Night Heat

by Anne Mather

  But at least she could hear nothing but the hum of the fan in here, she acknowledged with satisfaction even if the thought of spending an unspecified period in his bathroom filled her with dismay. Perhaps she should take a bath, she mused wryly, trying to lift her spirits. But nothing could erase the image of what she was trying to avoid.

  ‘Sara!’

  She heard Lincoln call her name before the door behind her opened and he appeared. It happened so quickly, she half thought he had told Rebecca she was here, and was summoning her to join them. The prospect of that was so distasteful to her, she remained silent, and only when he opened the door and she saw the empty bedroom beyond did she begin to hope that he had succeeded in getting rid of the girl.

  ‘What are you doing in here?’ he demanded, stepping back to allow her to emerge into the bedroom again, and Sara flushed as she came forward.

  ‘I could have been taking a bath. It would have been all the same to you,’ she retorted, deciding the best method of defence was attack. ‘Do you usually walk into bathrooms unannounced? Or as it was me, didn’t you think it mattered?’

  Lincoln’s mouth compressed. ‘Would you believe me if I told you I was half afraid you might have gone?’ he asked quietly. ‘I wouldn’t have blamed you—Rebecca is hardly discreet.’

  ‘How could I go?’ Sara argued hotly. ‘I may be unimportant, but I’m not exactly invisible!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She caught her breath. ‘You—you and Miss Steinbeck, that is—were between me and the door!’

  ‘Oh!’ Lincoln nodded now. ‘You didn’t realise there was another door.’

  ‘Another door?’ squeaked Sara in dismay. ‘Where?’

  ‘There,’ said Lincoln carelessly, gesturing across the room.

  It was a humiliating discovery to learn that the door she had thought must lead into his dressing room actually led into the corridor. She wondered if he thought she had known about it all along, and had gone into the bathroom to pretend she hadn’t. Of course, there might even be a second door out of the bathroom for all she knew. Oh, why hadn’t she considered that possibility? Instead of putting herself in such a position!

  ‘How foolish of me,’ she murmured now, her brief spurt of defiance evaporating. ‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice was stiff. ‘I suppose you think I was eavesdropping.’

  ‘Hardly.’ His mouth turned down at the corners. ‘Besides, there was nothing private about our conversation.’

  ‘Miss Steinbeck might not agree with you.’

  ‘Miss Steinbeck was simply concerned in convincing me that she’s not the cold-hearted bitch she appeared earlier,’ said Lincoln shortly, and Sara bent her head.

  ‘I don’t wish to discuss it.’

  ‘No, nor do I,’ he agreed levelly, ‘but I do want you to understand her motives.’

  ‘They’re really nothing to do with me,’ she insisted, wishing she had never mentioned Rebecca, but Lincoln wasn’t finished.

  ‘Rebecca obeys her grandfather in all things,’ he added quietly. ‘Michael would like her to be the second Mrs Korda. Do I make myself clear?’

  Sara drew a painful breath. ‘You don’t have to explain anything to me.’

  ‘Damn you, I know I don’t! I just wanted——’

  ‘Any feeling you have for Miss Steinbeck, or she for you——’

  ‘This has nothing to do with Rebecca’s feelings. God, I don’t care about Rebecca’s feelings right now. Only yours!’

  ‘Mine?’ Sara lifted her head then, but the brilliance of his eyes was too intense. ‘I—it’s late. I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’ She glanced longingly towards the archway into the sitting room. ‘Well, because—because I do.’

  ‘Because Rebecca interrupted us, and your narrow little mind can’t cope with that kind of complication,’ he corrected her flatly. ‘Okay. Okay, goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  She turned to go, but as she reached the arch that divided the rooms, she hesitated. The choice was hers now. She could leave if she wanted to; he had evidently lost all interest in her. But this time pride resisted his propensity to have the last word.

  Speaking over her shoulder, she threw his taunt back at him. ‘You didn’t actually expect to take up where you left off, did you, Mr Korda?’ she enquired acidly, and rejoiced in his audible intake of breath.

