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His legs shifted, his knee bending as his denim thigh eased between hers, rising up to fit snugly into the notch of her body, his hands on her hips tilting her pelvis into the cradle of his and then stroking around to trace the outline of her panties through the thin fabric of her silk trousers. When he began to softly knead the rounded cheeks of her bottom, moving her rhythmically against the rigid muscles of his thigh, she uttered a tiny, shivery cry that broke on the still night.
‘Ask me inside?
?take me to your bed,’ he whispered, sipping the cry from her bee-stung lips. A clever glide of his fingers slipped a few of the pearl buttons on her shirt and she felt the delicate swirl of his fingertips on the silky swell of her tightening breast. ‘You know you want to, Kate. You won’t even have to ask, you just have to want me…I’m yours for the taking…all of me is yours…’He moved his hips in a slow rotation that rubbed the thick bulge between his legs against her feminine mound, teasing her with the memory of the turbulent ecstasy his heat and hardness could provide.
For a moment they both thought the faint squeak was her whimper of surrender, but then Kate groaned and turned her cheek to the door, her arms dropping away. She could feel Drake’s rigid body drawn so tight it was trembling, then he uttered a harsh sound and let his forehead rap on the door behind her averted head, leaning it there while he said thickly:
‘I can’t take much more of this. I thought we were lovers, Kate. What’s happening? Why can’t we make love?’ He lifted his head, temper seeking a safer outlet. ‘And what the hell is that infernal noise?’
Now the enchanted spell was well and truly broken. ‘A rat, I think,’ she said. ‘I told you about it, remember.’
‘You’ve told me so many things…except, apparently, the one thing that really matters.’ He pushed himself away from the door, breathing deeply, half turning away to hide the painful state of his body. ‘Just tell me this, at least: have you fallen in love with someone else, Kate? Someone who makes it impossible for you to be with me?’
‘No!’ She fumbled with the buttons on her blouse. ‘I—No—There’s only ever been you these past two years. Please, just give me a little more time,’ she begged.
‘You haven’t been raped, have you?’ he rasped.
‘What? No!’ she said, her eyes rounded in shock. ‘You’re letting your imagination run away with you.’
‘That’s what I’m paid for,’ he growled. ‘You still want what we have, Kate. Stop fighting it. Whatever it is that’s bugging you you’d better sort it out soon. Or I will.
‘And first thing tomorrow I’m going to sort out that damned rat of yours!’
CHAPTER EIGHT
WHEN Kate walked into the house the next afternoon her heart jumped to find Drake standing barefoot in the middle of her kitchen, looking rumpled and gorgeously surly in the same shirt and jeans he had worn the previous night.
‘I thought I locked up when I left; how did you get in?’ she said breathlessly, setting down the cardboard box and large plastic bag she was carrying by the leg of the table.
‘The rental agent gave me a spare key for emergencies,’ he admitted, eyeing her grumpily.
‘You mean you could have come in here any time you wanted?’ she said faintly, thinking of 1000 Tips For A Healthy Pregnancy, which she thought she might have left open in the bathroom.
‘I could but I haven’t—I respect people’s personal privacy,’ he said pointedly, as if reading her mind. ‘I haven’t been pawing through your secrets. But I told you I’d be over to help you with your pest problem, and when you didn’t answer your door I thought something might be wrong…’
‘What—like something out of Curse Of The Rat People? Did you think I might be lying chewed up on the floor?’ she said sceptically, hugging herself with the knowledge that he worried about her in her absence. So it wasn’t entirely a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’…
‘Besides, you said you’d be here first thing. It’s now after lunch.’ She toned down her sarcasm as she took in his slightly bloodshot eyes, and dissipated expression. ‘Are you all right? You don’t look so great.’ Which was a lie—Drake always looked terrific, whatever his physical state. And she had never known him to be ill. He either had the constitution of an ox or, more likely, he downplayed and concealed his illnesses the way he did the rest of his vulnerabilities.
He ran a hand through his hair and scratched his grainy chin. ‘I was up all night writing.’ He glared at her with a mixture of accusation and bewilderment. ‘I didn’t crash out until six a.m. I’ve only just woken up.’
Oh, so maybe she had been out of sight and mind for a while…
‘That’s not my fault,’ she defended herself from his look. ‘I didn’t order you to go home and write yourself into a coma.’
‘No, you just wound me up, pumped me full of adrenalin and kicked me loose. What else did you expect me to do?’
She looked quickly away, smoothing back her hair and composing her face into a cool expression. Not quickly enough, however, for he suddenly chuckled knowingly.
‘Why, Kate, is that what you did last night? Go to bed and dream a little wet dream of me?’ he taunted. ‘What a waste, when the real thing was right there for the asking.’
‘But then you wouldn’t have got all those pages written,’ she told him stoutly, fighting to keep the heat that suffused her body out of her face.
‘Maybe I wouldn’t have minded the sacrifice,’ he said silkily.
‘Well, I would—I don’t want you to sacrifice anything for me,’ she said with haughty pride. ‘People who feel forced to surrender something they value for the sake of someone else generally tend to get bitter and twisted if things don’t work out the way they planned. My mother says she sacrificed her valuable time and money to give me a good education, which I’ve wasted, and she never lets me forget it. So, no, thanks, don’t make any grand gestures on my behalf…’
‘Wow, I did hit a sore point, didn’t I?’ he murmured. ‘I was only kidding. Once I’m in the grip of writing fever I just have to keep going until it runs its course. It’s a very anti-social tendency so it’s actually quite useful when inspiration strikes in the middle of the night.’
