A Question of Pride (17 page)

'I don't understand.' She was quivering in his grasp, disturbed by the force of emotion he was using.

That inconsistent mood shifted yet again, tilting on to an upward spiral that began swirling frantically around them.

Her hand, quite without her being conscious of it, had slid up the silk covering on his arm, and across the width of his chest, to come to rest on the open V of his shirt, and her fingertips were quite absently stroking at the tangle of short dark hair curling there.

She went very still, shock at her own actions widening her eyes. Beneath her palm she could feel the thud of his heart, tripping oddly, then accelerating to a strong hammer. Tension sprung between them—strong sexual tension that made the sudden silence between them a dangerous substance. Max dragged in a deep breath, his chest moving fiercely beneath her hand—and she flinched, beginning to jerk away. Max stopped her, bringing up one of his hands to cover hers, holding it hard against his pounding breast.

'You shouldn't have done that,' he told her huskily. 'You shouldn't have touched me like that, Clea.'

He didn't need to elaborate. She knew exactly what he meant. Her touch had been an instinctive sensual caress, done as an unconscious cry from her inner self to that part of him she never ceased yearning for, reopening doors that had been closed for months, doors that, on reopening, set loose emotions neither of them could deny.

Her lips parted, the pink tip of her tongue flicking out to moisten her lips in a nervous gesture. Her eyes seemed locked on their clasped hands, her body intensely aware of his closeness, tingling to life so it caught at her breath and held her trapped.

'I... ' She tried to speak, to say something to break the fraught atmosphere, but her words died in her thickening throat.

Max muttered something, drawing her against him, folding her into his arms. 'Look at me!' he demanded roughly.

She looked, and her body quivered at the blaze she encountered in his smoky-blue eyes. 'Max—'

she breathed. 'You can't want ... '

'Oh, I can,' he interrupted tensely, knowing exactly what she had been about to say. 'I've never stopped wanting!' he rasped. 'Can you honestly believe that because you're pregnant, swollen with our child, that I can't want you?' He laughed, a harsh, self-derisive, husky sound. 'Oh, I want,' he mocked. 'I want a lot of things!'

His mouth came down on hers with no warning. One moment he had been talking quickly and roughly, the next his mouth covered hers and he was dragging her as close to him as he could bring her, his lips forcing hers apart in a kiss that revealed a terrible hunger.

Clea swayed against him, overwhelmed by the sudden flare of desire between them. The kiss went on and on, weakening her with a need that fired her blood, matching the fire she knew raced through him.

Max groaned something unintelligible against her mouth, his arms tightening jerkily. 'I've needed this!' he rasped.
'Needed
this—'

His big body arched, curving her to him, the force of his kiss sending her head back against his supporting arm, and her senses swam away on a wild current of frantic desire. Clea clung shamelessly to him, fingers lost in the dark silkiness of his hair, nails scraping at his scalp, drawing groans of pleasure from him. Their mouths parted on a mutual need to throw themselves into a passion too long denied.

Hands, bodies, senses, grappling with an embrace that was quickly whirling out of control, there in the doorway to his dining-room.

'Not here,' he choked as his hand closed over one full rounded breast, his thighs hard and pulsing against her swollen tummy, leaving Clea in no doubt as to how desperate his desire was. 'Let me love you, Clea,'

he pleaded hoarsely. 'Please let me love you tonight.'

'Yes,' she whispered, unable to manage more than that soft, sensual encouragement.

His body shuddered on a release of tension, and he looked hotly down on her, smoky eyes consuming her love-flushed face. 'Just don't hate me for it later,' he muttered huskily. 'I don't think I could stand it if you hated me any more than you already do.'

Clea blinked, swimming up from the depths of sensuality long enough to frown at him in puzzlement. 'I don't hate you, Max,' she told him softly. 'I could never hate you.'

He searched her vulnerable face for a long tense moment, then sighed shakily, scooping her up in his arms and carrying her, her body gripped closely to him, to a darkened bedroom.

Clea could see nothing but Max as he placed her in the middle of the bed then dropped down beside her. He didn't speak, but his eyes were caressing as they ran over her face. Her hair was in wild array on his pillows, his hand very gentle as it stroked the soft skin of her shoulder.

