Trapped by that look, she tried to snatch her hand away. ‘Don’t look at me like that.’
‘Like what?’ His voice sounded impossible sexy and he held her hand firmly in his.
‘As if you—’
‘As if I want to strip that glittering dress from your body and carry on where we left off in the rainforest?’ He leaned forward. ‘I do, minha paixao, and so do you.’
There was no hiding from his meaning and she didn’t even attempt to try. ‘It would be ridiculous.’ She breathed the words to herself but they seemed abstract, irrelevant because what was between them was out there, pulsing like a living force. To deny its existence would have been as futile as resisting and she discovered for the first time in her life that there were some forces that couldn’t be resisted. ‘Yesterday you thought I was a liar and a cheat.’
‘Yesterday I thought you were beautiful and sexy. And I still think that today.’ His voice stroked her like a lover’s touch and she suddenly found it hard to breathe.
‘I’m really glad you believe that I knew nothing about it. But it still doesn’t mean—’ she licked her lips ‘—I’ve never—’
‘Acted on impulse? Followed your instincts? Why not?’
‘Because the world doesn’t work that way.’
His smile was derisive. ‘And you care what the world thinks?’ ‘Yes, I suppose I do.’
His soft laugh indicated that her answer hadn’t surprised him. ‘Even if you do it can hardly matter out here. Tonight you’re deep in the rainforest and the rest of the world is in another place altogether.’
It was true. She tilted her head back and listened to the sounds of the night that serenaded their intimate dinner for two. She felt as though nothing existed outside this jungle paradise with its bright rainbow birds, the dense greenery and the lush, exotic plants. And there was something about the closeness to nature that deepened the intimacy that was closing in on them.
‘I’ve never followed an instinct that I don’t understand. I don’t know you and you don’t even talk about yourself.’
He didn’t contradict her. ‘And that matters?’
‘I don’t feel safe with you.’
The humour in his eyes mingled with something much, much more dangerous. ‘And is that what you demand from life,
Grace Thacker? Safety?’
The pulse throbbed in the base of her throat and her voice was hoarse. ‘Not right now.’ Right now she wasn’t thinking about safety. All she was thinking about was him. And the way he made her feel.
‘If you want to choose safe then you’d better leave. I want you to be sure.’
Sure about what?
But she didn’t even need to ask the question because the air was thick with the answer. It throbbed between them like a living force, drawing them together.
‘I’m sure.’ Her lips formed the words by themselves but strangely enough she had no wish to retract them. She’d never been so sure of anything in her life. And perhaps it was just being here, in the rainforest, so far removed from reality. But deep down she knew that it was nothing to do with her surroundings and everything to do with the man watching her.
He stood up and tugged her to her feet in a purposeful movement, not roughly but in such a way as to leave her in no doubt as to his intention. ‘If you want to stop me, Grace, it has to be now.’
He was giving her a choice, then. Or was he?
Perhaps he knew that for her there had never been any choice. From the moment she’d seen him, standing with arrogant assurance in the doorway of the lodge, she’d been lost.
Could he see that? Could he see the effect he had on her? ‘I want you.’ The words were out before she could bite them back but she wasn’t even sure that she would have done because something was driving her that she didn’t really understand. A basic human instinct that being in this raw jungle had exposed?
He led her back through the glass dome and up a different set of stairs that opened into a bedroom not unlike hers. Only this one had a view of the waterfall and the forest pool, illuminated by tiny lights. She could hear the rush of the water punctuated by the insistent sounds of the forest that were becoming so familiar.
‘It’s amazing. It must be beautiful in daylight.’
‘You’ll have to tell me in the morning.’ He closed the door so that it was just the two of them and the rainforest. ‘It can be the second thing you see after you wake up.’
‘The second?’