She yanked again—but the vise of his fingers only tightened. His body was looming against hers, blotting out the light from the wall lamp, silhouetting his profile.
‘This isassault!’ she ground out, eyes flashing with fury—fury at him for seizing her…fury at herself for not being able to free herself. Fury that was safer than any other emotion.
And then something changed in him. A sudden tension. In heels she was tall, but she had never been taller than him…never even as tall. Nor was she now. Her face was lifted to his, rage and outrage warring in her flashing eyes, the gritted steel of her jaw.
‘Assault?’
He threw the word back at her. And as he did so she saw the sudden tension in him abruptly ceasing. Changing.
His grip around her wrist was ceasing. Changing.
Easing.
Softening…
‘Assault?’ he said again.
And now his voice had changed too. There was no scathing fury in it. There was a different note…one that suddenly, out of nowhere, changed her own coruscating fury into something quite different.
Her eyes were wide, filled with horror. Her whole body was filled with horror. With a drumming in her veins Bianca realised his fingers were no longer pressing on her wrist at all. They were softly, lethally, caressing it. Helplessness drowned her. The world seemed to fade away…
And then the instinctive, atavistic alarm lacing through her became overlaid with something different again. Something she needed to fight against. Something she needed to deny…suppress…escape…
She heard him speak…heard it through the drumming that was in her ears now, like a rush of blood. Her heart was suddenly thudding like a hammer in her chest. He had stepped closer to her as he spoke, filling her vision, looming over her. She was staring up at him now—knew she was staring, fixed on him, magnetised, unable to drag her helpless, hopeless gaze away. Just as she was unable to drag her wrist free of the soft, lethal stroking of his fingertips across the delicate skin of herinner wrist, beneath the lustrous pearls of the bracelet. It was making her feel as if her entire being were concentrated there, in the nerve-endings under his circling touch, and was melting…melting…
Faintness weakened her…
‘Assault, Bianca?’ His voice was as soft as his touch. His breath as soft. ‘Is this assault?’
His eyes were pouring into hers, possessing hers. She wanted to pull away, to use every muscle in her body to do so, to get free…
But she did not. Could not.
She saw his other hand lift, felt the tips of his fingers drift across her cheek like a drift of snow…snow that wasn’t cold, not cold at all, but melting…dissolving… Slowly…infinitely slowly.
She felt her eyelids dip with the sensation of it…so light was his touch, so leisurely.
‘Assault, Bianca?’
She heard his voice again, as caressing as his touch at her wrist, her face. But the gaze pouring into hers was mocking…
‘And this?’ he said.
His breath was warm on her, infused with the subtle potency of the almond liqueur he had taken with his coffee.
‘Is this assault too?’
And then his lips were grazing hers…
* * *
Her mouth was silk…softest, softest silk…
Memory filled him as his senses were filled with her, infusing him, fusing the past—so long past—to now…this momentnow…
The night cocooned him, the oft light from the wall lamps cast its glow around him, and the murmur of the cicadas wasall about as his fingers moved to curve around the nape of her neck, holding her to him as his mouth moved softly…lightly…possessively…on hers.
She did not fight him. He felt…heard…the soft sigh that came from her. She was yielding her mouth to his…quiescent…pliant…