He gave her no chance to protest, launching an experienced attack on her senses that took all logical argument clean out of her head and filled it with the magic of his closeness.
His hand cupped her head and forced her into a deeper, passionate acceptance of his lips and tongue, the exquisite sensitivity he was causing making her moan softly, low in her throat, before she could stop herself. She was dazed and shaking but enchanted, incapable of any struggle now, her body melting against him as he crushed her closer into the lean hard shape of him.
His lips scoured a hot sweet path down the line of her silky throat, causing her to quiver in response, before moving to take her mouth again as his hands roamed up and down her body, bringing shivers of delight wherever they touched.
‘You can’t deny this, Sephy,’ he murmured huskily, ‘and you know it. You want me every bit as much as I want you, and it’s nothing to do with proving anything, damn it. I left that stage behind years ago.’
She sighed against his mouth, unaware that her arms had slowly drifted up to his neck, only knowing that she was melting right into him, every curve, every arch of her femininity finding its home against the virile male body pressed against hers. There was a heat in the base of her stomach that was pulsing with her heartbeat and it was intoxicating, wild, luscious.
‘You taste delicious and honey-sweet,’ he whispered softly as his mouth continued to plant burning kisses in between each word. ‘The things I want to do to you… Hell, you can’t deny us, Sephy. You know that at the heart of you. It would be so good between us. We’ve both known it from day one.’
She was barely aware of what he was saying; it was only his deep husky tone which was registering on the whirling light behind her closed eyelids. She felt weightless and curiously heavy at the same time with the growing ache inside her, so when the office telephone began to ring at the side of them—harsh and shrill and cutting as it bit into the bubble that surrounded her—she actually stumbled, and would have fallen but for his arms swiftly reaching out to steady her as she jerked away.
She stared wildly at him for a moment, unable to gather her scattered senses at her rude awakening from the world of colour and light his lovemaking had taken her into, and then, as she began to fumble frantically with her clothing, realising the state of her dishevelment, she saw Conrad pick up the telephone with a steady hand and speak coolly into the receiver.
He could do that! He could behave like that, when she was a melting, aching mess, she thought numbly. It was the ultimate humiliation. This hadn’t affected him at all, not in his heart.
It was a moment or two before he put down the receiver and turned to look at her, and by then she was working on a feeling of outrage to cover her shame at her own complicity, at what she had allowed. ‘So, that was showing me,’ she stated as flatly as her pounding heart would allow. ‘Do you feel better now you’ve got that out of your system?’
‘Ah, I get it. Attack is the best defence, eh?’ His voice held a nasty edge of irony and his attitude was not reassuring.
‘I’m not attacking,’ she lied quickly through lips that still bore the imprint of his mouth. ‘I was merely asking if your demonstration is finished. Because I would really like to go home now.’
‘For crying out loud!’ The words were a low growl and then she saw him breathe deeply as he mastered the brief lack of control. ‘Sephy, in case you didn’t know, that was no demonstration,’ he mocked softly. ‘I kissed you because I wanted to; I’ve been wanting to for months, damn it. In fact that’s the least of what I want to do to you.’
‘Just because you want it it doesn’t mean it has to happen.’ It was a flat, bald statement and she faced him squarely as she said it. ‘I can’t lease out my body, Conrad. I’m not made like that.’
‘If that phone hadn’t rung—’
‘But it did,’ she interrupted with painful determination. Her eyes dropped for a moment, and then as she raised them she went on, ‘You are very good at what you do, Conrad—in all aspects of your life. And I can’t deny that I…that I am attracted to you physically.’
She wasn’t used to speaking about such things and she knew her cheeks were burning.
‘But?’ he said with lethal control.
‘But it isn’t enough. Not for me,’ she stumbled on. He was going to think she was callow and unsophisticated and pathetic; he’d probably have a good laugh at her expense in a moment and put the final nail in her coffin.
‘You want the till-death-us-do-part bit?’ he asked incredulously. But he didn’t laugh; for that she was eternally grateful. The way she was feeling it would have finished her.
‘I don’t know what I want,’ she answered with a frankness that was disarming, ‘but I do know it’s not what you are offering. I… Something happened when I was younger and it made me…go into myself, shut down on emotions and men and the whole love thing. Meeting you has made me realise I can’t go on like that any more, so that’s something.’
‘I am so glad.’ It was deeply sarcastic and carried a strong note of smarting male ego.
‘I want the sort of relationship my mother had with my father,’ she said suddenly, his mordant cynicism loosening her tongue. ‘They were ecstatically happy together and when he died…well, she didn’t want anyone else. She has always said she was lucky enough to have more happiness in a few short years than most people experience in a lifetime, and their relationship made her strong enough to face the years alone rather than take second-best. I want that sort of love or nothing at all.’
‘You call that love?’ he asked shortly. ‘I call it distinctly unhealthy.’
‘Exactly.’ She passed a tired hand across her face. ‘That’s what I mean; you see things so differently from me there’s no meeting point. You must be able to see that.’
‘You call what we just shared no meeting point?’
She had seen this side of him so often over the last months—the razor-sharp mind taking advantage of every unguarded word, every tiny weakness of his opponent—so it shouldn’t have surprised her. She drew in a long silent breath before she said, her voice very calm now, ‘You could get that and a darn sight more from any one of your women, Conrad. You don’t really need me at all. All cats are grey in the dark, isn’t that what they say?’
She saw his eyes narrow and sharpen on her face, his hard countenance darkening, but she still found the courage to say everything that needed to be said. ‘You imagine you want me because I’m different to your usual diet of beautiful society women who are happy to play musical beds. For once you feel you have had to play the hunter and it’s amused the “primeval—”’ here she couldn’t stop a note of bitterness colouring her voice for a second before she took another deep steadying breath and went on—‘part of you. That’s all. You don’t care about me as a person, not
really.’
‘Cut the amateur psychoanalysis,’ he grated coldly.