‘You can wonder as much as you like,’ Jenna grated back, ‘but you’ll never know.’
‘I think I will. I think that beneath this fear you’ve walled yourself up behind, there’s an extremely sensuous, warm woman.’
Rage curled her fingers into talons but James was imprisoning her wrists too tightly for her to break free. Even so, he was not hurting her. His thumb brushed her wrist bone in light circular caresses almost as though he were stroking a cat, she thought fancifully. Hurriedly she clamped down on any thought that did not help to focus and strengthen her anger. Already she was becoming aware of ambivalent feelings about what was happening. She didn’t want James to touch her, to make love to her, and yet his admission that he desired her was something she found disturbingly flattering, for a woman who claimed she was totally indifferent to male desire.
‘I think we can quite happily do without these.’
‘These’ were her skirt and top, and Jenna fought furiously against his skilled removal of both garments until she realised that all she was doing was exhausting herself. Fear was creeping through her alongside anger now, but it was a muted fear, a tiny thread of sensation rather than a full torrent. It must be the wine, numbing her, subduing her ability to function properly.
She ought to cry out, to scream, Jenna thought stupidly. That would stop him, but almost as though he read her thoughts James covered her mouth with his own, smothering any sound she might have made.
There was no way she could respond to him and no way she wanted to but the slow movement of his mouth against her own was dangerously seductive. Against her will she felt her lips soften slightly as though they were aware of some ancient magic she did not recognise that urged them to cling softly to James’s. Angered by what she considered their betrayal she tensed her body, forcing her lips to reject the subtle seduction of James’s kiss.
‘It won’t work, Jenna,’ he whispered softly against her mouth. ‘Sooner or later, I’m going to break down all those barriers.’
‘Never!’
He laughed with lazy amusement but there was nothing lazy or amused about the look in his eyes. They were glittering brilliantly with something that Jenna dimly recognised as intense male desire.
She wanted to cry out against the unfairness of what was happening. To remind him of his promise to her, but pride would not let her. Instead, she strained mutely against the iron band of his fingers gripping her wrists, tugging away from him.
James was watching her, scrutinising every inch of her body, now so inadequately concealed in the delicate silk undies he had bought for her. He took his time, his total concentration on her body something she could almost feel, like searing heat against her skin. The very thought of the physical desire which motivated his scrutiny made her shudder on a thrust of real fear, strong enough to pierce the alcohol-induced clouds that had so far anaesthetised her.
James bent his head and she shuddered again, turning her face away. She felt his laughter brush her skin as his lips touched and then caressed the sensitive curve between her throat and shoulder. His lips moved upward, moistly caressing her skin, lingering over each tiny caress until the tension within her was so great that she felt she might break apart under it.
His teeth tugged gently on her ear lobe, his tongue-tip delicately exploring the crevice of her ear.
Jenna gave a short, agonised, ‘Don’t!’ so filled with loathing and despair that she half expected him to mock her for it. Instead, she felt him withdraw slightly, and then he cupped her face, turning her head so that he could look at her.
‘What is it that frightens you so much?’
‘I can’t tell you…’ How could she explain to him her deep-rooted fear of any kind of involvement or commitment with a member of his sex? It wasn’t something she could analyse fully even to herself. She only knew that where he was concerned her fear was intensified by some deep inner knowledge that he made her feel acutely vulnerable…that she mustn’t let him get close to her either physically or mentally.
‘Jenna, I promise I’m not going to hurt you.’
His words were enough to unleash a
n avalanche of intense dread. Her deepest and most agonising fears were those connected with Rachel and the pain she had suffered; the hurt that had been inflicted on her and James’s words were enough to destroy her rigid self control, her body shivering in a mixture of primitive fear and protective anger as his mouth once more touched hers.
Helpless tears of rage and fear trickled from her eyes as she lay tense and unmoving still imprisoned by James’s grip on her wrists. She had refused to close her eyes when he kissed her or to move so much as a muscle in any way, and now she was forced to have her vision filled with the sight of his skin, brown and smooth, his eyelashes dark fans across his cheeks, flickering slightly as his mouth moved more possessively over her own. He murmured a small sound of satisfaction as his probing tongue finally defeated the barrier of her primly closed lips to stroke tormentingly against their inner sensitivity.
Unable to stem her tears she tried to pull away, but his hand on her nape stopped her. The crystal drops ran down on to his skin. He opened his eyes and Jenna saw that the pupils were hugely dilated, the outer rings a dense sapphire-blue. They seemed to blaze into her with a heat that made her flinch.
‘Jenna…’
He murmured her name against her mouth so that her lips could feel the vibrations of the sound, and then he dropped back against the bed, so that he was lying full length on it. His hand on her nape forced her to bend towards him, although she managed to remain kneeling upright. Jenna felt as though her back would break under the strain he was imposing on her muscles, but she was not going to let him force her to lie down beside him. The very thought of his muscular, masculine body pressed close to her made her shake with…with fear and disgust. Fresh tears fell on to his skin. James opened his eyes and stared into hers. His tongue touched the crystal drops dampening her skin and Jenna shivered convulsively beneath the softly abrasive rasp of his tongue against her flesh.
‘The next time you cry in my arms, Jenna, it will be with pleasure and satisfaction,’ he murmured against her mouth.
‘It won’t!’ She fairly shrieked the denial at him. ‘And I won’t let you do this to me. Let me go! Let me go!’ Blind hysteria possessed her now; she didn’t know what she feared the most, James or herself. Just for a moment then with his mouth feathering her own she had felt the oddest reaction flare up inside herself; quite what it was she could not have said, she only knew it had made her heartbeat quicken and her resolve weaken. As she hurled her defiant rejection at him she knew it was going to take every ounce of will-power she possessed to reject him. She ought not to fight, an inner voice warned her. She should remain cold and unmoving. Fighting only led to…Unbidden memories of her dream lover flooded her mind. To banish them she closed her eyes. James’s mouth caressed hers with moist heat, and suddenly, terrifyingly, the face in the mental image changed and it was not James who was kissing her but her dream lover…and her mouth was softening…flowering beneath the coaxing pressure caressing it and it was too late to stop it.
Confused mental images flashed behind Jenna’s closed eyelids. She saw the man from the portrait as he had appeared to her in her dream. She felt his hands on her skin, and was powerless to stop the sweetly savage flood of answering desire rising up inside her, even though she knew it was James who held her; James who caressed the trembling uncertainty of her lips until they clung moistly to his and parted at his command. James whose hands swept downwards over her body, skimming the soft outline of her breasts, expelling his breath with ragged unevenness into her mouth as he cupped his palms round their fullness. James…James…James…and no one else, but the images persisted, zigzagging through her brain until dream and reality became a tangled blur, and all she was really aware of was that the harshly fast breathing she could hear signalled a male desire that her body, with a primitive force she had not known it possessed, was already responding to.
When she felt James’s fingers on the clasp of her bra, she recovered enough to cry numbly, ‘No!’
For a moment his hands tensed on her skin and then he breathed hoarsely, ‘Yes,’ and he had released the catch before she could protest again.
Her bra fell away, the straps entangling her arms as she lifted her hands to cover her breasts. James’s hands still rested on her back. He lay simply looking up at her, and although she wanted to look away Jenna found she could not. Totally unable to move she trembled violently as his hands slid round to cover her own, brown and masculine against the smaller, feminine ones.