The Trusting Game (Presents Plus)

by Penny Jordan

  From a distance she could hear Daniel telling her curtly, ‘Has it occurred to you that those same adjectives could quite easily be used to describe you, Christa? Christa!’

  She could hear the way his voice changed, concern replacing contempt, but the sound seemed to reach her from a long way away, and the feeling of being scooped up in his arms, instead of arousing fresh anger, rather oddly filled her with a delicious sense of warmth and comfort.

  Her dunking in the lake had obviously affected her far more than she had realised, she acknowledged five minutes later, as she stood unprotesting and unfamiliarly docile beneath the blessedly warm spray of one of the boat-house showers, while Daniel stood there with her, quickly peeling off her wetsuit.

  ‘It’s all right, Christa, you’re going to be fine. You’re in shock that’s all,’ she heard him telling her as he turned off the warm water and wrapped her in a big towel. But it had been his eyes that had darkened before he’d looked firmly away from her naked body, his hands that had trembled briefly when he had touched her.

  And, beneath the shock that was still making her teeth chatter and her body tremble, Christa was aware of a small surge of feminine triumph in the knowledge that the sight of her naked body had affected him—so much so that, as a man, he had been almost afraid to look at her or touch her, that she was not the only one to feel unawakened desire, even if he’d very quickly cloaked his desire in clinical detachment.

  Just as soon as he had assured himself that she was not in any real danger from her shock, he had left her to dress herself while he too got changed. But if, instead of going, he had looked at her a second time, touched her…It had shocked her to feel that very betraying shock of sensation that ran through her body, especially when, mentally and emotionally, she was still so furiously angry with him.

  Half an hour later, as she sat beside him while he drove the Land Rover back to the farm, she was still just as angry—with herself as well as with him. Why had she panicked like that, giving him the opportunity to…to what? To make her feel even more wary of the physical effect he had on her?

  ‘How are you feeling now?’

  ‘Fine—no thanks to you,’ she told him pithily, adding furiously as her anger overwhelmed her, ‘God knows what you were trying to prove, but…’

  ‘I wasn’t trying to prove anything,’ he cut in tersely.

  Christa could see the anger in his eyes as well as hear it in his voice, but instead of feeling pleased that she had breached his professional detachment there was an oddly painful lump in her throat.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so stubbornly determined to hang on to their prejudices as you, Christa. What is it that you’re really afraid of?’

  ‘The fact that you can’t make me change my mind or my opinions doesn’t mean I’m afraid. Far from it,’ Christa told him fiercely, but she knew that she wasn’t being entirely honest, and she couldn’t sustain the long, level eye-contact he was making with her.

  As she turned her head away from him she could feel her colour starting to rise slightly.

  ‘What were you expecting, anyway?’ she demanded aggressively, to cover her vulnerability. ‘That that little sermon you delivered out there on the lake would make me fling myself into your arms and declare my undying trust in you?’

  Even as she spoke she knew she had gone too far, betrayed far more than was wise with that foolish comment about flinging herself into his arms, taken the situation into intensely personal realms which Daniel, as a professional, couldn’t fail to interpret correctly, despite the scorn she had injected into her voice.

  ‘Nothing quite so theatrical,’ she heard him telling her grittily. ‘A simple open-minded willingness to listen without pre-judging, that was all I wanted from you, Christa, but of course I might just as well have asked for the moon, mightn’t I?’ he concluded bitterly, braking with such force as he swung the Land Rover round a tight bend that Christa was thrown heavily against him.

  The scent of his skin, clean and faintly soapy, made her stomach lurch with such intensity that she had to dig her nails into the palms of her hands to prevent herself from crying out in shock.

  How could she be so physically and sensuously responsive to him?

  It was a question that continued to torment her for the rest of the day, and her secret, silent worrying at it caused Daniel to frown as he watched her.

