A feeling of fear and panic filled her but instead of strengthening her need to pull away from him, to stop what was happening, all it did was increase her weakness, her inability to resist the powerful flood engulfing her.
She did try to stop him, to protest, but her shakily whispered words were lost, silenced by the warm pressure of his mouth as he gathered her closely, kissing her with such soft, slow determination that it felt as though her whole body was dissolving and melting into him, and not merely her willpower.
No man had ever kissed her like this before, made her feel like this, not just aroused to physical desire, but filled with so much emotion that it made her eyes burn with tears behind her closed eyelids and her throat ache with yearning, every bit as much as her body ached with longing.
She had no will, no life, no power that was not controlled by him, her mind, her body, her emotions joyously obedient to the increasing demand of his mouth, the subtle caress of his tongue as it stroked persuasively against her lips coaxing them to soften and to part, to allow him the kind of intimacy she had somehow always believed she was too fastidious ever to want to enjoy.
Enjoy…No way did that small, simple word encompass the sensations, the emotions that poured through her now, sensitising every inch of her body, both outside and in, to such an extent that she could scarcely bear the heavy pressure of her clothes against her skin, nor control her shuddering reaction to the caress of Daniel’s hands, the hot hard pressure of his body.
‘No…’ Frantically Christa pushed herself away from Daniel, breaking their kiss, and the dark, magnetic sorcery of her unwanted and far too dangerous thoughts.
Her face burned hotly with chagrin. She could scarcely recognise herself in the wanton eroticism of her thoughts and desires.
When Daniel moved towards her as though he intended to take her back in his arms, for a shocked heartbeat of time Christa actually felt that she wanted him to, that she actually wanted him to take hold of her and silence her protests with the hard, passionate demand of his mouth, to physically overrule the logic of her thoughts and allow her body, her senses, the aching desire and need that crawled so treacherously through the pit of her stomach to her head.
Her heart jerked violently against her ribs in a mixture of fear and shock, the panic of knowing how close she had come to totally losing all self-control propelling her into another step back.
She saw Daniel frown, the hand he had stretched out towards her dropping to his side, the smile slowly dying from his eyes.
‘I’m going back inside,’ Christa told him shortly.
No wonder he had stopped smiling at her. Sickly she wondered how many other women before her had been deceived by the false promise of his oh, so seductive kiss, the sensual delicacy of his touch, the pseudo-vulnerable tension in his body as he released her, as though he could hardly bear to let her go, the quick way in which he had turned his body slightly away from her as though trying to disguise its erotic arousal.
Oh, he knew all the tricks, how it made a woman feel to know that she excited him so much and to know that he wanted to protect her from his arousal.
The hot tears stinging her eyes as she hurried, head down, across the kitchen, and the faint tremor in her body, weren’t just caused by the fright Clarence had given her. Tellingly, as she reached the door, against all her own better judgement she stopped to turn her head to look at Daniel.
He was standing motionless, watching her, his hands on his hips, his forearms bare, his hair, like the soft cotton open neck of his shirt, ruffled slightly by the breeze through the open back door.
Could he see from that distance the soft flush that was engulfing her body; did he know that he was the cause of it; did he care about what he was doing to her, about the pain he could potentially cause her?
No, of course he didn’t. His kind of man never did, Christa reflected bitterly, as she turned on her heel—and her hand pushed open the hall door.
Her shoes, she noticed, the expensive, soft leather loafers she had bought herself as a special treat only months ago, were thick with mud; there were splashes of it on her trousers, and the breeze, which had done little more than flauntingly caress Daniel’s skin, highlighting the strong play of muscles beneath the tanned flesh of his arms, had much more unkindly reduced her flesh to pinched, goose-fleshed chilliness.
It was too late now to regret not packing the thermal underwear which had served her so well all through last winter, she admitted morosely as she went back upstairs in search of something warm to put on.
But once she reached her bedroom, instead of completing the task which had brought her there, she went instead to stand unseeingly in front of her bedroom window, oblivious to the magnificence of the view beyond it, the mountains, stark and awesome, their sheer sides falling away from the snow-capped pinnacles. Her thoughts instead were locked on those few minutes she had spent in Daniel’s arms.
A small, sharply self-judgemental sound of anger escaped from her lips.
How could it have happened? How could she have allowed it to happen…wanted it to happen?
‘No.’ The husky denial came too late to stop the insidious, mocking question her subconscious slid so damningly into her mind. She had not wanted it to happen; she had not…
Not what? Not wanted Daniel to kiss her?
