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‘Oh, yes, it is,’ he said, and she looked up again to find his grey eyes focused on her mouth with an intensity that made her pulses race.
She didn’t want to respond like that. She wanted him to go away and leave her alone. But when he looked at her with such desire she felt her own passion leap up to meet his, and that terrified her.
‘Leave me alone!’ she whispered, her heart beating worryingly fast.
He pushed the chair aside and took her shoulders in his strong, supple hands. ‘You belong to me, Pippa, you know that, even though you keep trying to pretend you don’t. From the minute we met we both knew we were meant for each other. If I’d been free then, we’d have been together all these years, but by bad luck I wasn’t free, so you ran away, and you’re still running. Why?’
‘I told you. You’ve ruined my life twice—I’m not going to let you do it again!’
‘You love me,’ he whispered, his hand going down to her waist, pulling her closer. ‘I love you, too. Stop wasting any more of our time.’ His cheek descended against her face, their skin brushing softly. She wanted to resist, push him away, but she was paralysed, her whole being intent on her awareness of his heart beating against her own, his arm round her waist, his thigh pressing into hers, his mouth sliding over her cheek to her mouth. However hard she tried, she could not fight his physical power over her.
His kiss parted her lips. The warm tip of his tongue slid through into her mouth, his other hand went up the back of her head and cradled it, his fingers in her hair, softly pulling her head back as his kiss drove into her.
‘No, don’t,’ she muttered under that fierce, possessive mouth.
He kissed her harder, more demandingly, and she groaned, her lips trembling, burning. Eyes shut, she clung to him in spite of her warning brain, in spite of all her reasons for fighting him off. It was the same every time—the instant he touched her she melted like candle wax in his hands.
Suddenly, she was floating, like a leaf in the wind. She fought to force her eyes open, dazedly looked up at him, her body still shuddering with pleasure. He had picked her up bodily and was carrying her in his arms, a hand under her legs, the other around her shoulders.
‘What…what are you doing?’ she whispered, but he didn’t answer.
She found out what his intentions were a second later as he lowered her to the couch in the sitting room. Angrily, she tried to get up again, but he was beside her, fencing her in, a little heap of cushions behind her and his long, lean body stretching out in front.
‘I hate you!’ she breathed, trembling with an explosive mixture of rage and helpless desire. He was dangerously close, their bodies touching at every point from her shoulders to her feet, and she was on fire, wanting him so much it felt like dying. Yet at the same time a warning voice inside her head told her it was dangerous, lethal; he would only hurt her again. She must not let herself surrender.
‘Do you, Pippa?’ he asked silkily, smiling as he stared down into her bitter green eyes.
‘Yes! I hate the sight of you,’ she insisted, staring back at him with such fixed intensity that for a moment she wasn’t even conscious of what his lean fingers were doing, until she abruptly realised he had pushed up her turquoise sweater and undone her bra, and begun stroking and caressing her naked breasts.
Her heart thudded against her ribcage; she gasped, ‘No! Stop that!’
Randal’s head came down; his lips opened on one of her hot, swollen nipples, drew it inside the moist warmth of his mouth, and sucked.
Pippa moaned, pushing at his head, but it was immovable and she was helpless in the grip of pleasure. Her body was arching towards his, even while she tried to push him off. She despised herself for finding it impossible to resist him, but the ecstasy of his sucking mouth made her ache and shudder. She wanted him badly, badly. It would be so easy to give in, open her body to him and hold him inside herself, merge with him until they were one person, even if it was just for a few moments.
But the instant satisfaction he could give her wouldn’t last; she would come out of it and have to face herself afterwards. This need she felt was purely physical, sheer sensuality, a wild, beating urge deep in her body. Her mind warned her not to give in to it.
‘I’m not sleeping with you!’ she broke out, struggling.
His head lifted, his face darkly flushed, his eyes sensuous, drowsy. A wry smile curled his mouth. ‘Stop fighting the way you feel, Pippa. You want me to make love to you, even if you’re determined to insist you don’t.’
He looked down at her body again, bent and ran the tip of his warm tongue softly over the nipple he had been sucking, and she couldn’t keep back a cry of intense pleasure.
‘You see?’ he said. ‘You want it, just as much as I do. What I don’t understand is why you keep protesting that you don’t.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘YES, okay,’ she broke out hoarsely. ‘I go out of my head when you make love to me. I don’t deny it.’ Angrily, she saw him smile, his grey eyes glittering in triumph, and went on in a hurry, ‘But I still don’t want to get involved with you again. Last time I got hurt and I don’t want to get hurt again. I keep telling you that. Why can’t you get the point?’
He grimaced impatiently. ‘Not again! We keep having the same circular argument! But if you insist, we’ll go round again. Sooner or later maybe I’ll make you listen. Four years ago, I was married. Now I’m free. We both know that. I’m in love with you, I want you, you just admitted you feel the same—so where’s the problem?’
While he was talking in that brusque, impatient tone, she was discreetly clipping her bra together again, pulling down her sweater, smoothing her tangled chestnut hair. When he’d finished, she got up in a quick movement, before he could stop her, walked to the window, stood there with her back to him, speaking quietly. ‘The problem is simple, Randal. I don’t want to get hurt again. You know I was abandoned as a child—four years ago I felt I was being dumped again, when you chose your marriage and your child over me.’
He started to protest. ‘For heaven’s sake! What else could I do? He was only little; I couldn’t walk out on him…’
She interrupted. ‘Randal, listen! I’m not saying you were wrong. I understand. Your little boy needed you and had the right to expect that you would be there for him, protect him, make sure he was happy.’
‘I’m his father; I had to look after him. Renata was far too selfish to bother about a child, even her own. All she wanted was to have a good tim
