a floury smell a little like a suckling puppy or freshly polished leather. It made her skin feel hot and sensitized, and put a painful little catch in her breathing. That's beautiful, he said, and his voice felt like the touch of fingers along the nape of her neck. She felt the fine soft hair there rise, and the Hush of blood spread warmly down her chest and turn her nipples into hard little pebbles. They ached with something which was not pain, something more obsessive. She wanted him to touch her there, and at the thought she felt her legs tremble under her and the muscles cramped deeply in the wedge of her thighs. It's truly beautiful, he said again, and he was so close she could feel his breath stir the fine hair of her neck, and another thrill ran down her spine, this time it was like a claw cutting through her flesh and she clenched her buttocks to ride the shock of it as though she was astride a mettlesome horse.
She stared at the painting, and she saw that he was right.
It was beautiful, even though it was half-finished. She could see the rest of it in her mind, and it was beautiful and right, but she wanted the touch of his hands now.
it was as though the painting had heightened her emotional response, opened some last forbidden door and now she wanted his touch with a terribly deep physical ache.
She turned to him, and he was so close and tall that she felt her breathing catch again, and she looked up into his face. Touch me, she willed him. Touch me, she commanded silently, but his hands hung at his side and she could not fathom his eyes.
She could not stand still a moment longer, and she stirred her hips in a slow voluptuous gesture, something was melting and burning deep in her lower body.
Touch me, she tried to force him silently to her will. Touch me there where it hurts so fiercely. But he did not heed her, would not respond to all her silent pleas, and suddenly she was angry.
She wanted to lash out at him, to strike him across that solemn handsome face, she had a mental image of ripping his shirt away and sinking her nails deep into the smoothly muscled chest. She stared now at the vee of his open shirt, at the coils of dark hair, and his skin had an oiled gloss gilded by the sun to warm golden brown.
Her anger flared and focused. He had aroused these surging emotions which she could neither understand nor control, these heady terrifying waves of physical arousal, and she wanted to punish him for it, to make him suffer, to have him mauled by his desires as she was; at the same instant in time, she wanted to take that splendid proud head of his and hold it to her bosom like a mother holds her child, she wanted to cherish, and gentle and love him, and claw and ravage and hurt him, and she was confused and giddy and angry and puzzled, but most of all she was racing high on a wave of physical excitement that turned her birdlike and quick and vital. I suppose you've been bouncing about on that fat little trollop of yours, she almost snarled it at him. Immediately the hurt and shock showed in his eyes, and she was pleased and savagely triumphant, but also aching with contrition, wanting to fall at his feet and plead for forgiveness, or to lash out with her nails and raise deep bleeding lines across that smooth brown dearly beloved face. Wouldn't it have been wonderful if the providence that gave you your beauty and your talent had thought to make you a nice person at the same time, he said quietly, almost sadly. Instead of a vicious spoiled little brat She gasped with the delicious profane shock of it, the insult gave her cause to discard the last vestige of control.
Now she could loose the rein and use lash and spur without restraint. Oh you swine! she flew at him, going for his eyes, knowing he was too quick and strong for her, but forcing violent physical contact on him, forcing him to seize her, and when he held her powerless by both arms, she flung her body against his, driving him back a pace, and she saw the surprise on his face. He had not expected such strength.
She turned against him, her body fined and tuned and hardened by physical exercise on the courts and in the saddle, forcing him off balance, and, as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, she hooked one ankle with hers and threw her weight in the opposite direction.
They fell together, tumbling backwards into the grassy saucer of ground, and he released her wrists, using both hands to break their fall and cushion her shock as she landed on her back.
instantly she was at him with both hands, and her nails stung his neck. He grunted and she saw the first flare of real anger in his eyes. It delighted her, and when he seized her wrist, she twisted and bit him in the hard sinewy muscle of his forearm. Hard enough to break the skin, and leave a double crescent of small neat teeth-marks.
He gasped and his anger mounted as he rolled over her, pinning her lower body with one leg as he fought to hold her flying flailing hands She bucked under him, her skirts had pulled up to her waist, one slim smooth thigh thrusting up, natural, untutored, cunning, into his groin, not hard enough to injure him, but enough to make him suddenly conscious of his own arousal.
As he realized what was happening, his grip of her arms slackened and he tried desperately to disengage, but one of her arms slid around his neck and the silken warmth of her cheek was pressed to his.
His hands acted without command, running down the deep groove in the centre of her arched back, following the small hard knuckles of her spine to the rounded divide of her buttocks, felt through the glossy slipperiness of silken underwear.
Her breathing rasped hoarsely as sandpaper, and she shifted her head and her mouth joined his, arching her back and lifting her lower body to let her silk underwear come away freely in his hands.
The waxen fork of her body rose out of the bright disordered petals of her skirts like the stamen of some wondrously exotic orchid; its flowing perfection interrupted only by the deep finely sculptured pit in the centre of the perfect plain of her belly, and below that the shockingly abrupt explosion of dark smoky curls, a fat deep wedge that changed shape as she relaxed in a slow voluptuous movement. Oh Mark, she breathed. Oh Mark, I can't stand it Her anger had all evaporated, she was soft and breathless, slowly entwining, warm and gentle and loving, but the sound of her voice woke him suddenly to reality. He realized the betrayal of the trust placed in him by Sean Courtney, the abuse of a privileged position, and he pulled away from her, appalled at his own treachery. I must be mad, he gasped with horror, and tried to roll away from her. Her response was instantaneous, the instinctive reaction of a deprived lioness, that uncanny ability to go from soft purring repose to dangerous blazing anger in the smallest part of a second.
Her open hand cracked across his face, in an explosion of brilliant Catherine wheels of colour that starred his vision, and she screamed at him. What kind of a man are you? She tried to strike him again, but he was ready for her and they rolled together chest to chest in the grass. You're a nothing, and you'll stay like that because you haven't the guts and the strength to be anything else, she hissed at him, and the words hurt a thousand times worse than the blow. His own anger flared to match hers and he came up over her. Damn you! How dare you say that!
She shouted back at him. At least I dare, you wouldn't dare, But she broke off then as she felt it happen, then she cried out again but in a different voice. Oh Go! Her whole body racked as she locked him to her, enfolding and holding him while she purred and murmured with a voice gone low and husky arid victorious. Oh Mark, oh darling, darling Mark. Sean Courtney sat his horse with the slumping comfortable seat of the African horseman. Long
