‘Walking, Magenta?’
As though she had conjured him from her thoughts, Andreas was running up behind her. The contours of his chest and arms were emphasised by the white T-shirt he was wearing with black joggers, and with his hair slicked back he looked utterly superb.
‘You’re never going to stretch yourself, ambling along at this pace.’ He bounced light-footedly past and turned to face her, his sparkling eyes alive with health and teasing.
‘I’m stretched enough, thank you,’ she responded succinctly, and then could have kicked herself for the unintended implication. She was glad when he chose to ignore it. ‘I’ve already done my running,’ she clarified. ‘Besides, I’m not anatomically designed to be able to enjoy quite the same freedom as you.’
A swift glance over her anatomy beneath the zipped and clinging white top had comprehension dawning in those glinting eyes. ‘Ah!’ Like her, he had slowed to a walk, and was now falling into step beside her. ‘Magenta, would you mind if I asked you a rather personal question?’
She sent a wary glance towards him and with a shrug said, ‘Why not? You will anyway.’
His brows drew together as though he were questioning the chill in her voice. ‘When did you last make love?’
His question was so unexpected that she didn’t know how to respond immediately. ‘You should know,’ she parried, looking straight ahead.
‘I’m serious, Magenta.’
He was too. A quick look at his face showed a keenly assessing absorption that she hadn’t really seen in him before. But of course he had to be thinking how tight she had been last night when he had entered her—far tighter than he had probably been expecting.
‘You’re right.’ She made a cynical little sound down her nostrils. ‘It is a personal question.’ How did you tell someone who thought the worst about you that there had only ever been one man in your life and that he was standing right in front of you? ‘And all I have to say is that it shouldn’t have happened.’
‘Is that why you sneaked away before I was awake—and with my bathrobe?’
She could tell from his voice that he was trying to make light of it.
‘Don’t worry. You’ll get it back,’ she said tartly.
His hand on her arm was suddenly stopping her in her tracks. ‘The robe doesn’t worry me. Your frame of mind towards me this morning does. What’s wrong, Magenta?’
From the top of an ash tree near where they were standing the pure notes of a song thrush were rippling down through the dappled leaves like liquid gold.
‘Are you saying you regret what happened between us?’
He was drawing her closer and Magenta’s lungs seemed to lock—in contrast to Andreas’s, which were still expanding deeply from where he had been running.
She wanted to speak but she couldn’t, because his lips were suddenly brushing lightly across hers, sending traitorous impulses leaping along her veins.
‘Don’t...’ she murmured tremulously, but her plea was lost beneath the shrill, lucid notes of the thrush.
‘That doesn’t sound like regret to me.’
There was warm satisfaction in the way he breathed against her throat, and then she felt the cool bark of a tree against her back, and his fingers dealing with the zipper of her top.
His hands were like some craved addiction, making her cry out with the satisfaction that they alone could supply.
As he took her mouth with his she moved involuntarily against him, stimulated by the warm contoured muscles straining beneath his T-shirt, aware of his arousal that was every bit as strong as hers through the light, silky material of his joggers.
When he cupped her aching femininity she could have let herself go and taken the release she was craving right there and then. But the shrieking of a blackbird as it flew up from somewhere close by in agitated alarm brought her to her senses.
‘No—don’t!’
In an instant she was pulling away from him, breathing deeply to restore the sanity she could so easily have lost as her trembling fingers struggled to reinstate her top.
‘Magenta...’ He sounded breathless, and his strong features revealed just how much he was fighting for control.
‘No!’ she said adamantly, to herself more than to Andreas, and she started to run from him, not stopping until she came back across the little bridge, wondering how she was ever going to say what she had to say when he only had to touch her to blow all her firm decisions to smithereens.
He was right beside her as she came across the lawn towards the back of the house and saw a beautiful bronze Mini parked there on the shingle by the terrace steps.