CHAPTER SEVEN
THREE days later, showered, hair pulled into a simple ponytail, and wearing a plain white sleeveless sundress, Shaan was sitting at the dining table nibbling at the last slice of toast while she waited for Rafe to shower and get dressed himself.
Breakfast, Rafe called it. Sustenance more like, she thought, and grimaced as she swallowed. Making love gave you an appetite—She felt her cheeks grow hot as she sat there hardly able to believe the person she had become.
Or been turned into, she corrected that thought bemusedly. They had hardly moved out of these rooms for the last three days and nights. The man, she had discovered, was virtually insatiable—and if anyone had told her that a shy, almost reticent young-for-her-age twenty-two-year-old could become a slave to her own body pleasures so quickly, she would have scoffed them out of the room!
‘Now look at yourself,’ she murmured, and had to stand up as that now familiar restlessness began attacking her insides again.
You can still feel him deep inside you, she admitted shamefully, going to gaze sightlessly out across the glittering waters towards the Kowloon skyline.
And it feels wonderful. Warm and heady. Your breasts are still alive with the pleasure of his touch, the nipples pulsing a delicate plea for his mouth to close around them.
In fact, if he came in here right now and said, ‘Let’s do it again’, you’d be ripping your clothes off!
And Piers? she thought suddenly. What has happened to your feelings for Piers within all this new self-awareness?
Gone, she realised with a shock that filled her with a new sense of horror. She could barely manage to conjure up Piers’ face now, never mind that deep well of love she’d used to experience every time she thought of him.
So, what did that make her? she then wondered bleakly. Fickle?
Or just a very vulnerable woman on the rebound from a broken heart and desperately grasping at the first bit of feeling somebody tossed her way?
It was not a question. She refused to make it a question because if she did she would have to answer it. And she didn’t think she would like the answer any better than the thought.
Because she had an uncomfortable suspicion that ‘fickle’ would win over ‘rebound’.
And that love was something she really knew nothing about. Because if she had to describe the emotion then she would have to now call it—Rafe.
As if on cue, his hands slid around her slender waist and closed across the flat of her stomach. ‘What have you seen that’s so fascinating out there?’ he enquired lazily.
She blinked herself quickly back into focus. ‘A sampan—look.’ She pointed with a finger towards the boat making its slow way through the water. ‘For the first time I feel as if I’m near China.’
‘It’s a junk,’ he corrected humorously. ‘And Hong Kong belongs to China now, in case you’ve missed the world news for the last five years while Britain wrangled with them over their takeover.’
‘That’s right.’ She sighed censoriously, lifting her mood to match his. ‘Make me feel like a thick-headed bimbo. I am only a very poorly paid junior secretary, you know,’ she said teasingly as she turned in his arms to face him. ‘I don’t have your—Oh,’ she finished on a small surprised gasp.
‘What?’ He was smiling, puzzled—so different from the man who had walked out of this room a mere fifteen minutes ago that he rendered her breathless.
He had showered, shaved and smelled deliciously of something spicy. His hair was still damp and combed right back from his face. And he had swapped his bathrobe for a pair of lightweight linen trousers and a white collarless shirt that was both casual and classy, and did things to her metabolism that she was beginning to recognise with dread.
‘You look—nice,’ she murmured shyly.
‘So do you,’ he returned. ‘Nice enough to eat—only, I think we’ve both eaten enough of that particular dish for a while at least,’ he added wryly.
She blushed at his meaning. He bent down and kissed her. It felt different, this kiss. Warm and slow and tender. More like the kiss they had shared the other night on the dance floor. And her hands reached up, just as they had done then, found his head and held it there to prolong the pleasure. His hands were clasped at the base of her spine now, gently urging her closer, and the world faded away on a beautiful moment she knew she would treasure for ever.
He broke it—reluctantly—his mouth returning almost immediately to touch hers again in a strangely poignant gesture. And his eyes when she dared to look into them were darkened by a mood she couldn’t quite define.
‘You’re—special,’ he said gruffly. ‘Do you know that?’
So are you, she wanted to say, but didn’t have the courage. So instead she reached up to return the small touch of lips and was blushing shyly as she drew away again.
The rest of the day went like that—soft, easy, almost romantically perfect—as Rafe took her out to show her Hong Kong, and seemed quite content to play tourist with her, enjoying her fascination with all the new sights, sounds and smells.
They ended up on the Kowloon side via the Star Ferry, which looked so old she worried it might sink halfway across but in actual fact sped them over the water with an exhilarating efficiency.
They ate an early dinner in a small Chinese restaurant in a backstreet Rafe knew about that looked rather dubious to her but served the best Chinese food she had ever tasted. Afterwards he decided to show her the Temple Street night market.