He was staring at her again. He couldn’t take his eyes from her. It was impossible.
For a moment Lizzy just went on standing there, while the expressionless face in front of her just looked blankly at her.
Then suddenly, totally, she couldn’t cope. Just couldn’t. She felt as if a stone had been punched into her solar plexus. It was almost a physical pain. She turned on her spindly heels and plunged off. She didn’t know where. Just anywhere. Anywhere.
She didn’t know where she was going. The terrace ended in steps, down to the swimming pool level, and she just clattered down them, almost tripping in her desperation, past the glittering azure pool, to plunge on to the narrow stepped path that wound its way down to the sea between the vegetation and the pines. Her heart was pounding, and she could feel a sick, horrible flush in her cheeks.
She wanted to die.
Why had she let them do it? She should have known it was hopeless, useless, pointless. Hot, horrible mortification scorched through her.
I shouldn’t have tried—I shouldn’t have tried to make myself look better. Normal. Trying and failing is even worse than just accepting what I am—ugly, ugly, ugly…
She could hear footsteps hurrying behind her, heavy and pounding, and her name being called. She hurried faster, her heel catching in her haste, so that she had to lurch and clutch at the railing beside the pathway before trying to go on.
But her arm was being caught, held.
‘Stop. What is it? What’s wrong?’
She tensed in every muscle, trying to tear her arm away. His fingers pressed like steel into her bare flesh.
‘Go away.’
The words burst from her. She couldn’t stop them. Her head whipped round.
‘Go away. Leave me alone. Leave me alone!’
There was shock and bewilderment in his face.
‘What’s happened? What’s wrong?’
‘What do you mean, what’s wrong? Everything’s wrong. Everything,’ she gasped.
She just stood there, frozen and immobile, tugging hopelessly away from him, while he held her, feet planted on the step above, towering over her.
He was so close. Far too close. She tried to tug back again, but it was hopeless, useless. Just as everything was hopeless, useless.
For a moment he said nothing—just looked at her. A look of complete incomprehension filled his face. Then, as he looked, the expression of shock and bewilderment began to change. She saw it happening, saw it and did not believe it.
It was something in his eyes. Something that seemed slowly to be dissolving. Dissolving not just in his eyes, but dissolving her. Turning her liquid, like wax left on a surface that was very slowly heating up.
The way her skin was heating. Flushing with a low, soft heat that seemed to be carried by the low, soft pulse of her blood that was creaming, like liquid sugar, like honey, through her veins.
She felt his grip on her change. Not so much halting her as…holding her. Holding her in position. Holding her just where he wanted her to be. Wanted her to be because…because…
The world had stopped moving. Everything had stopped moving. She was just there, immobile, held. And he was looking down into her face—and the expression in his eyes simply stayed the breath in her throat.
She gazed back up at him. What had happened, she didn’t know. Reality wasn’t there any more.
And yet it had never seemed more vivid.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he said, in that low, soft voice that was curling the toes of her feet, sending liquid waves down her spine in long, honeyed undulations. ‘Don’t look at me like that here, now. Because if you go on looking at me like that, I’ll—’
‘Mum-my! Mum-my.’
They pulled apart, jerking away from each other. It was like surfacing from a deep, drowning sea.
‘He’s all right. I told him not to move.’ Rico’s voice sounded staccato, abstracted. He took a rapid, restoring breath.