At one point during the night Heather surfaced from a dream in which she had been telling Brad that she knew why he wanted her, to find her face wet with tears, but her body blissfully warm and relaxed, curled against something solid and smooth and so comforting that the misery of her dream evaporated, and she cuddled closer into the womb-like warmth surrounding her with a soft sigh of satisfaction.
Morning! Heather opened her eyes and blinked at the brilliance of the sunlight flooding the room, turning her head towards the window and stiffening as she realised the warm pressure against her body was Race, his arm curled round her waist, holding her against him. She tried to move his arm and wriggle free, but his hand simply lifted and moved up her body, coming to rest possessively against her breast, a sleepy murmur, warning her that he was on the verge of waking up, the pad of his thumb moving drowsily against her nipple, the lazy caress making her bitterly aware of his familiarity with the female form and the fact that he was no stranger to waking up with a woman in his arms. She tried again to wriggle free, tensing as she felt him stir, the pressure of his fingers hardening, seeking the softness of her body beneath her nightdress.
‘Mmm, you feel just like a woman should,’ she heard Race whisper behind her, his voice lazy with the satisfaction of touching her, his lips warm as they explored the exposed nape of her neck, his free hand pushing aside her hair, his laughter shivering across her skin as he encountered the thick fabric of her dressing gown, his coaxing, ‘You know you’d feel much warmer without this,’ sending tremors running along her spine, visions of herself naked in his arms making her regret her weakness of the previous night.
Better to have remained cold and safe downstairs, but it was too late to think of that now. Race was already easing the dressing gown off her shoulders, pinning her arms behind her back as he did so, her scrabbling fingers stilling in shock as they came into contact with the tautly muscled flatness of his stomach.
He laughed again, almost silently, but she could feel his breath shivering across her skin, the fact that she was lying with her back towards him making it far too easy for him to slide the dressing gown from her body without her being able to do a single thing about it, other than kick back at him angrily, twisting and turning as she tried to free the hands he held pinioned behind her back. Her nightdress was an old cotton one, and where he had unfastened the ribbons at the front the upper curves of her breasts were exposed, rising and falling urgently as she tried to fight free of him. Her hands were released and her dressing-gown finally removed in one easy moment, the breath leaving her lungs on a startled gasp as he turned her on to her back, trapping her there with the weight of his thigh, her body registering the nudity of his body as at the same moment she lifted her hands to push him away.
‘You said you wouldn’t touch me,’ she reminded him huskily, knowing that reminding him was her best defence and that she could never overcome him physically.
‘Unless you wanted me to,’ he agreed.
Heather’s eyes smouldered. ‘I don’t.’
‘No?’
Her palms were pressed flat against his chest, the muscles in her arms rigid as she held him off, her eyes furious and bitter as she struggled not to look away from him. With one mercilessly swift movement he pushed her nightdress off her shoulders, completely exposing her breasts. His fingers locked on her wrists, pulling her hands away from his chest, and forcing them back down to her side.
When he bent slowly towards her Heather felt as though her breath were suspended somewhere in her throat. Her heart started to beat with slow, heavy, choking thuds, her eyes locked on Race’s until he bent his head to her breasts. Something deep inside her longed to scream out to him to stop, urging her to give way to admit defeat, but stubbornly she refused, telling herself that she would not show her fear, that she would withstand him no matter what she felt inside. She closed her eyes, willing herself not to react, digging her fingers into the mattress as she anticipated the touch of his mouth against her skin. Despite the cold, perspiration broke out on her forehead, her mouth was dry, her body shaking inwardly as she waited… and waited… and then at last opened her eyes to find Race watching her mockingly.
‘Now tell me again you don’t want me, Heather,’ he told her, watching her as her eyes slid from his to the aroused and tormented peaks of her breasts, swollen and aching in anticipation of his touch.
Humiliation washed over her, drowning out every other feeling. She gave a small, inarticulate cry, hating him for seeing her like this, for making her feel like this, then she wrenched her arms away, curling her body into a small ball, as she tried to hide herself from him.
