'People do, particularly in Paris,' he mocked.
'But you weren't raised in Paris,' she mocked back. 'So how come?'
'Because I spent the first few years of my life in New Orleans, and then whichever parent I happened to be with at the time insisted I keep my French-so I went to schools where the teaching was bilingual.' He flicked her a smile. 'Maybe we should go and eat now.'
It was a conversational cut-off, presumably as a way of avoiding elaborating on a childhood which sounded awfully disruptive. Maybe it was his way of saying that he had told her things about himself when they were marooned in the house, but now things were different. She wasn't hungry, but she wasn't risking any more barbs about her lack of appetite, so she nodded anyway. 'Sounds good.'
'Where do you want to go?'
'I suggested the film, why don't you decide the food?'
There was a pause, and he touched her cheek with the tip of his finger, snaking it down in a spine-tingling little spiral. 'But you might not like my suggestion, Keri.'
She shivered at his touch. 'Try me.'
'I don't want anything to eat,' he said evenly. 'At least, not yet. I want to take all your clothes off and run my hands over your body and make you gasp and cry again.'
He couldn't see the hot colour which had flushed into her cheeks, nor hear the frantic clamour of her heart. She could look outraged, shocked, appalled. She could refuse and hail a cab. All those choices available to her, and what did she do?
She smiled a slightly shaky smile. 'I have a fridge full of food.'
But he was already lifting his arm for a taxi.
The ride back to her apartment was conducted in a tense and expectant silence. He didn't touch her, nor did he say a word, and Keri's emotions felt as churned up as cake mix. Was it right that this should feel almost clinical? But that was down to Jay. Given the choice, she would be snuggled up in his arms, smothering his face with tiny little kisses. Not sitting at either end of the seat, as if they were on their way to a business conference.
She was barely aware of him paying the cab, or of their swift journey to her front door, only that once it was closed behind them they fell on each other with a wild kind of hunger.
He pushed her coat from her shoulders and it fell to the floor, and she found herself frantically unbuttoning his shirt, sliding her hands up underneath the T-shirt he wore beneath and moaning when she made contact with the silken flesh.
Something hot exploded inside his head. It was all buttons and lace and hardness, and achingly moist softness too. With some last vestige of sanity he groped into his pocket for protection and stroked it on, then kicked his trousers off impatiently. Her panties were down by her ankles, and he pushed her up against the wall and parted her thighs, and her mouth sought his, sucked greedily on his lips as he lifted her up and drove into her with a low, exultant cry torn from his lips.
He tried to slow it down, but it was impossible-she was impossible, urging him on with little pleas and moans until she dragged her mouth away from his. He felt her tense, her back arching, and only when he felt her begin to shudder around him could he finally let go, in an orgasm which seemed to go on and on and on.
Through the slowing and muffled beat of her heart, Keri let her damp face fall heavily to his shoulder. 'Shouldn't I at least have offered you a drink first?' she questioned, her voice as sleepy as a well-fed cat.
Jay closed his eyes and locked his arms tightly around her waist. 'You are amazing,' he murmured. 'Completely and utterly and unbelievably amazing. Which way's the bedroom?'
'What bedroom's that?' she whispered. 'You've got me so I can't think straight.'
He tilted up her chin. 'How about a rough idea?' he drawled.
'Keep going, and I'll tell you when to stop.'
He picked her up, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth as he stared down into her eyes. 'Well, I guess there's a first time for everything!' he commented wryly.
He took her to bed, only this time he made love to her as if he had all the time in the world, slowly whispering his fingertips all over her skin, making her feel as if she had only ever been briefly acquainted with her body before, and now he was introducing her to it properly for the first time.
He teased and stroked, tipped her almost to the edge of desire, then drew her back again, time after time, the flow building towards some inexorable peak, frustration growing alongside excitement until finally she begged him not to stop. He gave a small, low laugh of pleasure, as though that had been what he had been waiting for all along. Through the tug of enchantment a vague disquiet touched her as she became aware of his sexual power over her, but by then it was too late to try to even the balance.
And what followed felt as though the world had ended and then begun all over again, only this time her senses were so heightened-so raw and so feeling and so acute-that she didn't know if she could bear to live with that kind of intensity.
When Keri finally drifted back to some kind of consciousness it was to find Jay dressed-well, half dressed. He was wearing his jeans, his torso bare, the hard, muscular body bathed in moonlight as he stared out of the uncurtained window. He looked like a warrior, she thought-tense, alert and watchful-though what was there to threaten him in the winter sky outside?
He must have sensed that she was awake, because he turned around. 'Hi.'
Did he sound cautious? 'You're dressed,' she observed, stifling a yawn and hoping that she sounded impartial, not needy. 'Yeah. Time I was getting back.' He looked at his watch, as if to illustrate the point. 'It's way past midnight.'
Keri sat up, her hair tumbling down over her naked breasts, seeing the fleeting light of reaction in his eyes-but it was only fleeting. 'But you haven't had anything to eat!'
'This from the woman who doesn't. Ever. Not unless coerced,' he teased. 'Actually, I'm not really hungry.'
But, oddly enough, Keri was-utterly ravenous. She would have liked for him to climb back into bed beside her and for her to go out to the kitchen and pile high a tray full of goodies. They could have eaten them together and he could have fed her again, as he had done so erotically at the house. But maybe that kind of love-play was only part of the wooing, and now that he had no need to woo her he had got straight out of bed and distanced himself. Jay didn't seem to do the cuddling-in-each-other's-arms bit afterwards.
'Could you pass me my robe?'
He pulled a silken-looking Chinese thing from the back of the door and handed it to her, his resolve momentarily wavering when he saw her long, pale limbs emerging from the rumpled sheets like a Venus.
'I'm expecting a call from the States,' he said, by way of explanation-except, of course, that was not the whole story. The kind of sex he'd just shared with Keri was … He shook his head. It took you too close to yourself. Made you feel things you didn't want to feel. If he'd given in to that kind of stuff he could never have done the job he'd been trained for. And he didn't do night-times either, for they brought with them their own particular problems. He felt as if he had strayed into some kind of unknown trap, and he knew he had to get the hell out of there.
She knotted the belt. 'Of course,' she said calmly-amazing, really, considering what was going on inside her head. The woman who had been so thoroughly pleasured now desperately needed to connect. She wanted to run to him, to have him pull her into his arms and show her that what had just taken place in some way mattered.
Wasn't it worth a try?
She walked towards him, leaned forward and kissed him softly, and as she deepened the kiss she felt him respond. But then he drew back, his eyes unreadable, the curve of his mouth regretful-but how true was that? she wondered.
'I have to go, Keri.'
He wanted to go; that was the bottom line. She gave a brittle smile. Sometimes you just had no control over what your face did. 'I'll see you out.'
In silence, they walked towards the hall, where he located his T-shirt and the shirt she had ripped from his back like a hungry animal. Keri as uninhibited predator. It was an image she wasn't used to, and one she wasn't sure she liked very much.