And then his mouth, the mouth she had stared at and yearned for until her body ached with the need burning inside her, was on her own, kissing her; not as she had ever been kissed before, but with a fierce, unrestrained male need that touched a chord somewhere deep inside her, bringing her quiveringly, singingly, to life.
She moaned helplessly beneath his mouth, oblivious to reality, totally lost in the dream world she had stepped into. She felt the hard pressure of his body against her and reached out despairingly to touch the hot, moist male flesh. She felt him shudder beneath the tentative stroke of her fingertips, and drew in a sharply ragged breath. Her head was swimming, her body drowning in sensation. She had a sharp, imperative need to know what it would be like to feel his body against her own without the sensation-dulling intrusion of her clothes.
Her breasts swelled and ached, sensations she could dimly remember experiencing long, long ago, but never like this…never with this sharp, almost unbearable pressure that made her cry out in protest and cling to him.
As though the meaning of the inarticulate cry was immediately known to him, Neil lifted his mouth from hers and whispered thickly against her lips. ‘Yes! Yes!’
And as she looked up into his eyes she was dazzled by their dark glitter, spinning free of the known world in a place where only the two of them existed.
She felt his hands on her T-shirt, tugging it free of her body while she stood, deaf, dumb and blind to everything bar the need burning inside her. She shivered when cool air touched her spine, and then moaned softly in pleasure and shock as Neil’s hands spanned her ribcage.
‘You’re perfect…perfect…do you know that?’ he told her rawly, and her head tipped back languorously under the pressure of his mouth as he caressed the smooth line of her jaw, and then her throat, with tiny, biting kisses that became abruptly more intense as he reached the swell of her breasts. His hands cupped her, burning her flesh through the fine cotton of her bra. His fingers found the hardening centre of her breast and traced it urgently, as though unable to resist the temptation. She felt the quickened thud of his heart and her own pulse mimicked its unsteady beat. He muttered something quick and savage against her body and she trembled with delight and arousal.
Her breasts, so sensitive to his touch, ached tormentingly as he dragged away the unwanted barrier of cotton. Against the darkness of his hand, her skin looked flawlessly pale, milk-white and blue-veined, her nipples flushed darkly pink. She felt hot and weak and oddly boneless, as though she had no ability to move unless he commanded her to do so. His hand supported her spine, his hair still damp as he lowered his head towards her breast.
Her whole body pulsed with desire and need…a need she had experienced before, centuries ago. Blindingly she suddenly remembered that need…surely a pale shadow of what she was feeling now, but a need none the less. Then, too, she had wanted to give herself, to give and be given…to love. And then had come the bitter shock of reality…the knowledge that she was neither loved nor desired.
She heard Neil moan as his mouth found the swollen peak of her breast and fastened on it, bathing it with a moist heat that sent sharply piercing darts of pleasure hurtling through her body.
But it was too late. The weakness that had stolen away her reason had lifted and she was able to see reality again. Neil didn’t want her, he wanted her land.
With a tiny sob of anguish, she pushed him away. He released her reluctantly.
‘It’s no good,’ she told him huskily. ‘I know why you’re doing this. You’re just like Julian. You’re all the same. You think you can coerce me into selling my land to you…’
The flat, metallic grey of his eyes frightened her, but she wasn’t going to let him see it.
‘I want you to go. Now…’
‘Like this?’ he demanded grimly, and she realised that all he was wearing was her towel. Mesmerised, her glance clung to the dark line of hair arrowing down over his belly.
‘Rue,’ he said softly, ‘let me…’
‘No,’ she interrupted sharply, panicked by her own vulnerability to him. ‘You’re wasting your time. I’m not as stupid as you seem to think. I might ha
ve fallen for that trick once, but I’m not falling for it a second time.’
He looked at her for a long time and then he said quietly, ‘Yes. I think you’re probably right. Your husband wronged you, Rue, no one could deny that. When I first realised the truth about you, I thought how brave you were, I admired you for it; but now I realise that you’re not brave at all. You’re a coward…a coward who’s hiding behind her bitterness and resentment…who’s using the memory of one bad experience to keep the rest of the world at bay.
‘All right, so your husband cheated you and hurt you. I’m sorry for that, very sorry, but I’m not your husband, Rue. I’m a different man with a different set of feelings.’
‘But not a different set of motives,’ Rue shot at him. ‘You want something from me just as he did, and you don’t care what methods you use to get it, just like him.’
He looked at her, and the odd mixture of pity and contempt in his eyes made her want to cry out that he was not to look at her like that.
Without a word he stepped past her and into her spare bedroom, leaving her staring numbly into space.
She was still standing there, her eyes huge with anguish, when he came out, dressed once more but minus his T-shirt.
‘In the circumstances, I don’t think there’s much point in my staying, is there?’ he asked her quietly, and even though her mind shrieked triumphantly at her that it had been right and that he had only wanted to deceive and use her, her heart ached with a pain so intense that she had to turn away from him in case he saw it in her eyes.
He stepped past her as though she was unclean, his every movement rigid with dislike. She knew she ought to thank him for what he had done, because, whatever his underlying motives, without his help she would have lost well over half her crop, and that meant all her profit, but the words just wouldn’t come.
She didn’t go downstairs until she heard him leave the house. She still hadn’t had her shower. She was wet and cold, and her teeth were chattering. She went into the sitting-room where she had lit the fire and knelt down in front of it.
Horatio, coming in and finding her crouched there motionless, apart from the tears that ran silently down her face, whined and went up to her.
The warmth of his solid body was comforting, but it wasn’t the comfort she wanted, she acknowledged miserably. What she wanted was Neil and that knowledge almost destroyed her. How had it happened? Why had she let it happen?