‘Are you happy now?’ she demanded in a thick choked voice. ‘Now that you’ve won, that….’
‘Heather.’ She felt his hands on her shoulders and stiffened in rejection. ‘Heather, we aren’t at war, you know. I don’t feel ashamed of wanting you and there’s no reason why you should feel ashamed of wanting me. Have you any idea what it does to me to know you want me and that you’ll do anything to deny that want? It isn’t exactly ego-building,’ he assured her dryly. ‘You were crying in your sleep last night,’ he told her huskily, ‘because someone a long time ago hurt you, but when I took you in my arms you stopped crying and you cuddled up against me as trustingly as a child. I damn near woke you up and took you then,’ he told her, his voice suddenly hoarsely uneven.
‘Have you any idea of what you do to me?’ he demanded savagely. ‘What you experienced just now is only a thousandth of it, and the insane thing is that there’s no need for either of us to feel like that. We want each other, Heather, our bodies are crying out for one another, you can make my body react just as hungrily simply by looking at me.’ He turned her over again and Heather felt herself quiver in fear and longing as he looked at her, uncrossing the arms she had folded over her breasts, his breathing suddenly unsteady.
An inarticulate murmur strangled in his throat, his mouth hotly possessive against her breast, and a fierce current of pleasure ran through her body like jagged lightning from the hard centre of her breast. Race muttered something against her skin, breathing heavily, his heart thudding unsteadily as he released her nipple to circle it with his tongue, the flood of desire rising swiftly inside her making her arch and murmur his name, her fingers biting into his shoulders, her body abandoning her to a sea of sensual pleasure.
‘Tell me… tell me… you want me….’ Race interspersed the demand with tormenting caresses, melting her body, dissolving it until there was nothing but the raging need he was building inside her, and her feverish, ‘Race… please…!’ brought his mouth down on hers with a hunger that matched her own, fanning the mingled flames of anger and need that burned through her, passion a dark underground river that possessed her just as surely as Race meant to.
‘I want you.’ Even his heart seemed to thud out the words, his mouth hot against her skin exploring it hungrily, trapping the pulse thudding at the base of her throat, the grey glitter of his eyes as they swept over her body making her shiver uncontrollably. ‘I want you, Heather,’ he told her thickly, ‘all of you, body, mind and soul—I want to possess you: I want you to give yourself to me in a way you’ve never given yourself to anyone else.’
His intensity half frightened and half excited her. She could feel the clamorous response of her blood to the thickly uttered words, the glinting absorption in his eyes as they feasted on her body. ‘I wanted you the first time I saw you—at a party. You didn’t notice me. You were with someone else. I wanted to kill him, to tear him apart limb by limb, and then make love to you while the blood lust still possessed my body. That’s how passion is, Heather; it isn’t neat and clean and antiseptic, it’s wanting mingled with anger and rage, resentment at the wanting and a fierce elemental hunger that has to be satisfied. That’s how I want you, Heather…. That’s how I want you to want me, so much that you’ll go mindless with the intensity of it, that you’ll forget every other man you’ve ever known. Kiss me,’
he ordered, his voice thick with emotion, and slow. ‘Kiss me, Heather….’
She obeyed him almost blindly, still trying to assimilate the meaning of his words, still trying to come to terms with her own reactions to them, that he would want her so much and without emotion astounded her. The feelings he had described were those of an obsession, his need to possess her obsessive in its intensity. When he talked to her she had had vivid images of the two of them together, their lovemaking feverishly violent and savagely necessary, and they shook her because she had never felt like that, never even thought of wanting that kind of sexual excitement.
But he had made her want it, made her ache to touch him, to caress and arouse him, to give herself completely to him… but that wasn’t wanting. That was love! She stilled, closing her eyes, trying to overcome the sick shaky sensation coiling inside her but knowing it was true. She did love him. That first time she had seen him she had reacted to him, and because she resented that reaction she had called it dislike. And then that time at his house, her body had known then what her mind refused to admit. She had fallen in love with him at first sight like an adolescent. And he wanted her.
