'You have time now. . .' came softly, fittingly.
The change from aggressor to seducer was so swift and complete that Sarah was bewildered, and beguiled. She had wondered, hadn't she, what it would be like to be in a man's arms again?
Curiosity warred with caution. He was no longer threatening, he was almost apologetically gentle and the gentleness lulled her into a false sense of security. A kiss was only a kiss, after all. Just one couldn't hurt.
She forced herself to relax as he murmured her name coaxingly and at the first, light, restrained touch of his firm lips her relaxation became genuine. It was strange ... a pleasant, cool caress, demanding nothing, nothing but acquiescence and that was easy.-
She leaned lightly against him and he let go of her shoulders to move his hands delicately over the fabric at her back. His skin against hers was smooth and warm, the fresh tang of chlorine mingling with his male body smell. He nuzzled the corner of her mouth and discovered the tender spot where her lip had split against her teeth, touching it with his tongue and gently sucking away the pearly drop of blood.
'Open your mouth, darling,' he whispered seductively, 'Let me taste you properly.'
Dreamily, without volition, her mouth opened beneath his, her hands sliding up to rest on the silken shoulders under the thin shirt. It was so warm, so enjoyable, so pleasurable that she let herself drift in the backwash of contentment and when the quality of their embrace began to change she was a prisoner of her own response before the danger even registered.
The strong, slender hands touched her neck, moved up to her face, cupping it, positioning it so that he could explore her mouth more freely, deepen the warm, rapid kisses to slow, sensual ones. Her own hands slipped on the tense muscles of his chest, fingers tangling in the dark hair there, clenching as her body clenched with impossible yearnings. She could no longer think, only feel, her senses reawakened to passionate life. And as the ravishing fantasy continued it was no longer curiosity that drove her to arch against the virile hardness but something more compelling, more elemental, that strove for expression.
Without knowing it she murmured his name and as he felt her body strain against his he gave a small grunt of satisfaction, shifting his stance and allowing his hands greater licence. They roved over her body in a journey of discovery, burning through her thin dress, describing slow, erotic circles.
His mouth roamed too, nibbling her tender ear lobes, gently biting the apple-smoothness of her shoulders left bare by her cutaway sleeves, burying itself in the sensitive arch of her throat. She shuddered as his hands slid into the small of her back, pressing hard, and she moaned into his open mouth, losing the final shreds of her reserve, feeling his tongue flickering against hers as though drinking in the sound. She had never known such darkness and heat and sweet, sweet, sensation.
How long they remained like that, fused into a sensual world bounded by each other's arms, Sarah had no idea, for time was out of joint. It was a sharp, alien sound that divided them. A door slamming and nearby voices.
He still held her by the arms, she would have fallen if he had not; but only for a moment. Then he blinked, and the wide, dark pupils narrowed
again like camera shutters and he stepped back, breathing with the same shallow intensity that he had after their race in the pool. The world steadied and righted itself and Sarah was appalled by the damage done. Nothing had changed, yet everything had. Herself especially. She could feel herself shaking like a stupid schoolgirl and stuttered into stupid schoolgirl speech.
'I thought you didn't have any designs on my virtue.' Her voice was a thread of sound but he heard, and his mouth twisted.
'It's not your virtue that tempts me,' he said softly, with wry self-mockery and Sarah felt a renewed surge of heat through her body. God, what was the matter with her? She wasn't a green girl. Had she kept herself under control for too long, ready to fall like a ripe plum into the hands of the first man who kissed her? She closed here eyes in embarrassment and backed away. Even a man whom she found personally objectionable? She looked around for her bag, desperately trying to avoid looking at Max. She couldn't bear to see amusement on his face.
'What shall I tell Julie your reaction was?' he asked as her hand connected with the door handle. For one awful moment she thought he meant the kiss and spun around to regard him with apprehensive stone-grey eyes. 'To Images,' he added helpfully and she flushed.
'I . . . tell her you charmed me into it!' It was a lovely exit line but unfortunately she fumbled it. The door handle seemed to stick and he had to come to her aid. He didn't laugh though, he was quite kind, which to her over-sensitised mind was worse.
CHAPTER SEVEN
If Sarah had harboured any remaining illusions that modelling was an easy, glamorous profession, working on the Images feature would have completely eradicated them.
