She put out her hands instinctively to fend him off, but it was like trying to stop a steamroller. She could feel the heat coming off his body, burning against her palms despite the cotton shirt between them.
Rorke bent his head, his eyes narrowed against the sun, and instantly her pulses set up a fierce clamorous beat. His mouth touched hers, lightly, tormentingly, and it was like being claimed by the ferocity of the sea pretending calmness while beneath the surface a tempest raged.
She pulled her mouth away from his, shuddering as she fought to free herself from his embrace, hating the sensations his touch aroused as his lips burned hotly against the sensitive skin of her throat, his hands enforcing captivity on her while she struggled helplessly in his arms, hating him with her eyes.
Her anger burned through her in a molten flood, her nails raking protestingly against his back when he refused to release her. She could feel the fierce pounding of his heart, and when he twined his fingers in her hair, pulling her head back sharply so that he could look into her face, she felt the first frisson of fear. The Rorke she knew was barely recognisable in the face above her.
‘Rorke, let me go,’ she pleaded feverishly, anger forgotten as she recognised the sexual explicitness of his gaze. ‘I shouldn’t have come down here,’ she admitted huskily. ‘I’m sorry if I made you angry, but…’
‘It’s too late, Lisa,’ he muttered thickly, ‘five years too late for apologies. Don’t worry, you won’t find me any less able than any of your other lovers.’
Lisa felt a growing wave of panic. Rorke was going to make love to her! No, not make love to her—punish her. She bit back a shocked cry as his lips moved lingeringly over her skin, caressing the soft swell of her breast. Panic and pain exploded inside her. Her body felt feverish with a need she wasn’t going to admit to. She had to get away before Rorke completely overwhelmed her. She could feel the heat of his fingers against her breast, his thumb teasing the already aroused nipple, his dark hair brushing her skin, as he kept her clamped against him. She tried to push him away again, gasping out loud when he grasped her wrists, pinning them behind her back, exposing her body to the totally male appreciation of his eyes.
His free hand slid slowly over her, and she closed her eyes, unable to bear the cynical mockery in his eyes. What he was doing to her was a parody of everything she had ever wanted from him, and yet her body was responding, she couldn’t deny that.
‘You’re disgusting!’ she panted bitterly, trying to use words to hold him off. ‘But I suppose it’s in your blood. Does Helen know about your depraved tastes; that you like to use force to make women submit to you?’
‘Force?’ He laughed mockingly. ‘Who are you trying to fool, Lisa? Why can’t you be honest and admit that you’re missing the attentions of your lovers? That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Anyone could have walked down here and found you lying there,’ he ground out at her, suddenly furiously angry. ‘Anyone, Lisa, but I was the one who did, and you can’t blame me for taking what you were offering. And as for using force…’
His free hand stroked over her breast with a gentleness that made her tense against the need to cry out with pleasure, but her body had already betrayed her, and Rorke knew it. She felt as though her whole body was on fire when his glance dropped to the pale flesh of her breasts, her nipples taut with the desire he had aroused.
Lisa trembled with acute embarrassment, hating the way her body had reacted. What was the matter with her? Just because she had once loved him, just because they had once made love, that was no excuse for her body to turn into helpless trembling wantonness every time he touched it.
‘Get dressed, Lisa,’ he said tersely, suddenly thrusting her away from him with open bitterness. ‘Making love on the beach might be your idea of fun, but I’m long past such adolescent escapades.’
‘Oh, I’m sure,’ Lisa agreed, bursting into hectic anger as she scrambled into her clothes. ‘I’m sure Helen prefers dimmed light, and silk sheets.’
‘Be careful,’ Rorke warned her, his mouth thinning, ‘otherwise I might start thinking you’re jealous!’
Not trusting herself to respond, Lisa pulled on her skirt and top, her cheeks still flushed with anger and embarrassment as she followed Rorke back up to the house. For a moment she thought she caught in his eyes a wild despair that almost brought out of her heart a meek response, but she must have been imagining things, because it certainly wasn’t there now.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘BUT why can’t I go to the party?’ Robbie pouted, sulking a little.
They were upstairs and Lisa was getting him ready for bed.
‘Because it’s only for grown-ups,’ she explained. Although Robbie didn’t know it she would gladly have changed places with him and stayed in bed, instead of attending the small dinner party Leigh had arranged to welcome them home.
Rorke had told her about it after they left the beach. Leigh had invited Doctor James and his lawyer to dinner that evening.
‘Do you love my daddy?’
Robbie’s voice intruded on her thoughts. He had obviously decided to accept the fact that he couldn’t go to the party and was now pursuing another tack.
How on earth could she answer him? Sometimes he surprised her with his astuteness; children always saw so much more than adults wanted to admit they could see. She, for instance, had always told herself that Robbie wouldn’t really miss the father he had never known, but she knew now she was wrong. Robbie adored his father and was already patterning himself on him.
‘Do you, Mummy?’ Robbie persisted. ‘Do you love him?’
‘Robbie…’
‘I want to stay with him,’ Robbie protested shrilly, anticipating her denial. ‘I love him!’
‘I love him too.’
How easy it had been to say. Too easy. It was true, she thought numbly, she did still love Rorke! That was why she hadn’t wanted to hurt him by forcing on him the myth about Robbie’s paternity!
She heard someone turning the door handle, and stiffened instinctively, her eyes mirroring her shock as Rorke walked in. Had he heard her betraying admission? The door was surely too thick for him to have heard anything through it. She looked at him closely, but it was impossible to read anything in his eyes.