'You look faint. I think you'd better come and sit down,' Elliott said solicitously, leading her into one of the bedrooms.
It had a four-poster bed with pretty floral hangings. A young girl's room, Beatrice decided wildly, glancing at the matching wallpaper and the pastel carpet.
*Elliott,' she said faintly, letting him push her gently down on to the bed. 'What...' She swallowed painfully. 'What are you talking about?'
'I'm talking about you and me, Bella Beatrice, and the life I hope we are going to live together.'
Her head whirled, and she wondered for a moment if she was hearing things. She looked at him with a puzzled, bewildered little-girl look, and heard him laugh softly.
A pain that threatened to be worse than any pain she had endured before gathered round her heart. How could he tease her like this? Didn't he know?
'Elliott, why are you doing this?' she asked him miserably.
'Doing what?'
He was sitting down next to her, and she had to turn sUghtly so that she could look at him. Motes of dust danced in the sunlight and all around them the old house seemed to sigh and settle as though roused from a deep sleep.
*You know what I mean.' Her voice was low and unhappy. ^Why all the flattery and pursuit? And what you said just now... it can't be because you... you find me attractive.'
There was a brief silence and she became aware that his fingers, which moments before had tightened on hers, were now caressing her wrist, measuring the frantic pulse that beat there.
*Can't it? Why not?'
^Because I'm not the sort of woman you find attractive,' she said flatly, feeling the painful beat of her heart, and realising as she said it how much that knowledge hurt.
*You mean you think you're not,' he corrected. 'Certainly you don't have the brilliant plumage of the other members of the Bellaire tribe,' he agreed sardonically, 'but you're very far from being the Plain Jane you seem to consider yourself. I think that's one of the things about you that irritates me the most, Beatrice. That and the way that you let the rest of the family walk all over you. What is it, I wonder, that makes you so determined to show the world the worst side of yourself? A kind of stubborn inverted pride, I suppose. God knows where you inherited that little lot from. The rest of your family aren't exactly inclined to hide their lights under a bushel, are they?'
To her astonishment he suddenly cupped her face in his hands and leaned so close to her that she could see the dark smoky irises round his eyes.
'You have the most marvellous bone structure, a clear fine skin, and the most staggeringly feminine shape.'
She knew she was flushing hotly, and there was nothing she could do about it. She felt as though she had strayed into a strange make-beUeve world where nothing had any reality.
*Don't you know what a challenge you are to a man/ ElUott groaned softly, 'with that intriguing mixture of Earth Mother and innocent?'
*Stop it!' Beatrice jerked from him, unbearably hurt that he could mock her hke this. Tm not a complete fool, Elliott,' she told him shakily. 'I know that men ... at least men like you... don't find me attractive. I don't know why...'
*Do you want a man like me to find you attractive?' he interrupted in a dangerous, silky voice, that sent tremors of delicious fear shivering all through her body. 'Is it so very hard to beUeve that I want you...that I love you?' his voice whispered against her senses with hypnotic intensity. She shivered against his hands as they touched her face.
'How can you?' Her throat felt sore and rough. *How can you love me? You've always seemed to disUke me... to be angry with me.'
'And so I was,' EUiott agreed mockingly, 'for giving your time and attention to your selfish, helpless family, when I was so obviously a far more worthy candidate for it.' He groaned suddenly, pulling her into his arms. 'God knows I'm probably just as selfish as they are, but at least I'll give you something in return.'
'Like what?' She was too bemused to take in what he was saying properly.
*Like this/ The words whispered over her skin, her insides melting on a wave of panic and delight as his mouth touched hers.
'Elliott!' She opened it to protest, but the sound was smothered beneath the fierce, dominating heat of his kiss. It was like drowning... like being swept into a dangerous undertow impossible to fight, and she didn't even try. She simply gave herself up to the sheer magic of it, letting him do with her what he wished.
She felt the softness of the mattress beneath her back and realised that she was lying down, with the weight of Elliott's body pressing her further into the bed.
She thought vaguely about objecting and then realised that since he could hardly really be holding her Uke this, kissing her Uke this, she must obviously be dreaming, and, since she was, there was scarcely any point in bothering to fight. Soon she would wake up, and she might as well enjoy herself until she did.
As soon as the traitorous word slid into her mind she tried to reject it. How could she enjoy herself in Elliott's embrace? How could she not? a strange, wickedly sensual side of her nature, which she had never previously known existed, demanded wantonly.
*I don't believe any of this is happening.'
She hadn't reahsed she had actually spoken out loud until she heard Elliott chuckle against her ear.
'Oh, it's happening all right, my love!'
*rm not your anything/ she told him crossly in a breathless little voice she barely recognised as her own.
Her body had surrendered itself to him so quickly and so totally that her mind was still struggling with the shock of it. All these years and she had never known how she really felt about him. Ail those years during which her body had kept its secret so well that she had never even guessed.
*Not yet/ EUiott agreed softly, *but you will be.'
