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She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t that, that she was crying more for what she was missing along with a hundred and one other things she couldn’t put a name to, but held close to him like this she couldn’t say a word. Her cheek was resting on his broad chest and her fingers had curled involuntarily into his body hair; she could hear the steady thud of his heart and his skin smelt of shower gel. Heaven on earth…
‘Your hair still carries the scent of apples,’ he said above her head, huskiness in his voice. ‘Apple blossom on a spring day, fresh and beautiful and sun-kissed. You’re beautiful, Rachel, but you don’t quite believe that, do you?’
She didn’t know what she believed at this moment, only what she felt, and that was the stirrings of a desire so powerful it took her breath away. His muscled body was hard and strong, its male angles and planes alien but so right. She wanted to stretch out on him, melt into him, feel him envelop and touch and enclose her. She wanted to feel him inside her, loving her.
‘This guy you were involved with, the one who let you down so badly, don’t let him spoil your life.’ She felt him nuzzle the top of her head and instinctively lifted her face. For a split second she felt him stiffen and then his lips claimed hers, firm and warm and seductively sure. His mouth played with hers, teasing her into a response that amazed her, or would have done if she had been thinking clearly. As it was, the more intimate the kiss grew, the more she abandoned all reserve.
The darkness, the soft warm bed, his hard masculine body and what his lips and hands were doing to her swept her off into another world of touch and taste, a place of sensual excitement where everyday life didn’t exist. She kissed him back because it seemed good and natural and what she’d been waiting for all her life without knowing it.
When her head fell back a little, Zac rained soft burning kisses on her chin and the exposed line of her throat, his hands cupping her breasts through the thin silk and stroking her engorged nipples. She gasped, and Zac took advantage of her open lips to return to her mouth, his tongue running riot with her heightened senses.
He caressed her with exquisitely controlled sensuality and a pleasure totally unfeigned, the soft pads of his fingertips injecting needles of sensation until she was aflame and the kiss had deepened to a kind of consummation. He pulled her more completely into him until she could feel every inch of his arousal, but then almost immediately pushed her away, flinging back the covers and moving to sit on the side of the bed.
‘Zac?’ she whispered tremblingly, still in the throes of desire. ‘What’s wrong? Have I done something wrong?’
‘Give me a minute.’ His voice was hoarse.
She lay still, unable to believe for a moment or two he had stopped, the ache in her body so strong it took all her will not to reach out for him. Slowly the desire was replaced by hot humiliation. How could she have encouraged him—and that’s what she’d done, she thought in an agony of shame—to make love to her when she knew this could be nothing more than a passing fancy for Zac? He hadn’t pretended he loved her or even that he was going to be around for a while; he’d been brutally honest from the start in making it clear this was a one-off trip and nothing more. And she had…
She shut her eyes tightly at what she’d done. If he hadn’t stopped, they would have been fully intimate—she knew that as well as he did. But he had stopped. She wanted to squirm with embarrassment and pain. He hadn’t wanted her as much as she had wanted him; he had been able to control his mind and body and prove he could take her or leave her—literally.
After what seemed an eternity she felt him move but he didn’t lie down again, sitting up in bed as he drew the covers over his legs. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said quietly. ‘It seems where you’re concerned, my control isn’t what it should be.’
‘It—it was my fault.’
‘Hardly,’ he said wryly. ‘I knew the score, you’d just made it plain how things are with you, and I let…’ he drew in a long shuddering breath ‘…the situation escalate out of control.’
Rachel drew in a long breath herself. She felt a bit better that he’d obviously had a struggle to stop.
‘I didn’t intend—’ He stopped abruptly and from the way he moved she was sure
he had raked his hand through his hair. ‘No, that’s not true. When we turned off the light I did intend to sweep away your defences. I was arrogant enough to presume this guy who’d let you down had soured your view of the male sex and I guess I thought I was the man to bring you back into dating mode again.’ He gave a bark of a laugh. ‘I thought we’d have a good time together, that I’d heal a few hurts. But when you told me you were a virgin—and why—that changed things.’
Now she did squirm.
‘I don’t want to be the one who takes that away from you, Rachel. Not when I can’t offer you anything real in return.’
Well, that was telling her anyway, she thought with a sudden flash of anger. No dressing it up. The anger provided welcome adrenalin. ‘You’ve always been very honest,’ she said stiffly. ‘And I’ve known all along you’re only in England for a short time. You made that clear from our first meeting.’
‘The thing is, Rachel…’ He hesitated, then went on, ‘I’m not looking for what you are. I’ve done the commitment thing once and once was enough. More than enough. I don’t want to be in that kind of situation again.’
Oh, yeah, she thought waspishly. The old ‘I need to be free to play the field’ argument. A completely up-front attitude so any woman foolish enough to fall for him had no come-back when he said goodbye. No tears, no regrets, no recriminations. A different approach from the one Giles had but still at heart the same selfish meme-me perspective. How did she manage to find these sorts of men? she asked herself as hurt sliced through her. Or did they find her? Did she have some sort of aura that attracted the shallow, don’t-give-a-damn types? ‘I understand,’ she said tightly. ‘And you don’t have to explain to me.’
‘You don’t and I do,’ he shot back so swiftly it made her jump. ‘I was married once and it didn’t work out. We…’ He stopped again, taking an audible breath. ‘No, I need to start from the beginning. I met Moira when I was eighteen and she was seventeen. Two kids, that’s all we were. Ten months later we were married because a baby was on the way. By that time we knew the thing between us had burnt itself out but neither of us wanted her to have an abortion, neither did we want the child growing up without both its parents. Rightly or wrongly, we’d agreed we’d provide a stable home for our child but be free to see other people as long as we were discreet. Crazy, looking back, but like I said we were young and crass.’
He’d been married? Rachel was unprepared for the way the news affected her, like a hard punch in the solar plexus.
‘Even in the months leading up to the birth, I knew it wasn’t going to work. She was my wife and that had changed things somehow. The thought of her seeing someone else or me having an affair had become…unacceptable. Moira pretended to agree; she was pregnant and clearly not looking around anyway. Then Josh was born after a long labour that suddenly went terribly wrong.’
There was a moment’s screaming silence. Rachel found she was holding her breath.
‘There were complications,’ he said expressionlessly. ‘He had the cord round his neck four times and no one had known. He never took breath. He was perfect, beautiful, but he never had a chance.’
This time when he stopped Rachel stared into the darkness in horror. She felt gut-wrenchingly sorry for Zac and disgusted with herself and the assumptions she’d made. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said chokily, putting out a tentative hand. She found his arm, felt his muscles bunch beneath her fingers. ‘That’s terrible.’
‘It was a long time ago.’
His voice was flat, wooden, which said only too clearly that it could have been yesterday as far as he was concerned. Rachel couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t horribly inadequate to the situation.
