She could feel the aching burn of her emotions in the hot tears that threatened to flood her eyes. Tears! She would never—must never—ever cry in front of this man. She must never show him any weakness. Never.
‘What could you possibly know about loving someone—about loving anyone?’ Fliss hurled accusations at him in furious self-defence. She’d say and do anything to stop him guessing at the pain within her that his words had touched. ‘You don’t know what love is!’
She had no idea what she was really saying as the wild words tumbled from her lips. All she knew was that they sprang from an unending well of pain deep inside her.
‘And you do? You who—’ Furiously angry himself, Vidal closed the distance between them, shaking his head in disgust as he stopped speaking.
But Fliss knew perfectly what he had been about to say, and the accusation he had been about to fling at her.
Now panic as well as pain had her well and truly in its grip
‘Don’t touch me,’ she ordered, stepping back from him, her voice shaking with dread.
‘You can stop the play-acting, Felicity.’ Immediately Vidal’s anger was replaced by a look of contempt. ‘And we both know that it is play-acting, before you attempt to deny it and perjure yourself even further.’
Her panic levels were going through the roof, sky-high and out of control, defeating her as she struggled to bring some rationality to her reactions and her emotions.
The memories had come dangerously close, muddying the waters of what was present and what was past. Her heart was jumping around inside her ribcage and she was sixteen years old again, floundering helplessly at the confusion of feelings that were forbidden and frightening.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she lashed out wildly, ‘but you’re wrong. I don’t want you. I never wanted you.’
‘Want me?’
The silence in the room was like the still centre at the eye of a storm. It was like knowing with all her senses that the danger was there and soon it would crash down on her and consume her. And there was nowhere she could run to escape it.
‘Want me? Like this, you mean?’ Vidal said softly.
‘This’ was being ruthlessly dragged into his arms and then being pinioned against him, trapped between him and the wall behind her, as he bound her to his body so intimately that she felt as though she could feel the bones and the hard male muscles that lay beneath the sleek flesh that padded them. Unlike her own, his heartbeat was steady—steady and determined. The heartbeat of a victor who had successfully captured his prey.
Was this how that long-ago Moorish princess had felt held in the vice-like grip of her captor?
Fliss’s own heartbeat raced, her pulse flickering in a wild primeval dance that took away her ability to think or even feel rationally. Had she, that long-ago young woman, also felt the same searing, soaring, confusing of fear and triumph? Fear for her independence—fear of the wild clamouring that was beating through her. And had she felt triumph because she had been able to drive the man holding her beyond his own self-control? Because she had broken something in him? Even though the price of that victory would be him exerting his power over her in retaliation?
A mêlée of thoughts and feelings rioted inside her, turning her into a version of herself she barely recognised.
He shouldn’t be doing this, Vidal knew, but somehow he couldn’t stop himself. A thousand nights and more of dragging himself from forbidden dreams in which he held her like this overwhelmed his self-control. She wasn’t sixteen any more; she wasn’t forbidden by his own moral code—even if his pride burned and recoiled at the thought of still desiring her.
The girl with the wide-eyed gaze, filled with all the heady innocence of a sixteen-year-old in the grip of her first sexual desire for a man, had never existed anywhere other than in his imagination. All the nights he had lain sleepless and tormented the bed she had been lying in had been far from chaste.
As he bent his head towards hers he could feel the thud of her heartbeat and the soft warmth of her breasts pressed against his chest—those breasts from which he had ached so badly to peel the tee shirt covering them so that he could reveal their perfection to his gaze and touch, so that he could pluck on the tormenting thrust of her nipples with his fingertips, so that he could draw them into his mouth and caress them until her body arched with longing for his possession.
No! He must not do this.
Vidal made to release her, but Fliss shuddered violently against him, the small sound she made deep in her throat drowning out his denial.
Vidal was looking into her eyes, forcing her to look back at him. Close up, his eyes weren’t one solid colour but several shades mingling together into topaz-gold. The unblinking intensity of his gaze was dizzying her, just as the heavy thud of his heart beating was commanding her own heart to match its rhythm.