to her feet angrily, her cheeks flaming red.
‘How can you even think such a thing?’ she asked fiercely. ‘I wouldn’t…I couldn’t…there’s no boyfriend lurking on the sidelines! I wouldn’t dream of…’ His implications were so staggering that she was finding it difficult to articulate, and she grabbed the glass from the table, swallowing the remainder of the drink in one long gulp. There was a rush of blood to her head and for a minute she thought that she was going to faint but she gritted her teeth together and looked at him straight in the eye.
‘It was merely a passing thought,’ he said, shrugging, ‘and I’m surprised you can’t understand my line of questioning. Why would a beautiful girl like you be willing to spend pretty much all day here,’ he gestured around him, ‘when there are far more exciting things happening in the big bad world outside?’
‘I am not a girl!’ she heard herself say in a loud voice, ‘I’m a woman!’ Had he called her beautiful? He had!
There was a long silence, during which she could hear her heart thumping in her chest, even if he couldn’t. She hardly dared breathe and she had the funny feeling that he was looking at her in a completely different way. Or was it just the gin and tonic going to her head? Two glasses of cider and she felt tipsy. Perhaps after one gin and tonic she was beginning to hallucinate.
‘Yes, I suppose you are,’ he said blandly.
‘But not like the sort of women that you’re accustomed to, is that it? Is that what you’re implying?’
‘I didn’t think that I was implying anything.’
‘You haven’t answered my question. Not the first bit of it, anyway.’ These were not at all the things she wanted to say, she realised, but for some reason they were spilling out of her mouth of their own accord and the brain seemed to have very little say in the matter.
Standing up as she was, she was on an eye-to-eye level with him. He was within touching distance, she thought.
‘All right,’ he said as though the matter was really of no great importance to him anyway, ‘if you really want to know, no, you’re nothing like the sort of women that I’m accustomed to. In fact, I can’t recall meeting anyone like you in a very long time. Are you usually so forthright?’
‘I don’t believe in playing games with people.’
‘We shouldn’t be having this conversation,’ he said heavily, and it was on the tip of her tongue to ask him why not when it struck her precisely why not.
Here they were, alone, in a semi-lit room which carried its own seductive atmosphere of intimacy, having a conversation about what was basically sex. It was a dangerous situation, but it was also an exciting one, one in which Claire had never before found herself.
Her emotional life, at the age of twenty, was as pristine as the driven snow. She had had boyfriends, that was inevitable, but they had all been passing interests, not one of them serious enough to make her lose any sleep.
‘I only wanted to find out a bit more about you,’ she said weakly.
‘About which aspect of my life in particular?’ he asked with a return to his normal dry tone of voice, although something in his manner wasn’t as relaxed as she knew he was trying to appear.
She looked at him vaguely and he said, raising his eyebrows in an amused question, ‘The sexual aspect?’
‘Sexual aspect?’ The frankness of the question horrified and excited her at the same time. Was this how the upper echelons communicated all the time? It wasn’t as if she didn’t know about sex, but it was the thought of him in a sexual situation that addled her. It wasn’t just that beneath those clothes it was easy to discern a physically powerful body. It was much more than that. It was his personality, the combination of ruthlessness and sensuality that made for such a heady mix.
She was certainly feeling very heady now. Doubtless the drink had something to do with it, but, she had to admit in all honesty, not really a great deal.
There was a thick silence, and then she said recklessly, ‘All right, yes, I can’t deny that I’m curious about the sexual aspect of your life. Have you slept with lots of women?’
‘What do you think?’
Claire stated at him nervously. ‘I don’t know. I suppose you have. I mean, you’re…’
‘What?’ he asked softly, and she bit down on her lower lip, wishing now that the conversation had never got started.
‘Attractive, I guess.’ Now that it was out, now that she had admitted that she was attracted to him, she began to feel considerably braver. Two months ago she would have run a mile at the thought of this type of conversation. She had always tended to shy away from anything that was provocative or blatant. It was a trait which her parents thought was charming, but which she personally considered an anachronism in this day and age when sexual liberation was so commonplace that it wasn’t even discussed.
Right now, though, her emotions were calling the tune and her mouth just seemed to be dancing to its music, uttering things that she would never have imagined herself saying to a man in a million years.
‘In fact, I’m very attracted to you,’ she said boldly.
He was staring at her and the intensity of his gaze brought a rush of colour to her cheeks.
‘That’s very flattering,’ he murmured, raking his fingers through his hair, ‘but you’d be better off confining your infatuations to someone nearer your age.’
‘Does that mean that you don’t find me attractive?’
‘You’re putting words into my mouth.’
She knew that he would have stood up and walked away, probably out of the room if not out of the house, but she was standing directly in front of him, blocking an easy exit.
‘I’m not attracted to boys nearer my age. They’re immature. They don’t do anything for me.’ She was breathing quickly now and the palms of her hands were damp with perspiration.
‘You don’t know what you’re saying,’ he said roughly. ‘That’s the drink talking.’
‘No, it’s not!’ She took the smallest of steps towards him and rested her hand against his neck, brushing it with her thumb.
His eyes darkened and she was pleased to see that he wasn’t in total control either.
Does that mean that he’s attracted to me? she wondered. He hadn’t said otherwise, had he? And he had invited her to have a drink with him. That hadn’t been necessary, had it? So what did that add up to? she wondered feverishly.
There seemed only one way to find out. With one impulsive movement she pressed her mouth against his, parting her lips to allow her questing tongue entry into his mouth, and with a groan he began kissing her, really kissing her.
It was like being lifted off her feet and transported into a completely new dimension. He raised his hands to cup her face, pulling her towards him, devouring her with a savagery which made her blood boil.
When he slipped his hand underneath her jumper to caress her breast through the shirt, she had an insane desire to rip her clothes off so that she could feel flesh against flesh. Her nipples were hard and aching and she begged in a high, pleading voice,
‘Make love to me. I want you. I need you, I love you.’
She was so consumed by the ferocity of her own wanting that it took a few seconds to realise that he had frozen. She opened her eyes and looked at him in bewilderment.
‘What is it?’ she asked, reluctant to let go of the mood but knowing that she had no choice.
‘What the hell do you think?’ he grated, literally lifting her off her feet to move her aside. ‘I think it’s time that you left.’
‘Why? What have