  ‘What I expected—or didn’t expect, for that matter—is not a subject for discussion,’ he told her civilly. ‘Go to bed, Miss Fielding.’

  But Sara couldn’t leave it there. ‘You did expect to go on, didn’t you?’ she accused him, finding it easier to talk when she wasn’t looking at him. ‘You’re incredible! You’re making love to one woman, when another arrives and professes her undying love; and you’re so full of yourself that when you’ve got rid of the second, you expect the first to be waiting in eager anticipation! My God, it’s barbaric!’

  ‘It wasn’t like that, and you know it,’ said Lincoln wearily, and she could hear the taut frustration in his voice. ‘I am far from full of myself, as you put it, and I was not—making love to you. When I do, you’ll know it.’

  Sara gasped, and couldn’t resist a glance over her shoulder then. ‘Don’t you mean if ?’ she demanded indignantly, and with an impatient sigh he came after her.

  ‘No, I mean when,’ he retorted harshly, halting right behind her, and it took an enormous effort of will power not to lose her cool and run.

  ‘I want an apology,’ she declared, hardly knowing what she was saying, in the raw panic of the moment. But the words spilled out, and she stiffened automatically when his hands gripped her shoulders.

  ‘An apology?’ he echoed incredulously, jerking her round to face him, and forced to support her words or look foolish, she nodded. ‘An apology for what?’

  ‘For—for taking advantage of our situation,’ she invented hurriedly, realising she was pushing him just a little too far. Frustration was rapidly giving way to a desire for vindication, and the smouldering impatience in his eyes gave them a strangely sultry appearance.

  ‘For taking advantage of our situation,’ he repeated bleakly, his hands digging into the slender bones of her shoulders. ‘Are you serious?’

  Sara faltered, torn by the scowling disbelief in his gaze and her own uncertainty. ‘Well, what would you call it, then?’ she mumbled, wishing she had never started this, and with a smothered oath Lincoln pulled her into his arms.

  ‘How about—an irresistible attraction?’ he muttered, his lips against the side of her neck, and without giving her time to recover from the unexpectedness of his caress, he covered her mouth with his.

  She could hear the acceleration of his heart, as his arms closed about her. For all he had acted so confidently, she sensed the lingering doubts he cherished, and that made him vulnerable. And perhaps that was why she couldn’t push him away. There was something incredibly satisfying in the knowledge that she had the power to arouse this man, and for all her grand intentions, she felt her resistance give.

  Her hands, which until then had been crushed between them, now slid around his waist, and then she was pressing herself against him, her breasts flattened by his chest, her hip bones melting into the potent urgency of his. He was all bone and muscle, no trace of fat anywhere. She could feel every flexing angle of his body, and the palpable weakness in her legs was only equalled by the sharp constriction in her stomach.

  ‘Rebecca means nothing to me,’ he told her roughly, his hands parting the buttons of her shirt from their holes, enabling him to stroke the creamy skin of her shoulder with his tongue. ‘Once—once before, I got involved with a woman to facilitate her family’s needs, but it won’t happen again, I promise you.’ His fingers found the lace-trimmed slip of cotton that comprised her bra and pushed it carelessly aside. ‘My whole life until this point seems to have been made up with doing things for other people. This …’ his teeth enclosed the engorged nipple that nudged his l
ips, ‘this … is for me.’

  Sara shivered. She was afraid he was moving too fast for her. The searching hunger of his kiss had left her weak and aching for more, but the intimate caress of his hands reminded her of her own inexperience. This was no fumbling youth she was tangling with. This was a man, with a man’s needs and a man’s expectations, and although she desperately wanted to prove herself, she trembled before the commitment.

  Yet she didn’t stop him when he slid the shirt from her shoulders and allowed it to fall to the floor. Nor did she object when her bra followed its path, exposing her more fully to his gaze. His eager mouth was on hers, his tongue igniting a flame that was searing in its heat, and her tremulous inhibitions were consumed in the fire.

