live in that island.’
‘Sebastian-do you really think I made this happen on purpose?’
‘No. You’d never stoop so low. I shouldn’t have spoken as I did, but I was crazy with anger.’ He met her eyes. ‘Forgive me.’
‘Of course.’
‘And shall we part friends?’
‘Friends.’
He looked down to where their fingers were still entwined. Lifting her hand, he laid his lips against the back of it, and then his cheek. Something in the defeated droop of his head hurt her.
‘Sebastian,’ she whispered. ‘Please don’t mind so much.’
‘Of course not. It isn’t sensible to mind, is it? Tell me, Margarita, what do
She was silent so long that he glanced up, and a fleeting look he saw in her face made him catch his breath. She became aware of him and he realised that a door had closed in her.
‘I don’t mind about anything very much,’ she said softly. ‘Not any more.’
‘God help you if that’s true!’ he said at once.
‘God help me if it isn’t. It’s dangerous to mind.’
‘There’s something in your eyes at this moment that I’ve briefly glimpsed there before.’ He drew a swift breath. ‘If you leave now, I’ll never know your mystery.’
‘There’s no mystery, Sebastian. Just a girl who took a wrong turning when she was too young and ignorant to know better, and then found that there was no way back.’
‘I refuse to believe that you ever did anything bad.’
‘I was worse than bad. I was stupid. That’s the real crime, and all the worst punishments are reserved for it.’
‘I know,’ he said simply. ‘I found out tonight, remember?’
He rested his cheek against her hand once more. Her heart aching for him, Maggie rested her own cheek against his black head. This was what she would remember about him-not his imperiousness but his vulnerability. When he looked up she drew a breath at the sight of his eyes, more naked and defenceless than she had ever seen them. Thinking only to comfort him, she laid her mouth against his.
At first he didn’t seem certain how to respond. His lips moved slightly, then stilled, waiting for her. A sweet warmth pervaded her. It felt good to kiss him freely, without anger or guilt. It felt right, just as it felt right to stroke his face with her fingertips, and then to relax against him when he reached out to hold her.
His arms had never felt so gentle as he cradled her head against his shoulder, but his lips passed swiftly from tenderness to purpose, as though the feel of her own was a touchlight. His mouth moved over hers again and again, each time a little more intent, while her pulse quickened and she felt her control begin to slip. This was not what she had meant to happen-or was it?
She made one last effort. ‘Sebastian-let me go,’ she murmured hazily.
‘Never. You kissed me, and now you must take the consequences.’
‘You must be the devil,’ she murmured.
‘Only me? There’s a devil in you too, Margarita. He taught you how to look at a man with eyes that promise everything, so that he knows what you’re thinking, and what you want him to think.’
‘Can you read my mind?’
‘From the first moment!’ he said against her lips. ‘Your thoughts are the same as mine-hot, fierce thoughts of the two of us together, naked, enjoying each other and to hell with the world. You know what you want from me- don’t you-
‘Yes,’ she said mindlessly, scarcely knowing what words she used, or what they meant.
‘And you also know what you would do to urge me on to fulfil your desires. I think you’re very skilled at the caresses that drive a man to madness. Be damned to the devil in you! He put witchcraft in your lips so that kisses are never enough. There’ll be no peace until I have you in my bed.’
There was no doubt of his intentions. She had walked into a trap with her eyes wide open. He was determined to make her marry him-if not one way, then another. When talk failed, he’d taken direct action, giving her a false sense of security while he lured her to come to him. Now he had her where he wanted her, and she knew she wouldn’t be allowed to leave until she’d said yes, and meant it.
That would never happen, her mind cried. But her mind drowned in her body’s clamour. Part of her-the only part that counted when she was in his arms-was saying yes wildly, determinedly, impatiently. She tried to feel anger but she couldn’t convince herself. No man had the right to behave like this, but that thought paled beside the knowledge that he was free. She could give her desire full rein and feel no guilt.
He wasn’t an admirable character. He was a harsh, cynical man who seized what he wanted arrogantly and without pity. But his lips possessed ancient skills of persuasion and coercion, and they could drive her to the edge of madness.
His hands were working on the fastenings of the beautiful velvet dress, slipping them open, pulling it down with swift, purposeful movements, until he could toss it onto the floor. Her slip followed, then her panties, and now she was tearing at his clothes, as impatient as he, until the moment when they were both naked.
He pulled her against him, kissing with lips that burned, caressing her with fingers that knew how to touch lightly and be gone, leaving a scorching memory behind. This had been waiting for them both since the night in the garden when she had fended him off and fled. What had she been running away from? The depth of her own response, which even then had alarmed her?
Now she could yield to that response, explore it to its depths, explore him. She felt him drawing her down onto the couch, pressing her naked body against his.
She looked into his face, expecting to see him triumphant. But if there was any triumph in him it was confused by other emotions-shock, bewilderment, alarm at losing control, eagerness to discover the unknown. All these feelings were hers, and for a blazing instant she saw them reflected in his eyes as though she were looking into a mirror.
Then the moment passed as he kissed her again with lips that were hot and fierce as they teased hers, taking her ever closer to the moment of truth. She kissed him back, seeking and demanding as an equal. A strange thing was happening to her. Sebastian had said she would know how to urge him on to fulfil her desires, and now she found that it was mysteriously true. Deep, unfathomable instinct told her about him, what he wanted, what he could give.
New life streamed through her like wine. For four years her body had lain cold and sullen, bitterly resentful of the passion that had betrayed her to a life of misery. Now it was asserting itself again, reclaiming its rights, and its rights included a man who could discover its secrets by instinct, and play on them for his own pleasure and hers: a man to whom seduction was more than a skill, it was a black art. This man, and no other.
He’d spoken of ‘the caresses that drive a man to madness’, and now she offered him those caresses without shame, with a kind of glory in her own power, lashing his desire on with her own. When he slipped his knee between her legs, she pulled him over her at once.
Then he surprised her yet again. Instead of claiming her in fierce triumph, he entered her slowly, almost tenderly, giving her the time she needed to become familiar once more with the sensation of a man inside her. It was such a good feeling. Once she’d sworn never to know it again. Now she wondered how she had endured so long. She threw her head back in a gesture of total sensual abandon, grasping him and driving herself against him.
Only when he felt that movement and knew that he was welcome, did he allow the last of his control to slip. He knew her now, knew that she was a woman who could match him as a man, returning vigour for vigour, demand for demand in the all-consuming death-in-life of mutual abandon. When the moment came they were at each other’s mercy, carrying each other down the long drop to oblivion, while each clasped the other as the only safety in a vanished world.
He parted from her, but only by a little. One arm still lay beneath her shoulders, holding her firmly at the same time that he pillowed her head. Sebastian would always be like that, she thought: enticement, the offering of pleasure and perhaps something even sweeter, and behind it, always the hint of ruthlessness.
It was there in his voice now, saying quietly, ‘We will marry on the sixteenth. You know that we must, don’t