  Her dunking in the lake had not been planned, but theoretically, once over the initial shock of it, she was physically and mentally strong enough to throw off the effects very quickly, her recovery aided by the intensity of her fury against him. But, instead of verbally castigating him now, as he had expected, she had become very quiet and withdrawn.

  ‘Christa…Are you sure you’re feeling OK…?’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked him sourly. ‘Afraid that I might die of pneumonia or something?’

  Her speedy verbal retaliation reassured him, causing his eyes to gleam slightly with amusement as he told her dulcetly, ‘I know how determined you are to discredit the work I’m doing here, but somehow I doubt that even you would want to go to quite those lengths…’

  ‘Don’t bet on it,’ Christa told him childishly, darkly. ‘It might almost be worth it.’

  * * *

  ‘What is it—what’s wrong?’

  Christa tensed as Daniel broke off in the middle of explaining his theories and teaching methods to her to pose the concerned question.

  They were in his study, a warm, cheerful room decorated in rich terracottas and soft greens; bookshelves crammed with books covering a fascinatingly wide range of subjects filled the walls; a fire burned warmly in the grate, and everything about the room and its decor encouraged relaxation. But relaxing was the last thing Christa felt able to do. Not when Daniel had just returned from feeding the fire not to his chair but to her side, as she sat at the desk, studying the papers he had given her.

  Now as he leaned over her, one hand on the back of her chair, the other on the desk only inches away from her own, she was conscious of the heat rising up through her body, and with it the panic that sent her heartbeat into overdrive and made the blood roar dizzily in her ears.

  She was so acutely conscious of him that she could actually smell him—not the faint sharp tang of the cold mountain air he had brought in with him when he went out for some logs, but him.

  The knowledge that she was conscious of him so intimately made the flush burning her skin deepen and her body start to tremble.

  Not even then was the runaway panic of her denial strong enough to suppress the jumble of rapid-fire mental images flashing across her brain: Daniel holding her in his arms, Daniel, his body naked as he touched her and caressed her. Daniel filmed slightly with sweat, the totally male scent of his desire and arousal flooding her responsive senses with messages her body ached to reciprocate.

  ‘Christa, what is it? Your face is burning up…’

  Christa wasn’t sure which of them was the more shocked at the way she cried out and visibly cringed away from his touch as he reached out to touch her skin.

  ‘I’m all right…It’s nothing. It’s just hot in here,’ she fibbed. ‘I…I was standing by the fire while you were out,’ she added equally untruthfully, holding her breath nervously in case he challenged her lie, but fortunately he seemed to accept it, although he was still frowning.

  ‘For a woman who has made her views on what we’re trying to do here extremely plain, so far you’ve been surprisingly unargumentative,’ he told her wryly.

  ‘Not because I’ve changed my mind,’ Christa assured him; she was on safer ground here…much safer. ‘In theory what you’re saying sounds good,’ she acknowledged, adding with a slightly cynical twist to her lips, ‘Very high-minded and altruistic.’

  ‘But you don’t accept that they are,’ Daniel replied for her.

  He was watching her intently—too intently, Christa acknowledged. She waited for her answer, but there was no sign that anything she
had said had disturbed him, she admitted—far from it.

  ‘Why?’ he challenged her.

  ‘Why?’ Christa repeated almost stupidly, her thoughts wandering from the subject under discussion to her own vulnerability towards him and the problems it was causing her. Not the least of which was the funny ache in the region of her heart and the awful compulsion to reach out and touch him which seemed to have gripped her.

  Was it possible for something to happen to a person so that their behaviour and emotions were completely the opposite of what they wanted them to be?

  Yes, and it was called insanity, she told herself starkly, hastily collecting her thoughts as she realised that Daniel was still waiting for her response.

  ‘Yes, why don’t you accept that my motives are altruistic?’

  ‘Well, there are the fees you charge to attend your courses for a start,’ Christa told him drily. ‘They are hardly altruistic, are they?’

