Settling The Score. Sharon Kendrick

body’s reaction to a man who was a complete stranger than by her entrapment.

      She could feel the heat pricking her skin, the insistent peaking of her nipples beneath the gossamer-fine lace of the bra she wore. ‘Are you?’ she asked, more urgently than she had intended. ‘Frightened?’

      He barely heard her. His thoughts were all taken up with the dewy appearance of her skin. He found himself mesmerised by the fine beads of sweat which were beginning to mist the magnolia-pale area beneath her neck. ‘Am I what?’ he asked her distractedly.

      ‘Frightened.’

      He found himself mesmerised by her eyes now. Great big pixie eyes—as rich and dark as the most expensive chocolate. He leaned forward, unable to stop himself, and removed a non-existent speck of dust from her nose. He saw her begin to shiver violently, as though she was unable to control herself, and he was suddenly overwhelmed by a sensation of inevitability which was almost primitive in its intensity.

      The air crackled; the silence was like thunder in their ears.

      ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Fear is just about the last thing on my mind right now.’

      ’D-don’t.’ She stumbled over the word, even though he was no longer touching her, but the grey eyes were suddenly blazing into hers with a fervent silvery fire which thrilled her.

      ‘Don’t what?’ he queried, so neutrally that the question seemed to pose no threat. ‘Don’t marvel at your exquisite beauty—when not to do so would be a crime? Or don’t kiss you—when we both know that’s what you want more than anything else in the world right now?’ His voice deepened to a husky caress. ‘What we both want,’ he finished.

      ‘You—can’t,’ Romy breathed in thrilled disbelief.

      ‘You can’t just come out and say things like that!’

      ‘Oh, I think I can,’ he contradicted her, with a glittering and arrogant confidence which renewed the racing of her heart.

      And then the lights went out.

      Instinct made her leap into his arms, and instinct made him clasp her tightly against his chest. And when instinct had been replaced by reason, and Romy tried to move away from him, he refused to let her go, his mouth irresistibly drawn to the scented silk of her hair.

      ‘My prayers have just been answered,’ he murmured softly against a blonde satin strand.

      Mine, too, thought Romy guiltily.

      ‘It’s all right,’ he murmured soothingly as he felt her heart beat out a loud tattoo which thudded intimately against his own chest. ‘They’ll come looking for us soon. They’re bound to find us.’

      But she didn’t want them to find them; that was the trouble. She had discovered her own little piece of heaven on earth, as far removed from reality and understanding as heaven itself, and oh, nothing could have made Romy stop him from holding her the way he was holding her right then.

      ‘Now, what were we talking about when the lights went out?’ he whispered.

      Afterwards Romy would attempt to justify what had happened next. She would tell herself that it had been her first close encounter with an experienced man who was able to seduce her with just the right mixture of desire and restraint.

      She would also try to convince herself that it had been curiosity. And pre-wedding nerves. She had never kissed another man apart from her fiance and what harm would one kiss do? A brief moment of madness before the lifelong commitment which was marriage was perfectly natural.

      In the strange, private world of the broken-down lift events took on an unreal quality. There in the warm darkness it was all too easy to give in to this elemental desire without any feeling of shame.

      ‘This,’ she whispered back, and raised her face to his.

      Her mouth tasted of toothpaste, and a faint scent of rain-washed meadows clung to her skin and her hair. To Dominic, she tasted and smelt so clean and so pure and so fresh. She was like a long shower at the end of a grimy day’s work in the city. A refreshing drink after being parched for so long.

      Oh, for heaven’s sake, he silently remonstrated with himself. Is it abstinence which is making you so fanciful? Because you haven’t had a woman for over a year? But then he felt her lips parting beneath his, and an overwhelming rush of desire made him give a small, tortured moan as he deepened the kiss.

      Romy had meant only to kiss him, but a need far stronger than her good intentions soon had her threading her fingers luxuriously through his thick dark hair, gasping with a kind of compliant greed as his fingers drifted over the taut, straining mounds of her breasts.

      ‘You shouldn’t!’ she gasped, the words wrung reluctantly from her lips.

      ‘I know, but you’d kill me if I stopped, wouldn’t you?’

      Say no, said some remote section of her mind which was still thinking logically. Go on, say it...say it! ‘Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes, I would kill you!’

      He laughed, but a little unsteadily, as though the strength of her desire had startled him. Her passion seemed so at odds with her blonde, scrubbed innocence. Unless the innocence was a sham, he thought reluctantly...

      He let his mouth slowly drift along the gentle curve of her jaw, anointing her with tiny, feather-light kisses which seemed to incite her even more. Her head fell back helplessly, so that her breasts were offered up to his mouth with a kind of wanton abandon.

      Romy was on fire as he peeled the T-shirt up her torso until her pert breasts in the lacy bra were revealed. She felt the cool rush of air to her heated skin as he freed the front fastening of the bra and impatiently pushed the filmy fabric aside.

      And when he began to suckle her the pleasure was almost as unbearable as the frustration she felt, knowing that she must call a halt to this madness.

      In a minute, she promised herself. I’ll stop him in a minute.

      But he pulled her roughly against him and she felt her body writhing against the hard pressure of his. Frantically, their mouths collided, their kisses fiery and passionate as they both fruitlessly attempted to derive the ultimate satisfaction from kissing alone.

      If there had been enough room to turn her over onto her back and take her right there and then, then Dominic suspected that he would have done. As it was, he knew that he must be the one to call a halt to things. And quickly.

      He drew a long, shuddering breath. ‘If we don’t stop,’ he warned her huskily, ‘you know what’s going to happen?’

      The sound of his voice should have brought Romy back to her senses, but it did no such thing. She felt as though she had wandered unawares into an enchanted place, which she had no desire to leave.