  Besides, he had loosened the belt of his robe so that her breasts were teased by the hair-roughened skin of his body, and when he gathered her closer, not even the twin thicknesses of her trousers and panties could prevent her from feeling the swollen evidence of his desire. Her hands were making an involuntary exploration of their own, sliding inside his robe to spread her palms against the silky hollow of his spine. The texture of his skin was smoother there, and still a little moist from his shower, much different from the taut curve of his buttocks and the thickening hair that marked their joining with his thighs. Meanwhile, Lincoln’s lips were beating a sensuous path across her breasts, and upwards to the sensitive curve of her neck and shoulder, and she was almost mindless with delight. But when he grasped her hand and pressed it down between them, close against the throbbing source of his manhood, she was shocked into the realisation of how far they had gone.

  ‘No—we—I can’t,’ she protested feebly, recoiling from the fiery heat of his flesh, but Lincoln wasn’t taking her objections seriously.

  ‘We can. We’re going to,’ he added huskily, and swinging her up into his arms, he carried her to the bed.

  She panicked when he drew her silk trousers and the diminutive scrap of cotton underneath down her legs, but then he was beside her on the bed, and the naked weight of his body was a powerful intoxicant. She had to tell him, she thought anxiously, but the knowledge that if she did so he would in all probability leave her created a dilemma she was not equipped to handle. Instead, she lay like a statue, steeling herself not to respond to the searching pressure of his mouth.

  ‘Sara—for God’s sake, Sara,’ he groaned, sliding his hands up and down her body, trying to instil some feeling into her, but she refused to meet his gaze. It was taking all her will power not to submit to the urgency of his hands, and when he bent his head to dip his tongue into the hollow of her navel, she arched convulsively.

  ‘That’s it,’ he breathed, against her stomach, feeling her fluttering pulses jerking to life beneath his tongue, and against any defence Sara could raise, her body began to move with him. It was like an instrument in the hands of an expert, she fretted, struggling to hold on to her sanity, and Lincoln’s husky words of approval were an added provocation.

  ‘I want you, and you want me,’ he told her thickly. ‘Don’t you?’ he demanded, threatening to follow his fingers with his lips, and with the hot length of him pulsing against her, how could she deny it?

  ‘Yes. Oh, yes,’ she admitted weakly, and parting her legs with one of his, he knelt across her.

  The temptation was still to fight him. He was so big and powerful, and although she had always believed that when this moment came, she would be ready for it, she wasn’t. She didn’t know what he expected of her; she had never had to face the simple practicalities of making love. And when he cupped her rounded rear and brought her to him, she felt as helpless as a baby in his hands.

  But it was when he thrust inside her that she reacted. There was a searing pain when he penetrated the protective membrane, and she couldn’t deny the choking sob that escaped her lips, or prevent her hands from pressing frantically at his chest. Her recoil was unmistakable, and Lincoln’s eyes sought her face in disbelief.

  ‘God,’ he groaned. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ but Sara’s resistance had ceased as the pain subsided. It was too late now to regret what had happened, and his angry condemnation was just a futile waste of words.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she mumbled, feeling ridiculously immature, but his expression did not change.

  ‘I thought——’

  ‘I know what you thought,’ she interrupted him unhappily, wishing he would just go on and get it over with, but with an oath of self-disgust he drew away from her.

  ‘God,’ he muttered, sitting up, with one leg beneath him, the other drawn up to provide a resting place for his chin. ‘You should have stopped me! Why didn’t you?’

  Contrarily, now that he had withdrawn from her, Sara knew a sense of bereavement. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, unaware of her own provocation as she propped herself up on her elbows. She wetted her lips. ‘Was I so bad?’

  ‘Don’t talk rubbish!’ he muttered, gazing at her broodingly. ‘You should have told me you were a virgin! God, I didn’t know there were any of them still around!’

  She quivered. ‘Is it a crime?’

  ‘Yes,’ he retorted coldly, and then, seeing her wounded expression, he shook his head. ‘No,’ he sighed wearily. ‘No, it’s not a crime. Not in normal circumstances, that is. Only these are hardly normal circumstances, are they? I’m no white knight, Sara. I’m not the man who should have—destroyed your innocence. Some place, somewhere, there’s the man who deserves to be the first. But not me. Not me!’