After a deflatingly brief morning posing in her own clothes for the merciless eye of the camera, Sarah was hustled unceremoniously into a world of discomfort and tedium. She was made-up and made-over, pinned and poked, pushed and pulled, primped and posed. She was stared at, talked about, teased and tested, treated like an empty-headed puppet dancing obediently for anyone who pulled the strings. And of course it was Max Wilde pulling the strings.
There were compensations. The clothes were lovely, she looked lovely in them, and she didn't need Julie crowing over her to tell her that ... it was self-evident. And the experience itself was interesting, if exhausting.
Teresa Grey had been an unexpected bonus. Not the glamorous, intimidating sophisticate that Sarah had dreaded, but a dizzy gamine-faced blonde prone to fits of the giggles, and given to ordering Max about with an easy familiarity that was enviable. She was also a whizz at her job and Sarah watched, fascinated, as the girl rang the changes of make-up and hairstyle, searching for precisely the right look for each Images ensemble—and finding it.
She had been cheerfully disgusted at Sarah's lack of interest in herself.
'You should be ashamed, letting yourself go at your age,' she had scolded on the first day, testing Sarah for colour and skin-type and pointing out all her weaknesses with professional frankness. 'I bet you've even been lazy about using cleansers and moisturisers. Now is the time to take care of your skin, before it's too late, especially if you spend a lot of time in the sun.
'You've got fantastic hair!' Her hair had surprised them all. Not even the colleagues she had worked with for three years had known of her great abundance. 'And great bone structure and you're just letting it all go to waste. Watch me and you'll get the idea. . . it's all a matter of colour and contour and balance.'
Max had been irritated that the project was taking a little longer than he had anticipated, conscious is no doubt of the limited time available to him, and being the most convenient whipping-boy at hand, Sarah often felt the sharp edge of his impatience. He seemed to take little account of the fact that she wasn't a professional model and expected her to anticipate his demands before he made them—then was angry when she didn't. It was very hot in the tiny studio with the lights on and Sarah found her own temper shortening appreciably, but she tried not to let it show. She was intelligent enough to appreciate that they were all working under pressure, the pressure of time and the more subtle one of making a success of what they did, though no one really seemed to believe that Max's idea could fail—not even Sarah.
He was a perfectionist too, which made him all that much more demanding. Sarah spent endless hours hanging around, waiting for some infinitesimal lighting fault to be corrected, or listening to an incomprehensible discussion about angles, or lenses, or shutter speeds. Max revealed a technical and artistic knowledge of photography that Mike Stone, the magazine's talented photographer, was forced to respect, even to the extent of letting the other man override his professional opinion on occasions.
Sarah being an amateur among professionals, wasn't supposed to have opinions. She was just supposed to obey orders without question. And she was frustratedly aware that it amused Max to have her in a situation where she couldn't refuse or obstruct him without seeming childish and churlish; where she had to smile when he told her to, put up with being critically discussed over the top of her head as if she wasn't there, and touched . . . always he was touching her, twisting and turning her, arranging her limbs or the tilt of her head. Usually it was with a remote concentration that belied the odd physical sensations that Sarah experienced at his hands, but sometimes his fingers would linger a fraction too long, or his eyes would gleam with a knowing light as she tensed at his touch, a tacit reminder that he knew she wasn't as indifferent as she affected to be.
It was annoying, after she had expended so much effort in reassuring herself about that kiss. How it didn't matter, how it made no difference. She was convinced that her explosive response to his lovemaking had been quite normal in the circumstances. She had recognised right from the start that he had sex appeal, but her intellectual acknowledgement hadn't prepared her for the potency of the physical reality. She was, after all, a relative innocent in terms of male-female relationships, whereas he was an expert. His sensual technique had been polished with practice ... it wasn't surprising that she should feel overwhelmed by it.
She had been naively curious, but his motives for kissing her that second time had been more obscure. Pique? Reflexive masculinity? Anyway, what did it matter? To ponder his reasons implied that she wanted to know, and she didn't. Far safer to dismiss it as a flash in the pan on both sides. Max was a graduate in the volatile science of body chemistry and it would be extremely unwise for a mere beginner like Sarah to start experimenting with him. At least she knew that she still had normal female reactions, she needn't worry that she had let them wither away through lack of use. And apart from anything else she still didn't like the man, he was too cynical, too hard, too . . . unsettling!