Later she wasn’t even sure if she had actually meant to touch him or if the gesture had simply been one of longing, but as he turned his head towards her her fingertips grazed his mouth. She felt his breath against them, warm, tormenting her with all that could never be. She started to look away and then, to her shock, she felt Ran taking hold of her wrist, circling it with his thumb and fingers, holding her hand where it was whilst he very deliberately pressed a kiss to each of her fingertips in turn.
Wild-eyed, Sylvie watched him, almost forgetting to breathe in her shock.
‘Ran,’ she protested half-heartedly, but as she said the word she was already moving closer to him, instinctively seeking the warmth and the comfort of his body heat, his body.
If it felt like heaven to have his arms close around her, that was nothing compared to what it felt like to have him lift his hands to her face and cup it whilst he oh, so gently kissed her mouth, a slow, tender, lingering kiss...a lover’s kiss. Silently Sylvie pressed even closer to him, lifting her own arms to hold him, her mouth and then her whole body, trembling with the effort it took her not to give in to what she was feeling.
She could feel her eyes fill with tears, feel them, too, starting to flood over and roll down her face.
‘Sylvie.’ She could hear the emotion in Ran’s voice as he lifted one fingertip to touch them. ‘Don’t cry...please don’t cry. No man is worth your tears...’
‘It just hurts so much,’ Sylvie told him, unable to hold back what she was feeling any longer. Somehow the night and their seclusion had stripped away the barriers she had fought so hard to erect against her love for him.
‘I hate feeling like this,’ she whispered. ‘I hate loving so much and so...so...unwontedly... It’s so demeaning and it hurts so badly.’
She heard Ran groan as though something about her agonised and honest admission touched him very deeply and then he was holding her, rocking her in his arms as he told her huskily, ‘You mustn’t be hurt, Sylvie. Please, don’t be hurt...’
And then, totally unexpectedly, he was kissing her, not with the gentle tenderness he had shown her before, but with a fierce sensual passion that took her breath away and with it all her resistance. Her body went weak, pliable, compliant, yearning towards his as his mouth moved demandingly on hers. She could feel the fierce, heavy thud of his heart, the sudden swift betraying arousal of his body.
He was and always had been a very male man, she reminded herself. He might not love her, she might not be the woman he wanted, but she was here in his arms, loving him, wanting him, and she could sense how little it would take to overturn his self-control.
Swiftly, dangerously, stabbing right at the most intimate female heart of her, came the thought that she might never have his love but she could have tonight...her memories and perhaps even more. A woman alone need not feel ashamed to give birth to a child these days...she need not even name its father... A child...Ran’s child... Already she was responding to him, inviting him, inciting him, her hands reaching out to move under his robe, shaping the hard muscles of his shoulders, his arms.
This time when the peafowl cried neither of them paid any attention to it. Beneath the insistent thrust of Ran’s tongue, Sylvie’s lips parted.
She just wanted comfort, that was all, Ran warned himself as he felt her mouth tremble beneath his. She didn’t want him...love him...
But it was already too late. He wanted her, he loved her, and, God forgive him, he couldn’t stop himself from giving in to his need to show her all that a man’s love for a woman could and should be.