That Tender Feeling (19 page)

‘If someone doesn't kill you first.'

‘All you have to say is, “Go away, Cliff.”'

‘Are you deaf? I've just said it.'

‘But you've got to mean it. Say, “Go away, Cliff,” and mean it. Surely that's not very difficult? You don't have to endure my odious attentions now that you no longer feel pity for me. Or perhaps,' he said, his fingers sliding under her sweater and layering themselves against her rib cage, ‘you don't find this odious?'

‘I never said I did.'

‘No, you didn't. Perhaps you find it exciting. The story you've just spun out is too incredible not to be true. In any case, it's already been agreed between us that you wouldn't lie about anything of that magnitude.'

‘I did come to you out of compassion,' she said doggedly.

‘And for how long was compassion uppermost in your mind? I didn't hold a passive female in my arms. You found me as physically desirable as I found you.'

It hadn't taken him long to reason that out, she thought bitterly, biting heavily on her lower lip to stop herself letting out a yelp of pleasure as his trespassing fingers, having made a slight detour to unfasten her bra, scaled upward to cup both her breasts. The resultant electric thrill that radiated through her was like an adhesive that pressed and held her enraptured body closer to his. It was as if she were trying to melt into the solid torso and the strong muscular legs that were slightly straddled to form an inverted, protective vee round hers and stopped them both from falling over. It took a lot of will power to pull herself away from him and transfer her weight to the edge of the kitchen sink.

‘It's your privilege to move away.' His whispery laugh assaulted her ear, the breath from it scalded her neck. ‘I don't force myself on any woman. No woman takes me out of pity. You're safe. I'll amend that, as safe as you want to be. How safe do you want to be, Ros?'

A good question.

He turned her round to face him. His hands stroked down over her disarranged sweater in a feeble pretense of straightening it, which made her yearn to be crushed close to his chest. They both knew that she was having to fight off not only him but also her own inflamed senses. His aim would be to keep them inflamed. It had slashed him when she had told him that she'd gone to him out of compassion. It had insulted his masculinity. She would never forget the way his face had changed color, the suppressed fury of him. She had known he would seek vengeance. And this was it, of course. Her punishment for daring to suggest that she had been motivated by pity. He wasn't going to have that. He would work on her without respite until she owned to her own feelings. He knew what those feelings were. Every quivering nerve in her awakened body was a brazen announcement of her craving for him. But that wasn't enough for him. He had made her admit to her reason for going to him, and he wouldn't let up until she admitted to this. He wanted to hear that she wanted him from her own lips. Well, she'd be damned if she would. She wouldn't give him that satisfaction.

She was in no danger for the moment, she knew that. He wouldn't enter her bedroom without invitation, and tomorrow she would be gone. She could surely hold out for the short length of time she would be here.

She lifted her hands and placed them flat against his chest, pushing him away. She hadn't been given time to dry her hands, and the soapy bubbles on them from the washing-up water adhered to his front like the falling snow outside. As she stalked out of the kitchen, her horrified vision was caught and held by the ominous beauty. Big ragged flakes fell to cluster upon the window sill and obliterate the sky.

‘I don't think you'll be going anywhere tomorrow,' Cliff said, plucking the thought out of her mind and sending it after her as a parting shot.

CHAPTER TEN

The radio gave it out about the crisis road conditions that stretched the length and breadth of the country. There wasn't a county that had escaped the arctic blitz. Planes weren't taking off, many roads were impassable, with a fleet of abandoned cars causing further hazards for those who had to travel.

Ros rubbed a circle on the windowpane to look out and hardly needed the announcer's advice to check first if the roads were open before setting off, or better still, stay at home if it were at all possible. The road had disappeared. The boles of trees and the hedgerows had shortened. All she could see was snow, snow and more snow. She didn't have a big enough shovel to dig her car out, even if she were foolhardy enough to risk it. Neither was it just a personal risk. She couldn't take the chance of adding to the burden of the emergency services and motoring organizations, which were already taxed to the limit.

