Far from saving her, the retreat brought her eyes into direct contact with Roman’s dark, deep-set, very angry eyes. Her lashes came down but not before a wave of sheer sexual longing had nailed her to the spot.
‘Then don’t act like one,’ he advised, his manner clipped and impatient. ‘I don’t force myself on women.’
Scarlet shook her head to clear the sensual fog that made it hard for her to think straight. ‘Hell, no, you’re irresistible,’ she husked sarcastically. ‘You don’t have to.’ Well, not with me, he doesn’t.#p#????#e#
The memory of her total surrender was terrifying. One kiss and she’d been his to do anything he wanted with. She had never relinquished control that way in her life and if the memory of it wasn’t enough to terrify her, the fact that she had liked feeling that way, that part of her wanted to recapture the feeling, was!
His jaw tightened another notch in response to her sarcastic jibe. ‘You can’t pretend that you were some sort of unwilling participant.’
Can and will, Scarlet thought, responding to his claim with a provocative shrug of her slender shoulders.
‘That you didn’t want to kiss me as much as I wanted to kiss you,’ he continued between gritted teeth. ‘That neither of us wanted it to stop. You can’t pretend those things and expect me to treat you seriously, can you?’ By the time he had finished the incredulity in his voice had become scorn.
She looked away from his relentless hard stare and gulped. It had been pretty foolish of her to assume that a man who possessed his vast experience of women would not know how she had felt.
‘Like you said, it was stupid.’ It was clearly pointless to keep up the illusion that she hadn’t kissed him back.
A speculative expression slid across his dark features. ‘Possibly…’
She shot him a startled look. ‘What do you mean, “possibly”?’ she demanded suspiciously. ‘There is no way we can go around kissing without it…’ Roman raised a quizzical brow as she stopped, flushing to the roots of her hair with mortification.
‘Not without it leading to other things,’ he finished for her smoothly. ‘I realise that.’
Her chin lifted. ‘It’s not that I couldn’t have stopped.’ The question was when?
‘You just didn’t want to.’ A faint, strangled sound was the only thing that could get past the emotional thickness in Scarlet’s throat. ‘Neither did I,’ he added.
Her eyes widened at his earthy admission.
Their eyes locked. His were filled with a raw hunger that snatched the breath from her lungs. She felt dizzy, and her stomach dipped as though she’d just stepped into a bottomless black hole. The whooshing sound in her ears intensified the sensation of light-headedness.
‘You didn’t…?’ She flushed with mortification to hear the amazed delight in her voice.
It doesn’t take much to please you, does it, Scarlet? A man saying he didn’t want to stop. As if that is such a life-changing occurrence? Of course he hadn’t wanted to stop. Men never did; it was in their nature. They took what was on offer.
Well, I’m not on offer! Once more with a little more conviction, Scarlet.
While she was still thinking he took action and a step that brought him closer, close enough for her to smell the warm male scent that rose from his body. The smile, the dangerous confident smile on his face kick-started her pulse. Now was the time to tell him she wasn’t interested, spell it out once and for all.
She instinctively knew that with Roman saying no would be enough.
She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out to break the silence. His movements were unhurried, deliberate even, but for Scarlet he seemed to move in slow motion. She wasn’t aware that she had been holding her breath until he took her face between his big hands.
Her breath escaped in a series of uneven gasps as his brown fingers moved along the curve of her jaw.
‘You have lovely hair,’ he rasped, releasing the clip that confined her curls on top of her head. Quite deliberately he fanned it out around her face, running his fingers through the silky damp strands.#p#????#e#
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s brown.’
Roman paused in the act of sliding his hands down her back. A baffled expression crossed his handsome face. ‘This is something you need to apologise for?’
‘And it’s too fine. I can’t do anything with it.’
She felt his laughter. ‘Brown and fine suits your face.’
He tilted her head back to inspect the face he referred to. Scarlet was very conscious of his other hand, which was resting very firmly on the curve of her bottom.