'The hotel holds your passport.'
'And you looked at it?' Elizabeth paled. The knowledge that his curiosity had extended that far was infinitely threatening.
'It's a perk of the job,' he said sardonically, 'pawing through each batch of passports to see if there's any women worth ravishing.'
'I didn’t think you were going to ravish me,' Elizabeth muttered through clenched teeth.
'Oh, good, we're making progress.' While they were talking he had been slowly flexing his injured leg and now he began to massage it.
'Is it feeling better? Will you be able to walk back to the hotel?'
'I won’t need a wheelchair if that's what you mean.' He took a few paces back and forth, limping noticeably.
'You must have needed one once,' blurted Elizabeth involuntarily.
'Once.' The acknowledgement was tight with loathing. 'Never again.'
'I...I haven’t caused any permanent damage, have I?' she asked anxiously.
'I have a high pain threshold,' he said with a grimly reminiscent smile that cut her to the bone. For him to have been in pain she must have hurt him quite badly.
'I'm sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you-'
He shrugged off her apology. 'You just happened to make a lucky strike on an injured nerve, that's all.'
That's all? His casual dismissal only made her feel more culpable.
'Is there anything I can do?'
He stopped his pacing and looked at her, eyes narrowed on her pale face and the expression of unwilling compassion that kept her hovering when she longed to flee.
'Well, you could kiss it better, but I'll excuse you on the grounds that physical deformity at close quarters is something of a turn-off.' The cynical resignation of his black humour was like a shining challenge.
Elizabeth was rarely given to impulse. Instinctive emotional reactions were dangerous. They were unreasoning and usually embarrassing. The one and only real love-affair of her life had been doomed by her over-impulsive passion. As a grown woman she knew the value of thinking before she acted or reacted, which made her spontaneous action now all the more inexplicable.
She sank to a crouch, placing her hands lightly on either side of his thigh for balance as she bent forward and pressed her mouth gently against the site of his injury. Her hair, caught by the breeze, blew in a soft dark froth across his hard abdomen. His skin was hot and faintly salty and her lips parted in inadvertent curiosity over the jagged scar that bisected his outer thigh.
For a stunned second he didn’t react. Then, beneath her fingertips, the muscles in his thigh bunched violently and his hand fisted in her hair, wrenching her head back.
'What in the hell do you think you're doing?' he demanded hoarsely, the shock flaring in his silver eyes as he looked down at her.
She was as shocked as he. A wave of colour swept over her pale face, her eyes widening to meet the shattering impact of his.
'I...' She sought desperately for a reason to explain away her foolishly impulsive gesture. Had a woman he cared deeply about rejected him because of his scars? Was that the source of his cynicism? His wife, perhaps? Would that explain their estrangement and his subsequent restless womanising?
His hand tightened in her hair, dragging her upright with an ease that belied any remaining physical weakness, holding her still for his perusal.
'I was only joking,' he murmured, staring at the small mouth that had shocked him out of his world-weary indifference.
'So was I,' she lied shakily, trying not to tremble under that probing gaze, desperately wishing she hadn’t given in to the fleeting weakness that had assailed her at the thought of his suffering.
'Really?' His shock receded as swiftly as it had come. 'Then here's something else to laugh at...'
His mouth was hot and spicy, aggressive and not at all amusing. He kissed her as though he already knew her mouth intimately, every moist corner and secret crevice, and was merely reacquainting himself with its store of infinite pleasures. His hand threaded deeper into the tangled weave of her hair, tilting her head against his shoulder so that he could brace her against the aggressive plunge of his tongue, filling her so completely with each thrust that she was dizzied by the taste and smell of him. There was a vague thud as he let her camera fall, then his other hand laced with hers, pulling it around his waist, placing it, pressing it there, splaying her fingers over the rippling satin of his back, daring her to explore the bold, restless movement of muscle under skin as his body shifted and rubbed against hers.
Taken off guard by the swiftness of his sensual assault, Elizabeth was ravished by her unexpectedly intense response. It happened so fast that no thought of resistance entered her pleasure-clouded brain; all she could do was flow with the incredible feeling. With a thoroughly uncharacteristic and totally unfounded trust in his masculinity she was sure that she could rely on him to stop before his challenge turned into a full-blooded seduction. After all, they didn’t even like each other...
The sheer expanse of sun-warmed, faintly gritty naked skin clinging and sliding in delicious friction against hers was intoxicating, a slow, erotic massage of her senses. Then there were the frank sounds of enjoyment that he made, both inarticulate and bluntly explicit, with which he encouraged her to abandon her inhibitions.