He grasped her by the hips, and held her, great, strong arms locked rigid and steady, until she felt the pressure of being suspended without release over his supple, aroused body. She curved over him as if in pain, reaching for him, guiding him with clumsy, untutored hands, and the look in his eyes was like nothing she had ever seen before: tender and ruthless and insatiable.
He arced his body, thrusting into her, vast and swift, and subsided, still holding her aloft as she cried out a hoarse, clawing frustration. Then he smiled and she saw it, and he brought her down, impaling her, and his face was transformed with triumph and exquisite agony.
All the while the bright little fire crackled merrily in the hearth, like the sound of crumpled wrapping paper at Christmas.
Chapter Eight
They breakfasted later with the others. Charles had scampered down quite early, looking clean and bright-eyed and deceptively cherubic, and over golden waffles topped with strawberries and cream he proceeded to regale Gordon with the newest of his acquired jokes.
Harper had been extremely solicitous to her sensibilities, Nikki reflected, as the fresh tangy fruit and crispy waffle burst a luscious combination of tastes in her mouth. He had showered while she huddled under her bedcovers, sensually replete and wide-eyed with a kind of naïve amazement at what had happened to her over the last night. Then he had kissed her briefly, told her he was going to dress and go downstairs, and that she should come down only when she was ready to.
After he had left she couldn’t stay in bed for long, and had washed and dressed hurriedly, impatient for the day to start and eager to snatch as much precious time with Harper as she could. Dressing indifferently in dungarees and an oversized striped shirt, she skipped down the stairs with a light step while running her fingers through her short hair to comb it. She succeeded only in making it stand up in raven peaks at her forehead, and wouldn’t have cared had she known.
When she reached the dining-room she stopped, poised on one foot as she hovered intensely at the doorway, her impetuous gaze sweeping over the room and alighting on Harper, who lounged indolently in one chair, a cup of coffee in front of him as he chatted to a cool, elegant Gayle.
For a terrible moment all the old uncertainty had rushed back, and Nikki was left standing with her mind a blank, not knowing what to do or say or even how to feel, until Harper caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye and turned his head.
It had all been there in his eyes—the profound pleasure at her appearance, amused, conspiratorial delight, and a certain measure of gentle resignation, and understanding had blossomed in her in a split instant. It was up to her how public she chose to make their relationship, and if she said nothing he would say nothing.
Nikki’s whole face came to glorious life, and she shook her head a little at him as if in despair over his incredible obtuseness, to which Harper laughed out loud, his stern face singularly altered. Gayle, sitting to one side of the table in a casual khaki skirt and light green top, stared incredulously at Harper as if she had never seen him before, then turned to stare at Nikki.
All the unmistakable signs were there: the bruised peach of her lips, the deep pallor of sleeplessness to her translucent skin, the delicate bluish hollows around her luminous, dazzling eyes. She looked exactly as she felt—exhausted and radiant after a night of lovemaking.
Nikki had seen the stiff shock that froze Gayle’s features. There, the whole thing’s as good as public now without ever an exchange of words, she thought, and all she felt was a tremendous relief. She wouldn’t pretend, not now or ever, but even as she tensed to hurtle towards Harper, who had held out an inviting, peremptory hand, she hesitated and watched his confident smile slip a notch.
Ah, it was some deeper instinct than she’d known she had that made her give him a tight, wicked grin that challenged and teased and mocked, and she whirled lightly on her feet in flamboyant rejection as she went to pour herself a coffee from the hot urn on the sideboard.
Only Gayle saw Harper’s expression. He still laughed, but it was a roused, hard laughter, the dark eyes wolfish, that smiling mouth ruthless. The blonde woman shuddered in convulsive reaction, and she wondered if the younger girl knew what she was doing.
No one was witness to Gayle’s expression: her glittering overlay of ice in her eyes, sharp to a cutting edge, the perfect features frozen in a winter of the soul.
After some discussion over breakfast they decided to go to a charity fête being given at the grounds of a local hospital. Harper would drive the Jaguar, in which everyone would fit, and while the general assumption was that Nikki would take the front seat she adroitly skipped around that and gave up the position to Gayle. Her heart was not in control under Harper’s very sharp, watchful gaze; it thudded wildly to a beat of his devising and it took all her strength of will to combat the effect and retain a mind of her own.
Nikki knew that she was playing with fire just as Gordon had last night, and of all the others she thought she caught a glimmer of sympathetic understanding in the handsome doctor’s eyes. Gordon had been the one, after all, to give her the vital clue. Harper was hers only for now, and he might not be in the future. She did not think he loved her yet, and she wanted desperately for him to, but she had to hide that very desperation.
She knew she couldn’t afford to let him be too gentle, for it would be the eventual death knell of their relationship. Not only was Harper’s gentler, wiser side the source of his restraint, but his ruthless, ambitious side had to be satisfied, or passion would die and he would wander away.
To keep him she had to be the eternal conquest, she realised with a deep shiver. He was too complex. If he had wished for either a refined, civilised wife, or a totally professional partner, he would have married by now, but Harper needed a combination of both passion and challenge, and it would take every ounce of her independent, intuitive personality to live up to that.
