by Susan Napier
‘I’ll have you know you’re the only woman who can do this to me,’ he said, letting the T-shirt drop and blinking furiously to clear his vision.
‘Make you chop onions?’ she mocked.
His bloodshot eyes captured hers. ‘Make me cry.’
In the breathless little silence that followed, the sudden spit of hot olive oil in the frying-pan was a welcome distraction. Turning away, Kalera blindly shovelled in the chopped vegetables and sautéed them with fierce concentration. When they began to brown, she quickly added the pasta just long enough to heat through, and stirred in a sprinkling of the grated Parmesan cheese that she kept in the freezer. The steam from the pan added to the discomfort caused by her snug skirt and stifling tights and she surreptitiously unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blouse, hoping to improve the air circulation over her heated skin.
Since she had determined to treat the meal with the utmost casualness they ate at the kitchen table and after her initial hunger pangs were satisfied Kalera found herself fighting a losing battle against the growing tension which gradually stifled their desultory conversation. Even when her eyes were lowered to her plate she was aware of every bite that Duncan took, every shift of his legs under the table, every dip and tilt of his dark head and flex of his fingers against the tall glass of iced water, which was all she had to offer him to drink.
‘This is delicious!’ Duncan’s sigh of satisfaction forced her to look up to acknowledge his compliment. She watched the fork slide between his lips and the motion of his mouth as he savoured the flare of flavours on his tongue. He chewed slowly, making a bio-mechanical process seem like a sensual act of erotic enjoyment, and when he washed down his swallow of food with a sip of water the gloss of moisture left on his lower lip made Kalera want to lean over and lick it off.
Unnerved by the pang of sexual aggression, she flushed when a piece of pasta slipped off her suspended fork and fell back onto her plate, splashing a little of the cheesy sauce onto her forearm. Unthinkingly she scooped it up with her finger and popped it into her mouth, a social solecism that she would never have dreamed of committing if she had been dining with Stephen.
She cast a sheepish look across the table and froze, finger in mouth, at Duncan’s smouldering expression. His eyes were black as jet and hot with arousal as he watched her jerkily release her finger. His lips parted and his tongue reflexively circled the inner rim of his mouth, and she knew that he was reliving, as she was, those fraught moments back at his office.
‘You have a unique and very unforgettable taste,’ he said huskily, indicating that his thoughts were reaching even further back. His eyes dipped to the open V of her blouse and Kalera felt a tiny trickle of perspiration shimmer down between her breasts. ‘Sometimes I wake up in the morning with it so vividly on my tongue that I roll over, expecting you to be still lying there beside me, all drowsy and damp with my loving…’
Oh, yes…!
A wild craving leapt in Kalera’s blood, clawing for freedom, but the sound of the telephone ringing in the hall caged the reckless response before it was uttered. Her fork clattered onto her plate and with an inarticulate cry she fled to answer it.
Duncan’s head dropped into his hands and he uttered a thick curse of bitter frustration. Dammit, he had almost had her. Now she would have time to gather her defences and would be more wary of him than ever.
He prepared himself for the worst, but it was still a crushing blow when she came back a few minutes later, the pale oval of her face flushed with shame, her lips reddened by the indentation of her teeth.
‘Stephen,’ he guessed, his voice flattened into harshness by his rigid grip on his emotions. ‘I told you he’d be checking up on you. Did you tell him we were eating?’
She shook her head as she picked up her plate and took it over to the sink, scraping the rest of her rapidly cooling meal into the waste disposal.
‘I think you’d better go.’
His hands clenched beside his plate, his eyes sullen with hostility as they bored into her slender back. ‘I haven’t finished my pasta yet.’
She clattered her plate into the sink and spun around, her hips pressing back into the hard edge of the bench. ‘Please, just go!’
‘Did he tell you to say that? Was he furious with you for feeding me? Did he threaten to come over to make sure I was gone?’
‘No!’ She felt his angry disbelief pulsing at her in physical waves and burst out, ‘For goodness’ sake—I didn’t even tell him you were here!’
