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Amanda felt herself sway in his arms, deaf to everything but the clamour in her blood, and slowly he lifted his head, and held her for a moment, steadied against him.
He took her unresisting hand, stroked the soft palm with the tip of his forefinger, then dropped a kiss on to her wrist before walking with her to the door.
She was choked with bewilderment, and then she realised he was only closing the door, and turning the key gently but definitely in the lock. Shutting them in together.
He led her over to the bed, then slowly, almost reverently, he began to free the buttons which closed the front of her sweater.
At once, her hands came up to stop him. No matter how much she had invited this, there was no way she could stand there in broad daylight and let Malory undress her.
She said, stammering a little. ‘I—I can manage.’
The blue eyes studied her quizzically for a moment, then he bent and kissed her swiftly on the mouth before walking round to the other side of the bed. Turning his back on her, he began to remove his own clothing.
Amanda turned the other way, too. It was ridiculous, she knew, considering the way she had thrown herself at him, but she’d never been naked with a man before, and she felt shy.
She tumbled out of her clothes, dropping them on to the floor, and scrambled into bed, pulling the covers up to her chin. The linen sheets felt faintly chilly, and she shivered.
The mattress shifted slightly as he joined her, and she shivered again, lying on her side, staring sightlessly across the room, suddenly, shatteringly aware of his naked, starkly aroused body lying next to hers.
Malory’s hands were warm on her bare shoulders as he turned her inexorably to face him.
He said quietly, ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’
She wasn’t sure about anything. The warm tide of feeling which had swept her here into his arms— his bed—was ebbing fast, leaving a kind of sick panic in its wake. But she couldn’t draw back now, because she knew she would never have the courage to offer herself again. She lifted a hand and stroked his dark hair, and drew him down to her, letting the action speak for her.
He kissed her slowly, softly, his mouth exploring hers as if there was all the time in the world, and he intended to use every minute of it. Then he pulled the covers away from her shoulders, making it clear that he was going to look as well as touch. Her body seemed to quiver under his gaze, and she had to clamp her jaws together to stop her teeth from chattering.
He touched her breasts as if they were flowers he was afraid to crush, then bent to adore their proud rosy buds with his lips. She caught her breath at the sharp delight of the sensation, and felt him smile against her skin. His hands stroked the length of her body, finding pulses, nerve-endings, secret reshe had never dreamed existed. She felt dazedly as if she were some deep and private mystery to which he alone had the key.
But she was thankful he did not seem to demand any reciprocal caresses from her.
As Malory’s hand feathered over the curve of her hip, and drifted down to part her thighs, she tensed, and he whispered, ‘It’s all right, darling, just relax.’
But that was easier said than done. This was entirely new to her, this slow, lingering exploration of her most intimate self, and her body’s greedy reaction to his touch terrified her. She didn’t want to feel like this—as if she had no will of her own, no existence beyond the caress of those all too knowing fingers. She didn’t want this sense of helplessness, as if she was being carried along on a current too strong for her to fight.
She wanted the mystery solved. She reached for him, her untutored hands fumbling, trying to learn from his response what he wanted from her, her mind shrinking, at the same time, from the strength and power of his maleness and all that it implied.
He said, ‘Oh, Christ,’ the words torn from his throat. Then, ‘Amanda—no I can’t…’
He pushed her back against the pillows, and his body covered hers with a swift urgency that transcended all else. His face was a stranger’s, suddenly stripped of all emotion except desire, the blue eyes glittering. Like ice, she thought, ice that burned…
She cried out, first in fear, then in pain, and the pain filled her mind, and her body. As her muscles tautened against the shock of his invasion of her flesh, she felt as if she was being torn apart, and she pushed unavailingly at his shoulders.
‘Stop it! Leave me alone!’
He said again, ‘I can’t…’ and it was like a cry of despair.
She lay beneath him, crushed and outraged, her body rigid with resentment. It didn’t even matter that the pain had stopped. She had given herself to him, trusted him, and he had betrayed her.