When Gordon, Charles and Nikki had arranged themselves in the back, she was behind the driver’s seat and had to sustain a particularly barbarous spear thrown from Harper’s hard glance as he slammed her door and slid behind the wheel.
Part of her was in a state of shock. She couldn’t conceive of how such satisfying lovemaking could feed her hunger, not assuage it, and her nostrils quivered in tremulous reaction as she caught the faintest ephemeral whiff of his scent. She couldn’t help herself and leaned forward against the back of his seat, her head ostensibly turned to Gordon, who sat talking at the opposite rear door, on the other side of Charles.
Nikki slid her hand stealthily between the driver’s seat and the door, and her fingers collided with Harper’s torso. She felt but did not hear his sharp intake of breath and, unseen by any of them, she stroked him from breast muscle to that athletic waist, while he sat rigid and unmoving.
Suddenly her lips parted in a silent gasp as he captured her wandering hand and crushed it roughly against the hard bone of his hip. Her fingers, slim and helpless under pressure of his, throbbed. Some sixth sense lifted her head. Harper was looking at her in the rear-view mirror, amused and aroused and savage. She was caught like a rabbit in the hypnotic effect, unaware that she licked her lips, until she saw his gaze fall to the tiny voluptuous movement.
The entire exchange lasted barely a moment, just long enough for Gordon to finish whatever it was he had been saying and for Gayle to give a quick reply, and for Charles to twist in his seat and grow restless. “Aren’t we ready yet?” snapped the boy impatiently.
“Sorry,” drawled Harper lazily as he gave her fingers a painful admonitory pinch, “I was just wool-gathering.”
“Oh, very bland,” Nikki said in an approving tone before she could help herself, and she earned the reflection of a white volcanic smile.
He advised her softly, “Sit back and behave yourself.” Laughing and shaken, she did just that while Charles and Gordon glanced at them in puzzlement, aware that what th
ey had seen was scorching and private, and, to them, incomprehensible.
Nikki’s attention went to Gayle. The other woman’s gaze was inscrutable and piercing; before she had written Nikki off, then been angered at that underestimation. Now Nikki would have sworn that she was being probed in some manner, and it made her uneasy to see such intent without knowing the reason behind it.
The fête was large and very crowded, and it took them a long time to weave their way around the various stalls. All the while that searing, spitting undercurrent raced between Harper and Nikki and manifested itself in the growl of his voice, the snap in her bright eyes.
They had tea and sandwiches at one of the tents, managing to claim an empty table to one side. Charles had yet more strawberries and cream, while Nikki succumbed to the extravagance of a chocolate eclair. She consumed the pastry with a delighted greed that brought an indulgent smile to Gordon’s face and derisive amusement to Gayle’s. She saw it and shrugged; she didn’t care, she was enjoying herself. What baffled her was when she quickly glanced sideways at Harper and found in his dark eyes an eruptive, ravenous expression that threatened to shake her body apart.
When she was finished, he reached out with one slow hand, cupped her chin, and turned her face to him. Puzzled, Nikki complied with the gesture, and as she looked swimmingly into his intent gaze he ran his forefinger down the corner of her lips in a delicate caress, captured a speck of cream and chocolate and showed it to her. She coloured a little, laughing silently at herself, and then all the laughter died away as he put the finger to his mouth and licked it sensuously while watching her.
The hectic blush across her cheekbones deepened until she was feverishly hot. She was burning up from the inside, and he had hardly even touched her. Her shattered gaze wavered and fell, to the accompaniment of his quiet, purring chuckle. My God, she thought dazedly, this is some kind of war of seduction and Harper’s holding all the trump cards.
It excited and threatened her, for she felt gloriously intoxicated, dangerously out of control; once again he was reading her like a book, and she felt that his triumph was coming too easily to him and he would get bored with her all the sooner.
She accorded him a major victory and fled in full rout, playing the only trump in her possession as she disconnected and played her mental game with the other people around her. Charles was getting impatient with the crowd and would ask to go home soon. Gayle would be quick to agree, for the older woman was wearing her “frigid” expression that drove Gordon to such excesses.
She had read the atmosphere right, and soon they were heading back to the house, while Gordon began to chip away at Gayle’s composure, Charles thought he monopolised Harper’s attention with a rambling soliloquy on everything that the cats and dogs had done that week, and Nikki stared thoughtfully out of the car window. When they arrived back Charles got banished to his room for ignoring several pointed suggestions to change the subject and behave more sociably, and in the general dispersement Nikki wandered down the hall towards the rear lounge.
She had so much to think about, and so much to decide. She knew she had fallen in love with Harper too soon, and she had to school herself to patience as she waited to see whether he would fall in love with her or not. But the trouble was, how long would she have to wait? Months, years, forever?
She fought the impetuous panic that thought produced, for she could not comprehend living with this uncertainty, this insecurity indefinitely. Six months, she thought, suddenly remembering the painting she had agreed to do for Harper. I can cope with the thought of six months, yet a lot can happen in that time. After that, who knows? She didn’t have to worry about it now, did she? In the meantime, what about London?
