She studied him directly, studying each feature of his face in turn, trying to ignore the wild thumping of her heart when her scrutiny was faultlessly returned, so faultlessly and so steadfastly that it was almost as though he could see her. Her heart jolted with unease and an almost superstitious fear that he was after all deceiving her, that he and Annie had lied to her and that he could in fact see, and she recognised what she had known all along: that in his blindness she had hidden herself from him, so that everything she had to do and say, every intimacy she had to perform was mercifully made less intimate, less dangerous by the fact that once she had gone from this place she could, if she so wished, come face to face with him across a dinner table and not be betrayed by his knowledge of her.
Not that she ever expected to encounter him across any of the dinner tables she was likely to sit down at.
Her disappearance, her faked death might mean that temporarily the doors of her old acquaintances and peers were closed to her, but they would open once more, and very soon. The pedigree she had concocted for herself was impeccable… the background, the wealth, the tiny details of the persona she was creating meticulously researched… so meticulously that no one would be able to find fault with them.
She would have an immediate entree into Charles’s world; she would be able to fascinate and then ensnare him, and ultimately she would be able to destroy him.
‘Stop daydreaming,’ Jake told her crisply. ‘You can fantasise all you like about the future in your own time… Unless, of course,’ he added silkily, ‘you believe I’ve taught you as much as you need to know…’
He was doing it again, looking straight at her with those cool, too knowing eyes, making her squirm both mentally and physically, making her want to hide herself from him. Making her flush like a child as she remembered this morning’s brutally pointed object lesson in male sexuality.
It was over two weeks now since he had first questioned her like an examiner on the facts she had gleaned from the manuals he had insisted she read; questions that had turned her face fiery red, and made her clench her teeth and bite the inside of her mouth to prevent herself from stammering the answers; questions so intimate, and yet delivered in so flat, matter-of-fact a voice, that somehow or other the awful intimacy of what was happening was heightened rather than lessened.
What had followed was still a nightmare to her: a relentless period of hours which had seemed to become days, of questions and answers… questions designed to underline her ignorance and to defeat her determination not to give in to the mastery she sensed he intended to have over her, over their situation. Questions which had laid bare the paucity of her knowledge, of her awareness, of her inner essence of herself as a woman.
And not until he was satisfied that she knew by heart every last nuance of male sexuality and male anatomy had he allowed her to touch him.
Allowed her! She shuddered at the very word chosen by her mind. Were it not for the fact that she was here by her own will, he would have had to drag her screaming and kicking to within a foot of his body, never mind make her touch it! It made no difference telling herself that it was he who should feel embarrassed, he who should feel diminished by their bargain. He did not and she did, and even now it seemed he wasn’t satisfied.
Her performance, while technically fair, lacked spontaneity and enthusiasm, he had told her.
Now, with her nerves stretched to breaking-point, her whole sense of purpose undermined to such an extent that she was no longer sure if she had the stamina to endure any more, she knew suddenly and bitterly that she couldn’t go on.
She moved savagely, hating herself, hating him, but most of all hating Charles for making all of this necessary.
Outside the window the snow whirled and boiled, the storm as tempestuous as her emotions. As she stared into the snow she had a momentary vision of her father the last time they had skied together, and the ache of pain inside her intensified. She mustn’t let him down… she must make Charles pay.
‘Face it,’ said Jake grimly behind her. ‘You’re never going to make it. You just don’t have what it takes.’
The moment the jibe was spoken he regretted it, but she had been driving him to the edge of his self-control for days, whether she knew it or not, and he suspected that she did. He felt her pain as though it were a physical link between them, felt the swift stirring of air that told him what she was feeling.
Part of him wanted to take hold of her and either physically shake her or punish her with the kind of kiss that he knew full well, once given, would change their relationship for ever. And the worst of it all was that, even knowing the folly of such an action, he was still unbearably tempted to do it—to drown out all the loneliness, the frustration… the sheer heaviness of the burdens he carried by opening up that sealed well of emotion she kept so well guarded.
He knew that within them both was the capacity to destroy the privacy each of them guarded so fiercely. Fortunately for him, Silver didn’t know it… not yet. She was too obsessed with keeping control of herself to worry about what he was feeling.
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ he heard her say unevenly. ‘I’m going up to my room.’
‘No!’
Even as he said it he knew he ought to let her go, for both their sakes. He was feeling too raw, too vulnerable to detach himself as he knew he must, and yet still he reached for her, still he touched her face and felt the warm dampness of tears he had known would be there, even though she hadn’t made a single betraying sound.
When he kissed her he told himself he was doing it for Beth… that everything was for Beth… for his guilt, for her pain, for her death, and ultimately for the destruction of whoever it was in London who had ordered the taking of her life.
Drug dealing was an ugly business, he had known that from the start… had known the dangers and ignored them. That arrogance on his part had cost Beth her life.
A life for a life… but so far three men had been made to pay. Not directly by Jake; it was the information he had given the FBI which had led to the gaoling of two members of the quartet. And José Ortuga was dead, killed in a bomb blast by a rival Colombian drug baron just before Jake could trap him. That explosion had also cost him his sight. Now there was one final member of the quartet to track down and destroy: the one in charge of the London arm of the operation… the one who had ordered Beth’s death… the one who had realised exactly who he was and who he was working for… the one who had so far eluded the skills of the experts he had paid to track him down.
Without his sight there was only so much he could do himself… but he would use Silver’s money to pay for men to find the final member of that unholy quartet.
Beneath the hard assault of his mouth he felt Silver’s soften, felt the frisson of shock run through her, felt her bewilderment and distress as though they were his own, and still he used them ruthlessly to expiate his own anger, his own pain. Used her in a way which he knew damned well was neither detached nor remote, refusing to release her mouth until she was quiescent with shock beneath his.
The moment he relaxed his hold she wrenched away from him, as he had known she would, and he knew quite well that if he could see her he would find her mouth swollen and her eyes full of tears.
The anger left him as quickly as it had come.
He ought to apologise, but if he did that he would be inviting an intimacy into their relationship which was dangerous to them both.
Instead he said coolly, ‘Now maybe we can make some progress. Now that you know at first hand what desire feels like.’
Colour scorched Silver’s skin. What she had just endured was surely the most humiliating episode in her whole life… worse in some ways than finding Charles making love to someone else. That she had actually for one brief second of time felt desire… that Jake had known it… She shuddered.
It was time for a break, Jake acknowledged as she fled. Both of them needed