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‘We’ll have to picnic in here, I’m afraid,’ he told Beth as he placed one on the table behind the sofa. Outside it had suddenly gone very dark, the wind driving the rain so hard at the windows that Beth could hear the fierce sound it made.

‘Perhaps we ought to make our way back to Prague,’ she suggested nervously, remembering how hazardous their journey to the castle had been.

But Alex seemed to misunderstand the cause of her apprehension, coming to stand close to her as he asked her softly, ‘What is it you’re afraid of, Beth? Not me?’

‘No, of course not,’ she denied, and then, for some reason she couldn’t understand herself, she discovered that she couldn’t quite bring herself to look at him, and the feeling that was curling up right through her body had far more to do with a dangerous sense of forbidden excitement than with any kind of fear.

There was something undeniably erotic about being here alone with him in this timeless place, and the lack of the modern amenity of electric light, the softness of the fire and candlelight, only served to highlight the sensation that filled her that she might have been transported back in time, to a time when for a young woman to be alone with a young man had been a very, very dangerous thing indeed.

‘No, not you,’ she said a little breathlessly.

‘Then this, perhaps,’ Alex suggested, clos

ing the distance between them and taking her in his arms and kissing her, gently at first, almost reverently, and then far more passionately as she swayed closer to him and her heartbeat picked up and echoed the fierce rhythm of the driving rain and her own equally stormy driving inner yearning.

‘We should go back,’ she protested shakily when Alex released her mouth.

‘We can’t, it’s too late,’ he told her, and Beth knew that he wasn’t really talking about their actual journey from the castle. ‘We can’t go back, Beth,’ he reiterated as he touched her mouth with his fingertips and then traced its trembling shape with his finger. ‘Not now...’

‘I thought we were going to eat,’ Beth reminded him. Her lips felt dry, clumsy, reluctant to form the words, reluctant to do anything that would increase the sensual pressure of Alex’s fingertips against her lower lip but equally reluctant to deny herself the pleasure of it.

‘You’re...hungry...?’

The smouldering look which accompanied his comment, the way his gaze dropped from her face to her body, made Beth’s heart race.

‘I... I...’

‘You’re right. We should eat,’ Alex agreed tenderly, reluctantly releasing her. ‘Come and sit down by the fire.’

He pulled a chair up for her and Beth allowed him to guide her into it. She wasn’t used to being treated so protectively, to being so cherished. One part of her loved it, another feared and suspected it. She didn’t dare allow herself to fall into the trap of believing that any of this was real, that Alex’s treatment of her, his tenderness towards her were genuine. They weren’t. She mustn’t allow herself to forget that he was simply using her, and that all she felt for him was, quite simply, a healthy physical female desire. She must not allow her thoughts or emotions to become clouded by the romanticism of the situation.

Alex picked up the hamper and carried it over to put it down on the floor between them.

‘Come and sit down here,’ he told her, dragging a couple of soft cushions off the sofa and piling them up against one of the chairs. ‘It will be warmer. The chair will protect your back from the draught...’

Obediently Beth did as he suggested. There was something dangerously sybaritic about being here like this with him. The heat from the fire was slowly relaxing her tense muscles whilst the candlelight spread soft, sensuous shadows across the darkening room. Outside the light was already fading, the afternoon giving way to early evening as the storm clouds continued to darken the sky.

‘Where did you get this?’ Beth asked Alex as he opened the hamper.

‘The hotel,’ he informed her promptly. ‘It’s all cold, I’m afraid...’

Beth could have told him that for some reason she was no longer really all that interested in food, but a self-protective instinct made her refrain from doing so. If she did Alex might be tempted to ask just what more compelling appetite had taken its place, and she was very much afraid that she might be tempted to tell him.

‘Chicken?’ Alex asked her, holding out a tender portion towards her.

Uncertainly Beth looked at it.

‘It’s good,’ Alex encouraged her, taking a bite out of it and then offering it to her, commanding her softly, ‘Bite.’

Unable to drag her gaze away from his, Beth did as he instructed, nibbling delicately on the chicken and then tensing as Alex reached out his free hand to push a stray lock of her hair off her face, his fingers just brushing against her mouth as he did so.

There was something almost shockingly sensual about what they were doing, about being fed by him like this, about knowing his fingers were so close to her mouth as he held the chicken and she bit into it, and the temptation to eat the meat with a deliberately erotic female show of the hunger she felt for him was something that Beth had to fight to control.

‘Enjoy it,’ Alex said softly to her, as though he knew what she was thinking—and feeling. ‘An appetite for food is like an appetite for love...meant to be savoured and enjoyed—indulged! That’s how I want to make love with you,’ he told her rawly. ‘Slowly and thoroughly, with every touch, every caress a feast of pleasure and indulgence.’

She was, Beth suddenly discovered, trembling so hard that Alex must be able to see and feel it.

Had Alex brought her here on purpose, to make love to her, to seduce her? If he had...if he had, he couldn’t have chosen a more romantic setting, Beth acknowledged as Alex threw what was left of the piece of chicken on the fire. Whilst it sizzled in the heat he removed a bottle of wine from the hamper and uncorked it, pouring it into two glasses.

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