falling in love, she'd experienced so many differing emotions.
Never had she used to tell such whoppers either. Love had made a liar of her. Not that she would ever lie to Thomson over any large issue, so perhaps her small fibs weren't so bad. Perhaps as long as they didn't hurt him they didn't count.
Yancie knew for certain that she never wanted to hurt him, and was just resolving that she'd be good fromm now on when-shocking her so much she was like a startled rabbit, incapable of movement-the bathroom door suddenly opened, and Thomson stood there. He was bare-chested, but trouser-clad, and had obviously come in to take a shower.
'I locked the door!' she shrieked. Where was the towel?
While at the same time, his eyes staring as if hypnotised by her slender but curvaceous, long-legged body, Thomson hurriedly started, `You weren't around-I thought you'd gone to breakfast.'
Panicking wildly, the towel back on the rail two yards away, Yancie vaguely registered Thomson knew that the hotel hadn't run out of food, and equally vaguely supposed that she had appropriated the bathroom long enough to have bathed ten times over, so he could be forgiven for supposing she had now vacated it.
But, suddenly and speedily, she was on the move, too late now to fret that the door bolt couldn't have been so far rammed home as it should have been. Yancie went to dash past him, found the duvet had slipped off the bathroom stool, and all at once, while trying to avoid coming into contact with Thomson, she found she was treading duvet.
'Ooh!' she cried, and `Oh,' she wailed as the duvet suddenly turned into an octopus that refused to let her go- and the next she knew she was falling.
She never got to hit the floor, though, because Thomson's arms shot out and he caught her, holding her while she tried desperately to get her balance. She clung onto him, her arms clutching at his arms, his shoulders-then, startled, she stopped treading the duvet and became aware of nothing except that he had one arm around her holding her upright, while his other hand was near enough holding her naked left buttock.
'Thomson!' she gasped, and realised from the shaken kind of look of him that he had just become aware of the same thing.
'Yancie,' he said in a strangled kind of way, and as if he could do nothing about it, and Yancie knew that she certainly couldn't as his head came down, so she turned her face up to meet him. And, as their lips met, nothing else seemed to matter.
It was a beautiful kiss, and Yancie wanted more. But Thomson was attempting to put some daylight between their two bodies. Yancie did her best to back away from himbut she felt hungry for his kisses.
'This is a nightmare,' he said, his voice hoarse, not like his usual tone at all.
She wanted to help, but how? `I don't know what to do,' she mourned huskily.
She saw him swallow, saw him try for a light note as he replied, `I trust you aren't inviting me to show you.'
'I didn't mean that!' she strove to find the same light note-but missed by a mile.
'I know,' he said gently, and sent her such a wonderful smile, her legs almost buckled. He looked down into her upturned face. `I should let you go,' he seemed to be talking more to himself than her. `But…'
'But`?' Yancie asked, her eyes on him, his mouth, the mouth she wanted to feel again. And, as his head came down again, so she did, and it was so heavenly she could have wept.
She wanted to cry his name from the pure ecstasy of it. But he was kissing her again, one hand caressing over her naked behind, and she was going light-headed from the pleasure of it.
He kissed her throat, and she placed her arms around him, holding him to her, her naked breasts against his bare chest. 'Thomson!' she cried, his name refusing to stay down.
'Dear Yancie,' he breathed, and she thrilled anew. Was she his dear? She kissed him, felt his caressing hands on her back, felt them caress round to her ribcage, then, with whispering tenderness, he captured her breasts. A sigh escaped her. The pink peaks of her breasts hardened incredibly under his touch, and as he brushed his palms lightly over the tips a fire went wild inside her.
She clutched onto him, unthinking, feeling only. She wanted him, oh, so much. Again he kissed her. Then he was capturing her breasts, moulding them, tenderly fondling, and Yancie was burning out of control.
When he bent his head and gently kissed the tip of first one breast and then the other, she soared to even higher heights of wanting. His mouth captured one breast, tormenting its wanting hardness with his tongue, while his other hand caressed and moulded over her other breast, over her body and down one thigh.
And Yancie didn't know quite where she was when, holding her a little way away from him, Thomson trailed kisses down her throat, over her breast.
'Oh, Thomson' she murmured shakily when he held her to him again.
'I want you,' he told her, his voice thick in his throat.
'I-w-want you too,' she answered shakily-and guessed her nervousness must be showing, for suddenly he was gripping her arms tightly, and was deliberately putting an inch of daylight between their two bodies.
'This-er-' he broke off, then appeared to have got himself a little more together. `This won't do, Yancie Dawkins,' he told her quietly, and Yancie, never wanting to leave his arms, just knew that their time of loving was over.
'It certainly won't,' she whispered, and, though she wanted to stay exactly where she was, from some unknown somewhere she actually found the strength to take a small step. Though, as Thomson started to take a pace back from her too, so she took a hasty grab at him, and when he looked at her she swallowed and, her colour high, began, `I know, given that I haven't a stitch on, that I'm giving off all the signals that I haven't a shy bone in my body-but would you mind closing your eyes while I get out of here?'
That reluctant but wonderful smile of his came out and Yancie didn't want to go anywhere but back into his arms. But as he stood with his grey eyes gently holding hers, so he stretched out a hand and took a bath towel from the rail, shook it out and, with his eyes still on hers, wrapped the towel around her. Then he closed his eyes. `Go, Yancie,' he said. `While I can still let you.'
She wanted to stay. Wanted to kiss him surely he would feel her touch and kiss her again? But, `See you on the ice,' she gasped and, belatedly spying her briefs and hurriedly snatching them up as she went, she went quickly.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT WAS Astra asking that afternoon if she was all right that warned Yancie she had better get her act together. Fennia had asked what was the matter just over a week ago.
'Yes, of c…' she began, and looked up to see that both her cousin Astra and cousin Fennia were observing her with a good deal of concern. And suddenly she couldn't bluff it out. `Well, no, actually, I'm not,' she admitted, and her cousins urgently wanted to know what was wrong so that they could help. `You can't help,' she told them, and confessed. `I've done the stupidest thing-I've fallen for this man and he's so constantly in my head, there just isn't any room for anything else.'
'Oh, Yancie!' Fennia gasped.
'How does he feel?' Astra, the more practical one of the three, asked.
'Like-he doesn't want to know,' Yancie replied.
'I don't believe it!' Fennia exclaimed. `To know you is to love you,' she added stoutly. And all three of them laughed.
'Tell him that,' Yancie said.
'Thomson Wakefield?' Astra asked.
'How did you work that out?' Yancie asked in amazement.
'There's something different about you when you come home after driving him,' Astra replied.
'Really? Well, I doubt I shall ever be driving him again,' Yancie said. He had driven as far as his home today. Then, as if their mindblowing, intimate embrace had never happened, he'd bluntly instructed her to see to it that the Jaguar was returned to the firm's garage.
'Do you want to talk about it?' Fennia asked. Yancie shook her head, and loved her cousins the more that they
