‘I… I don’t really want any coffee,’ she started to tell him, making a desperate bid to assert herself and banish the wildness of her private thoughts.
‘No,’ he agreed thoughtfully, his thumb resting deliberately against her frantic pulse. ‘Perhaps you have already received more than enough stimulation for one day.’
For a moment she thought he had actually guessed what was happening to her; had even perhaps looked into her mind and seen the desires… the need… the love she was trying so desperately to control.
The horror of it held her motionless and silent.
‘Not had another run-in with Charlesworth, have you?’
She almost shook with relief, and told him huskily, ‘No… nothing like that… I suppose it’s just the strain of Dad being away.’
She blinked suddenly as Ben pushed open the kitchen door. She hadn’t realised they had moved, but they must have done, and now, as he ushered her inside, he released her wrist.
‘I’m sure you don’t really need my help—’ she began, but Ben interrupted her, telling her softly, ‘I wanted to show you the details, talk over with you some of my plans for the house if I manage to get it. It’s very old, Tudor, with a later Queen Anne façade and frontage. I found it quite by chance and fell in love with it.’
Miranda had in fact already seen the details, unable to resist taking a peek at them, and the potential of the house had made her envy his ability to buy it.
‘It… it sounds lovely,’ she told him, her voice even more husky than his. ‘But I shouldn’t really stay.’
He had had his back to her, but now he turned round and saw the way her colour rose and fell as she gestured helplessly towards him.
‘I obviously interrupted you.’
‘I was having a shower, that’s all.’ He was watching her closely, too closely, she recognised nervously. ‘I’ll put the kettle on. We’ll have tea instead of coffee. Better for us both.’
As he walked away from her, her glance followed him, hungrily, hopelessly. She could feel her eyes stinging with the intensity of her emotional pain as she was torn between her love for him, and the anger and self-contempt that the vulnerability within her always evoked. She felt so helpless, so weak… so out of control.
She watched as he filled the kettle, almost shaking with the tension of trying to deny what she was feeling.
If he were to turn to her now, to take her in his arms, to kiss her—to touch her as he had done last night in her dream, sliding the clothes from her body, praising the feminine responsiveness of it as he stroked and kissed her skin, his mouth lingering achingly on the soft curves of her breasts, on the trembling tautness of her belly, on her thighs, while her hands— She couldn’t suppress the anguished moan that tore at her throat.
Ben heard it and turned round immediately, concern furrowing his forehead.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ he asked her, coming over to her. She had to sit down. She couldn’t stand up a second longer, she felt so weak, so terrified of what was happening to her.
She dropped down into a chair, shivering from head to foot, feeling her skin overheat and then chill in reaction to her desire for him.
Ben dropped on his knees beside her, so close to her that his robe gaped slightly as he moved.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ he demanded again.
She couldn’t stand it a moment longer. Everything that she was suffering welled up inside her, and before she could stop herself she burst out frantically, ‘It’s you. It’s… Oh, for heaven’s sake, can’t you put some clothes on…?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE silence stretching between them crackled with electricity, with tension, with pain almost.
‘Put some clothes on?’ Ben repeated slowly.
He withdrew from her, standing up, watching her. She knew he was watching her, but she couldn’t bring herself to look back at him.
What on earth had she done? Why on earth had she said it?
‘Is that what’s wrong? Am I the one causing all this?’ he demanded grimly, reaching for her wrist, and trapping it before she could move, his thumb pressing down deliberately hard on the fast race of her pulse. ‘Is that the reason you tense up every time I come within a yard of you… because you find me so—’
‘Irresistible.’ The high hard-sounding word hurt her throat and twisted her mouth, but she had to say it herself before he threw it at her. She had never felt more humiliated… more vulnerable in all her life, and yet at the same time there was a curious sense of light-headedness, relief almost, in finally admitting to him just what she was going through. She felt like someone who had carefully avoided danger all their lives and yet now, confronted with it, was deliberately abandoning themselves to it.
‘Irresistible?’ There was an odd note in his voice. ‘I was going to say just the opposite.’
She flinched visibly, her shock showing clearly in the defensive movement of her body. Had he really thought that… that she found him physically repugnant… that she…?
‘Irresistible…’ He said the word softly, marvellingly almost, and yet, for all the softness of his voice, it still jarred unbearably on her too-sensitive nerves.
‘Please.’ She tried to stand up and then realised that if she did she would be standing right next to him, so she subsided back into her
chair, turning her face away from him as she pleaded huskily, ‘I don’t want to talk about it. I…’
‘Oh, but I do.’ She gave him one frantic, panicky glance but he ignored it, repeating again, ‘Irresistible.’
This time it seemed as though he was savouring the word, enjoying it, drawing it out and with it her agony.
‘How irresistible?’ he questioned her, bending towards her.
If he touched her now she would disintegrate completely, she knew it, and yet she wasn’t going to get out of here until she had answered his question—she knew that as well—and it was far, far more than she could cope with.
Hating herself for her weakness and him for his strength, she buried her face in her hands and told him in a tormented whisper, ‘How am I supposed to define that? By degrees? A little bit irresistible… sort of irresistible? Well, if you want the truth…’ She took a deep, shuddering breath and found it was of no use: nothing was going to stop the avalanche of emotion building up inside it; it was going to roll down over her and destroy her no matter what she tried to do to avoid it. She could either try and outrun it or stay and face it, confront it… accept it… admit it.
With her face still buried in her hands, she began rawly, ‘Well, if I told you that virtually ever since we met I’ve been—’ She stopped and swallowed. She couldn’t do this… couldn’t strip her soul and her heart bare for him like this… reveal her innermost and deeply private emotions and needs to him like this, and yet if she didn’t he would question and probe until he had dragged every last nugget of information from her.
‘You’ve been what?’ Ben pressed, confirming her panicky thoughts.
In a voice thick with self-loathing, she told him sickly, ‘I’ve been having these… these dreams… about… about you. About…’ She shuddered helplessly, unable to go on, unable to admit to him the full enormity of what had been happening to her.
She felt his hand touch her shoulder, his breath warm her ear. ‘Look at me, Miranda,’ he urged her, but she couldn’t… couldn’t bear to confront the pity and revulsion she knew must be in his eyes.