‘That’s true,’ Fliss was forced to agree. ‘However you’re hardly the person to tell me how to behave, are you? After all, you obviously didn’t have any qualms about intercepting my letter to my father, did you?’ she accused him vehemently, her voice wobbling slightly over the final word.
Fliss was shaking inwardly and outwardly. Her one desire was to escape from Vidal’s coldly critical presence before she made a complete fool of herself by telling him how unfairly he had misjudged her and how much that misjudgement had hurt her. How much it still hurt her.
Avoiding looking at him, she started to walk quickly back down the pergola—until she was brought to an abrupt halt when she slipped on the petal-scattered path.
The sensation of strong hands reaching for her, strong arms supporting her, brought her an initial and automatic surge of gratitude—but as soon as her body registered the fact that the hands and arms, like the body she was now being supported against, belonged to Vidal that gratitude was replaced by panic. Frantically Fliss struggled to free herself, thoroughly alarmed by the way her body was already reacting to the intimate contact between them.
For his part Vidal had no wish to hold on to her. Turning to watch her rush away from him, he had seen how the sunlight shining through her thin cotton dress revealed the female curves of her body, and immediately—to his grim disbelief—his body had responded to that sight and to her. Now, having her twisting and turning in his arms, her breasts rising and falling with agitation, her breath touching his skin in a silken caress, the scent and the feel of her was calling to an instinct within him that wouldn’t be denied. An instinct that demanded he taste the erotically tender pink flesh of her lips, that he find and possess the soft rounded curves of her breasts, that he hold the cradle of her lower body close to the now swollen sexuality of his own.
In an attempt to push Vidal off, Fliss reached out wildly with her hand. Her whole body selate f with shock when her fingertips encountered the satin warmth of his bare chest. Fliss looked down at where her hand was resting and saw that Vidal’s shirt was now unfastened almost to the belt of his chinos. Had she done that? Had she ripped open those buttons when she had clung to him earlier and then struggled against his confining grip? Her hand was now resting palm flat on his golden skin, and the dark cross of fine hair that narrowed downwards over his impressive six-pack made Fliss feel as though nature herself had used that male body hair to mark him out as her own.
Was it the scent of the roses or the scent of Vidal’s skin that was making her feel so weak? She was forced to sway closer to him, her body bending pliably and willingly to his without needing to be guided there by the pressure of his hand on the small of her back, heating her body through the fine fabric of her dress. The topaz gaze was fixed on her own. Then as she caught her breath it slid deliberately to her mouth, capturing the small frantic moan of longing assent that escaped from her lips.
The quiver that shook her body as though she found her desire for him beyond her ability to control, that soft sigh of acquiescence, that liquid look of longing she had given him—they might all be a deliberate ploy to entice him, Vidal told himself. But whilst his mind might deride his folly for responding to them his body had no such inhibitions. Anger against it and against the woman he was holding exploded through him in a savage burst of primeval male need.
Beneath the fierce onslaught of his kiss Fliss’s already shaky defences gave way, her trembling lips opening to the demanding thrust of his tongue, her breast swelling into the cup of his hand. A heavy, aching sensation was rolling though her lower body and beginning an insistent pulsing beat that grew in tandem with the fiery burst of pleasure Vidal’s probing fingers and thumb drew from the aroused tip of her breast.
Fliss had never thought of herself as a woman whose sensuality had the power to overwhelm her self-control. On the contrary, she had believed in her most private thoughts that she had an unfashionably low sex drive. But now, shockingly, Vidal was proving to her that that judgement of herself must have been wildly wrong. Her out-of-control and unwanted arousal, her need for the intimacy it was causing her to ache and long for, was sweeping through her like a forest fire, burning away any resistance that tried to stand in its way. Her desire to have Vidal touching the flesh of her breast had flamed into life well before Vidal had lifted its sensually engorged roundness free of her bra, so that her nipple was pushing eagerly against the tightly drawn fabric of her dress, its shape and even its dark rose colour easily visible beneath the thin fabric.
The sight of that enticement, that incitement to his own desire, had Vidal bending Fliss back in his arms and then lowering his head over her body, so that he could taste her nipple, so close in colour to the petals of the roses that were providing them with their privacy. Unable to stop herself, Fliss gave a soft, aching gasp of delirious pleasure. The sensation of his tongue stroking and caressing her so-sensitive flesh, one second soothing its need, the next tormenting with a flick of his tongue, was driving her to fresh heights of aching longing, and it stole away what was left of her self-control. Her spine arched, lifting her breast closer to Vidal’s mouth.