He couldn't mean it. He was just playing with her... tormenting her. And yet under the heel of her palm his heart thudded jerkily, and his eyes, when she could bring herself to look into them, blazed nearly black with an excitement totally at odds with the lazy amusement in his voice. He looked, she recognised in bemused wonder, like a man holding himself under such a tight control that the strain of it showed in the lines of tension fanning out from his eyes and mouth.
*How can you have not known how I feel about you?'
*How could I have known?' Beatrice protested in a daze. *You never...'
'I never what? Touched you? Kissed you?' He groaned again. 'I couldn't, not without betraying myself completely. You've gone around for so long so totally wrapped up in your damned family, that I hardly dared believe it when you finally looked at me and saw me—not as an extension of that family, but as a man.'
'When... when did I do that?' She blurted out the question, feeling her skin burn, wondering how
much more she had betrayed to him. She still couldn't believe that he wasn't playing a game with her, that he wasn't going to turn round and tell her it was all a cruel joke.
The night of Lucilla's dinner party.' His teeth nipped at her ear, his words almost drowned out in the moist sigh of his breath.
*You made me angry.'
She felt the rumble of laughter begin somewhere deep in his chest.
'I've been trying to get some sort of reaction out of you for years, but you've never even batted an eyelid, until that night.'
She swallowed, half of her aching to give in to it, and to believe implicitly in what he was saying, the other half wary, tensed to protect her against the pain of discovering it was all a he.
*When your parents died I thought you might turn to me, but no, quite the opposite. You shut me out. But at least I had Lucilla as an excuse for seeing you.'
Closing her eyes, Beatrice remembered how often he had appeared in those agonising early weeks after her parents' death. She had assumed he was checking up on her suitability to act as Lucilla's surrogate mother. She tried to remember if there had ever been anything in his behaviour to suggest how he felt about her.
*You never showed how you felt ab
out me,' she protested.
*And receive the same short shrift as Benedict and Co gave the rest of your suitors? I've got more sense than that, Bella Bea.'
She opened her mouth to deny his comment, and then closed it again, remembering uncertainly how those men she had brought home had drifted away. At the time she had blamed her own lack of appeal. Now... She swallowed again and looked bravely into the dark grey eyes only inches away from her.
'You^re not doing this because you feel sorry for me, are you? Because of what Lucilla said the other night about...' she could feel the heat creeping over her skin... *about my being a... a frustrated spinster?'
To her astonishment Elliott laughed.
'If I feel sorry for anyone it's myself, and as for the rest ... A spinster at twenty-seven? Oh no, you're not that. I've told you before, Lucilla is jealous of you. And when it comes to being frustrated...' He paused suddenly, a peculiar gleam making his eyes glitter brilliantly as he looked at her in a way that sent quivers of sensation exploding out from the centre of her body right into her fingers and toes.
*You know I'm going to make love to you, don't you?'
Did she? Her body was reacting in a wildly abandoned way to what he was saying, but she managed to make a gurgled protest about wanting their lunch, at which Elliott laughed again, and murmured,
*In fact, I don't know how I've managed to keep my hands off you for this long! However, if you're hungry...'
Extremely ungallantly, he lifted his weight away from her and stood up, but when she made to
follow, he pushed her back gently and said, *Oh no, you stay right there. I won't be a moment.*
She knew she ought to move. It was crazy to simply languish there waiting.. .waiting to be made love to like an obedient puppet. She shivered and sat up, touching her forehead as though expecting to find signs of an incipient fever. What on earth was happening to her? Her whole world seemed to have turned topsy-turvy. Elliott couldn't love her, could he? She tried to think of some valid reason why he might go to such elaborate lengths to make a fool of her, but her brain refused to co-operate and she could not come up with a single one. Instead, it seemed to prefer to linger self-indulgently on what he had said, and the way he had looked at her, and she was still deep in this pleasant daydream when he came back, carrying a large picnic basket.
Her eyes widened as he kicked the door closed behind him and put the basket on the bed.
*We can't eat in here,' she protested.
*Why not?'
Beatrice opened her mouth and stared at him, unable to come up with a single reasonable objection.
*When I was little I used to pretend that my bed was a ship sailing on highly dangerous seas.'
He was opening the basket and poking about inside it with his back to her. She really ought to insist that they went downstairs. It was crazy staying up here with him. Downstairs they could talk sanely and...
^Elliott?' she began.
*Mm... chicken or salmon? Henry has packed both.'
*Here, try the salmon, it looks delicious. Open your mouth.^
She had always been obedient as a child, and it was a habit that had stuck. He was right, the salmon was delicious, and so was its tangy sauce.
'Hold still. YouVe got sauce all round your mouth.'
It was an exaggeration, but as she leaned forward and his tongue stroked softly over her lips, Beatrice really didn't care. She didn't want food, she realised dizzily, she wanted him.
She'd screwed her eyes tightly closed the moment he touched her, and now she opened them, staring at him in stunned amazement.
'Chicken?' he invited softly, and all she could do was shake her head and flush softly as she saw desire leap hotly in his eyes to meet the laughter already there.
'If you get really hungry you can always nibble on me,' Elliott teased as he removed the picnic basket from the bed, but there was no amusement in his eyes as he turned back to gather her into his arms, only a hot, open need that made her stomach muscles tense in instinctive protest.
