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Yet the warmth of his embrace was irresistible, as was the rhythmic movement of his hand stroking her hair as he lulled her into a state of utter defencelessness. She couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to, and she didn’t want to.
Her last thought before drifting off into a fitful and dreamless sleep was that this was the kind of thing you should do with a man before you had sex with him. Being intimate without being too intimate. Building something slowly instead of grabbing at it. She felt like a child who had gobbled all the icing off the top of the cake. And how she wished she hadn’t.
When Lara’s eyelids fluttered open, it was to find Darian’s space beside her empty. In fact, the room was empty. She blinked her eyes and rubbed them just as the door opened and in he walked, carrying a pile of clothes. Her heart flipped over when she saw him.
It’s just because he’s wearing jodhpurs, she thought—all men looked good in jodhpurs.
The cream trousers defined every sinew of his muscular thighs, clinging to the narrow jut of his hips and the high, hard curve of his buttocks. His shirt was loose and cool, though the fine, filmy material did nothing to disguise the rocky torso and the broad span of his shoulders. Long, soft black leather riding boots completed the ensemble, and for the first time in her life Lara understood why leather was considered synonymous with sex.
But sex was not what she wanted from Darian, she realised, her heart sinking. Or rather, not sex on its own. She wanted more. She wanted affection and respect and tenderness and regard. There was a word for what she desired, and that word was love.
And, judging by the cool, non-committal look on his face, she wanted far more than she could ever have.
‘Good morning,’ she said, feeling almost more shy than if they had had sex.
‘You slept.’ It was a statement. He knew it for fact simply because he had not. The moment she had got into bed with him had been the moment when sleep became, for him, a distant memory.
He must have been out of his head. Playing the protector and the carer when all he’d really wanted to do was drive himself into her sweet and yielding flesh, over and over again. Punishing his body with the nearness of hers and the sweet, feminine scent of her which had invaded his senses until the sun had risen, and unable to do a damned thing about it. He had never known such an acute and excruciating sense of frustration in his life.
‘Yes. Yes, I did get to sleep,’ she agreed. ‘Eventually.’ This was awful—she felt as if he was someone she had just met in the doctor’s waiting room. She looked instead at the pile of clothes he was carrying. ‘What’s that?’
He dropped it onto the foot of the bed. ‘Riding clothes,’ he said shortly. ‘Khalim sent them for you. They belong to Rose and he says you’re pretty much the same size. I’ve eaten breakfast and I’m just off to the stables—so do join us when you’re ready. If you’re still inclined to.’
The dark, unfriendly note in his voice told her that he would rather she didn’t, and with something which she supposed was a smile he was gone, leaving Lara staring after him, wondering what she had done to make him look as if he had been eating something with a distinctly sour taste. Was it sexual frustration he felt? Or frustration that he had actually ended up playing the gentleman?
Wasn’t it crazy that just lying innocently in his arms, with him stroking her hair like that, should have made her feel so…so…dreamy? But tenderness could mean so much more than even the most spectacular orgasm in the world. Even if it was only pretend tenderness.
She sh
owered and put the riding clothes on. Khalim was right—the two women were pretty similar in size, though Lara was taller and, judging by the shirt, her breasts were now smaller than Rose’s. But Rose had had one child already, and everyone knew that pregnancy changed your shape.
Lara stared in the mirror, at her slim hips and breasts untouched by childbirth, and a sudden yearning stabbed at her. Babies were something she had never even considered before, yet now she saw a sharp, snapshot image of a baby at her breast, a beautiful baby with golden eyes and dark ruffled hair.
Stop it, she thought impatiently. Just stop it. He’s gorgeous and he’s a challenge. He’s good in bed, and occasionally he can be tender—but that’s all. You aren’t in love with him, and he certainly isn’t in love with you.
And she tied her hair back so tightly that it made her wince, then set off for the stables.
CHAPTER TWELVE
LARA burst into a peal of laughter and was met with a furious gold stare.
‘It isn’t funny,’ he growled.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Darian, but it is. Very.’ She held her hand out to him. ‘Here.’
He eyed it suspiciously for a moment before grasping it, and then swung himself up from the dust onto which he had just tumbled, bringing himself right up close to Lara, enjoying the immediate darkening of her eyes.
‘Do you like watching me fall, Lara?’
Actually, it was strange watching him not being perfectly proficient at something, to see him cast in the role of novice. Strange and almost endearing. If it had been anyone else she might have said cute, except that four-letter words like nice and cute didn’t really sit well on Darian.
‘A fallen man?’ she mused. ‘Yes, I do think I like it!’ She could smell the sweat on him, and it gleamed on his skin as brilliantly as on the highly polished flanks of the Akhal-Teke horse from which he had just plummeted.
He let go of her hand and placed both his own on the horse again.
‘You’re getting back up?’ she asked, in surprise.
‘Isn’t that the first rule of riding?’ he questioned. ‘That you get straight back on?’
