‘And you think that’s what I’m doing?’ Alice bristled but there was a charge in the atmosphere that was thrilling. And she couldn’t peel her eyes away from his lean, dark face.
‘You want more of me...’ He sat back and allowed his eyes to roam over her; lazy, indolent, darkly sexy eyes that made her body burn. ‘Why don’t you stop running scared,’ he murmured, ‘and just take what you want? Take what you can’t tear your eyes away from.’
‘You are the most conceited person I have ever met in my entire life!’ She was breathing fast and, God, he knew exactly how she was reacting to him. Knew it and liked it.
‘You want to touch...I can feel it. Do you know why? Because it’s the same for me. I want to touch you too. Why do you think I spent hours driving down here on the spur of the moment?’
But you will never get hurt, Alice thought. You can touch and then walk away unscathed...
But was that enough of an excuse to run scared? If her mother could get involved with someone, as Gabriel had told her, then why couldn’t she? How many times would she spend her life running scared when faced with the possibility of getting hurt?
And yet the thought of any other man having the same impact on her as Gabriel was far-fetched, almost beyond belief. He wasn’t the gentle kind of guy who would gradually entice her back into the world of trust and love, the kind of guy she had vaguely pinned her hopes on finding at some point in her life. He was the dynamic, darker-than-sin, more-dangerous-than-the-devil kind of guy who would take her places she had never been and leave her broken-hearted when he walked away.
‘Shall we go?’ he asked huskily and Alice nodded mutely.
‘This was never the plan,’ she said shakily, once the bill had been paid and they were standing outside the restaurant.
‘What was never the plan?’
‘This. Me. You... It’s not a good idea.’
‘Life is about taking risks or else what’s the point? I’ve spent my life taking risks. I wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t taken risks.’
‘What do you mean?’
Gabriel laughed but his dark eyes never left her face. ‘Maybe one day I’ll explain.’ He threaded his fingers through her hair and tugged her towards him. ‘Do you want me to kiss you? Because if you don’t then this is your opportunity to say no and to walk away, and we can go back to playing our game of “it never happened”.’
‘Kiss me...’
Alice lost herself in that kiss. It was a crazy place to be doing this because she might get spotted. It was a small village and the fact that her mother had spent much of her time there confined to her house didn’t mean that there weren’t many locals who didn’t pop in for chats, to see how she was doing, to have tea or the occasional supper. Any one of those locals would have hot-footed it right back to Pamela Morgan with tales of her daughter being seen outside that new Italian restaurant kissing a man.
But she couldn’t resist. She breathed in his woody, clean aftershave, felt his firm, cool lips plundering her mouth and her body curved into his. She looped her arms around his neck and tiptoed to meet his searching mouth.
‘I’m only thinking...’ he broke apart to say in an unsteady voice that didn’t sound at all like his ‘...about your reputation when I say that we need to take this somewhere else.’
‘I don’t want you to stop.’
‘And I don’t want to...’ With his arm slung heavily over her shoulder, they half-ran to his car and picked up where they had left off the second the car door was slammed shut.
It was teenage, ‘back row of the movies’ stuff. That was what it felt like to Gabriel and he loved every second of it. He had never done that back-row kissing business; he was making up for lost time. If her teenage years had been spent caretaking her mother and being strong on her behalf, his had been spent digging himself out of the hole into which he had been born, forging a life for himself that would be strong enough to ensure that he would never have to look back or go near that hole again.
The fact that they had so much in common was a fleeting thought that was almost immediately buried under the urgency of his response.
He felt under the red jumper and found the obstruction of her bra, but made short work of that by plunging his hand under it, pulling free one breast that popped out, nipple already standing to attention, tightening to a rigid peak as he teased and pinched it into arousal.
The car was parked at a distance from the other random cars and the tinted windows meant that they were cocooned, protected from any curious eyes, not that there seemed to be many people around. Protected enough for him to feel comfortable raising her jumper so that he could cover that pulsing nipple with his mouth and suckle on it until she was whimpering and panting, spreading her legs in delicious invitation.