Following her out of the kitchen and into the living room, Cliff said, ‘Looks as if we're stuck with one another for a while longer. Fate is a very funny lady. You think you are in charge of your own destiny and find out that you are at the mercy of her capricious whim.'

Cliff had the look of a man who had resigned himself to a situation, only to find that the terms were quite to his liking.

She crossed to the sofa and sat down. ‘You're really enjoying this, aren't you?'

He took the chair opposite, lounging back in comfort, as opposed to her taut, ill-at-ease posture. ‘It does have its lighter side. I'm sorry that you don't possess a sense of humor to see it.'

‘Thank you for your concern, but there's nothing wrong with my sense of humor. It's normal and healthy, unlike yours, which seems to have a perverted twist to it. And will you please stop looking at me.'

‘I was brought up to believe that it was polite to look at a person while I was talking to them.'

‘There's looking and looking.'

‘You don't like the way I look at you? Is that what you're saying?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then you shouldn't be so nice to look at. Did you know that you look sexier when you're angry?'

The intensity of his preoccupation with her face drew a slash of harsh color across her cheekbones. But when he left off looking at her face, that was worse, because his dark, wicked eyes slid down her body in slow appraisal, lingering overlong on the rise and fall of her breasts. Indignation was making her breathe more rapidly, and she made a desperate bid to modify that, knowing that he was finding it a major source of amusement. It wasn't a kind amusement that mocks in a gentle way, its main concern to tempt a person out of ill-humor. It was cold, laying icy fingers of persecution on her stomach.

Uncrossing the legs that were now the subject of his scrutiny, she jumped up off the sofa. ‘I'll make some coffee. Could you drink a cup?'

‘If you promise not to put arsenic in it,' he replied.

‘Don't put ideas into my head.'

The slow smile twisting up his mouth told her that he knew she had sought for an excuse to get away from him for a while to get control over herself.

There were two escape routes she could take, both of which would take her too close for comfort to where he sat. She chose the one with the wider swing round his chair to get to her target, the door. Keeping her eyes carefully averted from his compelling face, she measured her step and quelled the childish impulse to break into a run. As she drew level with his chair, she risked an under-the-lashes peep out of the corner of her eye. His expression was without expression, indifferent. He wasn't even looking her way, which made it all the more surprising when, without turning his chin, his arm shot out to hook round her waist and pull her over the arm of his chair and down upon his knee. His hand stayed on her waist. His hold was loose, his fingers spread-eagled. Would they clamp like steel bands if she tried to jump up and attempt to free herself? Tried to . . . attempted to? Answering her own question, she thought that's all it would amount to, because she would not be allowed to go. Rather than engage in an undignified scuffle, she thought it was as well to remain passive. As passive as she could be when his touch had triggered off tremors in her stomach that were rising to sabotage and confuse her.

If only she wasn't so aware of him. Even though he petrified her half out of her mind, he was still the most magnetic charmer she had ever met. The dark enchantment of the spell he cast upon her made her senses swim, and her heart beat faster than was good for it. Its excited beat leaped into her throat as his free hand crossed her breast. He did not touch her there, he never intended to. His aim was to make her think that was his target by shaving perilously close, which he did, even calculating correctly just how far she would strain back. Satan himself lurked in his flashing eyes as his hand continued down and pulled the sleeve of her sweater just clear of her wrist, then brought it nearer to his face to inspect the bruises he had inflicted upon her the day before when he gripped her so tightly.

‘You were right. I have put my brand on you.'

He didn't have to bruise her flesh to do that. He had put his brand on her the moment they met up again. Even though it was only her body he lusted for, he had reached out and put his name on her heart, and she felt that she would never be free of him again. She might take up with someone else eventually. The desire for masculine company would drive her into another man's arms, but she would never belong to him as she belonged to Cliff.

‘I seem to make a habit of ill using you,' he said.

‘You don't know your own strength.'

