He was teasing her, trying to get under her guard, Elspeth warned herself, steeling her senses against the rueful tenderness of his words.
"I was following my instincts," she told him coolly.
She was becoming increasingly conscious of the coldness of the water, and of the bareness of her legs. Carter was standing right beside her things and, much as she longed to demand that he go away, she knew it would be ridiculous and dangerous for her to protest about the intimacy of their situation.
Trying to appear careless and unconcerned, she paddled back to the bank, only to find she was as embarra.s.sed and as fl.u.s.tered as her teenage self might have been when Carter remarked softly, "Well, one thing certainly hasn"t changed. You"ve still got the best legs I ever remember seeing."
For a moment she was too stunned to say anything, to do anything, other than subdue the ridiculous flutter of pleasure that warmed her stomach, and try to combat its insidious effect by saying acidly, "That is an extremely s.e.xist remark, and one I do not appreciate. How would you like it if I were to make a similar comment about you--if I were to say, for instance, that I--that I found your arms very s.e.xy?"
The moment she had uttered this challenge, she wished she had been more cautious. For a moment she thought he was going to burst out laughing, but instead he turned his head away from her, so that all she could see was the unexpected dark burn of anger along his cheekbones.
"You see?" she told him, trying to sound triumphant.
"You don"t like it. It makes you angry."
"Angry?" he demanded vehemently.
"You think I"m angry?"
She could understand why he might try to deny it. No man liked being bested by a woman proving her point.
"Oh, you can try to pretend now that you aren"t. I saw your face, remember, and you were angry..."
His mouth thinned and the look he gave her suddenly made her feel as though she were once again fourteen, a child in a world of adults.
"I don"t know what kind of relationship you"ve got with this " almost"
fiance of yours," he told her roughly, "but it certainly hasn"t taught you much about men. And the first and most important lesson you can ever learn is how to tell the difference between anger and arousal.
I"ll give you a head start. This is what happens when it"s arousal.
He moved so quickly she had no chance to escape. One moment she was still standing ankledeep in the water, the next she was in his hands,
pressed the length of his body as those same hands smoothed over what seemed like every inch of her skin from her shoulders to the tops of her thighs, stunning her so much by the sensations they aroused that she never even thought to move; could in fact only stand there, completely at the mercy of feelings she had never known might exist, blind, deaf and dumb to everything but the message Carter"s touch was relaying to her as he held her against his body and brought his mouth down on hers.
As she realised what was about to happen some latent sense of self-preservation came to her rescue. She tried to turn her head away, but Carter was too quick for her, cupping her face with one hand while the other gripped her waist. How could it be that the pressure of a man"s hand against her skin could at once be both so tender and so firm? Her movements stilled automatically as though he had spoken directly to her brain. Her lips actually parted in breathless antic.i.p.ation of his kiss; even the water seemed to slow its flow so that the music it made lulled and hypnotised her.
There had never been a kiss quite like it. certainly not one she had ever experienced.
Peter"s kisses were tepid, safe affairs, reinforcing her own belief that, as far as s.e.x was concerned, she was one of those members of the human race whose appet.i.te in that direction was slender rather than hearty. This self-admission had never particularly bothered her; after all, more and more City high-flyers, men as well as women, were now "coming out", so to speak, and admitting that the stressful pressures of their careers left them not just short of time in which to make love, but short of desire as well.
It was the nineties" counter-revolution to the sixties, fuelled by the dread of AIDS, and until this moment in time she had never really paused to give her lack of any strong physical desire for Peter much thought, simply accepting it as a facet of a modern relationship.
Theirs was a generation overdosing on high career achievement, burned out by stress and helplessly addicted to the narcotic of work.
Beneath the subtle alchemy of Carter"s mouth, her own softened, her lips clinging, shaping themselves to the silent demands of his.
She had no thought of breaking away. No thought of doing anything other than hungrily absorbing this startling new pleasure that turned her mind weak and sent her blood singing dizzily along her veins.
There was no past, no future, no Peter. nothing to remind her of her suspicions over this man, only this elementary, singing pleasure to mystify and dazzle her, to lure her on to her own selfdestruction.
The shock of Carter"s suddenly wrenching himself away from her was a brutal reminder of reality. As she stood, dazed and disbelieving, unable to stop herself from pressing her fingers against her mouth, as if by doing so she could capture the feeling of his against it, she heard him curse under his breath.
"The rotavator"s stopped again." He still had his back to her. He was looking towards the paddock, but she knew humiliatingly that he didn"t want to look at her.
"I"d better go and see what"s happening before John comes in search of me."
Not a word about what had happened. But after all what was there to say?
As she watched him walking away, absently noticing the smooth co-ordination of his body, achingly aware of a sense of tremendous loss and misery, she shivered coldly in the advance wave of a vast sea of guilt, confusion, humiliation and anger.
How could she have allowed him to kiss her like that? she berated herself as she quickly got dressed, pulling on her things with clumsy, stiff fingers, while her body trembled under the lash of her own destructive self-contempt. She wasn"t a child. It had been up to her to bring a swift and firmly rejecting end to what had been no more than a very obvious piece of chauvinistic male by-play. Carter had wanted to torment her a little, and predictably had chosen a very obvious and male way of doing so. And she was largely to blame for that. If he hadn"t found her paddling in the stream, half undressed, she doubted that it would even have crossed his mind to touch her. After all, he didn"t desire her, not her--the person, the woman. He had simply been briefly aroused by her physical presence. There had been nothing remotely personal in that arousal--she might have been any woman. What she ought to have done was to have let him take his kiss, to have stood cool and remote beneath it, instead of which. Instead of which. She stood still staring into s.p.a.ce, a fine shudder of selfloathing rippling through her as she remembered the way she had responded to him, offering him no resistance at all, and even worse. She trembled visibly as she remembered how her body had moulded itself to his, how her lips had softened and clung, how she had sighed and melted, and how, even if he had made no move to do so, had he chosen he might have caressed her far more intimately without her even thinking of stopping him.
