‘Enough!’ The tortured command was driven from his throat by forces he could no longer master.
He said nothing more. He stood utterly still.
Amanda bravely held his gaze, willing him to remember she had chosen to go with him and be with him wherever he led, not knowing he meant to reveal the crystal caves to her.
It seemed that the very air between them thickened and thinned with the sheer force of feeling that flowed and swirled in turbulent currents from one to the other. Amanda sensed a mental shift in him, a decision made or a barrier moved aside.
His gaze dropped from hers, gathering a different intensity as it ran slowly over her body, touching every part, heating her blood, sensitising her skin, making her breasts ache with a swollen heaviness, brushing her nipples into taut peaks, circling her stomach with an erotic sensation that arrowed down to the centre of her womanhood, stirring the warm moistness of desire.
He moved.
It was as though he drifted along high-tension wires that were strung between them, each step a tug on her heart, a tremor quaking through her body, a wild exhilaration thrilling her mind. His eyes feasted on her, drawing on her innermost being, wanting her to be all he desired.
‘Dance for me,’ he commanded.
Amanda thrust her breasts forward against the flimsy silk chiffon, wanting to feel the imprint of his hands upon them. She swayed her hips in rhythm with the chords of the Eastern music, conscious of the veil sliding and shimmering with every slow, undulating movement. She felt sensual. She was sensual.
‘Dance with me,’ she invited, holding out her arms to him, her voice throbbing with intense emotion and the deeply felt need to be once more taken into his embrace.
‘Never!’ he said, halting several paces away from her. ‘You twist and turn as it suits you. Prove to me you can keep your word. Dance as you said you would.’
Amanda fought against letting this further evidence of his mistrust hurt her. He didn’t want it to be this way. She was sure he didn’t. ‘I thought it would give you more pleasure,’ she appealed, swaying to the music in seductive invitation.
He looked at her with hard, scornful pride. ‘Do you know nothing of our culture? For centuries, milleniums, women have danced for the pleasure of men.’
Amanda did not have the skill or knowledge to match his Xabian dancers. To try would only invite derision. She needed to reach him, touch him.
She advanced towards him, uninhibitedly provocative in the way she moved as she pleaded her cause. ‘That may be true in Xabia. Where I come from, men dance with their women. It has always been so, not only because it is more equal, but because it gives greater pleasure to both.’
‘You are in my country,’ he reminded her.
Amanda opened her hands in a gesture of giving. ‘Are we not beyond race and culture?’ she whispered, repeating the very words he had spoken to her in the Presidential Suite in Fisa, the words that had tapped so powerfully at her resistance to him.
He stiffened. His chin lifted fractionally, tightening as though she had hit him. She sensed the conflict raging within him, the strong impulse to accept what she was offering, against his rigid sense of what was owed to him.
‘You said you would dance for me,’ he bit out, still holding her to her word.
‘For you...with you...so you can feel the dance that is only for you.’
‘I would not be able to see you,’ he said, dismissing her argument, turning aside in disdainful rejection of it.
She quickly reached out and touched his shoulder, arresting his movement away from her. He did not pull away but he did not turn back to her, either.
‘You will see all you need to see,’ she promised huskily. ‘You will see my eyes.’
Amanda trailed her hand down his arm. She sensed his struggle to exert control over the desire she stirred in him. Slowly he turned, the swing of his body dislodging her hand so that it dropped away from him. It didn’t matter because his eyes told her she had touched him in far more than a physical sense. The violence of his feelings was reflected in their dark turbulence. His chest rose and fell several times before he spoke.
‘Your eyes have the depths of oceans, and hold the mystery of the skies. They hold the promise of unknown delights; they would tempt any man...beyond endurance.’
She moved closer to him. ‘Take what I can give and give to you alone. Feel my body pulsing in harmony with yours.’
His fingertips bridged the distance between them, barely brushing her waist, yet his touch was magnified by the fineness of the material that barely separated his flesh from hers. An electrifying tingle raced over Amanda’s skin. It was as though the shimmering veil transmitted the compelling power of his desire for her, making her body more responsive, more aware than if she’d been naked.
Amanda knew she had to show this man she loved him. He had to know it beyond all doubt. Only by giving him the absolute assurance that she held nothing back from him, now or ever, would he come to a true appreciation of what she felt for him.
She let the music seep into her body, breathed deeply of the intoxicating jasmine scent and moved forward, undulating against him, provoking, prompting, her thighs sliding over his, the tips of her breasts rolling across his chest, and not for one second did her eyes leave his, challenging him to see, to know, to believe.
His loins hardened into rigidity.