She nodded because she knew if she tried to talk it would emerge as gobbledegook, and wouldn’t he just love that?
‘Sure?’ He stood there, practically naked, smiling at her.
Oh, but he had a body to die for. Which was why he was flaunting it with such magnificent unconcern presumably. ‘Yes,’ she squeaked. ‘I’m sure.’ Liar, a voice in her head accused.
‘OK.’ He padded across and turned off the light and the next moment he’d slid into bed beside her.
Rachel stiffened, as rigid as a board. She couldn’t help it. The light in the bedroom now came courtesy of the TV, and when Zac reached for the remote and switched it off, the room was bathed in darkness. She didn’t dare move, she didn’t dare even breathe as he settled himself more comfortably, his body touching hers for a heart-stopping moment.
‘Silk?’ he said after a few painful seconds had ticked by.
She cleared her throat and took a lungful of much-needed air. ‘Sorry?’ It emerged as a strangled croak.
‘Your nightwear. It felt like silk.’
She could tell his head had turned on the pillow to look at her, even though she couldn’t see him. Drawing on all her resources, she managed to say, fairly coherently, ‘It is.’
‘What colour?’ he murmured, very softly.
‘Sorry?’ she said again, although she’d heard him perfectly.
‘What colour is the silk? If I’m not allowed to see, the least you can do is describe what you’re wearing. Or would you rather I turn on the light and take a peek?’
‘Blue.’ She held onto the bedclothes like grim death.
‘Deep blue or light blue?’
‘Deep blue.’ A deep, violet blue actually, with black lace round the top of the camisole and bordering the splits in the side of the shorts, which came almost to waist level. Enough to protect her modesty should the worse happen, but only just. She wondered if he could hear her heart banging.
His grunt expressed satisfaction. ‘Like your eyes.’
Another few moments went by before he murmured, ‘I forgot to ask, do you snore?’
She could hear the amusement in his voice and tried to match his tone, although with her nerves as taut as piano wire it wasn’t easy. ‘How would I know? I’d be asleep if I did, wouldn’t I?’
‘And your previous boyfriends have never complained?’
It threw her and she hesitated just a fraction too long before she said, ‘No, no they haven’t,’ even as she asked herself why she hadn’t come right out and admitted she hadn’t slept with a man before. It had been the perfect opportunity.
The answer was there immediately. She didn’t want him to think any less of her. In his world of sophisticated and cosmopolitan women, a twenty-seven-year-old virgin would be an oddity at best and a freak at worst. She wasn’t ashamed of what she was, it was her choice after all, but nevertheless…
Aware his stillness had a different quality to it, and with the air so charged it almost crackled, she hoped against hope he’d let the conversation drop. The silence lengthened, quivering like a living entity. After what seemed an eternity to Rachel’s fraught nerves, it was almost a relief when he said softly, ‘Rachel, have you slept with a man before?’
She was so glad it was dark. Wrinkling up her face in an agony of embarrassment, she waited until she knew her voice wouldn’t tremble. ‘No.’ She opened her eyes wide.
He swore softly, which didn’t exactly help the way she was feeling, but immediately said, ‘Sorry. Really, sorry, but I just didn’t see that one coming.’ A brief pause ensued before he spoke again. ‘Is it because you’re frightened of sex?’
She hadn’t thought it could get any worse but she supposed logically it was the next obvious question. He was clearly wondering if she’d been abused or something. Rachel swallowed. ‘No, nothing like that, I’ve just been waiting—’ she knew this was going to sound absurd to a man like Zac ‘—for the right one, I suppose. The one I want to spend the rest of my life with.’
There was an even longer pause. Then his voice came softly and with a thread of something she couldn’t put a name to. ‘That’s one hell of an effective chastity belt.’
Which translated as saying he wouldn’t touch her with a bargepole now. She squeezed her eyes to stop the tears from falling. What was she crying for anyway? This was absolutely the best thing, wasn’t it? He was going to disappear out of her life in a couple of weeks and if she’d given herself to him, how would she feel when he left?
She thought she’d done pretty well in disguising the tears, it was pitch black in the room after all, but after a minute or so, when she’d surreptitiously wiped her eyes with the back of her hand a couple of times, he suddenly said, ‘You aren’t crying, are you? Hell, Rachel, tell me you aren’t crying.’
She couldn’t answer, not without breaking down completely and howling like a banshee, which would be the final humiliation.
She heard him groan and mutter something under his breath that sounded very much like a string of oaths, and the next moment she found herself gathered against a hard male body as he cradled her against him and began stroking her hair in a soothing, rhythmic caress. ‘It’s OK, sweet Rachel, it’s OK.’ His voice was soft and tender, the mockery she’d feared absent. ‘Don’t cry, honey. I’m not going to hurt you.’