He knew. Damn it, he knew what he was doing to her. It was there in that infuriatingly sensual smile.
'Jack, that's enough-'
'What about here...?'
'Jack!' His hand caressed the sole of her foot once more and slid abruptly up the underside of her stockinged calf, cupping the rounded flesh briefly before stroking up to the back of her knee. Her legs automatically bent to escape the sizzling contact, her narrow skirt riding dangerously up her thighs, her imprisoned feet twisting more deeply into his lap as she tried to jerk them free.
She stilled, a wild warmth flushing her body as she registered the hardness nestling against her heels that was not his thigh. Her toes curled involuntarily, scrunching the dark fabric covering his inner thigh as she realised that he was not the cool, controlled tormentor of her frightened imagination, that he w
as as aroused by the game she had instigated as she had been...perhaps more so.
Suddenly her misplaced confidence came rushing back. If she was trapped then so was he—far more obviously so. Why, he was practically seducing himself. This was going to be like taking candy from a baby!
She stopped trying to wrest herself away from his hold and tilted her head back, her lips parting, an expression of unconscious and very feminine cunning crossing her face, making her look as sultry as the archetypal vamp she had been attempting to emulate.
Warily Jack removed his hands from her legs, not taking his eyes off hers, watching the violet gaze become dark and heavy-lidded. Instead of taking advantage of her freedom Elizabeth flexed her feet experimentally. The breath came hissing through his teeth.
'Eliza-Beth.'
Now it was his turn to admonish in a slow drawl that hinted of darker passions. She pouted, her small pink mouth an erotic counterpoint to the huge purple eyes.
'Yes, Jack?' she enquired innocently. She moved her feet again and a low rumble vibrated in his chest and his hands clenched into fists on his thighs.
'What are you doing?'
'Waiting for you to finish my foot massage.'
‘I thought you'd cried "enough".'
He sounded wry, but his expression was anything but. Even with his tan she could see the dark blood that had risen in his face, the faint flare to his nostrils with each rapid inhalation.
‘It's a woman's prerogative to change her mind.' She relaxed her arms and leaned back against the arm of the couch again, in an attitude of conscious abandon. Having spent years successfully repressing her powerful sexual urges, Elizabeth was finding the freedom of provocative man-woman banter a headily addictive experience.
'Do you really want me to continue what I was doing?'
He might have relinquished control of his body but he was some way from losing his head. Elizabeth needed his thoughts as clouded as her own had been a few moments ago.
'Don’t you want to?' she asked, her normally husky voice made even deeper by her tense throat.
‘I think it's very evident what I want.' He glanced down at her feet in his lap with a twisted smile. 'But I'm not a foot-fetishist—to get it I'd need to be lying between your thighs rather than your heels... unless of course you're a particularly gymnastic lover...'
'Jack!' Just when she settled into her vamping role, he shocked her back into prudery.
'Well, darling, you did ask...' And to her further shock he grasped her ankles suddenly, lifting them from his lap and parting them far enough to make a space for himself as he turned in one lightning-swift motion to brace himself over her. He lay, his hips aligned with the hem of her skirt, which was pulled taut between her sprawled legs, his powerful arms caging her as he laughed into her flushed face.
'What's the matter, chérie'? Bitten off more than you can chew?'
‘I'd certainly like to bite you,' she burst out, temper mingling with a riot of desire.
His eyelids dropped. 'Mmm, exciting... you did that once before and I found it quite violently erotic. This time, though, I want you to take my clothes off first...'
Elizabeth's eyes widened, appalled and fascinated by the feverishly escalating indecency of the conversation. Not even in her most shamefully abandoned moments with Ryan had she invited such an explicit ravishment of words... but then Ryan had always been intent on controlling her fervour, rather than feeding it. He had never openly praised her body, preferring more cerebral compliments, and he had been a silent, serious lover. He had never confused her by blowing constantly hot and cold, always maintaining an elegant evenness of temperament that Elizabeth had adoringly tried to pattern herself on.
Ryan had been an intellectual whereas Jack was very much a decisive man of action, a fighter and a gambler, definitely not the kind of man that Elizabeth would normally contemplate any kind of relationship with, no matter how attractive. But the situation was most emphatically not normal, and although she could not afford to become involved with him it was necessary that he think she might. For a while at least she must give in to the forbidden allure of a dangerous liaison. And anyway, a little voice murmured in the wicked depths of her brain, after this abortive holiday was over she would never see him again. Whatever happened between them, no one but the two of them would ever know...
Elizabeth's breathing shortened in the knowledge of what she was thinking, her limbs felt heavy suddenly ... languid and weakly passive. Her hands, which had been clutched nervously to her breast, slid limply to her sides, palms opening beside her almost bare shoulders. She waited, curious, to see what he would dare do next...
'Do you know what the first rule of the game is, according to Ovid?'