“Tara!”
He seemed annoyed, though, annoyed and a little too macho.
“What have you done to yourself?”
She smiled, loving the feel of the fabric of his jacket against her cheek, fascinated by the gold and silver color of her hair where it fell across his shoulders.
“I told you—I have to sleep.”
“What did you take?”
“Don’t yell at me!”
“Then tell me!”
“It’s all your fault. George told me to go home and sleep so I had a glass of wine. And then you gave me more.”
His face was tense, and his arms were tight as he lifted her and carried her down the hallway, past the bath and the den to her bedroom. It seemed all right. Everything seemed to be all right.
More than all right. She felt ridiculously secure, comfortable. So relaxed, so ready to smile.
“You should be in bed,” he said as he stopped in the doorway.
“I would have been. You appeared at the door.”
Thick lashes hid the tawny gold of his eyes. She thought that he smiled a little secretively.
“I’m going to put you to bed.”
“Wasn’t that your plan?”
“No. Eventually, I plan to take you to bed. There is a massive difference, of which you will one day be completely aware.”
“Ah! No ego problems there!”
He smiled, turned down her brocade coverlet and the sheet below, then laid her down with her head on the pillow. He sat at her side, studying her intently.
“They’re quite unusual,” she murmured, reaching up to touch his face, smoothing a finger over his brows.
“My eyebrows?”
“Your eyes. They actually have brown in them, and green—and a ring of blue at the very edge. Like crystal. And when you combine all the colors, they seem gold. Like a tiger’s eyes, reflecting in the darkness.”
“They’re hazel,” he said dryly.
He caught her hand and pressed a kiss against her palm. She inhaled sharply at the river of sensation that swept through her. She was tired and off guard, yet she couldn’t seem to care.
When their eyes met, it seemed as if eons passed. Eons in which they strained to know each other, to absorb each other’s soul, and thoughts, and heart.
He leaned toward her. And kissed her.
Never had she felt such magic. Lips that knew hers, commanded, yielded and coerced. Warmth and fever, magnetism, engulfing her.
Never had a kiss coursed through every nerve and fiber of her being, awakening a fever, a heat. His lips were forceful, his tongue demanding. Sweeping all the crevices of her mouth, hungry and restraining, hungry and setting free…
She felt his hands cupping her face, caressing her shoulders.
Moving intimately. More intimately than they should have been. She trembled as his fingers curved around her breast, his fingers playing over her nipples. He groaned, deep and hoarse, against her, and sudden truth and panic seized her.
She wanted him. Everything within her quivered for him, like a strung bow, taut and ready to let fly. She was fascinated by him. Where he touched her, she felt alive. Where he did not touch her, she longed to be touched. She wanted to see his shoulders bared to her touch. She wanted to explore his chest and muscular legs. She wanted…
All of him. It was like a drumbeat, frantic, insistent.
And it was so wrong! She didn’t trust him; she barely knew him, and she couldn’t believe she was letting things go so far. She was suddenly very frightened, whimpering slightly in her throat.
Perhaps he heard. Or perhaps some alarm had sounded within him, a warning that the time wasn’t right.
He pulled away. Not with an apology. Pensively, painfully. She could see the tension in his features, the pulse throbbing in his throat.
He took her hands, planted a light kiss on each one, then let them go and rose stiffly.
“Go to sleep. I’ll see you soon.”
“Oh…no! Really, we can’t.”
He shook his head, smiling crookedly. “No, Tara. We not only can. We have to.”
He turned and left her.
She struggled to think, to find logic. She didn’t trust him. She didn’t know why, exactly, but she didn’t trust him. He wasn’t following her because she was a “beautiful” woman. He would attract women without seeking them, all of them beautiful, all of them sensual.
He knew her, she was certain. He had watched her in the museum; he had followed her to the Plaza.
She shouldn’t see him again.
She shivered, knowing that she would. He was right. She would have to.
Seeing him could become as necessary as…breathing.
“No,” she protested aloud.
But no one heard her, and she gave up all attempts to be rational when sleep overcame her.
CHAPTER 5
He was there when Tara finished with her fittings the next day, in the showroom, idly talking to George—waiting for her.
Tara saw him as soon as she emerged from the back, and she held herself still, stunned and, to her annoyance, slightly panicky.
Morning had brought reason back to her. Humiliation, too. The night now seemed part of a dream, a very disturbing dream. She could remember him carrying her, could remember the feel of his arms. She could remember his smile and his laughter, and the way his hair had felt beneath her fingers.
She could remember his kiss, his touch on her breast. And she could remember the absolute feel of fire. Sensations that ripped through her. A wanting unlike anything she had ever known.
And she remembered him pulling away. Kissing her fingers, leaving her be when he could have…
Continued. With her so content, yet at the same time so explosive that she would have never thought to stop him. To seek restraint. To realize that they were virtual strangers and to remember that the one previous affair of her life had ended in absolute disaster.
Easy, she had told herself in the morning. It was a matter of will, and her will would control her actions. She didn’t trust him—he was a tiger. Fierce, exciting, wonderful, beautiful—and dangerous. She couldn’t quite fathom why,
