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So he hadn't gone to the nearest village for supplies, she thought drearily. The fridge was fully stocked. And he must have spent some time here, she thought, pouring a glass of water and sipping it reflectively. The store cupboards, too, were well stocked with tinned and dried food and she knew he had a few changes of clothing in the drawers upstairs. And it couldn't have been his intention to bring her here and dump her goodness knew how many miles from another human being, no means of transport and no phone!
But worse than that uncomfortable thought—so very much worse—was the tight ache inside her chest that came from missing him! And that knocked her former theory that her pride wouldn't allow her to go on loving him right on the head, didn't it just!
At the sound of a car drawing into the clearing she went weak with relief. He was back! She fled over the room and out through the door, her heart racing. No need to wonder why she suddenly felt so light-hearted, she thought drily, why the relief that he had not, as she had begun to fear, been taken ill in the night and had driven away, looking for medical assistance, was almost intoxicating. She still loved the swine. Her foolish heart refused to listen to the wisdom of her head.
She stood watching him as he got out of the car, his movements relaxed and smooth, and she pushed her hair back out of her eyes. Her hand was shaking. And something of what she was feeling must have got through to him because he walked slowly towards her, stopping, towering right over her, and he said lightly, his mouth curling upwards just a little, 'Missed me?'
Totally unable to deny what she was sure any fool could read on her face, she said thickly, 'Where were you?' and suddenly felt claustrophobic, as if the tall trees were moving nearer, crowding her, smothering her. But it had nothing to do with the forest. He was doing the crowding. He hadn't moved, he hadn't needed to, his very presence was suffocating her.
And there was more than a smile in his eyes right now.
The narrowed grey slits were knowing as they rested for a lingering moment on her wide, shocked green eyes then drifted slowly down, assessing the suddenly soft trembling vulnerability of her parted lips, and down again to the revealing peaks of her breasts as they pushed in aching invitation against the fine cotton of her blouse.
And there wasn't even a hint of a query now as he moved a pace nearer and repeated, a shocking glint of something triumphant, alive and deep in his eyes, 'You missed me.'
She picked up the danger and desperately tried to negate it, shaking her head, her denial too vehement as her pulses suddenly changed gear, racing.
'You're crazy! I thought you'd dumped me. Wondered how far I'd have to walk, dragging a heavy suitcase, before I got back to civilisation—that's all.' Her eyes met his defiantly, impressing the lie, but she saw the soft insolence of his smile and shuddered.
He didn't believe a single word, and the angry reaction to the way she had actually worried about the brute had her snapping out, 'Where the hell were you, anyway?'
'Finding a phone and arranging for one of my secretaries to present herself on your former boss's doorstep to deal with your unfinished professional business.' He laid slight stress on the 'professional' but his shrug was minimal as he moved in, stating, 'It's not important.'
And what was? she wondered chaotically, as those narrowed, steely eyes undressed her, absorbing the fine tremors that invaded her skin. That she had missed him, worried about him? Did he get his kicks out of making her emotions go into a I state of aching confusion? Turning her into a gibbering wreck while he stayed so calm, so coolly aloof?
But there was nothing aloof about the slow burn she glimpsed behind his eyes, nothing aloof about the way he br
ought his hand up, the tanned skin of his long, hard fingers brushing against the peachy softness of her cheek, lingering for one tantalising moment against the fullness of her lips, making them part, revealing her trembling vulnerability.
Oh, nothing aloof at all.
Beth shuddered, watching her control slide out of existence with a strange detachment. He only had to touch her…
Touch her. The warm pads of his fingers were resting now on the tiny pulse that was beating so frantically at the base of her throat and he said thickly, 'You are so beautiful.'
He had never said that to her before and, for a brief space of time, for a few glorious, heady moments, she believed him. Could believe nothing else as his mouth took hers, his strong, inescapable arms drawing her so close to the hard length of his body that they seemed to be fused together, divided only by the thin superfluity of clothing, paradoxically made whole by the very separateness of their sex.
And her senses went haywire as his hands shaped her body, making it blossom beneath the sliding sensuality of his touch.
Greedily, lost in the wanton responsiveness only he could call forth, her body moved against his, soft breasts crushed against the heated masculinity of his chest, hips pressing urgently on to his, the obvious strength of his arousal making her mindless, boneless, utterly receptive. And her head was spinning, her brain functions on hold, as he swept her up into his arms and carried her back to the cottage, his long stride purposeful. And her head fell back against the taut breadth of his shoulder, her lazy eyes sweeping languorously to his profile, and her heart almost exploded with rapacious sensation as the glint of resolve in those j predatory, narrowed eyes, the dull flush of naked desire that brushed the taut skin across his angular cheekbones, the sensual curve of that hard, bold mouth told a story that was as old as time…
CHAPTER SEVEN
In a daze of receptive sensuality, Beth felt as if she were being wafted upstairs on the wings of a dream. In reality, Charles's arms were holding her close, his dark head dipped as his mouth curved erotically over the exposed skin of her long white throat, the delicate angle of her jaw, the sensitive hollow just below her ear. And that was so much better, infinitely more satisfying than any dream.
And a drugging mist of fantasy kept her pinned to the bed, her body so boneless that she felt as if she were drowning in honey, and languorously she became plastic beneath the sureness of his hands, her breath swelling within her as he slowly unbuttoned the green cotton blouse, pulling it away from the gleaming slenderness of her shoulders as if it were a thing of no substance, dissolving in the heated, narcotic sexual tension that throbbed and sighed in the air.
A tension that inexorably began to tighten. She could feel the build-up, the spiralling heat so deep inside her, felt it and caught the echo of it coming from him, calling her, binding her. And as the last of her clothing disappeared beneath the wicked magic of his hands, he straightened, the heat of desire marking the high slash of his cheekbones, the brooding intensity of his eyes holding hers captive as his hands went to the buckle of his belt.
And he said thickly, 'You want me. That has to prove something.'
And something sharp, very painful, exploded darkly in her brain. It killed the wanting, the overpowering need, made all that magic turn to dust, translating into a raw sob as she twisted round on the bed, burrowing beneath the covers as if she could hide from the hateful, shameful knowledge that he had deliberately set out to prove just how easily she could be turned on—by any passable man who happened along, regardless of emotion. That she didn't care who that man was, that even the man she had repeatedly asked for a divorce could make her delirious, begging for sexual release!
'Just go away—leave me alone!' she howled, self-disgust and the icy knowledge that she was just part of a vile experiment, part of his plan to discredit her, making her voice a disjointed, anguished sound beneath the smothering duvet.
Merciless hands dragged the unlikely shield away from her body, his voice no less unyielding as he told her rawly, 'Never. And you'd better believe that.'
And then he was on the bed beside her, one long, hard-muscled, hair-roughened leg across her, pinning her down, and she raised her white-knuckled fists to beat him off, her blood pounding in burning outrage, but one of his hands, quite slowly and oh, so effortlessly, pulled those totally ineffective little fists above her head and his voice was silky as he told her, 'Don't make me fight you for what we both know we want.'
