A Solitary Heart (13 page)

dazzling, uncloaked sexuality of the former kiss, then offered this,

was like denying a condemned man his last meal, and she trembled

with a violent gnawing hunger she'd never before experienced, nor

knew how to assuage.

At last he turned his head away with a sharp, muffled sound, and

pressed her face not gently—not that—into his neck. They stood thus

for some minutes, in reverberative silence too tense for words, while

he stroked her hair and back.

Sian was suffering from deep, uncomprehending shock. She felt as if

she had lived all her life with blinkers on, like some kind of ironic

joke: I see, said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw.

Or that the world of colours and textures that she loved so much had

suddenly sprouted a fourth dimension. There was no room in her for

the concept that had just exploded all around her, and inside her, with

the force of nuclear fusion. She couldn't recover because she didn't

know where she had been.

Then Matthew stirred, and sighed into her hair, and said hoarsely,

'That's what you were saying to me.'

She shook her head dumbly. She didn't know what she was doing.

One hand threaded in her hair clenched into a powerful fist. 'You lack

proof?'

Even his growl was an invasion; it permeated her body. She breathed

hard once, in distress, and would have shaken her head again. She

could not. She was trapped, by his hands and by the truth.

'Matthew,' she whispered, violently unsteady, 'you push me too far.'

His head reared back, the ferocious male gaze narrowed, that tight

evocative mouth twisted. 'I, push you?' he breathed, a visual" and

audible statement of incredulity. 'Woman, you don't know what

you're talking about. Look at you—every aspect about you is a

provocation. Your mouth, your skin, those high, firm breasts, and

curving hips were made for ravishment, and you lock it all away in a

safe pretence and a polite distance, and a stubborn belief for the

future you know will shrivel everything generous and giving inside

you.'

'Shut up!' Her lovely face twisted. His hold at the back of her head,

on her senses and crumbling convictions was making her crazy with

pain and desire. She raised her hands to strike at him; she, who had

never before done or wished to do violence to another human being

in her life. Her fingers curled around the intransigent poles of his

wrists, an ineffective shackle, an impossible protest as she strained to

gain her freedom.

If anything he became even more reckless, a rampant wildfire that

drove her, fleeing, before its devouring heat. 'I will not!' he snarled.

Then, strangely, he opened his fingers and spread her raven hair

along the palms. 'Oh, look,' said Matthew, 'I've messed up your

lovely hairstyle. Somehow you don't look so cool and

unapproachable any more, darling. Why, if anyone sees you this way,

they'll think you've been
kissed.'

She shook all over. It must be fury. It must. Her lips trembled as she

struggled to hold it in, but the laughter stole like a thief from her

anyway.

He froze, listening to her laugh, looking at her over- bright, tear-

glazed eyes. A toss up, between one or the other, and laughter had

won. The thrumming tension in his body eased. He said ruefully, 'I've

been abominable, haven't I?'

'Now and then,' she admitted. Her hair slipped, silken and elusive,

from his fingers, and he stroked the sides of her face. She could have

pulled away, for she was no longer held prisoner. She didn't. 'But

perhaps I've goaded you.'

Matthew ran his thumbs over the crushed softness of her lips, and

said, 'Now and then. Your hairpins flew everywhere, didn't they?

Want me to collect them for you?'

He bent to the dirty asphalt, looked around, then cocked a doubtful

eyebrow at her. 'Leave it,' she said, still laughing. 'You'll never find

them all.'

Her cheeks were flushed, her green eyes vivid, her raven hair falling

gloriously about her shoulders, and he rocked back on his heels to

stare up at her.

'Sian, you take my breath away,' he said quietly.

Her laughter died, and what came in its place was chilled and fearful.

'Don't,' she whispered.

He rose until he towered above her, and her huge gaze rose with him.

For a moment he looked stern, hard, a bedrock of the adamance that

was always seen through the swirling mists of his ever-changing

moods. She remembered the icy stranger she had met on Sunday, and

shivered.

But then his grimness passed away, and he said, 'But to deny it would

be to deny what has happened here between us, and I'm not prepared

to do that. Come, I'll take you home.'

Well, she thought as she climbed into the car with a vague, secret,

ever-to-be-denied sense of anticlimax, you couldn't really get more

mundane than that.

THE drive back to her apartment was undertaken in complete silence.

By running her hands through her hair, Sian managed to restore at

least some order, and her colouring had returned to its normal

flawless cream.

The Mercedes turned gently on to her street. She stared out of the

window, feeling the pressure build inside her head as the houses

melted past. After the resounding clash from earlier, this nothingness,

this total withdrawal, felt like a desolation. Dinner and a kiss? The

inadequate description was unacceptably trite. What had it been,

Sian? What?

Dinner, not a few kisses, and...

They pulled up to the apartment, and she was her own greatest fan, as

she achieved a perfection of cool courtesy. 'Coming in for coffee?'

But Matthew was already out of the car and coming around to her

side. 'So you decided to speak to me after all?' he remarked, one

eyebrow slanted mockingly. 'And here. I thought I was the recipient

of a magnificent sulk. I don't know whether to be relieved or

disappointed.'

He always managed instant ignition. She snapped, 'I don't sulk!'