She clapped her hands to her hot cheeks and Duncan kicked out of his chair, startled understanding dawning in his eyes.
‘And now you’re afraid of what will happen if he finds out?’ His voice gentled as he moved towards her.
His misunderstanding only poured salt into the wound. ‘No, it’s not that—’ She tried to curl away from him as he approached but he caught her shoulder, pressing her back against the sink.
‘I don’t even know why I did it,’ she said miserably.
Duncan’s forefinger curled under her chin and lifted it so that she was forced to meet the steady challenge of his gaze.
‘Yes, you do.’ His quiet certainty burned like a brand into her consciousness.
‘We were just having a meal,’ she denied.
‘A man and a woman innocently enjoying each other’s company,’ he agreed softly. He had a gift for making a chaste phrase sound ineffably wicked.
His thumb pressed into the tiny indentation in the middle of her chin, tugging minutely on her lower lip. ‘Only it wasn’t entirely innocent, was it, Kalera?’
‘We weren’t doing anything,’ she blurted feverishly.
His eyes grew slumberous. ‘But we wanted to,’ he murmured, his hand moving to cup her smooth cheek, encompassing it from jaw to temple, the heel of his palm curving under the angle of her jaw. ‘We wanted to do this…’ His thumb dragged across her parted mouth, smearing moisture along her lips.
‘And we wanted to do this…’ He bent his head and fitted his mouth briefly against hers, then again, harder, crushing her lips and darting his tongue between them to sip at her liquid heat.
‘And most of all,’ he whispered, his mouth still touching hers, his lips caressing her with every word, ‘we wanted to do this…’
The force of his third kiss arched her head back and his hand trailed down her exposed throat, over the rumpled opening of her blouse, to settle heavily over the breast pocket of her shirt, his fingers contracting as he ground his palm into the warm mound of flesh. Her eyes fluttered shut at the implosion of blissful excitement. Under the limp cotton of her shirt the fine lace of her bra was a fragile barrier that couldn’t hide the firming of her nipple and he found it instinctively with his gliding thumb, circling and scraping at the tight bud with his thumbnail, drawing it out into throbbing sensitivity. His teeth sank into her lip, eating her tiny, helpless moan as his other arm snaked around her waist, pulling her sharply away from the bench and into his body, his hand slanting down over the back of narrow skirt to cup her buttock, kneading the soft globe with imperious fingers, his denim-clad knee rubbing against her flank.
Overwhelmed by the violent storm of physical sensations, Kalera relinquished herself to mindless pleasure, her hands running under his T-shirt to stroke over the taut skin that had tempted her earlier, tracking his ribcage and skimming up over the bunched muscles to play with the soft, springy hair on his chest.
He grunted as her fingers clenched in the luxuriant thicket, her knuckles scraping his flat nipples, the rumbling sound trapped in his chest by the sealing of their mouths. His hand contracted on her bottom, lifting her higher against him so that the centres of their bodies fitted so tightly together she could feel the studs of his jeans grating against her pelvic bone. His mouth was savagely intent on hers as he suddenly shifted his weight, his undulating hips nudging her backwards until her shoulder-blades struck the cool smoothness of sheet metal. Her eyes flew open and she realised that he had laid
her against the door of the refrigerator to free his hands for more sinful roving.
He tilted his head, his face filling her vision as he slanted his mobile mouth for greater access, his closed eyes making her aware of the thin-skinned delicacy of his eyelids and the way his dark brows had rumpled into his forehead as if he were in great pain, prompting a fierce surge of tenderness to soften the raw physicality of her response and turn it into something infinitely more threatening to her emotional safety.
But as his denim-clad thigh thrust between hers and his hands raked open the buttons of her blouse she couldn’t remember why she should care. The mingled scent of their heated bodies was a heady bouquet in her nostrils and went like wine to her head, so that when Duncan broke the endless kiss to curse over a lone snagged button a bubble of husky laughter escaped her throat.
