The Insiders

will it make? It's going to happen if we marry; it's something we're both going to have to accept and enjoy. I don't expect that from you yet, but at least you can find out for yourself if you can stand me or not. If you can't— if my touch turns you off—I'll take you back home, and I promise I won't bother you again. As it is, you can still back out at any stage of the game. I won't try to rape you, Eve. And you're the only woman I've ever taken into my bedroom. I do my playing in the—other room."

She thought he added the last deliberately, bringing the memory of what had happened the last time she'd been in his house out into the open between them— another specter from the past that needed exorcising?

Afterward, Eve didn't know why she hadn't turned to run or why she stood there while he came from behind the bar and took her hand in his. Afterward was already too late, because she had let him take her with him, and they were climbing a beautifully curving staircase, passing through rooms she didn't remember seeing before.

The door to his room stood closed, somehow forbidding—a massive and aged-looking carved door that seemed embedded in the rough-textured wall. There was no knob or conventional handle on it—Brant pressed a button somewhere in the carving, and it swung open like the entrance to some robber baron's cave or secret passage. Catching her look, he smiled.

"Relax. There is a handle on the inside. Turn it, and the door will open right away. No magic to it, just electronics."

Inside the room, Eve was surprised all over again at its starkness. She hadn't been in a condition to notice very much the last time she'd been inside here, but now she looked around curiously and saw sparse, austere-looking antique Spanish furniture, heavy and dark. The lack of anything that was in any way fussy or elaborate. It was a functional room; there was nothing in it to show what kind of person he was.

It was also an enormous room by any standards, but when he pressed the switch on the wall that made the drapes move apart, Eve caught her breath. There was an effect of a whole wall opening suddenly to let in a new dimension of height and breadth. There was the sky and the rooftops and treetops and even, somewhere in the distance, the blue curve of the bay.

Eve couldn't help being entranced. "Oh—but it's beautiful!" she said, being completely natural for the first time. Brant turned the music on, and she turned, surprised again.

"I love that, too. Handel?" " 'Water Music.' It seemed to fit" "You surprise me. I didn't expect—" "You didn't expect I'd like Handel? Who knows, Eve Mason, I could surprise you some more if you'll let me. Want another drink?"

She shook her head, turning back to the window wall and the amazing view; standing there still undecided, poised for flight, maybe—not yet knowing what she would do in the end, how she would react to whatever he might do next. Nervously, with the toe of her shoe, she tested the softly opulent pile of the carpeting. Persian, all dark reds and night-blues—somber colors that matched the rest of the room. She had noticed that there was a fireplace in here, too, in the wall to the side of the bed. And no mirrors. No mirrors anywhere at all, not even over the large triple dresser.

Eve felt, rather than saw, him come up behind her, and fought down the impulse to shiver. She didn't want to turn around—but she did, making herself do it, her chin tilted defiantly. Her thoughts echoed her words earlier. Now what?

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

BRANT COULD TELL, from her determined stance at the window and her almost studied avoidance of his eyes, that she was still afraid—probably already regretting having come up here with him. Impatience rose in him, the urge to tear down her defenses in order to penetrate to whatever lay beneath that defiant surface manner of hers. She was wearing a brown-and-beige silk dress that suited her coloring—high-necked and long-sleeved. And suddenly, something in the set of her shoulders under the thin silk reminded him of Francie, of all people. Perhaps because Francie had sometimes shown the same defiant attitude. But in Francie you knew it was scheming and calculated with an eye to effect, while with Eve it was real—maybe more defensive than defiant after all, as if she were telling him hands off, she wouldn't let him hurt her or have her.

He walked up to her, standing behind her, and after a moment, when he could hear the catch of her breath, she turned quickly to face him. He caught her shoulders and looked down into her face, unsmiling. Her eyes mirrored fear, and something else, too—a kind of despair, maybe, or hopelessness. And suddenly he felt a stab of contempt for David Zimmer, the man she was regretting. Her lost lover, who was probably the main reason she was here now, with him.

They stared silently at each other, adversaries about to do battle. And Brant began to wonder at himself. What had made him go after her and offer her marriage, anyhow? What was he doing here with this particular woman? Lust was such a casual thing. It had always been so for him. You saw; you wanted; you took. And after that—it was finished. Hurt feelings could always be paid off. What was the difference with Eve?

