Rachel sat up and away from him. ‘She isn’t me,’ she said simply. ‘I don’t like her.’
He made no comment, but lay studying the drawing for a long time, while Rachel felt a touch of her old restlessness attack her and got up from the bed, pretending to return her attention to the mounds of clothes scattering their bedroom floor.
‘None of me,’ Daniel made wry note, when eventually he turned to the next page only to find the devil leering back at him.
Rachel’s smile was forced. ‘How can you say that,’ she mocked, ‘when that is exactly how I see you?’
She couldn’t explain why she had never attempted drawing him. She understood why herself, but those reasons did not translate into words very well. Daniel was different. He was one of the family—yet not. The other faces in the book belonged—they were a part of her. Daniel used to be—the most important part of her— but he wasn’t any longer. He had drifted away, become a blurred image in that place inside her where those drawings came from.
He didn’t love her as the others did.
Daniel was the broken link.
She reached out to take back the pad, and he let her this time, watching her silently as she took it to store it away, in the bottom of her wardrobe, then closed the door on it before turning back to face him.
He was still lying on the bed, with only the towel covering the leashed power in his thighs.
‘Where’s Michael?’ he asked softly.
Her insides curled. ‘With your mother for the day.’
Their eyes held, and time stood breathlessly still in the quietness of the bedroom. He was asking something of her, his lazy eyes showing her the need beginning to burn inside him. She stood a mere arm’s length away from him, nervous, unsure, blushing slightly, feeling the trailing beginnings of desire seep warmly into her blood, responding to the lean, muscular length of him stretched out on the bed.
Her gaze flicked down to the whorls of dark curling hair covering his wide chest, following restlessly the way they tapered like an arrow across the flat tautness of his stomach and disappeared beneath the covering towel. Daniel was tall, lean and essentially male, his legs two powerful limbs with long muscular thighs, and calves sprinkled liberally with crisp dark hair which she could actually feel rasp sensually against her own softer more delicate skin, even though she stood a good two feet away from him.
The sun was shining weakly through the window, and she realised with a small jolt that this was the first time in months that she’d openly gazed on his body like this. Her need for darkness had denied her this pleasure. Denied her the pleasure, too, of seeing the desire burn in his eyes.
His hand reached out, inviting her without words to come to him, and silently she placed her hand in his, drawn by a force too great to fight. His fingers closed around hers, being very careful not to break the hypnotising contact with her eyes as he slowly sat up and parted his thighs so that he could draw her between them. She was wearing very little, just a loose woollen dress and a pair of briefs. Daniel slid his hands around her thickened waist, then stroked them down her hips and thighs until he made contact with the hem of her dress.
She stopped breathing on an inward gasp. His caressing hands paused, his eyes dark and watchful, waiting to find out what that gasp meant. Then she was letting the air out of her lungs on a shaky sigh and her eyelids lowered, her soft lips parting as she bent to join her mouth with his.
He fell back and she went with him, her dress being stripped away from her body as they went. And, as quick as that, they were lost in each other, hungry, demanding, stroking and arousing in a sensual scramble of tangled limbs and intimate caresses and long, moist, drugging kisses.
She was ready for him—more than ready—as her senses began to draw together in that sweet, hot knot of need that made her pull him down on top of her, mouth urgent, hands clutching at the tautness of his hips in an effort to draw him deep inside her.
Then it happened. Loving him with every sense she had in her, Rachel allowed her eyes to open slowly, gaze into that stern, dark, beautiful face above her, see the sunlight play across his gleaming black hair, see the fierceness of his driving passion, his eyes glazed with the sheer intensity of it. Then the ghost of her hell came back to haunt her, and she snapped her eyes tight shut, whimpering in wretched frustration as her body began to tighten in rejection.
‘No!’ Daniel rasped, violence erupting inside him because he recognised what was happening to her. ‘No, damn you, Rachel. No!’
She fought it, oh, she fought it with everything she could, her fingers clinging to him, her breathing fast and labouring with the struggle.
‘Look at me!’ he demanded raspingly, struggling to hold back from making that ultimate union. ‘For pity’s sake, open your eyes and look at me!’
Her lids lifted slowly, eyes taking their time to focus on his dark face locked with tension. His eyes were shot through with a hot haunted need she could not deny. Daniel might not love her, but he desired her passionately—still, after almost eight years—still, when she was swollen with his child—still, with, during and through everything that had come between them over this last six months. Daniel still desired her with a need that made him tremble against her, and maybe that was enough…
‘No!’ he protested harshly as her lids began lowering back over her eyes. ‘No—you won’t shut me out this time, Rachel!’
His hands came up to take hold of her face, tightening until her eyes flickered open in frowning confusion.
‘You want me,’ he stated fiercely. ‘But you won’t have me unless you keep your eyes open and accept just who it is you want! Me!’ he stated harshly. ‘Me, Rachel. Faults and all. Me, the man I was before I let you down so badly and the man I am right now!’
‘And if I can’t do that?’ she whispered wretchedly. ‘What if I can never accept what you did to us?’
‘Then you’ll never have me again,’ he answered grimly. ‘Because I know I can’t keep on making love to a woman who has to hide behind her closed eyes before she can accept me inside her.’
He pushed himself away from her then, while Rachel took in what he was actually saying. Daniel had just issued her with an ultimatum, she realised as she watched him stride back to the bathroom. He was telling her that he had done paying for his crime. He was, in short, telling her that she had to learn to trust him again or forget the physical side of their marriage.
She couldn’t believe it—found it incredible the expert way he had just managed to turn the tables on her, making her the one who had to make the concessions from now on if there was to be a normal relationship between them in the future!