Goaded by the sexy sound, he lost patience and ripped her blouse open, thrusting his hands into the stretch lace cups of her bra and dragging them down to expose her swollen, brown-tipped breasts.
He bent his head and ran his tongue around the puckered rims, finishing with a brief, rasping flick across the rigid crowns. Kalera’s head fell back against the fridge, her shoulders slumping, her hands sliding down to his compact waist where her nails curled convulsively into the firm resilience of his skin.
‘When I was sucking your fingers,’ he told her thickly, ‘I was fantasising that they were these…’ He blew lightly across the responsive peaks and watched her breasts quiver with the tremulous rise of her ribcage, her nipples visibly reacting to the moist stroke of air. ‘I remember how much you enjoyed me playing with them, how you leaned over me and fed them to my lips like ripe berries…’
She shivered wildly. ‘Oh, please…’
‘Please what?’ His fingers surrounded her breasts, his thumbs pushing the pouting nipples up towards his mouth as he slowly sank to his knees in front of her. ‘Please please you? Of course I will—that’s my mission in life, darling,’ he vowed as he enveloped her in a lashing wet fire that made her bones crumble and her flesh melt.
Lost in a carnal world where everything was subordinate to the pleasure-giving caress of his mouth, Kalera reached flashpoint with stunning speed. Suddenly the aching delight that she was experiencing became shot with feverish urgency. Her hands cupped Duncan’s head, her fingers weaving sensuously into his hair as one slender thigh rubbed up and down his side, her back flexing to rock her hips insistently against his chest.
Duncan’s hands tightened on her restless flanks, sliding up to her hips to anchor her against the fridge as he rose back to his full height.
‘Oh, no,’ he growled, letting her feel the hard bulge between his legs jutting against her belly. ‘Not this time…this time I don’t have to be noble and restrained. This time, when I give you an orgasm I want to be inside you…’
This time. The phrase ricocheted around inside Kalera’s turgid brain, exploding her sensual trance, triggering a rising panic as he continued triumphantly, ‘This time we make love as equals, and we have names—Kalera and Duncan. And this time there’ll be no ghost joining us in the bed…!’
Ghost. He was talking about Harry, as if the lingering spirit of her past love had been the only stumbling block to their tumbling headlong into a scorching affair.
But he was wrong, horribly wrong, for there were a host of other very good reasons why it was a very bad idea—the crucial one being emphatically no ghost…
As if she had uttered his name the telephone began to ring again, a shrill cry of reproach from the other room. Kalera’s head began to turn towards the sound and Duncan’s hand slammed into the fridge beside her head, the thick column of his arm blocking her view of the door.
‘No, dammit!’ At her flinch his shout dropped to a mere yell as he caged her with his other arm. ‘Don’t answer it!’
‘I have to—’
She frantically tugged up her bra, wincing as it compressed her tender nipples, and shakily buttoned her shirt.
‘No, you don’t. It’s not illegal to ignore a ringing phone.’
The electronic burr seemed louder with every repetition.
‘But it might be important,’ she protested, trying to duck under his arms.
He lowered them to hip-level, trapping her even more effectively. ‘It’s Prior again, isn’t it?’ His searching gaze found confirmation in her anxious face. ‘You know it is—so does that mean he always calls more than once when you’ve been out late?’
How could she have let Stephen’s hitherto trivial little habit slip her mind? Because when Duncan was kissing her she didn’t have a mind!
‘If he realises he’s forgotten to tell me something—’
‘And to make certain that you haven’t gone out again,’ he interpreted grimly.
It was true that Stephen’s reasons were invariably petty and he never chatted long, but she had flattered herself that it was out of affection that he wanted to hear the sound of her voice again. ‘I’m sure that’s not why—’
‘Of course it is. He’s testing you, Kalera, trying to control you by remote, and you’re letting him get away with it. I bet if it was me calling you all the time you’d soon tell me where to get off!’
How long was the wretched phone going to continue ringing?
‘You’re not my fiancé,’ she retorted. ‘I only work for you…’ Her words trailed off as his nostrils flared.