Her body trembled. She closed her eyes against the self-torment of the inner taunt, knowing full well that she could not rebuff the mocking whispered question without lying.
She had wanted Daniel to kiss her, to touch her, to…
This was crazy; she was an adult, for heaven’s sake, far too mature, too sensible, too aware to fall head over heels in love with a man simply because his kisses did things to her that no man had ever come anywhere near doing before.
Head over heels in love. That spinning, dizzying, frighteningly disorientating feeling, as though the ground was no longer completely stable under her feet, could not have been caused, surely, by something as simple as the threat of having fallen in love with Daniel?
A threat which was surely laughable in its complete impossibility.
Yes, she might be sexually attracted to him, she admitted cautiously, and yes, it had been a mistake—and one which she would not repeat—to allow that attraction to get the upper hand and make her behave with unfamiliar recklessness; but in love…No…Never. Not her, and certainly not with a man like Daniel.
If she was to stay here…
If. There was no ‘if’ about it. She had to stay, she reminded herself sharply. If she left now, not just Daniel but everyone at home would assume that it was because she could no longer stand by her outspoken statements.
She had to stay, and she had to find a way of controlling her unwanted sexual awareness of him. Remember what had happened to Laura. Laura had fallen in love too, and look what had happened to her.
Character-building mountain hikes, team-building exercises, canoeing!
Angrily Christa threw down the programmes Daniel had given her. Did he really think any of that was going to change her mind?
The canoeing trip was fixed for tomorrow. She frowned as she looked out of the window. She could just see the silver gleam of water where the lake reflected the cold grey-blue of the sky.
She had never really been an outdoors type; she liked the heat and the sunshine, not the cold and the wet; her most recent experience of being afloat had been in the Greek islands, a far cry from Wales, and the captain of the Greek craft had been nothing like Daniel—nothing at all, she reflected, mentally contrasting the Greek’s portly, sturdy body with Daniel’s: the cold grey dullness of the Welsh mountains now that the early morning brightness had gone with the warmth and sunshine of the Aegean sea; and, before she could stop herself, Daniel’s normal apparel of jeans and shirt with a pair of faded cut-off shorts, the rest of his body bare beneath the hot Greek sun apart from the fine, soft covering of dark hair that ran so tantalisingly from his breastbone to the waistband of his shorts.
Her mouth, Christa discovered, as she fiercely dismissed the tantalising mental image her traitorous senses had called up, had gone very dry and her pulse was very fast.
Well, at least she needn’t worry about Daniel wearing nothing more than a pair of shorts tomorrow, she acknowledged wryly. Wetsuits were apparently to be the order of the day.
It infuriated her that she should be so perversely and so ridiculously affected by Daniel as a man.
It wasn’t just angry impatience with herself that she felt, though, was it? There were other emotions there as well. Anxiety, apprehension…uncertainty and…
Tiredly she closed her eyes. It wasn’t logical that she should feel desire for such a man; that she should want him…ache for him. Such feelings would have to be suppressed…destroyed…denied.
* * *
‘Ready.’
Christa threw Daniel a murderous look as he stood at the side of the small jetty waiting for her. They had changed into their wetsuits in the changing-room provided inside the small but well-equipped boat-house next to the jetty, and now Daniel was standing next to the wooden ladder leading down to the water.
Gritting her teeth, Christa walked towards him. Below her on the water she could see the canoe, an impossibly fragile thing, bouncing lightly on the waves.
‘You can’t possibly expect me to risk my life in that,’ she protested in disbelief. It looked like a child’s toy.
‘It’s perfectly safe,’ Daniel assured her. ‘Completely unsinkable; the worst you can do is turn turtle in it…’
‘Turn turtle?’ Christa demanded suspiciously.
‘Yes,’ he agreed, explaining, ‘An inexperienced canoeist can cause it to capsize, but these things are specially designed so that they right themselves again without any damage to either themselves or the people in them. That’s why we use them.
‘You’ll be perfectly safe, Christa. I wouldn’t take you out in it if you weren’t…’
‘Oh, no?’ Christa muttered under her breath, but he had obviously heard her, because she just caught the hard gleam of anger in his eyes before he masked it and asked her lightly,
‘What were you expecting: that I’d take you out to the middle of the lake and threaten you with death by drowning if you didn’t agree to change your mind?’
She hadn’t thought anything of the kind, of course, but now, hearing him say the words and seeing the open amusement in his eyes made her feel so defensive and angry that she retaliated acidly, ‘I wouldn’t put it past you. After all, you must be pretty desperate. A place like this succeeds or fails on its reputation…’