  ‘Perhaps not, but they are a fair reflection of what it costs to run a venture like this, to provide the highly skilled and professional tuition that is necessary.’

  ‘And to enable you to make a handsome profit into the bargain,’ Christa suggested.

  Now she felt that she had really angered him.

  ‘Is that really what you think of me?’ he asked her quietly, cutting right across the defences she had erected and bringing the question at issue out of the public arena into one that was strictly private with such speed that she felt as though the ground had been cut completely from beneath her feet.

  ‘This has nothing to do with what I think of you…on a personal basis,’ she started to defend herself.

  ‘Yes, it has,’ Daniel contradicted her flatly. ‘When something arouses you emotionally your voice changes completely…I could hear the dislike and contempt in your voice quite clearly—and the fear as well,’ he informed her.

  When something aroused her emotionally? What about when someone did the same thing? Did she betray herself equally shockingly then, too?

  Suddenly she was starkly conscious of Daniel’s profession, of his training, of the fact that he probably knew more about people’s reactions and what they meant than she could possibly know.

  ‘What is it, Christa?’ he challenged her. ‘What is it about me that you find so painful, that makes you feel so antagonistic? What I am, or what I do?’

  ‘Neither,’ Christa denied quickly. Too quickly, she recognised as she watched the way his eyes narrowed, felt the full power of his concentration on her.

  ‘I…I just don’t like the idea of people being deceived…cheated…hurt.’ She stumbled slightly over the words, wishing she had never got involved in such a conversation and longing to escape—but how could she do that without betraying herself even more to Daniel?

  ‘And you think that I would do that?’

  An immediate denial sprang to her lips, but somehow she suppressed it, the effort it took making her throat ache and her eyes feel gritty.

  ‘I don’t know you well enough to make that sort of judgement,’ she managed to tell him shakily.

  To her surprise a slight smile suddenly curled his mouth. ‘You’re a fighter, I’ll say that for you,’ he told her.

  Christa stared at him. ‘You want me to disagree with you?’

  ‘Not exactly, but there is a certain stimulation about discussing something with someone who knows their own mind and isn’t afraid to say what they think. It brings a certain kind of energy…a chemistry to the discussion, not totally unlike the very special chemistry that two people create when they’re very strongly sexually attracted to one another,’ Daniel told her softly.

  Like someone in a trance Christa went totally still, only her eyes moving, and totally against her will they focused on Daniel’s face.

  ‘I’m not saying that I don’t and won’t take issue with you on what you’re saying,’ Daniel continued, as calmly and easily as though he had never made that reference to sexual chemistry, as though he had never left those words hanging in the air so provocatively that Christa felt as though she could still feel their echo vibrating dangerously through her whole body. ‘But that kind of person, the kind of woman who negatively accepts everything she hears simply to make life easier…’ He gave a small dismissive shrug.

  ‘But men don’t like women who argue with them, who are too independent,’ Christa told him quickly.

  ‘Don’t they?’ Daniel challenged her softly. ‘That’s a myth I thought was well and truly exploded. Men, intelligent men, real mean feel exactly the same about women who passively accept their every word as law as they do about women who passively accept their intimacy in sex.’

  Christa couldn’t help it; she could feel the hot, toecurling sensation his words evoked, submerging her body in a flash-flood of intense awareness.

  ‘Sex…making love,’ Daniel continued, ‘like a good discussion, should be about mutual intensity, mutual involvement…a mutual desire to share what is happening…Don’t you agree…?’

  ‘Sex for sex’s sake isn’t something that interests me,’ Christa told him, forcing her voice to sound disparaging and curt.

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘Nor me—call me unmacho if you like, but I really fail to see what pleasure there can be in a physical intimacy that does not include—not merely include, but also fully embrace—an emotional and intellectual intimacy as well. Which probably explains why I seem to have become unintentionally celibate…’ he added ruefully.