  Sara absorbed this in silence. Lincoln looked so grim; so frustrated. She almost felt that it was her fault for not being what he expected, and she desperately wanted to reassure him that she had been as much to blame. Besides, if she was completely honest, she would admit that what had happened had not changed her feelings towards him one bit. He was still the only man she had ever wanted to make love with, and there was a bitter-sweet poignancy in the intimacy they had shared.

  With a feeling of inevitability, she moved then, scrambling up to kneel behind him. With her breasts warm against his shoulders, she slid her arms around his neck, and pressed her lips to his cheek.

  ‘Don’t!’ he muttered, but his intention to escape her clinging arms went wrong, and she ended up in his lap, her arms still round his neck. “Sara——”

  ‘Well, I’m not now, am I?’ she protested obliquely, and he frowned.

  ‘Not what?’

  ‘Not strictly a virgin; not any longer,’ she informed him huskily, sliding her hand along his jawline. ‘Don’t you think that’s rather a waste?’

  ‘Sara!’

  But she could feel the instantaneous reaction of his body beneath her thighs, and when he lifted his hand to remove hers, she took it to her breast. ‘Don’t you want me?’ she asked, her cheeks turning pink at such wanton behaviour, and with an agonised expellation of his breath, Lincoln closed his eyes.

  ‘Don’t I want you?’ he echoed, opening his eyes on a grim laugh. ‘Dear God, Sara, of course I want you, but——’

  ‘But nothing,’ she interrupted him gently, taking him with her, back against the satin coverlet, and the sensuous softness against her thighs cushioned what came after …

  There was daylight beyond the fine silk curtains at Lincoln’s windows when Sara awakened. Sunlight was causing tiny threads of light to pierce their ivory folds, glinting on the brass rails at the foot of the bed, and sending rainbow slivers across tumbled sheets.

  For a moment, she was puzzled by her surroundings. The lilac-coloured walls were not familiar, and nor was the bed. But as she moved and discovered her own nakedness, memory flooded back, and with a feeling of anticipation she turned her head.

  However, she was alone. The place beside her had been occupied; that was evident from the dented pillows and twisted sheets. But Lincoln had announced the night before that he was leaving for New York today, and a quick look at her wristwatch confirmed her worst fears. It was almost nine o’clock! Not late by normal standards, perhaps,
but when she considered that Lincoln usually left at seven, it was far too late to hope that they might see one another before he departed.

  And she had wanted to see him. With a feeling of delicious lethargy, she rolled on to her stomach and buried her face in his pillow, remembering his lovemaking with a clarity that defied expression. But, she acknowledged, after a few mindless moments, after what had happened last night, she could no longer delude herself about her feelings for him. Crazy—hopeless, she derided, her exhilaration evaporating—as it was, she was in love with him, and she had to face the painful fact that he didn’t feel the same. Oh, he was attracted to her, he had said so. He had wanted her. But she was just one of many women he had made love with, while she knew she would never want anyone else.

  It had all proved so fantastic. What had begun as an unmitigated disaster had become something so right, so perfect, that even Lincoln had not seemed able to get enough. He had been unable to leave her alone, and it had been almost morning before they fell asleep in one another’s arms.

  Sara shook her head. And to think that she had invited him to resume his lovemaking with something akin to martyrdom! She had been quite prepared to stifle her suffering so that she might make him happy. She had never expected to respond in the way she had, and instead of him hurting her, he had taken her to paradise.

  From the moment he entered her, she had felt her senses stirring, her muscles rushing to enfold him within their silken sheath. It was if they belonged together, she had thought at once, and there had been something so wonderful about feeling him move inside her. There was no pain, only an intense pleasure; a feeling of anticipation that this was what she had been waiting for all her life.

  He had been so gentle to begin with, she remembered, his own pent-up hunger held in check until she could share it with him. He hadn’t rushed her or got impatient with her, even though he must have suffered agonies of frustration. Instead, he had used his quite extraordinary skills to give her satisfaction, and by the time he reached his climax, she had been bucking under his hands.