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‘And is that all you want?’ Something had fired in the depths of those dark eyes, but she could give no name to it.
She could not answer him.
She turned her head away, walking towards the vase of flowers. She seemed so calm still, and yet inside her something was happening to her that was not calm at all.
She stopped, and reached out her free hand to touch one of the petals. It was heavy and waxy to her touch. There was a mirror behind the vase, and she could see, although she was not looking directly into it, that Diego Saez was walking towards her.
He stood behind her. She did not lift her eyes from the flower, nor move her hand. Only when she felt his hand curve around the nape of her neck did she still completely. Her finger touching the petal hovered immobile, her unvarnished nail gleaming pale against the vivid magenta of the bloom.
But the flowers had disappeared.
The whole world had disappeared.
Only one thing still existed.
The touch at the nape of her neck.
His hand was warm, encircling, resting on the bared skin beneath her chignon. She could feel the tips of his fingers, moving slowly, exploratively, hardly at all. With such a slight movement, how could they engender such sensation?
Because sensation was dissolving through her, wave after slow wave, shimmering down her spine, fanning out across her shoulders, easing along her neck, her throat.
She could not move, only stand there as still as a statue while the press of his hand on her nape, the slow moving of the tips of his fingers, became the whole world of existence to her.
Was she still breathing? She did not know. Knew only that the world had become focused minutely, consumingly, on his touch.
The tips of his fingers reached further, spreading out to splay around her throat. His thumb found the small hollow behind her ear, stroking into it gently, so gently, that she thought she must faint and fall, as the shimmering sensation became focused on that one point of being.
Then it shifted, and his thumb and forefinger closed over the tender lobe of her ear, feeling the fullness of that delicate flesh. Slowly, so slowly, she felt her head droop and turn, so that his long fingers could span further, stroke yet more of her throat, while his thumb feathered at the softness of her earlobe.
It seemed to last an eternity. An eternity that dissolved around her as she stood helpless, immobile, while Diego Saez touched her, stroked her. She had no will left, no strength, no resistance.
She was nothing, nothing except sensation. Slow, drugging sensation.
Slowly, as if it were infinitely heavy, she lifted her head to let her eyes gaze ahead. Through the mesh of vivid petals she saw her own reflection, a pale, slight figure, and behind her, as if caging her, Diego Saez’s tall, imprisoning darkness.
/> She stared, eyes unblinking. His hand was still at her neck, but it was motionless now, merely holding the base of her head, watching her watching herself—and him.
Her gaze moved away from herself, shadowed by him, and moved to meet his.
For one eternal moment he held her gaze in the glass, his eyes dark, and hooded, and unreadable.
She felt her lungs tighten. For the briefest instant an urge so great she thought it must overwhelm her shook silently within her.
She should have run. Because if she did not, if she did not run now, something terrible would happen—something that would cost her more than she could pay.
More logic sliced through her mind.
You can’t run. If you run now Salton will be lost, your family destroyed. You will have to live with that all your life, the fact that you ran and Salton was lost.
What did she count for compared with that? Whatever price she paid, Salton would be saved—for Tom, for his sons, for his grandsons.
She could not run. Could do nothing—nothing except go on standing here, caged by the man she was going to yield her body to, the man who was already putting his mark on her, with his hand resting on her bared skin.
So it was with complete, absolute acquiescence that without a word, with only the sliding of his hand down over her shoulder, pressing her around, she turned away from the mirror, trailing her fingers away from the vivid waxy petals. And with that same acquiescence she let him guide her forward, his hand splayed now across the small of her back, hardly touching her, but for all that controlling her—totally.
The bedroom was vast, and as opulent as the reception room. The floor-length curtains were already drawn, bedside lights already lit and turned low. She walked into the room, and halted.
Her heart slewed in her chest with heavy, uneven strokes.
