'All in good time. I'll fill the bath and even soap your back.' One hand threw back the covers and his eyes strolled unapologetically over her pale body. 'And possibly other parts,' he purred.
She closed her eyes. 'This is ridiculous, Luke. You can't propose to rape me.' She opened her eyes; his were cynical and gleaming. He never would need to. He might have said it, but he didn't need to; it was in the triumphant gleam in his eyes and the feverish desperation in her own. The moment of empathy passed and she was aware of the anger in him. 'I don't want…' she began. 'Not while you're angry.'
'Angry at being told I'm a convenient body?'
'Isn't that what women are to you?' she hit back.
'Just because you are as incapable as the rest of your clan of sustaining a relationship, don't assume I am similarly handicapped. The women I sleep with happen to have been fully rounded—and I don't just mean physically,' he snarled, his derision biting. 'Intellectually and emotionally stimulating is what I'm talking about. Not lifetime partners, but not one-night stands either.'
'Why me, then, if I'm neither, and emotionally retarded into the bargain?' she demanded, her struggles to free herself only succeeding in trapping her arms against his chest. She glared at him defiantly, her breath coming in short, laboured gasps. 'And, most importantly, I'm a Stapely.' And this was his revenge for a lifetime of slights…and one unforgiveable sin.
The laugh was a fragmented sound, seeming to be torn from somewhere deep in his chest. 'Believe it or not, that fact isn't uppermost in my mind at this instant; and I've been asking myself why you, why Emily with the eyes that can be seductive and innocent, innocent eyes and erotic mouth… You taste so sweet,' he said with bitterness, his voice thick. She scarcely noticed, her senses were so choked with the aching awareness of him. His mouth was impossible to evade even had she felt the desire any longer to do so. His tongue moved in sensual pantomime of the movement of his hips against her belly. She moaned in his mouth, growing limp and pliant, surrendering with some relief to the inevitability.
'I want to hear you say it.' His voice was slurred, his eyes glittering with the sexual fever that held him in its relentless grip. Her head thrashed on the pillow as his voice, as exacting as his body, continued in her ear. 'I waited a long time, Emily; I want to hear you tell me again.'
She felt boneless with supplication. 'I want you, Luke.' Did he need complete capitulation? She wondered bleakly, hearing her own voice respond to his demands just as her body shifted to accommodate his every unspoken desire. 'I want to feel your hands on me…taste you,' she murmured, the words emerging from between a series of small guttural moans.
Her determination never to let this happen again was forgotten as he touched not just her body but an invisible part of herself too long ignored; now it craved the warmth, the passion that he gave her. His hand had been touching the silken flesh of her inner thigh with feather-like, sensitive motions that made her delirious with anticipation, but he had been still too long.
A question in her feverish eyes, she looked into his face.
'After last night I thought you might be sore,' he said with a bluntness which starkly highlighted the new and frightening intimacy between them. Frightening because the longer it went on, the harder it would be for her when he returned to his world and she was no longer useful.
'Would you care?'
'Still playing unwilling victim, Emmy?'
She shook her head, suddenly ashamed of the hasty riposte. He had been nothing if not generous and sensitive as a lover, erotic and passionate. 'I'm not too sore,' she responded huskily. 'If said I was, what would you do?' she added curiously. His control would have to be of the iron variety if he could switch off at this point.
'Shall I show you, my curious, sleek little cat?' he asked as he firmly parted her thighs. Emily's reply was all that he could have wished.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Should she wear the green dress or was it too formal? With a sigh of despair Emily threw it on top of several other discarded outfits on the bed. The bed she had shared with Luke for the past three weeks. His London flat occupied the entire floor of a converted warehouse; it was elegantly uncluttered, with a gleaming wooden floor scattered with vibrant oriental rugs and a tasteful mixture of antique and modern furniture. It was remarkably well-organised, if you discounted the books which overflowed on to most available surfaces.
'Shouldn't you have a shower?'
She didn't turn at the sound of his voice. 'Is that your way of telling me I smell?' she said calmly, although as always her metabolic rate kicked into a higher gear because of his presence.
'You smell of me,' he said, coming behind her and taking the weight of her breasts in his hands, his thumbs touching the sensitised nubs through her thin robe. She turned her head to meet his contemplative stare.