'It's all right, there's nothing to be frightened of. I'm the one who should be scared,' he murmured as he smoothed her hair back off her face and stroked his fingers against her scalp, easing the tension building up in her nerve endings. 'If I go wrong now I could lose you for ever. You've no
idea how much that knowledge has tormented me down the years, how often I've ached to take hold of you and make you see me as a man/
He was already undressing her, his fingers deft on the buttons of her dress, and then abruptly she remembered what she was wearing underneath and she grabbed the front of her dress protectively, holding it against her.
^Beatrice?' He leaned forward, stroking her mouth with the tip of his tongue until she forgot why she was hanging on to her dress and wanted only to slide her hands into his hair and hold his mouth against her own.
She made a soft sound of feminine satisfaction deep in her throat as she achieved this ambition. Part of her mind registered the fact that ElUott was sliding her dress off her shoulders, but she was too busy enjoying the delicious sensation of his mouth moving against her own to pay much attention, and EUiott was the one who tensed as he eased her dress away from her body and saw what she was wearing underneath.
Because she was watching him, she was able to see his eyes darken and shimmer with a need that made her feel almost light-headed.
It couldn't be real; this couldn't be Elliott looking at her like a man who had ached and hungered for the sight and feel of her so much that his need had caused him acute physical pain.
His fingers trembled as they touched the first of the tiny satin-covered buttons.
*Mirry gave it to me.'
For once he seemed to have lost that acute perception that always alarmed her. He looked at her with hot, passion-blinded eyes.
'You wore this for me?'
He sounded so... so humbled that she had to blink back quick tears of pain and pride. She wanted to reach out and restore to him the arrogance that was so familiar to her, and in that instant she knew how deeply she loved him.
Too deeply, an inner voice warned her, but she didn't want to listen to it. She wanted to hold to her for ever that moment when Elliott had looked at her and she had read in his eyes that he wanted her.
She tried to tell him that her choice of underwear had been dictated by circumstance rather than by choice, but his hands were moving slowly over her satin-clad breasts, causing tremors of sensation to ripple through her.
Touch me, Beatrice.'
She wanted to resist, to tell him that she wasn't ready, but she was overwhelmed by the sudden rush of emotion sweeping over her as his hands swept back up over her body to ease down the fabric covering her breasts.
*You can't know how much I've ached to do this,' he told her softly, 'and this.'
He bent his head and she felt his lips gently caressing her breasts.
As she looked down at his dark head as it lay against her breasts she was swept by a wave of emotion so intense that it left her hot and shaking. She ached for him in every pore of her body; wanted
him with a need that left no room for pride or doubt.
As he kissed his way slowly back up to her mouth she wrapped her arms round him, arching her back instinctively so that her breasts were pressed against his chest. He made a sound deep in his throat and moved his body deliberately against her, until the delicate friction made her cry out beneath his mouth and arch feverishly against him, wanting him with such an intensity that it left no room for anything else.
His mouth left hers and she knew he was looking down into her unguarded face as he deUberately aroused her. UnwiUingly she opened her eyes.
This is how Fve dreamed of seeing you for years...aroused...wanting me the way I want you. And you do want me, don't you, Bella Bea?'
The immediate leap of her pulses, the need that burned inside her, were shocking discoveries for a woman who had always thought of herself as cool and controlled.
&
nbsp; There was nothing controlled about her now, she admitted shakily, feeling the fine tremors building up inside her, knowing that EUiott only had to look at her to make her burn up inside.
His thumb pressed softly against her bottom lip, teasing her, and she bit at it, quivering impatiently, caught up in a tension she didn't fully understand. She caught a stifled moan and thought she had hurt him as she looked into his tortured face. She must have made some sound in response, because Elliott shook his head and said huskily, 'Shush, it's all right. I thought I could do this slowly and care-
fully, but it isn*t going to work/ His voice was suddenly raw with a need that both excited and alarmed her. 'You're making it impossible for me to hold on to any self-control. Twenty-seven years old and with about as much experience as a seventeen-year-old, and you're driving me out of my mind!'
He moved, tugging open the rest of the satin-covered buttons abnost clumsily before smoothing the fabric away from her body with hands that actually seemed to tremble... Or was she the one who trembled? she wondered achingly as she felt her body's response to his avid visual appreciation of her.
Whenever she had imagined such a moment in her Ufe, she had beUeved that her embarrassment with her own nudity would be such that there would be no room for anything else. But embarrassment was the last thing on her mind as she saw the way Elliott looked at and responded to her.
In a gesture as old as time itself her body arched and invited, her curves enticing. She closed her eyes, every nerve end quivering, instinct telling her that Elliott would not be able to resist such an invitation, her breath up in her throat as she waited for the glorious heat and weight of him to descend upon her.
But nothing happened, and she opened her eyes again, her total abandonment to her own femininity retreating before an advancing tide of insecurity.
He looked back at her, holding her eyes so that she couldn't look away.
This is your last chance to change your mind/ he told her huskily. 'If I touch you now, Fm not going to be able to stop until I've made love to you, and I warn you, Bea, that my hunger for you is going to take one hell of a lot of appeasing/
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