Surgeon Of The Heart. Sharon Kendrick

as she felt his tongue trail a path to one hardened rosy nub of nipple.

      Head flung back, totally uninhibited, she heard herself gasp, ‘Take it off,’ in a kind of frenzied whisper.

      The wisp of bra floated its way to the floor, and he cupped each breast in almost reverential fashion, bending his head slowly to kiss each one in turn.

      Driven by instinct, and a power as old as time itself, she found herself unbuttoning the fine linen of his shirt, until his chest too was bare, and she heard him give a groan of sheer delight as she kissed him there. He pulled her to him fiercely then, and she knew a sensation of both wonderment and gratification as, for the first time ever, she felt bare skin touching bare skin in the act of love.

      She was aware of his shrugging off his jacket, of his other clothes being flung off his body, straight on to the floor.

      That beautiful suit, she thought with lazy amusement, and then she was in his arms again, and he was laying her on the bed, pulling her dress off completely, then the filmy half-slip, and finally he hooked his fingers into the tiny lace panties and slid them off her, leaving her naked before his eyes.

      He lay above her, just watching her, a mixture of awe and desire and something else on his face, something she couldn’t recognise. He lifted a hand and touched her face quite gently. ‘Are you sure you want this, my Cat? Quite sure, mia cara?’

      She gave him an enchanting smile, loving him all the more because he would have stopped. Some primitive instinct told her that with absolute clarity. Yes, he wanted her very badly, she could see that, but one word and he would have stopped. One word. She put her hand up to trace the outline of his lips, and he imprisoned it there, kissing the palm with breathtaking homage. He was waiting for her answer. One word.

      ‘Yes,’ she told him. She scarcely recognised the voice as her own; it sounded almost slurred with the blood-stirring response he was eliciting from her.

      He moved over her then, to shower her with kisses, light, butterfly kisses at first, gradually becoming deeper and more insistent.

      She had never seen anything so beautiful as the physical perfection of this naked man. Each limb brown and strong, all muscle and sinew. But there was softness behind the steely strength. Tenderness, too, in the way he spoke her name, over and over again. She kissed him back, with a fervour and a passion that matched his. She was flying, like a bird newly out of the nest. The wings she had never used before were unexpectedly simple to use. She matched each stroke, each caress, each seeking gesture with movements of her own. She had never been to bed with a man before, but she felt no fear, no hesitation, no embarrassment. It was as though the instinctive way she responded to him was being guided by some force stronger than she, stronger indeed than both of them. She knew a moment of sheer pleasure as she saw his face just before he moved in to possess her utterly. A primitive joy at the sensation of his fullness, dominating her completely, before the sharp and totally unexpected spasm of pain. She had forgotten, she had actually forgotten that it might hurt. She heard him exclaim, saw his face. . .not pleasure there now, puzzlement, yes, and—surely not?—anger. His movements became fierce and strong, tinged with a kind of desperation. He moved one last time with a sudden ferocity, and then she heard him groan, before withdrawing completely, and falling on to the bed beside her.

      There was a brief silence, if you could count it as silence, when the raggedness of his breathing seemed almost to deafen her. She turned to him miserably, knowing that it should not have ended like this, feeling his mental as well as physical withdrawal, knowing, just from the forbidding set of his newly tense shoulders that he was very angry, but not knowing why.

      When he turned over to look at her she almost recoiled from the pure fury that lit the dark eyes with a angry glow.

      ‘Dio!’ he swore. ‘You little idiot—how could you? How could you?’

      She felt suddenly cold. ‘How could I what? Nico—what is it? What have I done?’

      He moved as far away from her as he could, as though he could taint himself by mere proximity. He sat up, the rumpled sheet at his waist, still breathing heavily. ‘What a waste!’ he exploded. ‘Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me that you were a virgin?’

      Why? Why indeed? If she told him the reason she would be able to add scorn to the contempt on his face. Tell him that she had never felt anything like that in her life before? That she had felt lifted almost on to a higher plane? That their lovemaking had had, for her, a spiritual quality that had ruled her response to him? Tell him that she had foolishly mistaken lust for love? ‘Was it—I mean, did you not. . .enjoy it?’

      He swore violently under his breath; the words were foreign to her, but their meaning plain enough.

      ‘Enjoy it?’ he asked scornfully. ‘How could I enjoy it, knowing that?’ he spat out, then, seeing her look of puzzlement, he relented. ‘Oh, I achieved—satisfaction.’ His mouth curled in distaste as he spoke the word. ‘I should have stopped. . . I would have stopped, but——’

      ‘But?’

      ‘It was too late by then,’ he said bitterly. ‘Nothing could have stopped me.’

      She knew one last surge of triumph, that the tide had been strong enough to sweep him, too, out of control, and then she sat up, hugging a sheet around her nakedness, willing herself to stem the tears, for now at least. ‘Well, at least you can be sure of not catching any disease—as you were the first!’ she cried.

      She saw him glance at her quickly, as if recognising the vulnerability behind the attempt at bravado.

      ‘It shouldn’t be like that, you know,’ he said, quite softly. ‘Your first time. It should be special.’

      It was special, she wanted to scream at him. For me, anyway! But she turned her head away.

      ‘I would have been more. . .less. . .more gentle. . .’ His words tailed off into an embarrassed silence.

      And all at once she knew that she could not tolerate one second more of this humiliating post-mortem. With a shuddering sense of realisation she remembered that she was in a strange country and a strange house, with a man who was now as far away from her as a complete stranger, ever though he lay just feet away, even though he knew her body intimately. A vestige of the Ice-Queen returned as her pride’s saviour.

      ‘I’d like you to take me back now, please.’

      To her shame, he didn’t even try to argue. He merely nodded and stood up, and she closed her eyes to blot out the sight of the body. She still, even now, longed for him to take her in his arms again, to make everything all right, as sweetly perfect as before. . .

      They dressed in silence. This time round she noticed the car; she made herself obsessively observe details. The smell of fine leather, the dazzling array of instruments. Anything that would keep her tortured thoughts away from the subject of the man who had so summarily thrust her away from him.

      ‘Where are you staying?’ he asked at last.

      Some last scrap of self-preservation made her lie to him. She mentioned the name of a hotel she had noticed in the adjoining street to her own hotel. The drive there seemed to take forever, and when he stopped the car he turned to her, his troubled eyes betraying that he wasn’t feeling as calm as his exterior suggested.

      ‘Catriona. . .’ he began.

      So she was Catriona now. Not Cat. His Cat. The use of her proper name became the final straw, and she wrenched the door open. ‘Thanks for the memory!’ she said on a sob, before running away down the road, as if demons were on her heel, away, far away, where he could never find her.

CHAPTER TWO

      ‘ARE you all right, Cat?’

      Cat turned from the mirror, where she had been adjusting her green theatre gown, her lacklustre eyes regarding Josey Betts, her