She heard him before she saw him, the swift run of a big man extraordinarily light on his feet, and she turned to face the doorway as Harper rounded it and swooped on her. All her rational thinking descended into a gibbering breathlessness as her idiotic heartbeat betrayed her again, and her eyes went as wide as a child’s.
He caught her up, set her against the wall and pinned her there with his body as his grey-maned head bent over hers. He said vividly, his dark eyes predatory, “I thought I’d never get you on your own.”
Her head fell back against the wall as desire exploded in her veins, and she murmured, “So do we have cause for celebration?”
She hardly knew what she said but, whatever it was, it didn’t matter; the communication that was all-important pulsed in both his body and hers. However, somewhat to her surprise, Harper took her statement seriously and replied to it, his mouth turning grim. “That remains to be seen.”
At that cryptic statement her eyebrows furrowed together, but he didn’t pause to explain himself. Instead, he grabbed hold of her hand and pivoted on one heel. He was clenched, intense; she could feel the tension vibrating down his arm. He dragged her out of the house and Nikki trotted along beside him obligingly, curious as to what he had in mind and patient enough to wait for the explanation.
That he wanted to show her something was obvious. Several possibilities ran through her mind as he took her to the garage, which was a separate building from the house. Harper withdrew from his pocket a key and unlocked a side-door, which opened to a staircase that he strode up. Nikki followed, and, of all the half-drawn conclusions she had come up with, what she saw at the head of the stairs was completely outside them and took her breath away.
Gavin’s mysterious work in the garage over the last week, noticed, shrugged at and half forgotten, was suddenly explained, for visible in the large room was the evidence of recently completed carpentry where walls had been torn down and the markings of where they’d been were plastered over. The floor was bare, one huge skylight set into the roof still had new stickers on it, and in one corner was an empty and waiting easel. There were shelves of art supplies, canvasses and brushes and paints, and Nikki’s experienced glance quickly told her that everything was of the highest quality.
Harper had planned this—ages ago, before they were lovers, before she knew she loved him, when? Last weekend? As early as last Friday when he first invited her? This—was a staggering statement of intent that wiped the mind blank; she was appalled, frightened, no, terrified. Was he so sure of her, or was he so arrogant? Either possibility in her mind verged on the unacceptable.
He watched her expressive little face, saw the outrage, the fear, the stiffening incredulity. His own face hardened and he said in a harsh voice, “I gave Gavin instructions for this on Monday morning, before I left for London.”
“I did wonder,” she muttered tightly from between bloodless lips. She took several steps away from him, pretended to look over the paints, put her hand over her mouth.
“Nikki,” he said then, with extreme care, and it was both revealing and inexplicable, “you aren’t the only one to take a chance.”
Her head tilted back. She pushed the fleshy part of her thumb into her mouth and bit it, thinking back to last night as he had meant her to, and how he had said that she took too much for granted and she had corrected him. Was he saying this was not arrogance? What, then? What, Harper?
“I don’t understand,” she whispered at last, her shoulders hunched, still afraid. This was outside what she knew of him, and herself, and was anything really the way she perceived it?
“No, I know,” he said, and the tightness was gone from his voice, replaced by something else. Gentleness, sadness. “We haven’t very much between us, after all. An accidental meeting, very little history.”
She made a sound of pain, didn’t know why, bit her thumb all the harder.
“Do you trust me, Nikki?”
How quietly he reached out with the words, without either passion or threat, stabilising all those incoherent, half-completed thoughts of alarm. How quietly he made her consider just that question alone and nothing else. She thought and took her time, for it was so important, even though the a
nswer was obvious.
“Yes,” she said, a thread of sound connecting them together, and she thought she heard him sigh.
“Then, my love—” How delicately he said it, and moved, until his touch came feather-light at the nape of her exposed neck. “Can you trust me enough not to worry for the moment about why I had this done? I have my reasons, and they are important to me. I will tell you some time, but please, not now. Just consider this a given choice, for yourself and not for me. There’s space, privacy, plenty of light and safety, and if you look around you can see that you are welcome. Would you like to work here?”
He asked her not to question his motives, but why? Why? Why? pounded in her brain until she covered her face in distress and confusion. Think, Nikki. Two sides of the man, one dynamic, passionate, powerful, the other gentle and wise and kind. Two sides, incompatible, straining against each other.
She did not think that if she refused this remarkable invitation they would immediately stop seeing each other. Knightsbridge and Mayfair in London were within easy access of each other. But conducting the relationship here in Oxford meant something important to him, perhaps vital; what? London or Oxford, seeing him during the week in the evenings, or seeing him at the weekends?
But there was plenty of light and safety here. His linkage of words, not hers. And there were two sides, power and gentleness, and he wanted her in the gentleness. It was the same old conflict in him and followed a familiar pattern, where next came restraint, and then withdrawal, and then—the end?
So staying was dangerous. But he had his reasons, and the time and the money spent on this new studio were full evidence of that. And he had the vast measure of his maturity and experience, whereas all Nikki had was her instinct.
Cry Wolf Page 13