The mockery became an outright laugh. She managed to fit her key

in the back door lock and entered the cool dark kitchen, the hunter a

close-following, silent menace. He found the light switch and

snapped it on. She turned away from him, heard the echo of

emptiness throughout the rooms. Oh, God. Get thee behind me,

Satan...

She felt to the counter and drew the coffee-maker towards her, and

asked severely, 'How many cups would you like?'

'I don't want any coffee,' said Matthew irritably.

How he tried her. She bowed her head over the machine while her

teeth clenched, then she pushed away from the counter and turned to

glare at him. He was a restless caged beast, prowling.

'I think this was a mistake,' she gritted. 'Maybe you had better go,

before either of us does yet another thing to regret.'

'But Sian,' he purred, cocking that insolent brow at her* 'you haven't

asked me what I do want.'

She closed her eyes, as liquid lightning bolted down her legs. 'No, I

haven't,' she whispered, averting her pale face in sharp rejection. 'I

don't want to know.'

'Always a contrary creature,' Matthew muttered, swinging with near

violence as he reached the limit of the kitchen, and turned to stalk

back. 'I say black, she says white. I say wrong, she says right. Is this

what it means to be a woman, Sian? Everything has to be bent,

nothing straightforward, bluff and rebuff.'

His face was filled with dark enjoyment.

'Heaven give me strength,' she groaned. 'Can't we even have a simple

civilised conversation? Why must everything be a battleground for

you?'

'Oh,' he said with angry wisdom, '
that's
why you invited me in for

coffee—a simple, civilised conversation. About the weather,

perhaps? It would have to be something appropriately distant for you,

wouldn't it? Containable, in control.'

'You're quite mad, you know,' she uttered, with the perfect calm of

conviction. She was pressed back against the counter as if she would

melt into the wood.

'No,' he replied grimly, 'but I am going crazy. I'll tell you what I

want. I want to fight. I want a good, hard, rousing, no holds barred,

nasty fight. Care to oblige me?'

'Be careful what you ask for,' she warned, hands curled into stiff

claws at her sides.

He stuck his face into hers and snarled, 'I'm not finished yet.'

She met him thrust for thrust, furiously. 'I think you might wish to

be!'

He swung away from her, on another pacing lap. It was not a retreat.

'Then,' he continued, as stark and as unrestrained as if she hadn't

spoken, leaning his long, taut body against the table, 'we make up.'

She hadn't seen it coming and felt the breath knocked out of her. His

hazel glare on her tell-tale face was insatiable. 'Push and shove, Sian,'

he whispered roughly of the maelstrom primeval. 'Your angry

spitting, and the limits of my endurance. I push you too far. You push

me over the edge. How do you cushion a man who's falling? The

fight's over now, and making up has a sweetness to pierce the soul.'

Her mouth shaped words, but the words had no sound, just the shape

and the siren call of his name, plea and curse, and invocation.

'Then I would want you to walk over,' he muttered. His eyes closed.

He tilted back his face, that harsh and worldly, compulsively

handsome, predator's face. He leaned back on his hands, the suit

jacket falling open to white-covered torso, the muscular legs

outstretched and slightly splayed. 'Your grace of movement, green

eyes intent with slumbrous warmth and the residue of fire. I would

want you to come to me with confidence and surety. I would want

you to catch me before I fall too far, with the feline ease of the

slightest touch which is given in desire.'

He filled her vision, encompassed her world. He made the fight so

seductive, she might never want to make love to another man. His

serpent's tongue pulled her across the gulf of the floor, a whisper of

movement between his legs. The convex breadth of his broad chest,

tapering to slim waist, was a haven for her shaking fingers.

Her butterfly touch arced his body. It brought her down to him,

curved her to fit the power of his offered bow. She fell victim

tenderly without a sound, and her eyes closed, and her face lowered

over his rigid mouth. At the meeting of her soft lips with his, he

shuddered his delight and torment, and groaned, and sprang his sultry

trap.

His arms closed around her, and he rose up from the table, and as he

gained his full height he carried her up with him so that her feet left

the floor and she was flush and heavy against him, an irrevocable

strain, no holds barred. His mouth was a piercing, open furnace.

Her arms wound around his neck. The world moved and the light

became, intolerable. He was laying her on the table, his shoulders the

bowl of the sky, spearing her wetness with his ravening tongue. Her

thighs trembled and he parted them, and came between them as no

one had ever done before, and his hardness pressed against her and

made her own heat intolerable.

Then he reared back in shocking retreat, his entire body a scream of

protest. 'Ah, goddammit, no.'

She felt flayed by a whip. Her eyes opened, searing in her blinded

face, framed by his sheltering forearms and the snaking black beauty

of her hair.

Matthew devoured her with his ferocious, loss-filled eyes. His naked

face. She didn't understand.

Then she, too, heard it: the slam of car doors, familiar teasing voices,

leisurely approaching footsteps, the advent of discovery. The

comprehension of it slammed into her and twisted her expression into

pure frustrated rage.

Matt hauled her to her feet in a dizzying wrench, shoved her to the

hall and said savagely, 'Go to the bathroom.'

She went; somehow, she went.

With shaking hands she splashed cold water on her overheated face

and throat, straightened her rumpled suit, found a comb and ran it

through her hair. Then she looked at herself in the mirror.

Was this what he had seen—the dilated eyes gone brilliant and black

and ringed with emerald? The flush on her high cheekbones that

matched the crushed velvet of her mouth? She stared at the woman,