A Kind Of Madness Part 15

Suddenly he seemed very intimidating, very male and alien, and suddenly she wished desperately that she were a million miles away from him, and safe from the dark intent she could read in his eyes.

"Let me go. Carter."

She tried to keep her voice steady, to inject a note of cool lightness into it, to prove to him that she was completely unaffected by what was happening, but her voice shook a little, and she knew quite well he must have felt the tiny tremor that burned through her.

For a moment she actually thought she saw compa.s.sion soften his mouth, actually felt that he might out of pity let her go--but suddenly his grasp tightened, his mouth hardening as he looked down at her and said softly, "Not yet."

She knew already that he was going to kiss her.

She had a handful of seconds, maybe less, in which to tell herself frantically that this time it would be different, this time she would be prepared, this time there would be no terrifying, unbelievable awareness that under this man's hands, under this man's mouth, every single one of her senses, every smallest nerve-ending flowered and blossomed, and that with them the tightly close- furled bud of sensuality she had never known she possessed burst into life inside her.

A handful of seconds. Such a small s.p.a.ce of time, so why instead of using it did she simply stand within his arms, trembling not with apprehension, nor even with anger, but with a sensation which she dimly recognised as being born of the quick, wanton heat that filled her whole body? The traitor within, she recognised dizzily as her lips parted in instinctive response to the hare heat of his.

And yet it wasn't a violent kiss, nor yet even an angry kiss--not a punishment at all're all despite the volcanic threat of his words.

She protested once as she fought agains': his sensual domination of her body, and instantly his mouth lifted, but when she attempted to turn her head aside he checked the movement, not aggressively, but with the gentle strength of his open palm cupping her jaw, stroking the softness of her skin, so that she looked at him with unknowingly tormented and bewildered eyes, shivering beieath the explosion of emotions he was generating, her senses obedient to the silent demand of hi? " so that this time when he kissed her she automatically moved closer to him, instinctively and unknowingly slid her arms around his neck, and sighed tremulously beneath the pressure of his mouth, inviting the male possession of it in a dozen subtle and unintended ways.

People didn't kiss like this; not grown-up, adult people, she thought hazily at some point. This kind of kissing was for impossibly romantic films and besotted teenagers.

Adults were intimate, made love, had ex, their kisses a brief tactical opening-stage towards that goal; but this kiss . this kiss was a whole world of sensation and delight complete unto itself.

She couldn't remember that she hadn't wanted him to touch her, only that now she couldn't bear him to stop; that each time he left her mouth to nibble the soft flesh of her ear, each time he bit gently at her bottom lip and teased her with the soft stroke of his tongue, she grew more hungry, more desirous, more shockingly eager for the return of his mouth to hers, clinging urgently to its possession.

When he finally set her free it was the sound of her own incoherent denial of that freedom that shocked her back to awareness, her eyes opening into his in bewildered pain, her body trembling and so weak that she felt as though she had no physical strength at all.

From a distance she heard Carter saying in a strained voice, "I'm sorry. I never intended..."

And brutally she came back to reality and realised what she had done.

She felt quite sick with mortification. No wonder Carter sounded so embarra.s.sed. No wonder he was keeping his back to her.

Valiantly she struggled for something to say, for some light, insouciant words that would somehow or other return everything to normal. She tried to imagine herself saying airily something or other about missing Peter and apologising for getting a little carried away, and knew helplessly that she could never make that kind of lie sound anything like believable.

Now, when oddly enough she hadn't been particularly aware of it at the time, her body was shockingly telling her how much it missed its intimate contact with Carter's. How much it longed for the sensation of that hard male flesh in intimate contact with her own. Frantically she closed her eyes, trying to banish the shocking images dancing in her head, but they refused to go away.

She heard Carter saying her name in ar; uncomfortable, strained voice.

Instinctively she umed to look at him, and then wished she hadn't.

Heaven alone knew what he must have read in her expression to make his own change like that, to make him look at her so blankly and so grimly, as tliough he wanted to shut out the image of her forever.

It wasn't all her fault--she hadn't been the one who had initiated the kiss, even if she. She gulped painfully and bit her bottom lip to stop its wild trembling.

"For G.o.d's sake."

The raw, furious male sound was like knives tearing at her flesh.

Unable to endure any more, she did something she had never in her life magined herself doing; she swung round and ran betrayingly and desperately towards the inner door, opening it before Carter could stop her and fleeing for the sanctuary of her borrowed bedroom.