But what was ‘wanting’? Only an appetite that once satiated, was gone. The sudden realisation of what her life would be without him appalled her. How could this have happened to her? She didn’t know, she only knew that it had, and all at once she knew she had to get away from Race, it was imperative that she did. She couldn’t stay and hide from him how she felt, and he, male-like, would revel in the discovery of how she felt about him. She had no illusions about that. He might not love her, but her love for him would feed his ego, and he would take advantage of it, just as his body would delight in forcing her submission no matter how often he told her he wanted her to come to him willingly. Some instinct she hadn’t known she had told her that he would find pleasure in letting her defy him, only to reduce her to hungry need in his arms.
He hadn’t lied when he said he resented wanting her. She could feel that resentment in the way he touched her, see in the glitter of his eyes, and it was because of that resentment, to appease it that he would stop at nothing.
His hands stroked compulsively over her body, touching and learning the texture of her skin, registering the response she couldn’t hide from him, satisfaction gleaming in the depths of his eyes, his voice hoarse with urgency as need broke through the control he was exercising, his heart thudding unevenly against her as he groaned her name, parting her thighs with his knee, the throbbing arousal of his body communicated intimately to hers, his mouth hot and possessive as it closed over hers, making her moan deep in her throat and arch instinctively beneath him, welcoming the heat of his body against her.
‘Heather, touch me. Pleasure me.’ The huskily muttered command shivered over her skin, eliciting an age-old wanton need to respond, and her fingertips pressed feverishly against his shoulders, exploring the bones and muscle, her lips arching to follow the same path, before she realised the ultimate conclusion to which her actions would lead.
Suddenly angry with herself and him, Heather pulled back. Twenty-four hours, that was all it had taken Race to persuade her into his bed, and she, poor fool that she was, had let him.
She looked up into his face, knowing he could not have mistaken her withdrawal. His eyes were brilliant with baffled fury and frustration, his thoughts for once completely unguarded. ‘I don’t think I believe this,’ Heather heard him say tensely. ‘I told you before, I won’t force you, Heather, but damn you for a hypocrite—and worse—if you stop me now,’ he added thickly. ‘You know you want me as much as I want you.’
‘I thought I did,’ Heather admitted slowly. She must be very careful what she said now. She had no intention of allowing him to guess how she felt about him; if she did he would simply use the information against her, forcing her submission through her love, although, of course, he would cloak it in other words, say that she gave herself ‘willingly’. But she had no intention of letting him make love to her. To do so would be to sacrifice the rules by which she lived her life, to destroy her own self-respect.
‘I thought I did,’ she repeated, taking a deep breath and praying that what she was going to say would have the desired effect, ‘but I’m afraid mere sexual desire isn’t enough, Race. You said you wouldn’t force me,’ she reminded him, holding his eyes, ‘and I intend to hold you to that.’
It was almost more than she could bear to endure the look of bitter frustration combined with cold contempt that she could see in his eyes. ‘Damn you!’ He swore softly, adding something else under his breath which she barely caught, but which brought a dull tide of colour to her skin.
‘Do you play this game with all your men?’ he demanded as he released her, ‘wind them up until they’re begging you, and then turn them down cold? What you’re doing is dangerous, Heather. It’s tantamount to asking to be raped,’ he told her contemptuously, only the ragged sound of his breathing betraying the fact that he wasn’t fully in control. ‘Is that what you like? To drive a man so far that he can’t damn well stop himself from taking you? Does that give you a thrill of power, to watch the poor devil writhing in abject self-contempt whichever path he chooses? Well, that’s not going to happen to me. Perhaps I’m not as gentlemanly as all your other men either, because it’s going to give me a great deal of satisfaction to know that you’re damn near aching for satisfaction as much as I am myself. A satisfaction I wouldn’t give you now if you went down on your knees and begged me for it,’ he finished crudely.
