He ground his teeth, infuriated by his own weakness. It was that damned perfume she was wearing…it was conjuring up all manner of erotic images.
‘Look, if you imagine that—’
‘I’m not imagining anything,’ Emily lied quickly, adding as calmly as she could, ‘Of course, you’re right. We have no option other than to share the sleeping-bag.’ She gave a small shiver, aware that already she was getting cold and, worse, that her legs were slowly growing almost numb. It was that knowledge that provoked her into action.
‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to take off my jeans,’ she reminded him nervously.
‘Yes,’ he agreed tersely, wondering why on earth he was behaving like such a fool. Did he really prefer to risk suffering hypothermia than to matter-of-factly point out to her that both of them were likely to remain far warmer inside the sleeping-bag if they both removed their jeans and sweaters and allowed their combined body heat to circulate between them more effectively?
Emily’s heart sank as he grimly announced these facts. She knew that he was speaking the truth, but the thought of lying next to him stripped down to her bra and briefs was a very daunting prospect.
‘I think perhaps we should have a cup of coffee and a sandwich first,’ she suggested hesitantly, waiting for him to mock her obvious reluctance to undress—but to her surprise he agreed, almost as though he felt as uncomfortable with the situation as she did herself.
It was a novel thought. Her only experience of male sexual behaviour was restricted to Gerry, and Gerry would have been very quick indeed to torment someone in her position. Gerry enjoyed inflicting emotional pain. She had quickly recognised that once the scales had been ripped from her eyes.
A little to her own astonishment she heard herself saying quietly, ‘My father is in a local voluntary rescue team. I know he’d be the first to agree with everything you’ve said.’
His head came up and he looked at her. ‘In that case I’m surprised he allowed you to drive anywhere tonight.’
Emily didn’t tell him that her parents had themselves been on the verge of leaving, this time for the rain forests of Brazil. Instead of telling him this she said coolly, ‘I’m an adult, not a child. I make my own decisions.’
She watched as his mouth compressed. He had a rather nice mouth beneath that straggly beard. His bottom lip was full and curved. She wondered hazily what it would feel like to touch it with her fingertips, and then swallowed nervously as her stomach plunged in shock at her own wayward thoughts.
‘An adult! You’re, what…eighteen? Nineteen?’ He was scowling at her again.
‘Actually,’ she told him shakily, ‘I’m twenty-six.’
Twenty-six! He stared at her. It must be because she was so small that she looked so much younger. Twenty-six…a woman, not a child…and so not innocent, either, despite the fact that those huge grey eyes seemed so unaware and unawakened.
‘I’ll get the coffee,’ he told her austerely. ‘You’d better get those jeans off.’
For such a large man he was surprisingly light on his feet, Emily reflected, as he managed to manoeuvre himself between the two front seats to crawl into the rear of the vehicle.
Her own hands had become awkward and clumsy, or perhaps it was the thick and unfamiliar fabric of the jeans that waywardly refused to respond to her demands. Whatever the cause, it seemed to take her ages to tug off the clammy fabric.
Once she had done so she was grateful for the huge oversized sweatshirt, which reached down almost to her knees…and not just for the warmth it offered, but because it concealed the minute briefness of her underwear which had been chosen because she had liked the pretty delicacy of the embroidered satin, and which she had never intended should be exposed to anyone’s view other than her own. The cut of the briefs was such that they emphasised the feminine roundness of her hips and the length of her legs in a way which she was suddenly aware was very provocative indeed.
‘Coffee?’
The curt voice from behind her made her swing round, causing Matt to wonder what on earth had put that look of sick misery in her eyes, unable to know that she had been thinking of Gerry, remembering how he had taunted her so cruelly, how he had found her so undesirable.
‘You’d better get in the back,’ Matt announced brusquely. ‘It’s getting dangerously cold in here. The sooner we’re in that sleeping-bag, the happier I’ll be.’
Acknowledging that he was right, Emily started to crawl awkwardly into the back of the Land Rover, totally unaware that, as she did so, the front of her sweatshirt was trapped beneath her body causing the back to ride up, so that Matt, automatically glancing into the driver’s mirror, had a very clear and erotic view of the rounded curve of her bottom, more revealed than concealed by the brief scrap of satin clinging so seductively to her skin.
It infuriated him that he should continue to stare into the mirror for far longer than he would have wished, so that the way he finally took hold of her shoulders and virtually hauled her over the seat left Emily not only feeling bruised and breathless but also in no doubt of just how exasperating and irritating he found her presence.
She drank her coffee quickly, savouring its fragrant warmth, but decided that after all she didn’t want to eat. Her stomach was churning nervously and she was having to fight hard not to look at the sleeping-bag Matt had unrolled, and to rigidly keep her back to him as she heard the small betraying sound that signified that he was removing his outer clothes.
She intended to keep on her sweatshirt until the last possible moment, all too conscious that her bra was every bit as revealing as her briefs, and so she waited until she was quite sure that all the slithering sounds which she suspected meant that Matt was climbing into the sleeping-bag had finished, before quickly tugging off her sweatshirt and hurriedly diving for the protective cover of the sleeping-bag.
Only Matt wasn’t already in it. Instead, he was waiting grimly beside her. The sight of him—a shadowy, intimidatingly male figure with a bronze torso and a wedge of dark hair that arrowed downwards over a body that was less bulky and muscle-bound than she had envisaged to a pair of mercifully respectable boxer shorts—caught her unprepared. She froze and looked wildly for something to focus on other than his body, while he said frigidly, ‘If you’re quite ready, I think we’d both better get inside the sleeping-bag before either of us loses any more body heat.’
She was already shivering, her legs icy-cold from the knees downwards. Even so, she found herself hesitating, wishing there were some other way. But there wasn’t, and she had no other option but to crawl into the sleeping-bag which he was holding open for her, to find that he had already put the car rug inside—which would account for the rustlings she had heard and which had deceived her into thinking he was already inside it.
There wasn’t much space in the back of the Land Rover, and in order to get inside the sleeping-bag she had to wriggle past him. Her hip brushed against his arm, her skin quivering at the contact with the rough hairiness. Tiny flutters of sensation quivered to life deep in her stomach, an odd physical tension aching there. Shadowy insubstantial thoughts clouded her mind. Sometimes in her dreams she had felt like this, experienced this disturbing ache.
Shivering, she crawled into the sleeping-bag, keeping firmly to one side of it and lying with her back to its centre as she waited for him to join her. He was equally cautious—only there was a lot more of him than there was of her, and the sleeping-bag was not really designed for two people. It was inevitable that, as he slid down inside it, his body should brush hers, but what was surely not equally inevitable was the sensation that that brief contact should cause.
Once, she had desired Gerry, or she had thought she had, but even his most coaxing, skilful caresses had never aroused that sudden wanton spurt of awareness she had just experienced now. It must be her age, she told herself shakily as she lay rigid