Adam stared down at her, his mouth set and his eyes as dark as the night.
‘I’ll help,’ she said tremulously. ‘It won’t be like the other times.’ She moved away, but only to slip her arms around his neck and touch her lips to the strong column of his throat.
He stayed as still as a statue..Then he said her name in a voice that made her think he was angry, but it didn’t stop her. She loosened her hands behind his head and slid one beneath the open collar of his shirt while she felt for the buttons of his shirt with the other.
She said with her breath still coming erratically, ‘Don’t be angry, please. It’s just that I feel, so sad, and not only for Nimmitabel but the fool I’ve been. I need some reassurance—I need you.’ She laid her cheek on his chest where she had opened his shirt, and although the tears had stopped, she was still shaking with emotion.
Adam said after at while, ‘Roz, come with me.’
‘Where? Why?’
‘Into my room.’ He stood up and picked her up as if she was a child. ‘It’s more private. No one bothers me in here.’ He closed the connecting door with his heel and set her down on the bed. Then he lay down beside her and took her in his arms and held her until she was calm at last.
Then he said, ‘Roz, let’s get this into perspective. We … ‘
But she wrenched herself free and sat up. ‘No! I know what you’re going to say—you’re going to talk me out of it again! But l don’t want to be talked to, I don’t want to be reasoned with!’ She glared at him, her tears forgotten. ‘You seem. to have forgotten about my conjugal rights—isn’t that what you call them? Or is it only husbands who have those rights?’
A faint smile lit his eyes, but he said gravely, ‘No, of course not.’
Roz thought she could kill him for laughing at her and said in a tight little voice, ‘Then let’s prove it.’ She got awkwardly to her knees, lifted her hands behind her neck to undo the zip of her dress and pulled it defiantly over her head.
The sun was setting now and because the bedroom faced west, it was lit with a golden radiance that would soon fade to indigo shadows. But as Roz sank back on to her ankles wearing only a bra and panties, the light gilded her figure, and especially her hair, which, had tumbled down in drifts of curls.
She hesitated, conscious that Adam’s gaze was no longer amused and conscious of a new emotion within her that was no longer pure anger.
She took a breath and reached behind to unclip her bra, leaning forward slightly as her breasts were freed and she slid each strap off slowly. Then she folded it up carefully and put it away from her. She placed her hands on her sleek young thighs and straightened, and her high, pointed little breasts rose and fell softly in tune with her breathing. She stayed like that beneath his dark, expressionless gaze, and discovered as she waited, that from sorrow and anger, from uncertainty and defiance, she had passed on to another stage—a curious state of serenity, or perhaps to call it do or die would be more apt. But whatever, nothing could turn her back now.
‘Is this doing anything for you?’ she murmured, and picked up his hand ‘It is for me. Feel,’ she whispered, and placed his hand over her left breast. ‘Do you know what it does to me when you touch them? It sends shock waves through me right down to the tips of my toes. Do you remember when you danced with me on my birthday and you asked me what I was thinking about?’
His eyes probed her, then he nodded, the barest movement.
Her lashes fluttered and a tinge of pink stained her cheeks and throat. She said breathlessly, ‘I was thinking of the last time you made love to me and how you’d kissed me here, and here.’ She moved. his hand. ‘And just thinking of it made this happen.’ She glanced down, but
didn’t need the evidence of her eyes to know that her nipples had unfurled like buds. ‘I was shocked and terribly embarrassed,’ she went on softly. ‘It had never happened to me before, not in public. I felt naked and … I don’t know what the word is.’
The sunlight was all but gone now and the blue of her eyes seemed to be darker like the gathering shadows.
Adam said ‘Wanton?’
‘Oh. Yes, that’s the word,’ she agreed gravely, and felt her heartbeat triple beneath his hand as she thought of it.
Perhaps he felt it too, because he sat up and for an instant Roz felt supremely vulnerable as he loomed over her. She let go of his hand and caught her bottom lip between her teeth.
‘So,’ he said very quietly. ‘Looks can be deceiving. I would never have guessed.’ And he took her by the shoulders, cupping them in his palms, then he slid his hands beneath her armpits and brushed her nipples with his thumbs. ‘But it’s no crime to feel like that, you know.’