‘Only? Only? Oh, that isn’t only all that you do for me, Kalera…’ He leaned forward just far enough for his erection to tease the fabric of her taut skirt.
Kalera swallowed. ‘Look—he knows I’m here. If I don’t answer he’ll ask me about it tomorrow—’
‘You can tell him you were in the shower.’
‘I don’t shower in the evenings.’
‘You did the night you slept with me. When you came to bed your skin was all soft and clean and soap-scented. For the next few weeks, every time I had a shower I washed myself all over with that very same cake of soap…’
Her hands clutched protectively at the front of her blouse.
‘Stop it! Just stop it! And let me answer my own damned phone!’
His eyes gleamed with satisfaction at her rare flash of temper. ‘Maybe Steve won’t be happy until his suspicions are confirmed. Maybe he figures that if he calls often enough the law of averages will apply and one night he’ll catch you out when your lover accidentally picks up the phone.’ His arms dropped away and he stepped back. ‘Maybe I should answer it and put him out of his misery…’
He headed for the door and after a frozen moment Kalera burst into action.
‘No!’ Aghast, she grabbed at the back of his T-shirt and hauled on it, not knowing whether he really meant to carry out his threat or was merely tormenting her with the possibility. There was a brief tug of war over the stretching T-shirt, in the midst of which she became aware that the ringing had finally stopped.
With a sob of relief she let go and Duncan wheeled back, the merciless kitchen lighting exposing the depth of his anger.
‘Let that be a lesson to you,’ he told her ruthlessly. ‘If you think you feel guilty now, wait until he really gets to work on you—you’ll be apologising for drawing breath without his permission!’
She took a sharp breath, furious at him for manipulating her emotions simply to illustrate a point. ‘It’ll be different when we’re married—’
‘The hell it will!’ he exploded incredulously, naked fury crackling out of every pore. ‘After what happened between us just now you must have realised you can’t possibly go ahead with this farcical engagement!’
His words merely confirmed her painful suspicion that what had been for her a spontaneous loss of control had for Duncan been a carefully planned and executed assault on her virtue. She had been tested and had failed miserably. But that didn’t mean that she should give up and let passion rule her life, she told herself fiercely. Giving up the dreams that she had held since girlhood for the sake of the fleeting ple
asures of the moment would be by far the greater failure!
‘I don’t see why not,’ she said, straightening her slim shoulders.
‘Because you don’t bloody love him, that’s why!’ he yelled hoarsely.
‘That’s your opinion.’ She held steady, as she always did, in the face of his flamboyant wrath.
‘It’s not an opinion, it’s an obvious fact!’ he grated. ‘Tell me, would you have carried on like this with me if I’d been around when you were engaged to Harry?’
Her face went white, then red, as if he had struck her.
‘Let’s leave Harry out of this,’ she said, almost choking on her outrage. She had finally worked out—idiot that she was—that whenever Duncan was trying to talk her into doing something that went against the grain he invoked the spirit of her dead husband to soften her up and use her feelings to distract her from the issue at hand.
‘No, of course you wouldn’t have,’ he answered for her. ‘You stopped looking at other men when you found Harry. I never even had a chance with you while he was alive. But with Stephen it’s different—whatever else you feel for him, he obviously doesn’t excite you sexually. If he did you wouldn’t be using me to provide you with your orgasms—’
Her hand cracked across his cheek, the force of the unexpected blow snapping his head to one side and knocking the insulting words back on his tongue. By the time he had recovered she had marched to the front door and thrown it open with a crash, the red mist of rage blurring her vision making it momentarily difficult to see him as he trailed after her.
‘Get out!’
He emerged from the red veil moving with deliberate slowness, sullenly manipulating his injured jaw. ‘Does Steve know you pack a punch like that, or am I the only man who can provoke you to such violent passion?’
As a blind shot across her bows it was devastatingly effective. Thank God it was Friday night. By the time she had to face him again she would have been able to put the whole humiliating episode into its proper perspective.