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Her own imagination was taking fire now, leaping ahead of her, illuminating the way just as the mosaic glass lanterns she was visualising would illuminate the cool shadows of enclosed courtyard gardens and rooms.
The fabrics she was envisaging would work just as well with modern pared-down minimalist furniture in plastic and chrome as they would with more ornate traditional things.
She was as fiercely passionate about her work as he was, Jay recognised reluctantly. He didn’t want to acknowledge that they shared a certain mind-set, he didn’t want to find that he admired her professionalism, and he certainly didn’t want to have to admit even to himself that he had actually enjoyed talking to her about his vision for the future of this development because he had sensed that, unlike so many other women he had known, she was genuinely interested in what he was doing.
Instead he focused on the sensuality of the way she talked about her work. It was like watching an image come to life, her passion illuminating her expression. The same way she herself would come to life in his arms in the heat of passion, offering him her body and her pleasure, inciting him to take it and to take her, exciting and denying him until he was driven to possess her in every way imaginable.
His body tightened with a desire he had to punish her for causing.
‘You paint a very sensual picture. Deliberately so, I suspect.’ His voice was harsh and accusatory.
‘I was simply describing a light fitting. If you choose to see something sensual in that then that is up to you.’ Keira defended herself even whilst her heart thudded into her ribs.
‘You did not consider it sensual yourself? There are those who believe that the underlying message of the Kama Sutra is that everything we are is designed for sexual and sensual pleasure.’
The shock caused by his words sent a sharp thrill zigzagging down her spine, as though he had actually touched her there himself. She could feel the warmth of his breath heating her skin, just as his words were heating her already fevered imagination.
The Kama Sutra! It was unfair, surely, that he should refer to a such a book after what he had said to her about her having to beg him for sex? Was he deliberately trying to test her?
‘I wouldn’t know,’ she told him sharply. ‘It isn’t a book I’ve ever felt any inclination to read.’ There—that should make it plain to him that she was sticking firmly to business.
‘Because you don’t feel you have anything to learn from it?’
‘Books instructing women to debase themselves for a man’s pleasure will never be something I’d want to learn from,’ Keira hit back.
‘The Kama Sutra contains no suggestion of debasement of anyone. Rather it is about the honing of mutual pleasure, the giving and taking of that pleasure, the sensual and sexual education of both male and female so that they can experience the greatest degree of mutual pleasure with and for one another. I am surprised that you did not know that.’
If she could have walked away from him she would have done so, Keira knew. Anything to get away from the taunting softness of that male voice, painting images inside her head that made her ache as though her whole body was on fire. Images which had no right to be there and which she did not want to be there.
‘It’s time for us to head back.’
His abrupt change of subject was a relief, but Keira still felt it wise to keep her distance from him as they headed back towards the four-by-four over the rutted and rock-strewn ground. He was walking very fast, his longer legs carrying him over the rough ground far more swiftly than her own, and in her haste not to look unprofessional and helpless she started to walk faster, ignoring the danger in the loose rocks and deep gulleys carved into the dusty road by the wheels of heavy excavation plant.
They had almost reached the four-by-four when it happened. A loose stone beneath her foot rolled away into one of the gulleys, causing her to lose her balance.
Jay heard Keira’s exclamation of alarm and turned back, moving swiftly towards her, reaching her just in time to catch her as she stumbled.
His chest was on a level with her eyes and Keira could see its fierce rise and fall. It mesmerised her as much as the hot male scent of his body, sending out a message that locked on to her own female hormones, dizzying and almost drugging them with awareness of his masculinity. She could feel the heat of the sun on her back, but it was as nothing compared to the heat burning through her from the grip of Jay’s hands on her arms.
