‘If it is, then I can hardly be blamed for it, can I?’ he rasped, flooding the road with angry light again.
‘Why? Because I look the way I do? You virtually dressed me today, remember? And you aren’t exactly the type of man the opposite sex can ignore.’
‘Is that your way of reminding me of where we were an hour ago?’
Was it?
‘No,’ she refuted quickly, because it would be far too easy to rekindle the mood that had propelled them out of that hotel ballroom, and she’d known it was crazy even thinking of allowing herself to become intimately involved with him even before they had bumped into Gerard.
‘As you wish,’ he accepted, with a long drawing out of his breath, and he didn’t say another word to her for the rest of the journey home.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘DO YOU WANT a nightcap?’
Andreas had removed his jacket, and his bow-tie was hanging loosely below the winged collar he had unfastened.
‘No.’ Magenta was much too conscious of being with him, knowing that if it hadn’t been for meeting that man Gerard in the foyer they would have been in bed, making unrestrained love to each other now. ‘I think I’d like to go up and maybe read for a while. Would it be imprudent of me in any way to ask if you would lend me the Byron?’
He glanced up from the sideboard, where he was pouring himself a drink. ‘Still the incurable romantic?’ When she didn’t answer, not sure whether he was being sarcastic or not, he said, ‘I suspect that you’ve already guessed—or remembered—that it’s yours anyway.’
She nodded, wanting to ask why, if that was the case, he had it in his possession. But the moment didn’t seem right somehow.
‘Go in and get it,’ he acceded, turning away.
Bidding him goodnight, she walked upstairs on legs of lead, her stole and her bag clutched tensely in her hand. She wanted him and he despised her. And he probably despised himself for wanting her too. That was probably why he had reined in those ravaging desires of his after he had been reminded of the kind of woman he obviously believed she was. But she couldn’t have been that loose or free, with other lovers in her past, could she? Not Marcus. Not anyone! There had only ever been Andreas. She knew it in her heart as surely as she knew that day would follow night into eternity.
The book was where she had left it when she had crept up there alone the other day—back in its place between a tome of classic literature and a Winston Churchill biography.
Trying not to look at the enormous bed, she tripped lightly across the room with her mind anywhere but on poetry, fighting back the feelings that were stirring in her as she pictured herself lying naked with Andreas under the folds of that abstract-patterned king-size duvet.
Putting her bag and stole down on a Jacobean-style chest, she was quickly retrieving the book when the light she’d switched on suddenly faded almost to candlelight.
Pivoting round, she saw Andreas coming around the door.
‘Still here?’
Standing there with her lips slightly parted in shock, and with reckless impulses suddenly leaping through her, Magenta wasn’t sure whether he was surprised or not.
She made a careless gesture towards the book. ‘So it would seem.’ Her throat had contracted so much she could scarcely get the words out as she watched him, his smile distracted, advance across the luxurious carpet towards her.
Somewhere between the sitting room and the bedroom he had unfastened most of the buttons of his shirt, and Magenta was acutely aware of the hair-sprinkled chest it exposed. He was so close to her now that she could reach out and touch him. But she didn’t. Instead she stayed exactly where she was, riveted by his nearness, his scent and that powerful magnetism that made her protest to herself go unheard and kept her eyes trained painfully on his.
With the briefest touch of a finger he lifted her face to his, and then with a tenderness that was excruciating brought his mouth down over hers.
Magenta’s senses screamed from the lightness of his touch, the calculated skill with which he was arousing her. Or was it calculated? she wondered. Perhaps he was merely kissing her goodnight.
She wanted to strain against him. Put her arms around his neck and cling to him. But the not knowing kept her still, her fingers almost painfully stiff around the velvety cover of the book.
‘So where do we go from here?’ His eyes were half veiled by his long lashes so that she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. She knew her own eyes would be dark pools of wanting, so why did he need to ask?
But he was leaving it to her.
Candidly then, her face racked with longing, she murmured softly, ‘I don’t want to be alone.’