Was it only this morning she had wondered what it would be like to be kissed by him? Well, now she knew, and she wished to G.o.d she did not have that knowledge, because she knew already, intuitively, irreversibly, that the memory of that one kiss would remain with her for the rest of her life.
And yet why--why should the touch of one man"s lips affect her so powerfully? It wasn"t even as though she liked Carter or admired him.
It wasn"t as though there was any kind of trust or respect between them.
There had been a moment before he"d kissed her when she had been given an unexpected glimpse into his past, when she had realised that the tough and very grown-up male she remembered had been nothing of the kind. With that knowledge had come a second"s fleeting sadness that she had been too young to understand and know him better. Was that why she had responded to him, so shockingly?
It must be, she tried to comfort herself as she finished dressing and hurried back to the house. After all, there had to be some kind of explanation;
the man was only human for heaven"s sake and not some kind of sorcerer with the power to. to what? Make her desire him? Uncomfortably she recalled how peculiarly aware of him she had been well before he"d kissed her. It was just because he was so different from Peter, she rea.s.sured herself; because she herself was so unused to men who were so. so male. So what was she admitting? That she had turned into marshmallow in his arms simply because she was turned on by him physically?
Little as she liked to admit that she was capable of anything so out of character and extraordinary, it did seem to be the only feasible explanation. She firmly ignored the small voice that pointed out dulcetly to her that all through her teenage years she had been surrounded by well-muscled young men, and that she had never once felt anything like that shocking desire for them which she had just experienced with Carter.
It was a case of arrested development, she told herself tartly, and of course it meant nothing; absolutely nothing at all, and just to prove it she would telephone Peter when she got in and ask him if he could manage to tag an extra couple of days on to his weekend so that they could spend more time together. That would show Carter just how little that kiss had meant to her.
Heavens, from the way he had turned his back on her and been so obviously eager to escape, anyone would think that he was terrified she might try to turn that kiss into something far more important than it had actually been. Men were so vain--especially men like Carter.
And besides, he had no right to go round kissing women like that, when it plainly meant nothing whatsoever to him. It would serve him right if she did allow him to believe that she was attracted to him. If it weren"t for the fact that she had too much pride, too much self-respect to invite any further humiliation, it might almost have been worthwhile doing so, and watching him squirm as he tried to tell her that he didn"t want her. And then of course there was Peter. Of course, as an almost engaged woman, she couldn"t do anything so foolish. But that was what Carter had been banking on when he"d kissed her, she decided scornfully. Knowing that she was committed to another man, he had thought it safe to kiss her. By the time she was actually back in the kitchen, she had managed to subdue the rebellious and disconcerting sensations she had experienced in Carter"s arms to such an extent that she had almost convinced herself that she had never experienced them at all. Almost.
Sadly, when she went up to her borrowed bedroom to change into something more suitable, as she stood in her parents" bathroom stripping off her clothes she caught sight of her reflection in one of the wall mirrors. Her face was slightly flushed, her mouth surely a deeper red than usual, her hair windblown and softly tousled.
She paused, and then on an impulse she didn"t want to name quickly removed her skirt, studying herself in the mirror as Carter must have seen her as she"d stood in the stream.
A small shudder of shock went through her as she recognised how provocative she must have appeared. Her silk shirt, so respectable when worn tucked into her skirt suit, somehow or other took on a decidedly wanton allure when it was all that she was wearing, and when furthermore it revealed the entire length of her legs virtually from the top of her thighs. Had the silk always clung so. so lovingly almost to the curves of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, almost as though the fabric loved its contact with them? And why had she never noticed before how very far from demure the neat row of b.u.t.tons that marched up to her throat actually was, almost visibly enticing a man to slide them free and lay bare the flesh they covered.
A sudden startling awareness that within a few more seconds she would actually be mentally visualising a male hand caressing her flesh brought her abruptly back to reality. It was Peter she had been thinking of, of course, she a.s.sured herself feverishly as she turned her back on the mirror and quickly dressed. It had been the thought of seeing him next weekend which had sparked off that sudden spiral of heat inside her, that tiny aching, yearning of her suddenly restless body.
This time when she dressed she took no chances, firmly donning a pair of jeans and a workmanlike cotton shirt.
It was only when she went downstairs to telephone Peter that she realised that she was going to have to insist on Carter"s finding somewhere else to stay the weekend of Peter"s visit. The house only had two furnished bedrooms. She would deal with that problem later, she told herself uncomfortably. After all, it was no concern of Carter"s whether or not she and Peter shared the same bed, and there was certainly no reason for her to feel awkward and reluctant to let him know that they did not.
It took her several minutes to get through to Peter, and, when she told him why she was ringing, he seemed to hesitate before saying cautiously, "Well, it should be possible, although I"d rather promised Mother that I"d spend a couple of days with them next month. She wants to clear out the loft and I"ve promised her I"ll lend a hand. How are you coping?"
Quickly she explained about Carter, stumbling a little over her description of how astonished she had been to find him in residence and how unsuccessful had been her attempts to get him to leave.