  Celibate? This man? Christa’s heart lurched and floundered and then ricocheted against her chest-wall so hard that she thought Daniel must actually be able to see it beating.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she heard him asking her.

  ‘Nothing,’ Christa denied, and then added quickly, ‘It’s just that men…most men wouldn’t say…don’t tell…don’t reveal their… themselves…’ She stopped speaking, shaking her head beneath the onslaught of her muddled thoughts.

  ‘Perhaps because they’ve learned the hard way that women don’t always want to listen,’ Daniel told her, apparently guessing what she had been trying to say. ‘Some women find male emotions, male vulnerability, very threatening. It isn’t what they’ve been brought up to expect from a man. Watch a small boy with his mother, observe the different way she treats him from his sister…the way society expects her to treat him. Once they get to a certain age boys are actively discouraged from being open about their emotional needs, but they do have them, and so do men.

  ‘What are your emotional needs, Christa?’ he asked her softly, catching her so totally off guard that she could only stare at him while the colour came and went in her face as she succumbed to the shock of his question.

  ‘I…I don’t want to talk about them,’ she managed at last, adding fiercely, ‘That isn’t why I’m here…’

  ‘No, you’re here to test the efficiency of our work, on the surface at least, but there’s more to it than that, isn’t there, Christa? There’s a personal hidden agenda in there somewhere, there inside you, something that’s perhaps not quite a fear and certainly not an obsession, but something which has a very strong hold on you and no one else.’

  Christa stood up abruptly.

  ‘Stop it,’ she demanded frantically. ‘I don’t have to listen to this, to you. I…’

  ‘Christa…’

  She almost made it to the door and to freedom, but he caught up with her just as she was reaching out to wrench it open, placing his body between her and it, catching hold of her much as he had done earlier; only this time her body, her senses, registered the subtle, telling differences in that hold, his familiarity with her height and shape, just as she knew, as she reached out her hands supposedly to fend him off, that the feel of his heartbeat beneath her palm, the heat of his skin, the faint roughness of his body-hair beneath his shirt, were something she wanted to experience again with a hunger that was already dangerous.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to upset you. I just wanted…’
r />   Instinctively, as she heard his softly whispered words, Christa looked up at him.

  It was a fatal mistake, because her mouth went dry as she focused on his, her heart pounding frantically. The longing that engulfed her to reach up and wrap her arms around him, to press her body close to his, to pull his head down so that she could reach his mouth with her own, made her tremble with shock.

  She made a soft sound of denial at the back of her throat, closing her eyes to blot out the vision in front of her. But it was no use. With her eyes closed, her other senses sharpened. She could hear the sound of his breathing, feel the rapid thud of his heartbeat.

  When she opened her eyes he was looking right back at her.

  ‘Christa.’

  As he breathed her name against her mouth she gave up, acknowledging defeat, unable to fight her need any longer.

  His thick, ‘Open your mouth and let me kiss you properly,’ sent such a violent frission of reaction through her that she had to cling to him for support, cling to him and do exactly what he had just begged her to do, not because he had commanded it but because her own need to experience the intimacy of his tongue exploring the inside of her mouth, stroking against her own, was much, much too strong for her to resist.

  Resist…If he hadn’t spoken, she would probably have been the one biting frantic little kisses at his mouth, silently pleading with the quick, tortured little strokes of her tongue for him to do exactly what he was doing now.

  Almost delirious with arousal, Christa heard the soft, satisfied sound he made as he invited her to reciprocate his intimacy. The sensation of him sucking gently on her tongue as he drew it into his own mouth, the way his lips openly caressed hers into more intimacy than she had ever known in her life before, made her ache to feel his hands on her body, stroking it, caressing it, easing it free of the unwanted restriction of her clothes.

  ‘God, I want you…I want you so much.’

  The raw passion in Daniel’s voice shocked her back to reality, panic flooding her as she felt her control slipping, her desire to respond to what he was saying, what he was asking, almost too strong for her to resist.