‘I suppose it’s your privileged upbringing,’ he said conversationally, ‘that means you don’t know when to stop,’ and before she realised what he was doing he caught her wrist in a grip just short of painful and leaned over and kissed her with a merciless mouth, crushing her objections, her worry and fear to nothing.
It was over in a moment. As she dragged painful air into her lungs, he stared at her with eyes as cold as shards of diamonds and said beneath his breath, ‘God, what the hell are you doing to me?’
Stephanie’s world had turned upside-down, been wrenched from its foundations by a kiss, as it had not been by the preceding nightmarish days. For a lifetime, for an aeon encompassed by the space between two heartbeats, she was captured by those eyes, dragged into a world where winter reigned supreme. This man, whoever he was, moved and breathed like a human being, but, in spite of his gentleness and care for her, at his heart was a core of primeval ice.
The prince of ice, she thought, trying to be flippant, an effort spoiled by foreboding.
‘Turn over and get to sleep,’ he ordered in that quiet, lethal voice.
Silently she turned her back on him and crawled beneath the covers, enveloped by the instant warmth of down. Tense and resistant, she huddled on the edge of the bed. Heat prickled across her skin, suffused every cell in her body. For the first time in her life she felt a tug of desire in her loins, a strange sensation in her breasts as though they were expanding.
Stop it, she adjured her unruly mind fiercely; stop it this minute. But she couldn’t, until finally she fell back on a childhood remedy for unpleasant thoughts and strove to block out the images that danced behind her retinas with a concerted attack on the seven times table.
Out of the darkness he said, ‘I’m sorry, that shouldn’t have happened, and it won’t be repeated. You needn’t be afraid that I’ll jump you again.’
She couldn’t answer; touching her tongue to lips that were tender and dry, she wondered why his kiss should have had such an effect on her. Beyond the somewhat inexpert embraces of several boys not much older than she was, she had nothing to judge it by. Oh, she’d had crushes, but her brother’s overwhelming masculinity made other men seem pale and ineffectual, and it had been difficult to let down the barriers of her mind and heart to anyone less compelling than Saul.
Also, her very protective brother made sure that she was kept well away from anyone who might view his younger sister as a tempting morsel. Consequently, most of her friends at school were far more experienced than she was.
Although their family had always been rich, and grown even richer under Saul’s capable hands, he wasn’t a member of the jet set. He despised people who didn’t work, and because he was deeply in love with his wife he preferred to spend the time he had to spare with her and their children. Stephanie, too, loved being with the half-sister she had come to know so late in her childhood, and adored being a favourite aunt. Saul, she knew, kept a close eye on her friends, so although she had spent holidays with schoolfriends she had never gone anywhere except with people he had known and trusted.
Which meant, she thought, as she lay rigidly in the bed, that she was pretty naïve. If she’d been more sophisticated she wouldn’t now be so overwhelmed by the powerful charisma of the man who lay beside her in the huge bed.
And perhaps she had been conditioned to look for that concentrated authority in a man; growing up with Saul had persuaded her that there could be kindness and love in a man of imperious character.
Exhaustion gripped her in unrelenting claws, but she couldn’t sleep. Acutely aware of every tiny movement her rescuer made, of the length of his body next to hers, of the sound of his breathing, the tantalising, seductive heat of his body, her nerves sang like tightened bowstrings.
She didn’t even know his name, and here she was sharing a bed with him!
Resentment simmered, encouraged because it blocked out the strange equivocal warmth seeping through her body. She despised men who thought their superior strength gave them the right to dominate.
And she hated the fact that he was able to sleep when she couldn’t.
He’d probably shared a bed more times than she could count. Like Saul, who had been unmercifully pursued for as long as she could remember, the man who slept beside her possessed a smouldering sexuality that every woman would recognise. Squelching a mysterious pang, Stephanie lay longing for him to snore. It would demystify him, make him an ordinary man.
Of course he didn’t. Eventually her muscles protested vigorously at being locked in stasis; giving in to them, she turned over on to her back, moving inch by careful inch in case she woke him. He didn’t stir, but her change of position had brought her closer, and she scorched in the heat from his body. Surely all men weren’t as hot as that? He certainly didn’t have a fever, so perhaps he lived on a fiercer, more intense plane than other men.
Hastily, she turned back again.
‘Stop thrashing about,’ he commanded, his voice cool and slightly amused.
‘Goodnight,’ she muttered through clenched teeth.
Strangely enough, sleep reclaimed her then, but with it returned the dreams. Unable either to banish them or allow them to take her over completely, she fought back, and woke to find herself once more in his arms, that cruel hand clamped over her mouth again to cut off her screams.
At last, when it had happened three times, he said brusquely, ‘Right, that’s it. No, don’t scuttle back to your side of the bed.’ His arms tightened around her; one large hand pushed her head into the warm, hard muscles of his shoulder. ‘Stay there,’ he ordered.
‘All right,’ she said in the flat tone of exhaustion.
He pulled the duvet over them both. ‘Now,’ he said, his voice as level and unhurried as ever, ‘let’s see if we both can get some sleep.’
Her last thought was that he wasn’t naked; she could feel some fine material beneath her hand as she cuddled against him, her body and mind immediately responding to his steady heartbeat.
Towards morning she woke, still in his arms, his body heat encompassing her, his scent in her nostrils, a masculine hand lying laxly along her thigh. At some time during the night she had climbed over him, and was now lying half on top, her leg between his, her arm underneath his other shoulder, using him as a mattress.
Overwhelmed by a demand she didn’t fully recognise, a need she had never experienced, by the sheer, male power radiating from him even in sleep, she woke with her senses fully alert, her body in high gear. Unknown feelings tingled through her and before she realised where she was she felt his awakening, and the surge of awareness through his heated body, the swift compulsion of arousal that gripped him.
Stephanie might have been innocent but she wasn’t stupid; she had read magazines and books, listened to some of her more worldly friends, and she knew that a man could be instantly ready for making love to any woman if she turned him on. She understood what was happening.
What she didn’t understand and couldn’t fight was her own reaction, the heady, draining weakness that had invaded her while she slept, making it impossible for her to retreat as prudence commanded. Anticipation coiled through her in sweet, seductive promise, drowning out common sense, washing away morals and logic and caution.
She had to get out of this immediately, scramble free and get on to her own side of the bed. But her muscles refused to obey her brain. Something world-shaking was making her heart race, drying her mouth, dampening her skin with an unexpected sheen.
He said harshly, ‘Is this what you want?’ And the hand that had been across her back found the full curve of her breast, cupping it, measuring its soft weight in slow, sensual appreciation.
Fire invaded her, robbing her of strength. An incredible sensation shot down her spine and into her loins; in answer