'As I don't remember saying anything, I doubt it.' His brows drew together and she wondered if he was aware his thumb was making circles on her palm. She didn't think so, but when he lifted her hand to his lips, she couldn't be sure of anything anymore. His tongue brushed over her knuckles. 'What did I say?' And when she didn't answer, he turned her hand and bestowed a moist kiss to her palm. 'Tell me.'
She shook her head. 'I'd rather not.'
'That bad, was it?'
'Pretty bad,' she agreed, quivering a little as he continued to play with her fingers. 'I guess you don't want to talk about it?'
'No.'
Matt was very definite about that and she was suddenly aware of the intimacy of the situation. She couldn't forget he was naked beneath the sheet and the warm pressure of his thigh against her hip was a tantalising reminder.
He looked at her then, and she dipped her head in embarrassment. She suspected what she was thinking was there in her face for all to see and this was definitely not the time to be having such thoughts.
But averting her eyes had its dangers, too. The sheet didn't quite cover his navel and she was treated to a disturbing glimpse of the arrowing dark hair that grew thicker around his manhood. The sheet stirred, and her heart almost stopped beating. He was becoming aroused, she thought uneasily, and they were alone in the house. Did she really want this to happen?
She ought to leave, she told herself. She should get out of there before something irrevocable occurred. She didn't want to, she admitted. What she really wanted to do was crawl into bed with him. To hold him in her arms and comfort him. But that wasn't going to happen and with her history it was obviously the last thing she should do.
But he was still holding her hand and she didn't want to make a complete fool of herself by getting into a tugging match with him. 'Well, if you're all right,' she murmured, hoping he would get the message and let her go. But he didn't.
'Hey,' he said instead, and she was obliged to meet his probing gaze. 'What's wrong? I'm not embarrassing you, am I?'
'Embarrassing me?' Fliss managed to sound as if what he'd said was totally off the wall. 'No, of course you're not embarrassing me.' She wet her dry lips with the tip of her tongue and looked pointedly at his brown fingers caressing her pale flesh. 'Um-can I have my hand back, please?'
Matt's lips twisted. 'What if I don't want to let you go?'
Fliss's laugh was nervous. 'Then I'd have to use force,' she said, struggling to keep her tone light. 'Come on, Matt. I've got to get on.'
She felt his eyes on her face then and, although she didn't want to meet his gaze, she couldn't seem to stop herself. He might be disturbing, he might be dangerous, but she wouldn't have been human if she wasn't excited by his unpredictability.
'You don't have to be afraid of me, you know,' he murmured, lifting his other hand and trailing it deliberately down her cheek. 'I might want to touch you, but I can't hurt you.'
Don't you believe it, thought Fliss, remembering the last time he'd touched her in intimate detail. Already her heart was beating faster than it should and a trickle of perspiration was making its way between her breasts. Any minute now, she was going to say or do something equally stupid and she couldn't have that.
'I'd still like my hand back,' she said, unable to think of a more original response. And then, because she had to make him understand, 'We-we both know this isn't going anywhere, Matt. So why spoil a good working relationship with-well, with sex?' She forced a smile. 'Just let me go.'
Matt laughed then. But it wasn't a nervous laugh as hers had been. Nor was it a particularly humorous one either, and she wondered what she'd said to provoke it. There was a bleak expression in his eyes, too, that spoke of memories best forgotten, and she felt a latent sense of contrition for inadvertently reminding him of the past again.
'Matt,' she murmured pleadingly, wanting to placate him and comfort him and not really knowing how. 'I didn't mean that the way it sounded.'
'Didn't you?' She doubted he believed her. 'Well, it was a reasonable enough supposition. We're alone here, and you have every right to assume that I might want to take advantage of you.'
'I wouldn't assume that.' Fliss wanted to groan at her own inadequacy. 'Look … ' She paused. 'If I'm afraid, it's of what I might do if-if you did try to seduce me.'
Matt's mouth took on a mocking curve. 'Try being the operative word,' he said, in a strange dry voice. 'Oh, Fliss!' This time when he spoke his voice was thick with emotion. 'You are such a contradiction.' And putting a hand behind her head, he pulled her down to him.
Fliss tried to remember that just moments before she'd been determined this wouldn't happen, but she was lost from the start. When he kissed her, his mouth hot and demanding on hers, his tongue forcing its way into her mouth, she could do nothing less than respond. His hand at her nape slanted her mouth across his, deepened and hardened the kiss until she was breathless and gasping for air.
She tried to keep her feet on the ground, both metaphorically and physically, but when he rolled over on the bed, imprisoning her beneath him, the possibilities of either went out the window. Somehow the sheet had been sacrificed in the hungry tangle of their bodies and all she could feel was the warm, muscular weight of his body pinning her to the bed.
And it was such a delicious feeling. One muscled thigh was lying between her legs, which meant that her skirt must be caught up somewhere around her hips, but she couldn't seem to care. Even the knowledge that her plain cotton underwear must be vastly different from what he was used to didn't arouse more than a fleeting regret. This was where she wanted to be, and if that meant she was wicked she would deal with it later. Right now, it was enough that Matt was kissing her with an urgency that matched her own, and she was wasted.
'You know this is crazy, don't you?' he breathed a little unsteadily into the hollow of her neck, but Fliss didn't want to listen. Instead, she gripped his head and brought his mouth back to hers. Recriminations could come later, she thought fiercely, when this feverish madness was a thing of the past, too.
And despite what he'd said, Matt couldn't seem to control what was happening either. His overnight stubble was a welcome abrasion when he trailed searing kisses down her throat, and she felt the calluses that gardening had made on his hands when he pushed his fingers beneath the cropped hem of her T-shirt.
His hands stroked her midriff, as they'd done before, but then they moved upward to cup the swelling mounds of her breasts. Within her bra, her nipples felt rock-hard and painfully engorged, and she shifted restlessly when all he did was press his palms against them through the bra.
'Fliss … ' he groaned, but she couldn't let him voice his doubts now. Scrabbling behind her back, she managed to release the clasp of the bra, and allowed a little moan to escape her when his hard fingers touched her sensitive flesh.
'God, Fliss,' he muttered now, but this time there was no reluctance in his words. She moaned again when he pushed her T-shirt up above her breasts and took one swollen peak into his mouth.
His tongue circled her nipple almost greedily before sucking strongly on the tip. Then he moved purposefully to her other breast, and she felt a pleasurable pain envelop her. The rush of heat it engendered flooded down into her belly, and she trembled with emotions she knew she'd never experienced before.
A pulse was beating between her legs, a throbbing ache that she sensed only he could satisfy. In a fleeting moment of coherence she wondered if this was what romance authors meant when they said the heroine was consumed by her own body's desires. That was how she felt: consumed, and reckless, and blind to the dangers he now-and always had-represented.
He pushed her T-shirt over her head and Fliss felt her hair come loose from the pony-tail in which she'd confined it that morning. He said something unintelligible as he dropped her bra over the side of the bed and buried his face in her hair. Then she heard him whisper hoarsely, 'You smell incredible.'
So do you, she acknowledged silently, the clean male scent of his skin made all the more sensual by his body's heat. There was the faintest trace of musk, too, and this potent evidence of his maleness made her feel weak and dizzy with need.
That was when she identified the growing pressure beside her hip. It was so long since she'd been with a man that she hadn't realised until now what was happening. But then, the abortive little affair she'd had with Terry Matheson was not something to remember. And he had felt nothing like this: so big and powerful, his erection pulsing against her leg.