The hall light came on, making her blink as she walked towards the open front door, spilling yellow light on to the dark drive. Connel hadn't waited to be invited in; he was already inside, holding the door open for her. She hesitated on the threshold.
She could say she was very tired, which wasn't true. She had never been so wide awake in her life.
She could say she had a headache, which wasn't true, either.
Or she could simply say that she had to be up very early next day to work and she needed a good night's sleep, which Was certainly true.
But she knew, they would both know, that that was not the real, underlying reason why she didn't want him in her cottage.
'Come in,' Connel said impatiently.
Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly. Surely no fly had ever been so desperate to be consumed? Yet common sense and self-defence wouldn't let her surrender to her own stupid instincts.
Throwing pretence to the winds, she wailed, 'No, I can't, Connel. I won't sleep with you.'
He didn't pretend to be shocked or surprised. Without answering, he picked her up, kicked the front door shut and carried her upstairs.
Zoe's mind was a battlefield. He was doing what she wanted him to do. She was dying to go to bed with him. But it was crazy. She ought to stop him. And how dared he just ignore what she had said? How dared he treat her like a doll without any right to an opinion about what happened to it, what it did?
Angrily she told him, 'If you try to make me sleep with you I'll fight you all the way!'
'I won't make you do anything, Zoe!' His voice was deep and slurred with intensity.
She shivered. 'You're not seducing me, either!'
They were in her bedroom by then. Connel lowered his face against her throat. 'Zoe…Zoe…I want you like hell.'
'You can't have me!' She hoped she sounded strong, determined; she felt weak, yielding, utterly at his mercy. His kiss sent shudders of pleasure through her.
His mouth pushed her low neckline away, burrowed slowly, softly, down into the hollow between her breasts while he walked towards her bed and lowered her on to it, kneeled over her, kicking his shoes off, then his elegant jacket, which flew sideways on to the floor.
She desperately tried to scramble up again, and met his mouth. Demanding, coaxing, passionate, sensual, it blew her brains out.
The fight went out of her; she arched up to him, kissing him back, her hands grabbing his shirt, slipping buttons out of buttonholes, needing to touch his skin, to feel him, discover every inch of that hard, male body.
Connel groaned, 'Yes, oh, yes,' his own hands exploring, pushing her skirt upwards, stroking her bare thighs, her hips. He shrugged out of his shirt a moment later, then her dress was gone; he pulled it over her head and tossed it to the floor.
'My dress…it cost a bomb!' she groaned.
'It was the sexiest dress I've ever seen. I couldn't take my eyes off you all evening,' he muttered, his head moving down her body, kissing her breasts while he unclipped her bra and removed it Kissing her naked midriff, pulling down her lacy panties, he whispered, 'But what was under it is much sexier.'
She caught hold of his head, her hands filled with his black hair, the rough strands tickling her palm. 'You're going too fast!' Her voice was shaky with a muddle of need, uncertainty, panic.
'If I don't have you soon I'll go out of my mind,' he said, kicking his trousers and then his briefs off. Now they were both naked, staring at each other.
It only lasted a second or two, that instant of confrontation, finally seeing each other without disguises or clothes; Zoe looked at his broad shoulders and deep chest, that slim waist, strong hips and what lay between them.
She shut her eyes after one glance, then, burning with desire, fell back against the pillows.
Breathing roughly, his heart audibly beating too fast, Connel came down on top of her, pushing her legs apart, moving between them, his hands caressing her smooth thighs as he lifted her slightly to open her for his entry.
She was shivering, tense; she felt like a virgin. He was the first, in a very real sense. The first man she had ever loved. The first man she had ever wanted so much she was dying for him, had to have him inside her. Suddenly she knew what sex really was—not just some passing pleasure, but a necessity, an emptiness he had to fill, only him, no other man.
She took him into herself with a long moan of satisfaction, completing herself at last. I
t was a miracle the way he fitted so exactly into her. They had been made for each other. After years apart now they finally came together again.
They made love with an urgency that was intolerable; bodies writhing, entwined, moving in hot tension, her arms and legs around him, his body a driving force inside her, thrusting deeper and deeper. Zoe cried out feverishly at the end, not even knowing what she was saying, or doing.