Suddenly, not desiring to think any further, needing for a change not cerebral but physical reactions instead, Brant bent his head and kissed her half-open mouth, cutting off whatever it was she had wanted to say—at first harshly, feeling her tense up, and then, recalling himself, very gently and almost exploratively.

Her body, so rigid and unyielding at first, began very gradually to relax against his. Now she was giving her mouth to him, at least, and he became conscious of her high, rounded breasts pressed against him; aware of her firm, smooth thighs lying against his, slightly parted as she stood braced against him. And between those thighs —he knew what lay between them, had looked, had touched, had tasted. He'd meant that much, at least, when he'd told her that night how beautiful she was down there. And then, soon afterward, the others had come bursting in and he'd called for a camera, for them all to see the prize that for a moment had been his alone by right of capture.

He brought his mind back to the present. Well, this time, at least, there were just the two of them, and he wouldn't think dark thoughts. He could smell her hair again, faintly perfumed, and he suddenly put his hands in it, feeling again its particularly soft and silky quality. It was a new experience for him to be consciously and carefully gentle, to take the time to kiss and hold a woman he wanted to fuck. Normally, he wouldn't have wasted time on preliminaries—the women he'd had, had known what they were there for, so why bother? But now, remembering the time he had promised her, conscious of the newness of this particular experience, he stood there and did nothing but kiss her, his hands still in her hair, until he felt her begin to kiss him back—her body leaning into his, instead of away.

"All right, let's do this properly," he said in her ear a little later.

He carried her over to the big bed that waited, and she lay there with her face averted and her eyes closed while he undressed her, still trying to be gentle with her.

Eve's body was the color of old ivory, its feel just as smooth, almost polished. His lips grazed her breasts, finding a path between them, tracing their outline and their peaks until he could feel her sudden trembling. He touched them, letting his fingers resume the exploration he had begun, while his mouth moved lower, finding the indentation of her navel, traveling lower and feeling her body move, responding in spite of herself. But when he would have kissed her between her legs, she shuddered and closed them together, pleading with him breathlessly.

"No... no, not that... not yet..."

So she remembered, too? Understanding her reasons and wanting her response again, he let his mouth move upward to her breasts, feeling the hardness of her nipples, her quickened breathing.

Not wanting to wait any longer, impatient now, he covered her body with his, nudging her thighs apart with his knees.

He tried to make himself gentle, but it was not possible for either of them to forget the last time and the way it had been when he'd raped her bruised, unwilling body, although this time her hands were not held over her head but rested complaisantly on his shoulders.

Eve had turned her head away from him, her face profiled against the pillow, teeth caught in her lower lip. She was doing this to forget David, to put him out of her mind, but her mind was betraying her, bringing back the memory of the last time David had made love to her—the way her body had arched willingly, eagerly up to meet his while she had clung to him fiercely, never wanting to let go. She knew with a feeling of despair that she couldn't respond to Brant the way he wanted her to respond, the way she wanted to respond. His body was too insistent, forcing movement from her, a purely physical reaction that she couldn't feel with her mind.

Why had she suddenly begun to hold back? Brant had had enough women in his life to recognize, in spite of the automatic movements of her body that matched themselves to the rhythm of his, that she wasn't going to make it. Not for a long, long time yet, and he felt suddenly savage and selfish, wondering what was going on behind those closed eyes of hers. Well, he wasn't going to wait for her—goddam all that garbage about self-control, about hanging fire, holding back until the woman was ready to come. Hadn't Syl always told him, "Just come, darling, come for me when you feel it, as soon as you feel ready—that's what counts, the feeling."

He'd always done just that, not giving a damn if the woman under him, or over him, or beside him had an orgasm or not. He used to think, contemptuously, that a woman was either hot and ready for it or she wasn't, and if she wasn't, then it was too bad for her. The few times he had waited, taking his time, were because he wanted to, because it was better that way, holding back until his climax was a hundred times more powerful, more achingly complete. It was always for himself, though, that he came; the only woman whose feelings and reactions he'd cared about had been Syl. . ..

Now, with Eve, he could tell that she wasn't ready and wouldn't be ready soon enough for him; and he was already impati

ent for the next time, wanting to be finished so he could talk to her, try to break through the damn wall she had put between them. Putting his hand under her taut buttocks, he lifted her body up higher, grinding her pelvis against his until he had forced a muffled cry of protest from her.