‘Or your weakness.' Oh, he knew her weakness all right, the devil. ‘I bruise you without knowing about it.' Neither were all the bruises on the flesh, and he knew about that as well. ‘First your shoulder and your poor face when I lashed out during that malaria attack I had. Now your wrists.'

‘I didn't know you knew about my shoulder. That was concealed from you.'

‘I recall an occasion when not one part of you was hidden from my eyes.'

‘Don't, Cliff. I can't take it.'

‘Can't take what? Remembering how it was? Does it make you want it to be like that between us again?'

She couldn't lie. She couldn't say no, because she did want it to be like it was—only better.

‘It's no good, Cliff.'

‘Why are you so stubborn?'

‘The same reason that you are.'

Two dominant personalities had clashed. If she stayed for any length of time, Ros knew only too well whose will would break first. She had to get away at the first possible opportunity.

‘Life's too short, Ros, to stand on principles.'

‘But you're standing on yours, it's only mine you want to trample down.'

‘Only because they're about twenty years behind the times. Why won't you own to that?'

‘But I do. I hold old-fashioned ideals. There—you've heard it from my own lips. It's a fetish with you, isn't it, making me admit to things? In this instance—so what! I'm basically an old-fashioned girl. I can no more take lovemaking on its own than I could down neat spirits. In both, I need a modifying element.'

‘Back to square one—the price tag on your body. Sex in exchange for a commitment.'

She flushed at the base level he brought it down to. ‘It might amount to that. But that's not the angle I look at it from. The other way, with no commitment, no strings of any sort, would put too much of a weight on my conscience.'

‘I'm going to have to work on that conscience of yours. It's an old fuddy-duddy. That, or get to work on you and make you forget it.'

His face was turned to her slightly averted cheek, which shivered as his breath touched it. His mouth didn't have far to come to tease the corner of hers, making gentle licking bites that put an intolerable strain on her. He was so clever. That soft persuasion tormented her to want the full passion. How she managed not to give her lips fully to his kiss she would never know. His references to how it had been between them had ignited a flame of excitement within her that she must squash. In wanting it to be like that again, she was her own worst enemy. Her desire was as invidious as a snake and must be struck down before its poison fully penetrated her blood. It would help if she concentrated on the fact that while she thought of it as making love, the term Cliff used was sex—it was nothing more than sexual satisfaction to him. If anything could help her. It was like sinking in quicksand. She wanted to pull out, but she was being sucked down by the turbulence of her own stirred emotions.

She could never be sure what happened next. Did she turn her head, or did Cliff angle his neck to brush her lips more fully with his, for suddenly her whole mouth was being subjected to a battery of light, unsatisfying kisses that drove her crazy for kisses of depth. Pulses began to beat in various parts of her body that she hadn't known existed, roused from a lifetime's dormancy by the wild exhilaration of a sensual hunger she hadn't known possible until Cliff fed it. And which, for all the fine intentions of her upper mind, at base ground level was not taking kindly to the self-inflicted pain of renunciation.

Barely had her lips beat out their message to him before the tormenting, coaxing, goading seduction blazed into a passion of accelerating savagery that was brutal delight, a feast to the hunger of her deprivation. His mouth glanced across her cheek in a moment's respite, his breath as hot as the fire burning within her, and then came back with renewed vigor to work the soft flesh of her lips into a frenzy.

His hands gathered her body closer, sliding across her shoulders and down her back, seeking under her sweater for softer areas to plunder, his kisses growing more urgent, a greedy, rampageous assault that made her gasp. The yielding weakness that engulfed her horrified her. She struggled in a panicky endeavor to fend off the reaction in her own body, which was defeated when his mouth clamped on hers again in a long drugging kiss. It was all too much for her, the feelings she had tried to suppress broke free of the bounds she had so futilely set out to impose and became the dominant power, subservient only to his superior domination. Her fingers rippled through his hair as the fight drained from her, and her mouth became fiercely alive beneath his.