‘No, what?’ he murmured between light kisses against her forehead. ‘No, you’re not frightened, or no, you don’t want me? If it’s the latter, you’re lying, Rue, and I can prove it to you…’
Before she could stop him, his hand moved from her arm and parted the front of her borrowed robe, reaching out to cup the soft weight of her breast.
A shiver of delicious sensation quivered through her, a sharp cry of tension bubbling in her throat as his thumb stroked slowly back and forth over her nipple, wordlessly telling her that he knew quite well the effect he had on her.
All at once the fight went out of her, and instead of resisting him as she knew she ought to she said wildly, ‘Yes, it’s true. I do want you, and I am frightened of that wanting. Can’t you understand, Neil? The only other man who’s made love to me hurt me badly. Isn’t it understandable that I should be scared?’
She saw the look in his eyes and realised with a fierce leap of her heart that he liked knowing there’d been no one else apart from Julian. Her mouth went dry, her body shaking so much that she was sure that if he hadn’t been holding her she would have collapsed.
‘There’s nothing to be frightened of, Rue,’ he told her thickly. ‘I won’t hurt you.’
But she knew he would…because he didn’t know the truth…didn’t know that she loved him. She had managed to keep that much from him, if nothing else.
‘It’s no good, Neil,’ she cried out feverishly. ‘We can’t be lovers…’
‘We already are,’ he told her, shocking her immobile until he laughed softly and added, ‘Oh, not literally, perhaps—I didn’t take advantage of you during your drugged sleep, if that’s what you’re thinking—but you know and I know that we are lovers, Rue. There’s never been a woman who’s made me feel the way you do, and I suspect that no other man has aroused you as I can.’
It was all too painfully true, but she had to stop him somehow, to make him realise…and then abruptly she knew there was only one way, only one weapon she could use now to deflect him from his purpose.
Steadily she looked at him.
‘I want you physically, Neil…I can’t deny it. But can’t you see: your physical possession of me would never be enough? I’d want more. Much more than you’re prepared to give,’ she admitted painfully. ‘I’d want your love as well as your lovemaking, Neil. I’d want more from you than just a brief affair.’
She waited for him to release her, to turn away from her with shocked embarrassment, to tell her that she was right and that he had been wrong, but to her astonishment he just continued to look at her and then said hoarsely, ‘Say that again!’
His face had lost all its colour, his bones standing out tautly. He swallowed, and she saw the movement in the rigid muscles of his throat. His hand tightened on her arm,, the fingers caressing her breast suddenly stilling.
She had come too far to lose her courage now. One quick blow…an instant severing now was surely less painful in the long run than gradually waiting for him to discover the truth and then reject her.
‘I’m in love with you, Neil,’ she told him sadly. ‘That’s why I want to sell the cottage…to move away…’
To her astonishment, instead of releasing her, he said roughly, ‘I don’t believe it! You’re even more of a coward than I thought. I could find it in my heart to forgive you when I thought you just weren’t aware of your feelings, but to stand here and listen to you telling me that you’d rather turn your back on what we feel for one another than give up your independence… At least you haven’t suggested we become part-time lovers, you in your cottage, me here…because that is something I could never stomach. Perhaps you’re right—I’d want all of you or nothing at all. Commitment, marriage, a family and everything that that means…and you’re not prepared to make that commitment, are you, Rue? You’re not prepared to give up your freedom and independence. They mean more to you than I do.’
He was white to his lips, every word he spoke almost spat out at her as he fought with his rage. Rue knew she ought to be terrified, but all she could do was simply stand and stare at him in disbelief.
She reached out her hand and touched him shakily, interrupting his tirade.
‘Neil…I don’t understand. When you spoke about marriage, about love, I thought you were warning me that there would inevitably be someone else… that all you could ever feel for me would be a fleeting desire. In fact, I thought you didn’t even want me any more.’
‘Not want you?’ He stared at her, his tension dying, to be replaced by a look of grim self-mockery. ‘For a woman of your years, you know remarkably little about men, my dear. Ever since I walked into this room, my body has been proclaiming extremely obviously and painfully exactly what effect you have on me.’
Round-eyed, Rue’s glance slid down his body, coming to rest on his thighs, her skin pinkening betrayingly at his unmistakable arousal.
‘Why the hell did you pretend that you didn’t care?’ Neil groaned rawly. ‘I’ve been going out of my mind trying to think of ways to keep you here so that I could convince you that what we could have between us was worth far more than independence, but every time I brought the subject up, every response you made only seemed to confirm how determined you were not to allow any commitment between us. You don’t know how desperately close I’ve come to giving in to my baser needs and making love to you regardless.’
‘Why didn’t you?’ Rue asked him shakily.
‘Because, like you, I wanted more than sexual satisfaction,’ he told her frankly. ‘I knew I could make you desire me, but that wasn’t enough, and I was terrified that once we’d been lovers you’d refuse to even contemplate accepting me emotionally.
‘Much as I wanted you physically, to enter into a relationship with you based merely on physical desire would have demeaned all that I felt for you. I’ve never believed in love at first sight—nor love at all, really—but when you opened your cottage door to me and stood there looking at me so aggressively, I felt as though the sky had fallen in on me.’
‘You knew then?’ Rue asked him disbelievingly.
‘I knew then,’ he confirmed. ‘I’ve waited a long time to meet the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. It nearly tore me apart to know that I’d found her and that she didn’t share my feelings.’
‘I did, though,’ Rue admitted, ‘but I was so scared of them…so terrified.’
‘That I’d hurt you as Julian did,’ Neil supplied drily, but Rue shook her head.