'How clever you are at evasion.'
'Almost as clever as you,' he agreed smoothly, and Sarah felt a small spurt of rebelliousness.
'Are you secretly insecure?' she taunted. 'Is that why you never let your women get too close to you?'
Black brows rose. 'We haven't established yet whether you are one of "my women".'
Sarah glared at him and his mouth twitched temptingly.
'It is commonly known that you like to flirt. That your attitude to your ... to female companionship is easy come, easy go,' she said, and felt ridiculous as he clicked his tongue.
'Sarah, Sarah,' he said, with mock-disappointment. 'You've been reading the newspapers again. Who are you going to believe, them or your own instincts?'
'Both, they both tell me the same thing!'
The hazel eyes gleamed with pleasure and laughter as he leaned forward in a confiding manner and Sarah instinctively leaned forward also.
'Do you know what the dictionary definition of "flirt" is?' His face was disconcertingly close and as she watched the words form on his lips she was swamped by a sudden surge of desire. She wanted to pull his head even closer, run her fingers through that silky black hair, feel the movements of that mobile mouth against hers. The feeling was so intense that she had difficulty controlling it, and grasped her hands tightly in her lap to prevent them betraying her by reaching out for him.
' "To pretend to make love",' he quoted softly, insinuatingly. 'I don't qualify, Sarah. I don't pretend.'
'You told me you didn't use the word "love",' said Sarah, her voice husky, eyes fixed on his face, inextricably caught in a web partly of her own making.
'I'm not talking about emotion. As the description of a physical act the word is very apt. When I go to bed with a woman we don't just "have sex", we engage in a mutual ravishment of the senses. Purely physical gratification doesn't require a partner—but to make love . . .'
Sarah felt her skin bloom with colour and struggled to overcome what seemed to be an acute lack of oxygen. Her breasts rose and fell quickly as she began to breathe rapidly to make up the deficiency. She could not have felt more flustered if he had suited his actions to his words.
'Does that frighten you?' He seemed to be flattered by the idea, so that she would have liked to deny it, but she didn't.
'Yes.' It was like being on a high board, wanting to feel the exhilaration of the dive, and aware that fear played a part in that exhilaration.
'But it excites you, too,' he read her perfectly. 'As you excite me.' He moved in for the kill, catching the hand that came up as though to fend him off. 'But it's more than purely physical, Sarah. I like your mind, I admire your independence ... I understand it, we're two of a kind in that respect.'
In the midst of the toils of desire, Sarah denied that. 'I want to be free because I know what it's like to be a prisoner. You want me to be free because it absolves you from any kind of responsibility, because an independent woman won't clutter you up with emotional demands.'
'Isn't that the pot calling the kettle black?' Max said drily, the banked fires still visible in his guarded eyes. She was aware that he was stepping delicately and she couldn't blame him. It had been a stupid thing to say, because she was going into this thing with eyes wide open, as selfishly as he was. She too was scared of emotional clutter. Desire without responsibility, that was what she wanted.
'Don't you want us to meet as equals?' he asked, and suddenly she found her answer, looking at her hand enveloped in his.
'No.' His face altered, though he masked his uncertainty well, and Sarah smiled, putting all the feeling she could into the lazy invitation in her darkening eyes. 'I don't want to be an equal partner—' she paused, deliberately heightening the tension between them—'I want to be seduced, I've never been seduced before. What's it like?'
There was an incredulous silence. Then he laughed abruptly, with as much frustration as humour. 'Just when I think I'm beginning to work you out—! My God, that's another first. . . I've never been asked to seduce a woman before, at least not in words. I begin to wonder who is seducing whom.' He gave her a long, slow look—her eyes, her mouth, her bare shoulders, the golden promise of her breasts. 'But I accept the invitation, of course, how could I re
fuse without ruining my reputation?' Now both of his hands held her submissive one. 'You're so elusive that even the colour of your eyes shifts. They're dark, almost purple at the moment. What colour will they be when you're aroused, I wonder? Or are you aroused already?' The last word slurred to almost a whisper and one hand slid to her wrist. Her pulse beat hard and fast against his thumb and she could feel a slight ridge of hardened flesh on his palm. Another scar? Soon she would feel it on the soft skin of her body and she went weak with imagining it.
With slow deliberation he brought her hand up to his mouth, palm upwards and bit gently, voluptuously into the soft base of her thumb. It was a statement of sexual power and Sarah's eyes" half closed as she felt a deep, molten flowering inside her, her body softening in a way that made the man across from her catch his breath.
She was hardly aware of leaving the restaurant, or of the journey home. Only of Max beside her, controlling the powerful car with ease, glancing sideways every now and then with barely concealed impatience.
He followed her up the darkened stairwell to the studio where she had left a single, soft orange lamp burning. She kicked off her shoes and floated over the polished wood floor towards the light, like a moth drawn inexorably towards the flame.
CHAPTER NINE
The dark volume of the night pressed against the wide expanse of uncurtained window; cloud hung like smoke across the thin, pale face of the moon. There was no wind, not a sound but the chorus of crickets outside in the darkness, no witness but the large, soft moths beating their wings against the glass, drawn like Sarah to the spell of the light.
She was trembling. Here in familiar surroundings what had seemed so inevitable now seemed less certain.
She heard a soft footfall, felt hands descend lightly on to her shoulders.