'I'm here to lend you my support.'
'Why doesn't that make me feel better—?' she wondered out loud. She broke off as they both heard the sound of voices at the selfsame instant. A door opened and the throb of music filtered into the small hallway. 'I can't… I don't think I can cope with this.' Blind panic that had made her freeze for an instant suddenly sent urgent life into her limbs. ‘I’ve got to…' She had to run, get away. Eyes wild with the urgent drive to escape, she searched the room for an avenue of escape.
Fresh shock swept through her veins, interwoven with a snowballing sense of panic, when without warning Luke turned towards her, trapping her between the wall and his body. Impressions were bombarding her brain as she tried to think beyond the immediate impact which made her laboriously gasp for air, her head growing immediately light.
He was a large man, not heavily built but muscular and hard. She hadn't actually appreciated the physical proportions of his tall, rangy frame previously. He was close enough without being in actual physical contact for her to be aware of the heat of his body and the male odour which emanated from him, a clean smell, not tainted by the over-use of scents and potions. Unconsciously her hands went out, palms outwards to preserve her own space.
'You're hyperventilating,' he observed impatiently, looking down into her alarm-filled face.
'What are you…?'
'Inspiration, remember? That's what I'm here to provide. And if you want to get out of this mess with some of your precious pride intact, just follow my lead,' he told her harshly. He bent his dark head and she closed her eyes with a sense of impending doom.
Inspiration obviously allowed for no preliminaries, because she found her hands flattened against the hard plane of his belly as he pressed forward, pinning her to the wall with his weight. She wasn't aware of one hand sliding beneath her hair to cup her skull, but she found her movements being controlled by the touch of his fingers. She breathed his name, filled with an intense desire to escape; but the sound of her voice was lost against the movement of his mouth.
Luke was kissing her. The concept was too strange to grasp completely. She stood stock-still, counting the sound of her own laboured inhalations. The awareness of his heavy thighs pressing against her traumatised her already impaired nervous system.
'Open your mouth, infant.' His voice was tinged with heavy exasperation.
What the hell did he think he was doing, hauling her about like a doll and handing out ridiculous instructions as though she were some sort of puppet? She opened her mouth to tell him exactly what he could do, but he seemed to take this as compliance. The abrupt intimacy of his tongue colliding with her teeth, touching the moistness of her inner lip, was like a bolt of pure, intense excitement. It destroyed all coherent thought processes—and most physical responses too. The weakness was totally debilitating, and if his hands hadn't slid across her back she would have slid to the floor at that moment.
Nothing in her life had prepared her for the black hole of pure sensation she found herself sinking into. Countering the sensation never entered her head; the intensity required total co-operation. She let the flow carry her along. She was absorbed in the texture of his lips against her tender mouth in a way that was totally alien. A kiss was something pleasant, if you were lucky in your partner, but something she had been able to stop without the wrenching feeling of loss she experienced when Luke raised his head.
She stared at him in a half-horrified, half-fascinated way before she registered the sound of her own father's voice. The blue eyes held an ambiguous mingling of mockery and anger. Why should Luke be angry? she wondered. / should be angry… I am angry.
'What do you think you're doing?'
Luke moved to one side after winking at her, his expression contemplative but palpably unmoved by the ardent embrace. The realisation was painfully humiliating. 'Charlie, I would have thought that was rather obvious,' he said, smiling with silky provocation. His fingers strayed seemingly automatically to Emily's bare shoulder, his fingers stroking her hot skin.
At any other time her father's thunderstruck expression of total incredulity would have made her laugh. She felt just as stunned herself; her bemused brain was only just beginning to function. Her father's mouth was open, his face suffused with a purplish glow that stood out in violent contrast to the leonine mane of silver hair he was so proud of. He wasn't supposed to get over-excited, some sane portion of her brain recalled fuzzily.
'Hello, Father,' she said stupidly. The tableau had to be broken at some point and Luke appeared to be savouring each moment too much to be of any assistance. She couldn't look at Luke—what little dignity she had left he'd managed to rip into shreds. She would murder him, slowly, painfully and with relish! she decided.