He raised his head for a moment, his hands moving to her ponytail. She felt his fingers loosen her hair so that it fell in a smooth, sleek curtain either side of her face.
‘Beautiful,’ he murmured thickly. As if drawn by an invisible silken cord, he lowered his mouth again and took her lips, her hair caught in his fingers.
Her hands slowly slid around his neck and he immediately deepened the kiss, slipping his tongue inside her mouth and exploring the inner sweetness. She didn’t resist as his hands tightened in her hair, tilting her head back as his lips staked their claim, even though a small rational part of her mind was telling her this was madness. And it was madness, a sensual, magical madness against which she had no defence, never having felt like this before. Rafe was invoking sensations no other man had called forth and it was intoxicating. The warmth of his body surrounding her, the incredible things his mouth was doing to her—she didn’t want it to stop.
‘Marianne.’ His voice was almost agonised against her mouth, his hunger naked, and it raced through her bloodstream, igniting nerve-endings and causing her to press closer into the hard male body.
The crackle and spit of a log as it fell deeper into the flames brought them apart, both thinking for a second that the door had opened and Crystal had entered the room. For a moment they stood still, bathed in the afterglow of sensation and sexual excitement, the only sound the rattle and hiss of the burning wood. Shadows danced across Rafe’s taut face and she saw he was fighting for control. She wanted to reach out and touch him but she didn’t. Something warned her not to.
‘This is—’ He stopped abruptly, shaking his head.
She waited, staring into the rugged handsome face without speaking. He didn’t like the fact that he wanted her, she thought with a strange lurch inside her chest. Even more, perhaps, than she didn’t like the fact she wanted him. But she did. Without rhyme or reason, against everything that was sensible and logical, she wanted Rafe to make love to her. She felt she was drowning in the sensations he’d aroused.
She watched as his inner torment turned the startlingly blue eyes to a deep violet. She could see sanity rearing its head as she watched him, the intimacy, which had been so real and soft seconds before, evaporating as he took charge of what he was feeling. It was a lesson in how self-disciplined he was, will-power and rigid strength of mind evident as his harsh breathing was subdued and his face became blank.
Before he could speak, she said, ‘Don’t say you’re sorry or anything of that nature, Rafe, because we both know it was me as much as you.’
For a moment the mask slipped and his eyes widened.
‘Let’s just put this down as one of those things. It’s clear we strike sparks off each other—sexually, that is. I suppose, with the tens of millions of people in the world, we’re bound to come across someone at some time who can press all the right buttons.’ She was talking nonsense but it was providing her with some degree of protection against the hot humiliation which had filled her as she’d watched him reject her. ‘We know now, which will prevent us making the same mistake again.’
A corner of his mouth twisted in a wry smile which wasn’t a smile at all. ‘I’m a mistake?’
‘Only as far as I’m concerned, and it works both ways,’ she said steadily. She wasn’t sure where the strength was coming from to talk like this but she blessed it.
Rafe’s eyes narrowed. ‘Meaning?’
‘We’re very different people and we want different things out of life. It would be a huge mistake to complicate what is essentially a business arrangement by getting involved.’
‘Physically, you mean.’
She had meant romantically but if this wasn’t confirmation that she was on a different planet from Rafe, nothing was. Or perhaps it was just the age-old complication of lust and…Her mind balked at the word love and substituted intimacy. By the nature of the act itself, men took and women received. The act of penetration was not the same emotionally for the two sexes, not in her book, at least. Drawing on her own considerable will-power, she said steadily, ‘Exactly.’
A muscle knotted in Rafe’s cheek. ‘So you’re saying this attraction is just a biological accident of some kind?’
‘Yes, I am.’ She stared at him. His eyes had gone as flat as his voice.
‘Isn’t that a little…cold-blooded?’ he accused, his eyebrows raised.
‘I don’t think so,’ she lied evenly. ‘It’s a well-known fact that animals respond to certain chemicals in their mates.’
‘Excuse me, but I think I am a little more discerning than your average orangutan.’
Marianne smiled; she couldn’t help it. He sounded so outraged.
‘I’m sure you are.’
She watched him take a deep breath. ‘You really are a very unusual woman, Marianne Carr.’
No, just one struggling to preserve the shreds of her dignity, she thought miserably. ‘Thank you.’ She forced a smile. ‘I think.’
‘And your parents?’ he said softly. ‘Did they have nothing more than this chemical response between them?’
‘Of course not,’ she said indignantly. ‘They had masses in common, too, and they loved each other.’
‘Ah, love.’ He eyed her indolently, very much master of himself again. ‘A complicated, elusive phenomenon and not one I would care to engage in.’
She was done pretending. ‘You didn’t love your wife when you married her?’