Heather heard the door close behind him and guessed he had gone into the bathroom. She knew now that he was gone that she ought to get up and get dressed and that staying here in bed, wrapped in the sheet that still smelled tormentingly of his body, was tantamount to begging him, but her mind felt too bruised for her to do anything else. She had experienced male frustration-orientated anger before, but never to such an extent, never quite so painfully.
Because she loved him, she acknowledged with painful inner honesty. Because she loved him she had wanted to give herself to him, had wanted to know the fevered pleasure of his possession. He was right, her body did still ache for him. She touched her pale skin curiously, still bemused by the sensations she had experienced under his hands, her nipples tingling into aroused hardness as she remembered how he had….
Quickly she left the bed, getting clean clothes from her case, promising herself a shower later when Race was downstairs.
The kitchen felt freezing cold, the fire still barely burning in the living-room. She fed it with logs, trying not to shiver as she went into the kitchen and turned on the tap, praying that the pipes had not frozen during the night. They had been lucky, and the water flowed freely, icy cold against her fingers, her breath white plumes in the cold air. Outside the sun was shining brilliantly, but it held no warmth, rather it was the icy dazzle of a diamond reflecting the light, the glare bouncing off the snow, half blinding her as she searched the now peaceful landscape.
The kettle was boiling when she felt rather than heard Race walk into the room. She didn’t turn round, her legs suddenly weak as she wondered how on earth she was going to face him. It helped to know that he was still probably too angry to judge her feelings with any accuracy, and besides, she was the only one who knew that the intimacies they had just shared, she had shared with no one else. Not even Brad had touched her or aroused her like that. But then Brad had never truly wanted her, not in the way that Race did.
Heather felt a quiver run through her body, a yearning need to tell him that she had changed her mind, to feel the hot urgency of his body against hers as she had done earlier. Her nails were gripping into her palms when she turned round, her voice husky and unsteady as she asked if he wanted a cup of coffee. ‘I think it’s my turn to make the breakfast,’ she told him, striving to enforce some normality between them, her pale skin flushing when she saw the sardonic twist of his mouth, the cold contempt in the eyes that stripped her ruthlessly of every l
ast defence, his voice ice-cold as he drawled.
‘What game are you playing now, Heather? Showing me how “civilised” you can be? Well, I can tell you that right at this moment I don’t feel one damned bit civilised. In fact,’ he added still pinning her where she stood with the cold ferocity of his gaze, ‘if it wasn’t for the fact that I value my self-respect, I’d take you here and now, and make you cry out with the same ache that’s tearing at my guts. But it isn’t over between us,’ he told her softly. ‘Look out of that window. See that sunshine? That means it’s freezing, and it will probably continue to freeze tonight, which means that even on the very best estimate, even if we don’t get any more snow, you and I are trapped here for at least two or three more days. Before we leave here you’ll be begging me to take you back to my bed and finish what we started this morning. Begging me,’ he reiterated softly, infusing the words with a menace that made them both a vow and a threat.
‘I don’t see why you should bother,’ Heather managed, forcing her features to assume her cool modelling mask, the impenetrable mask behind which she hid from the world. ‘Unless you enjoy rape.’
‘You can’t get out of it that way,’ he told her, shaking his head, ‘and it won’t be rape. No, Heather, if you must put a name to it, call it a blow dealt on behalf of all mankind, or at least all those poor unfortunate specimens of it who have crossed your path. I’ve been blind. I thought of a hundred different reasons for your coldness, but none of them came anyway near to the truth. You’re a tease, Heather, and that’s putting it politely. Perhaps it’s time, for your own good, that you were taught how very painful that can be.’
His control and determination were formidable weapons, Heather acknowledged, both seemingly indestructible. Views that were reinforced time and time again during the next two days when the freeze continued, and she was tortured by every Machiavellian method of making her aware of him and undermining her self-control that he would think of, and none of them so obvious that she could take him to task.