In the kitchen Carter stared after her, and then into the silence the parrot, who had taken in the whole scene with avid curiosity, repeated with unnerving accuracy and emotion something which neither Elspeth herself nor Carter had even realised she had said, something so emotional and betraying that Carter blenched as the bird whispered emotively and pleadingly, "Carter."

There was nothing else but that one word--his name, repeated so exactly as Elspeth had unknowingly whispered it when she had pleaded for the return of his mouth to hers that the hairs on his arms stood sharply erect and his body responded so savagely and so achingly that he took a step towards the parrot and told him bitterly, "Don't you ever, ever do that again, otherwise..."

"Nice chap. Carter," the parrot told him palliatively.

"Like him very much. Pity about Elspeth," he added mournfully, strategically getting out of Carter's reach.

"Pity about Elspeth."

Upstairs Elspeth sat with her head in her hands, trying to come to terms with what she had done, with what she had allowed to happen.

Useless to try to pretend any more. Physically Carter aroused her as a woman as she had never dreamed any man could arouse her. If there in the kitchen he had whispered to her that he wanted to make love to her.

If he had caressed her. touched her, if he had slid the clothes from her body and then touched her naked flesh with his hands and then his mouth. She trembled violently at the very thought. Appalled by what she was thinking, and y3t at the same time knowing a helpless, sick longing for something far more tangible than the mere mental knowledge of how she would feel if Carter had made love to her.

Now, when she was completely alone, when he wasn't touching her in any way at all, when she ought to have been safely free of whatever spell it was he cast over her, she was yearning, aching, wanting him in such an earthy and elemental way that she could hardly comprehend that she was actually having these feelings.

She wanted Carter to make love to her. She said the words silently to herself, half expect ng them to be followed by a rush of mental denial--but nothing happened, apart from the fact that that dull, unfamiliar ache way down in the pit of her stomach seemed to twist fiercely and burn.

She shivered, suddenly feeling cold, sho;ked that she could feel like this, and for a man who didn't desire her, didn't love her. For a man who had done nothing to encourage her to feel like this.

No, right from the start she had been the one who had for some reason made his presence in her life take on a sensual significance. Right from the very start, when she had been so sure he had been trying to flirt with her, when she had failed to recognise him, and in so doing had--what? --sprung the trap into which she had now fallen.

It would be different once Peter got here, she told herself firmly.

Once Peter was here, all this nonsense would stop. She would be her normal self again. Perhaps she might even suggest to Peter that it was time they set a formal date for the wedding. Yes, perhaps that was it.

Because she could not allow herself to think of Peter in such sensual terms, her mind was playing tricks on her and transferring her burgeoning desire to Carter.

She frowned. Why couldn't she think of Peter as her lover? They were after all going to be married. There was no reason why they should not be lovers. It was all very well being sensible, she decided forlornly, but this evening, in Carter's arms, beneath Carter's mouth, her senses had been awakened to such aching pleasures that the thought of being sensible, cautious and pragmatic suddenly had no appeal at all.

She closed her eyes, and tried to visualise Peter behaving as Carter had. Sweeping her into his arms, kissing her with the same strong male pa.s.s' on turning her body into molten heat, making her want him so much that she began to make soft sweetly pleading noises beneath his mouth.

Perhaps there was something wrong with her imagination, she decided dispiritedly five minutes later, opening her eyes and bitterly admitting that she just could not visualise Peter and herself in such a situation.

But she did love him. Of course she did. And he loved her, and they were going to be married.

And tomorrow morning she would pretend she had overslept and that way with a bit of luck she wouldn't have to face Carter again until after he came back from his auction. By that time she was sure she would be in a much more sensible frame of mind. Back to her normal self.

It was only later when she crawled into bed, feeling more confused and unhappy than she could ever remember feeling in her life, that 'he wondered miserably if she would ever be her old 'normal' self again.

A vast chasm seemed to have appeared between the Elspeth with whom she was so familiar and whom she thought she knew so well, and this new one, whom she did not know at all, and wnom, she was beginning to discover, that part of the old

I.

Elspeth which remained found extremely frightening J The trouble with this new Elspeth was that she i had a whole set of emotions, a whole range of awareness and senses that the old Elspeth had never experienced in her life.

The best thing she could do was to somehow or other banish this new Elspeth before she began to get too much of a hold on her, Elspeth decided tiredly. Yes, that was what she must do. Starting with tomorrow, she must firmly force herself back into her familiar, businesslike mould. This new Elspeth must not be allowed to get a hold on her. She was far too disruptive, far too illogical, far too vulnerable. Far, far too vulnerable.

CHAPTER EIGHT.