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Was that husky voice really her own? She attempted to push him away, but she was still trembling far too much.
‘I’m fine, thank you,’ he mimicked, suddenly almost savage. ‘You’re the epitome of the cool, in-control lady, aren’t you? Apart from that brief slip last night. Will you tell him about that, your estimable fiancé? I am right in describing him as estimable, aren’t I, Tamara?
‘Let me see …’ His fingers captured hers, studying her diamond ring. ‘He’s something in the City; very correct and proper; ambitious in his way, and you’ll make him the perfect wife. Perhaps you hadn’t better tell him. It might mar your perfection.’
‘He’ll understand,’ Tamara lied shakily.
‘What?’ Zach demanded softly. ‘That the veneer of civilisation isn’t always as thick as we would like, and that you came perilously close to the point of proving just how thin it can be?’
‘I didn’t.’ Tamara was desperate to deny the truth; not because of Malcolm, but because she couldn’t bear the thought of Zach discovering how she felt about him.
‘No?’
In the sudden quiet of the clearing, the word was dangerously loaded.
‘No,’ Tamara reiterated firmly, avoiding her eyes.
‘Liar!’
She hadn’t been aware of Zach moving, but all at once he was so close to her that she could see the individual pores on his skin; could breathe in the male scent of him, and her nerve ends quivered in response to his effect upon her.
‘Don’t touch me—I hate it!’ It was the panic-stricken cry of a child, but it seemed to ignite a fire within Zach which scorched along Tamara’s nervous system as she was lowered to the ground, the weight of Zach’s body pinning her there, his potent maleness dizzying her senses as his mouth punished hers in a brutally forceful kiss which left her lips swollen and quivering and frighteningly vulnerable to the tantalising stroke of his tongue over the flesh he had so recently savaged.
But the desire was still there. Tamara could see it smouldering in the depths of his eyes; she could feel it in the hard tension of his body; in the hands which swept her from throat to thigh, destroying for ever her innocence and leaving her dry-mouthed and aching with a need that was wholly adult.
‘Still hate me touching you?’
His eyes seemed almost black, without a single trace of compassion or remorse.
‘Yes.’
Pride forced the lie, her face averting as she closed her eyes.
The sudden touch of Zach’s mouth, moving moistly over the tender vulnerability of her throat, forced them wide open again, but it was plain that her defiance had driven him beyond reason. Despite her incoherent pleas he refused to let her go, pinioning her arms instead, so that she was powerless to help herself, her whole body torn by deep shudders, by his tongue’s delicately tormenting tracery of first one nipple and then the other.
The sight of his dark head against her breasts awoke in Tamara an almost primitive yearning
to know what it would be like to hold his son against her body, but even this was banished as the expertly questing lips moved downwards exploring the softly trembling swell of her stomach, his fingers stroking seductively along her thighs.
‘You want me, Tamara.’
It was an assertion she could no longer deny. Her fingers twisted convulsively in the thick blackness of his hair. His body emanated the same dry heat as her lips, the small satisfied sounds he made as hesitantly, and then with increasing confidence her lips and fingers explored the male contours of his body, encouraging her to touch and taste with a sensuality she had never in her wildest dreams imagined herself possessing. The tentative touch of her tongue against the sensitive maleness of his throat brought a response that made the heat beat up under her own skin, her fingers digging into the solid muscle of his chest shadowed by the dark hair that arrowed down past his navel.
‘Tamara, I want you.’ The hoarsely groaned plea was an echo of her own desire, the pulsating heat of the thighs pinning her to the ground arousing inside her a deeply exciting hunger which seemed to grow with every brush of his fingers against her skin. The passionate demand of his kisses obliterated caution and fear; her whole body trembling with the need to know his complete possession as she arched pleadingly beneath him, mutely inviting the culmination of their mutual desire.
Beads of sweat dewed his forehead and throat, tasting salty on Tamara’s tongue as she touched it delicately to his moist flesh. With a groan Zach cupped her breast, teasing it tantalisingly for a second before possessing the urgently aroused peak with lips that seemed to burn where they touched.
There was a brief moment when Tamara thought he was going to leave her, and she clutched desperately at the smoothly muscled shoulders, only to realise with a thrill of increased desire that he had merely been removing the final barrier between them. His knee parted the soft flesh of her thighs, the tautly masculine shape of him at first shockingly alien, but then his mouth slid moistly over hers and Tamara forgot her prickling apprehension in the waves of melting sweetness that started to engulf her.
There was a moment when she could have drawn back, but it was swiftly gone, only Zach’s surprised, and passion-drugged, ‘Why so tense?—relax,’ intruding upon the dream world she was now inhabiting.
Pain, swift and unexpected, lanced through her. Above her she saw Zach’s face, alien and almost savage with anger, and then the moment was gone and she was soaring higher and higher on the wings of pleasure; far beyond the cobalt blue of the heavens to a place where all the colours of the rainbow exploded and dazzled all around her, before floating her back down to earth on mother-of-pearl clouds.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were a virgin? Does your fiancé know what a rare prize I’ve stolen from him?’
The brutal words shattered her dreams and Tamara stared at him in growing bitterness, as she realised that his anger sprang from the fact that he had taken her to be a woman of experience, and simply did not want the involvement that might come from someone who was sexually unawakened.
‘No, he doesn’t know,’ Tamara told him scornfully. ‘And he won’t know that I was—from me.’