'I've dreamed for months of seeing you here, Clea, on my bed, with me beside you.' His voice was like rough silk, sliding over the sensitised nerve-ends beneath her skin. 'I lie awake for hours, wondering what you look like with your body full of my child, swollen, firm. Have you any idea how erotic dreams like that can be?' he murmured. 'How could you think that I ever stopped wanting you? You're beautiful, beautiful ... ' he repeated huskily, and covered her mouth once again.

His hand slid to her breast, covering the full mound, his thumb locating and gently caressing the throbbing nipple. Fire licked through her at frightening speed, making her arch in an attempt to escape the source, and she gasped.

'Max ... ' she breathed in confused entreaty.

'Ssh,' he soothed, brushing his lips across hers. 'Don't think. You want this, Clea, as much as I do.'

It was true; she accepted it on a soft sigh that whispered across his face, and drew that mouth back to hers in a clinging kiss that sank them both into oblivion. Max wanted her, just as passionately as he used to do, and she couldn't fight that. She had always known it, and that was why she had erected all those hostile barriers against him, because she had known that to allow him close would end like this, with them losing themselves in one another.

Her hands lifted to his shoulders, stroking along the tensed muscles, revelling in the ripples of pleasure that shook him. Her fingers buried themselves in his hair, loving its silken texture, holding his mouth to hers. Their tongues touched, and she trembled on a shock of pleasure.

Max muttered something beneath his breath and jerked away from her, a dark flush streaking his cheekbones, fingers trembling as they fumbled with his clothes in his eagerness to free his body, to enjoy the aching sweetness of her touch. Then he was gently turning her so he could slide down the zip on her dress, helping the material to glide down her body with hands that trembled, eyes dark with hungry desire to look upon each part of her revealed to him until she, too, was naked and lying, locked by the intensity of his gaze as it ran over her.

On a soft sigh, he touched the tip of her breast with a single infinitely gentle finger. Her breasts were fuller than they used to be, the dark circles around the throbbing tip larger and much darker. The nipple, as he coaxed it into tingling life, was a long, tender nub that drew his mouth on to it in fascination.

With her hands locked behind his neck, Clea could only lie, lost in pleasure as he explored the new curves of her body with infinite care, his hands lingering on the firm mound where their child lay slumbering inside her womb. She felt no shame or embarrassment, only an incredible feeling of pride. His mouth ravished her breasts, moving urgently from one throbbing tip to another in rapid succession, arousing her with a heated gentleness that overwhelmed her. She reached out a hand to caress him in return, but Max firmly replaced it around his neck, refusing her desire to please him.

'Clea...' he whispered.

His heart slammed against her, his body racked with deep shudders of desire. Then they were caught in the wild rhythm of need, all conscious thought lost as they were hurled onwards, out into sensuous space, far beyond anything they had ever shared before.

Cleamust have slept because, when she next became aware, the soft light of a summer dawn was threading through the window. She was in Max's arms, his hard body curled against the back of hers, his arms cocooning her to him. His hand splayed across her womb, their baby kneading softly against it, comforting her.

It was idyllic, this, she thought sadly. And dangerous, because it matched exactly so many of her secret yearnings. The soft, warm feel of his breath on her hair told her that Max was still sleeping. He was relaxed, his arm heavy on her, their bodies damp with sweat in the warmth of the room. Max must have covered them both, because a thin sheet was thrown over them. How long had he lain awake while she slept? she wondered. What had he been thinking?

Problems stirred to life, and she stirred with them, moving as stealthily as she could out of his arms, and sliding to the edge of the bed, scraping her hair back from her face with a hand before sitting to gather her thoughts, taking stock of where she was.

It could only be his bedroom. Max's character was stamped all over the deep tones of rusts, browns and black. Very masculine, she observed wryly, very Max.

Her dress lay in a heap on the floor beside the bed, and she bent to retrieve it, pulling herself into a standing position and arching slightly to ease the several aches in her body. She felt sluggish, languid after their loving.

'What are you doing?' His voice was slurred with sleep.

