Nina, but I never made the mistake of comparing them, or even wanting them to be like my wife. Whereas you…' The gaze which roamed hungrily over her captive body suddenly contained an element of sullenness, as if her provocative appearance no longer pleased him. 'You haven't repast either physically or mentally. You've preserved yourself, held back all the passion in your nature except where it's safely channelled into the living shrine of your son, afraid of any real flesh and blood man who might crack that cool little shell of mourning…'
Clare tugged at the tensile strength of his hands, her mood of languorous enchantment dispelled by his piercing darts so near the truth. She had changed since the tragedy, had been afraid of new places and experiences after the upheaval of moving to Moonlight. The people who passed through its doors were mere acquaintances, too caught up in the adventure of the place, in their own luxurious lives, to press to enter hers. David had changed that, had changed her...and that he had such power frightened her.
'I suppose you would have preferred me to have spent my period of mourning flinging myself at every man who came along,' she snapped, wriggling a lot and achieving little except a heightening awareness of the solid thigh flexing against her hip. 'I suppose if I'd racked up all the experience with casual sex that you've had, you'd consider that the key to re-entering the land of the living. Well, I'm sorry to be so provincial and middle class about it. But I loved Lee and I'm proud of it! And I never will look on sex as the only path to happiness and fulfilment, or something to be indulged in lightly or casually—and take your damned hands off me!' She was panting by the time she finished, infuriated by the way he was smiling as he watched the riveting metamorphosis from sultry, pouting sensuousness to doubt, to spitting fury. He had never seen her so uninhibited, and wondered what she would look like utterly so. Her eyes drilled into him like shafts of steel, her honey hair flaunting about her head, her cheeks rosy and the lush little bow of her mouth looking ripe to bite him. Her breasts heaved, and he could feel the intriguing flex of her diaphragm against his thumbs pressing her lower ribs. How in the hell could mortal man resist her? Why should he resist her? Even as he tempted himself, he knew the answer. All the reasons he had given her earlier were still valid. He wanted their lovemaking to be a leisurely voyage of discovery, not a quick, heated coupling that would cause a woman of conservative values like Clare agonies of conscience afterwards… the first time, anyway. His own conscience would offer no stumbling-block, whatever happened. He had known from the first what he wanted and was supremely confident of getting it, albeit with a little more difficulty than he had anticipated. But that would make the victory that much the sweeter…
'I don't account promiscuity a virtue, either,' he said smoothly. 'I haven't been with that many women, Clare, and I wasn't trying to malign your chastity. I just find it rather daunting, that's all.'
'Daunting?' Clare stopped pulling at his impervious hands and stared at him suspiciously.
He held her eyes steadily. 'Making love is something you consider very special, so special that only one man has touched you, seen you, though many men must have wanted to. That makes your expectations greater, not less, than a woman of experience. Your lover would have to be special, too—gentle and slow and very sensitive to your needs and responses, willing to withhold his own pleasure until you were lost in yours. He would have to be careful not to rush you, frighten you with his strangeness. He would have to make sure you were in the right frame of mind, and willing, not just for the moment, but for the next and next, for all the tentative little steps on the path to ecstasy. I would like to be that man for you, Clare.' He smiled crookedly. 'The flesh is willing, but the mind is weak. What if I can't make you feel the way you think you should feel? I'm not a man who takes failure lightly. It would shatter me to discover that I had disappointed you…it makes me almost afraid to try…and it makes me as defensively callous as an adolescent…'
Clare's bones had turned to water at his skilful verbal seduction, but the last, rueful show of weakness was a trace humble for a man of David's arrogance. Clare looked down into his innocent face, and lowered her lashes so that he couldn't see her expression.
'I wouldn't tell you.'
'What?' Expecting a passionate reassurance after the imperceptible softening of her body in his
hands, David was taken aback by her cryptic utterance.
Her lashes lifted, her eyes gravely in earnest. 'If you were a disappointing lover. I wouldn't be so brutal to your ego. I would fake it. I'd lie and tell you that you were wonderful.' Her brow suddenly crinkled into a freckled ridge, and a hand came up to cover her rounded mouth. 'Oh! I suppose I've ruined it now. You'll never know what kind of lover you are. You'll always wonder if I'm only pretending to enjoy it. Oh, David, how awful for you!'
His jaw had dropped before he caught on. There was a stunned moment of silence, and then a wild flurry of movement as he dragged her down on top of him and rolled to pin her beneath him growling in half-angry amusement. 'Damn you, little tease, you've been begging for this.'
His kiss should have sent her into seventh heaven, but she was laughing too hard. He gave up after a while and lifted his mouth to glare at her sternly.
'Stop laughing, woman!' With a nudge, he shifted his jean-clad hips between her thighs, but to his chagrin Clare continued to laugh, although a little more breathlessly than before. 'Brutal to my ego? Clare, around you a man doesn't dare have an ego.'
'You should have seen your face,' giggled Clare remorselessly. 'You looked so horrified. Haven't you ever wondered before whether the lady was really enjoying herself, or just trying to please you?'
He grinned wolfishly. 'With me, they're one and the same thing. I'm glad this little joke of yours has sorted one thing out.'
'What's that?' Clare was now relaxed, at ease with the big body on hers.
'That we are going to be lovers. You said that I'll wonder whether you're pretending. You won't be, Clare, because with me you're going to be completely uninhibited and utterly honest...'
'I…I was only teasing,' she said, flustered into sobriety.
He smiled. 'I like it when you tease me with your tongue. Do it some more,' he invited in a vibrating purr against her mouth. This time his kiss had the desired effect. Drowning in his sweet taste, Clare slid her arms up his back, under the soft caress of cashmere. His skin was hot and dry to the touch, a contrast to the moist silk of his mouth. She had to explore his chest, too, to see if the thick growth of hair was as soft and springy as it looked. It was, and Clare slid her fingers through it as David moaned encouragement, his flat nipples rising against her palms. His mouth hardened, as she slanted her head back over his arm so that her back arched and he could feel the tension quivering through her body. His mouth moved down her exposed throat to where the silk blouse was thrown back from her shoulders. Here he lingered in anticipation, the muscles of his chest rippling beneath her hands as he supported his upper body on his elbows. His head dipped and he kissed a slow line across the taut flesh rising from the basque. The kisses were followed by an equally slow string of erotic bites, and then by kisses again as he murmured to her in Russian. She didn't know what he was saying, but the verbal stroking aroused her almost as much as the exquisite touch of his mouth. His thighs pressed against hers, parting them, the two layers of denim an offence to both of them. David's free hand slid against the sheepskin to seek the low back of the basque. He ran a fingernail down the long line of little hooks—and groaned.