The low husk of sensual desire was still in his voice, but there was another note, too …
Confidence. Assurance.
Assumption.
And suddenly her body was no longer boneless, pliant in his clasp. She pulled back, pulled away. He reached for her again, as if to reclaim her, but Flavia stiffened. In an instant she was the way she had been all evening.
And in the next instant she had reached for the door handle, acting instinctively, urgently. She had to get out! Now!
‘Flavia!’
She heard her name, but she was gone. Pushing open the car door, standing momentarily on the road, then in the next instant registering that the vehicle in the lane beside her was a taxi with its ‘For Hire’ light showing. She yanked open the passenger door and tumbled inside just as the driver, taken by surprise, started forward when the lights changed to green.
‘Regent’s Park!’ she bit out urgently, and collapsed back into the seat. Her heart was pounding, her head muzzy with shock. She closed her eyes.
Dear God, what had she let happen? How—how had she let it happen? How had Leon Maranz gone from ignoring her and making phone calls to making love to her …?
Kissing me like that—caressing me like that!
She glanced down at her torso. Mortification swept over her—her nipples were still crested, aroused. Compelling, undeniable witness to just what she had done—what she had let him do …
Her body seemed to be fizzing as if champagne were bubbling through it, as if it was still resonating from his kiss, his caress. It seared through her brain so she could still feel the impact of his touch.
I got out just in time—just in time!
It was a mantra that replayed itself for the rest of the night and was still there in the morning. Desperately she tried to find a reason for why Leon Maranz had been able to so precipitately sweep aside her defences the way he had—overwhelm her guard as effortlessly as if she had never raised it in the first place.
He took me by surprise. I didn’t stand a chance!
Yes, that was it—that was how it had happened! She’d been holding him at bay all evening—holding down her hopeless reaction to him, her disastrous attraction to him—and it had been so hard to do, so hard to keep fighting it the whole time, with him doing his best to get past her guard, to thaw her frigid defences against him. And then out of nowhere, just as she’d thought him finally distracted by his business calls, she’d stupidly let herself gaze at him, and then he’d sensed her momentary lapse, realised her weakness … and made his move.
Swiftly, expertly, overwhelmingly …
Sweeping away all her resistance. Overpowering her defences as if they were made of cotton wool.
Hot, sensuous memory flooded through her synapses like a warm, seductive wave of sensation, as she replayed those moments in his arms, his mouth exploring hers, his palm shaping her breast …
No! No, she must not let herself remember, recall, replay … Must shut that memory right down, lock it down so that she was no longer haunted by it.
That was what she told herself all that day, on the train journey down to Dorset. She had set her alarm early to get out of the apartment before her father and Anita surfaced, to get to the station and pile herself on to a morning train, to stare sightlessly out of the window as she passed the time not thinking, not remembering …
Only rationalising. Ruthlessly, remorselessly, rigorously.
I met a man. A man like I’ve never met before. And for some inexplicable and irrational reason he had an effect on me no other man has ever had. Which is ridiculous, because he’s
nothing like any man I’ve ever been out with! And it’s impossible even to contemplate anything with him! He belongs to my father’s world and I want nothing to do with it—and even if he didn’t I still can’t have anything at all to do with him, because my place is with my grandmother. I have an indelible responsibility for her, and nothing on earth can change that. Nothing.
And if he did sweep past my defences last night, then I must take that as even stronger evidence that I should and can and must have absolutely nothing more to do with him! Because he’s made it clear—crystal clear!—that he’d sweep me off to bed as well!
Would she have gone with him?
That was the stark, unanswerable question that hung in her head. He had assumed she would—she’d heard it in his voice, heard that note of confidence, of assurance. Of course, since she’d melted in his arms in the back of his limo, she would melt all over him in bed straight away!
And you would have, too …
The whispering, treacherous thought wound into her brain and found an echo in her treacherous flesh … which quickened at the thought. Her pulse was insistent, a sensual, shimmering tremor quivering through her body. A vision leapt in her mind: herself entwined with him, laid upon a wide, waiting bed, and his dark sloe eyes burning into her as he possessed himself of her with mouth and hands and all his strong, lean body …
But it was a vision—only that. Nothing more. Not real, not actual—and it never could be, never would be.