Clea turned her head to look at him. Max lay as she had left him, half covered by the sheet, his arms resting where her body had just been. He looked sleepy-eyed, and she smiled at him, because there was a look of the boy about him in this half-light.

'Getting dressed,' she said quietly, stepping into her dress and pulling it up over her body. She sat down on the bed, her back facing him. 'Fasten me up, would you?'

There was a pause, and Clea sensed a grimness in him, but didn't turn to confirm it. Then his fingers were deftly dealing with the zip, their touch impersonal.

'Where do we go from here?' he murmured once his hands had left her.

Good question, thought Clea. Where
do
we go from here? 'I don't know,' she answered honestly.

Max pulled himself up on the pillows, sombrely studying her profile. It had never been easy to read her, but just now her expression gave nothing away, other than an odd blankness.

'No backward steps this time, Clea,' he warned grimly.

She shook her head, agreeing with him. Her hair tumbled down her back to brush the mattress, eyes like violets, wide and startling, her hands resting absently on her swollen stomach. She looked the epitome of maternal woman, and his heart lurched with some answering masculine reply, making him want to gather her close again, but he dared not. He wasn't sure whether last night had been a mistake or not. The answer to that had yet to come out.

'I didn't plan seduction when I brought you here last night, you know.'

That brought her gaze around, on to him. 'I never for one moment thought you did,' she assured him.

Max could be a swine, she knew that, but not that much of a swine.

Blue eyes held purple for a long moment. 'We both wanted it.'

'Yes,' she agreed quietly.

'Needed it.'

'Yes,' she agreed once again.

He folded his arms across his chest, watching her face carefully. 'And it's going to happen again. I won't just fade off the scene, because we've found we still have a—need for each other.' He was choosing his words with care, even Clea realised that. So he added softly, 'I need you again, right now.'

This time she nodded mutely in agreement, her expression solemn. Max sighed impatiently. 'Are you going to just sit there and agree with everything I say?' he mocked angrily. 'How am I supposed to know what you think if you don't tell me?'

'But I don't know what I think,' she answered quite levelly. It was the truth, she just didn't know! And it was that which was bothering her, this odd refusal to grapple with the problem. 'Take me home, Max,'

she appealed suddenly. 'I can't think here, I can't seem to ...'

Her hand lifted to her brow, rubbing at the frown marring it. Max reached out to grab her hand, moving it from her face so he could look worriedly at her. 'I didn't hurt you last night, did I?' He had gone pale at the thought. 'You're all right? I tried to be gentle, but I ...'

'It was beautiful,' she assured him gently. She couldn't—wouldn't lie about that. 'You didn't hurt me. I'm just—confused, I think.' The frown came back. 'Will Mrs Walters mind if I make myself a drink?' She stood up, taking him by surprise and moving jerkily away from him.

'Of course she won't mind!' Max protested irritably. 'Clea, why don't you come back here?' He patted the space beside him in the big bed. 'We'll talk this thing through in comfort. There's no need for you to go back to your flat yet. You can ...'

'I need a drink,' was her reply. And she was gone, gliding through the door before he had an opportunity to say any more.

Max joined her within minutes, dressed only in a dark robe, as though making a statement that he wasn't yet prepared to concede and take her home. Clea had made a pot of tea, and was sitting at the rich redwood table in the middle of his modern redwood kitchen. She poured them both a cup, and he pulled out a chair and sat down opposite her,

'We have to talk this through,' he insisted as soon as he sat down.

'Yes, I know. Max . , .' her voice drawled thoughtfully. She had been staring into her teacup, watching the steam curl up from the hot liquid, but now she lifted her eyes to his. 'Have I been behaving like a sanctimonious prig?'

His mouth took on a small upward curve. 'Did I say that?' he mused mockingly. Then he sighed, and there was more mockery in the soft sound. 'Yes,' he replied, and shrugged. 'Not that you didn't have a right to,' he added. 'If I can be a self-centred swine, why can't you be a little sanctimonious? We're none of us perfect.'

There was a message for her in there somewhere, but Clea refused to look for it. Instead, she sipped at her tea. 'I won't marry you,' she told him suddenly.