LITMIR.BIZ

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if you are wise you’ll leave before…”

      She did not quite like the sound of the short laugh that cut off her half-uttered threat as he said: “Before…what? Would you call the sentries and let them see you as you are now? A guest at Queen’s House? I had guessed you for some lucky man’s light of love, not His Excellency the Governor’s, for I don’t think his wife would permit him such an indulgence; but perhaps one of his senior officers? Obviously one of the older ones, or you would not be out here by yourself to seek your solace from the moon and the sea, would you?”

      Her volatile temper boiling to the surface at last, Alexa snapped cuttingly, “By God! And now you’ve made it obvious that you are not only without manners but a depraved, degenerate…”

      “You left out pervert and libertine,” he pointed out in a casual tone of voice that took Alexa by surprise. And then he said savagely, almost beneath his breath, “But if I’m no gentleman and all that you think I am, my little mermaid, then neither are you a lady! I think you’re a flirt and a hypocrite.”

      “That’s not true!” Alexa flared up.

      “It isn’t? Then why are you afraid to prove it, little liar? Or are you going to seek safety behind the convenient wall of convention and mortal sin?” His voice, deceptively calm to begin with, had suddenly turned into an animal snarl that almost frightened her. But then, before she had time to think further, his arms captured her again; and he began to kiss her, sliding his body against and over hers until she was held trapped and helpless. And this time his kisses were not gentle as he cut off her half-formed protests by the pressure of his hard mouth over hers. They were demanding and almost savage, these kisses; and when she fought, almost by instinct, to free herself from the encroachment of his body over and against hers, it was only to discover that he was much stronger than she was—and in the end, and even more frighteningly, that her body did not, inexplicably, really want to escape.

      He was touching her everywhere—everywhere, even though she wriggled and tried to twist and turn herself free. And nothing in her upbringing or her schooling, as unconventional as it was by the standards of the day, had prepared Alexa for the wild and almost overwhelming tumult of emotion and sensation that raced through every vein in her body and rendered all the rational, practical commands of her mind futile. She heard herself moan and felt the shudders that shook her whole body when he touched her in certain ways, despising herself with the one small detached part of her mind that remained sane and actually relishing all the new sensations that had suddenly begun to erupt in her with all the force of a volcano. What was happening to her? What did it mean? How could she let it happen, this feeling of senses taking over from mind and reason until thought was only a vague pinprick?

      Caught and trapped in a daze of unfamiliar emotions and feelings, Alexa was only half-aware of leaving the softly undulating coolness of water for the wetness of dew-damp grass. They had climbed the steps, still holding on to each other, and had almost fallen down together soon after.

      The moon had slipped even lower in the blue-black sky, moving inexorably towards the horizon that was defined by the dark line of the Indian Ocean. Silver reflections still danced and shimmered off the surface of the pool they had just left and the sea beyond it; and Alexa could still see the twinkling orange riding lights of the ship she had noticed earlier, anchored at Colombo Roadstead. She saw without really seeing because for the moment only feeling was uppermost in her.

      The grass had not been cut for some time, and it felt scratchy and coarse against her skin. And with his hands roving over her body—seeming to know, diabolically, just where to linger—Alexa found her breath first coming faster and then catching in her throat as she began to wonder helplessly what she was doing lying here with a stranger and allowing him to take such liberties with her. Harriet had never warned her about this—no one had! He was lying on his side with his body touching hers along its length; and when his fingers began to play teasingly with her breasts—making taut, aching points of her nipples before he bent his dark, wet head to kiss each one in turn—she wondered why she did not seem to have the strength to roll her body away from his and thought that she must have been made mad by the moon. Because she was suddenly frightened by so many strange feelings inside herself that she did not understand—this sensation of being swept away on a surging tide she could not control, making her body ache and tingle and want…? That was what he had said before. Want what? She was afraid—of him and of everything he was making her feel in spite of herself.

      “No!” Alexa heard herself moan softly in protest. “No…no more…please stop!”

      “And why is it that women always cry ‘no’ when they really mean ‘yes’?” He reared himself up on one elbow to look down at her, and the meaning of his caustically uttered words acted like a glass of ice-cold water thrown in her face.

      With a catlike swiftness that took him by surprise Alexa twisted away and sat back on her haunches as she glared down at him. “I suggest that you go find these women you are so familiar with who say no when they mean yes and do as you please with them! But as for me, I detest that insufferably superior attitude of yours, and you can…”

      By now he had sat up too; and unfairly, she still could not read his shadowed face as he held her wrists for a moment and said: “Listen, moon maid…mermaid…witch…whatever you are. Why should we waste time on questions or arguments on a night like this? We’re strangers brought together by Fate and we’ll probably never meet again. But why not make the most of the present? I could not fall asleep tonight, for some reason, and so I decided to swim out here and try out the Governor’s pool, and I found you. And I want very much to make love to you, moon maid. Right here and right now.”

      His hand reached out to touch her face, and Alexa flinched away nervously, never wanting to lose herself again under the touch of a stranger’s hands. Within an hour’s time he had used her far too familiarly and had turned her into a shameless wanton—a bold, reckless hussy. Her hair lay in tangled, sea-wet curls about her face and shoulders, and although she could not know it, the way in which she stared at him in startled silence reminded the man of a frightened doe—and was unaccountably annoying to him. Now what was she playing at? She had yielded, teased coquettishly and then yielded again before this latest display of temperament. How dare she suddenly glare at him as if he had mortally insulted her?

      “For Christ’s sake! What is the matter with you now? Or is it that you dislike plain speaking? Should I have seduced you without words instead? When I first saw you, swimming naked under the moon so naturally, I had the feeling that you might be different. Why must you suddenly insist on playing a game of charades?”

      Each contemptuous word was like a stone that had been flung at her, sinking into vulnerable, sensitive flesh. He thought…but of course he would think the worst, and no wonder. She had allowed him to think, all this time, that she was one more of the quick, easy conquests he was no doubt used to. How humiliating the thought was!

      Almost unconsciously, Alexa’s small white teeth had begun to worry her lower lip, and her eyes had narrowed dangerously—both signs that would have made her Aunt Harriet watchful and that made him aware intuitively that he had said something to make her as furious as a spitting cat, suddenly. He watched her warily now, outwardly relaxed but half-expecting her to leap at him like the wild creature she had begun to remind him of at this moment, when only seconds before he could have sworn she was one of the few women who might appreciate honesty and openness in place of flattery and guile.

      Breaking the tensely-stretched silence between them, he said quietly, “I have the impression that I’ve said something to make you angry, even if I did not mean to do so. What was it?”

      Instead of mollifying her, his speech only seemed to make her even more angry, her lips drawing back from her gritted teeth as if she belonged, in fact, in the depths of some primeval forest—an animal as wild and as untamed as every other that lurked there.

      “Why should your ‘plain speaking’ make me angry? Or your ‘seduction without words’? I wish you could repeat your speech so that I could learn it by heart! Is it one of your favorite gambits when you think you are dealing with some gullible female?”

      Oh,

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