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  Several times Annie had tried to counsel him to forget the past, even while she knew he wouldn’t listen to her.

  She had known and liked Beth, but she suspected that had she not been killed there would have come a time when Jake might have tired of carrying the burden of a wife who would never really have been able to match him in either intelligence or maturity. Beth had been a young man’s love, and Jake was a young man no longer.

  He was also intelligent enough to recognise for himself what she herself had seen, and she suspected that it was this knowledge that added to his guilt and reinforced his determination to hunt down Beth’s killers.

  After his return from the rehabilitation centre she had offered him the use of the chalet which had been given to her by the parents of one of her young patients. She suspected he would have liked to refuse her offer, but both of them knew he had nowhere else to go. He wasn’t a rich man; government agents did not receive pensions, and he had used what money he had in trying to track down the final member of the quartet.

  ‘I can’t let it rest, Annie,’ he told her quietly. ‘You know that. Not yet.’

  She wondered if he knew how much he betrayed in those two final words. This was the first time she had ever heard him express any desire to be free of his self-imposed task.

  He moved away from her and, sensing his withdrawal, she guessed that he was thinking of Beth.

  If she had only known it, she was wrong. It was an entirely different woman who was occupying his thoughts as he said his goodnights and left.

  He had already made all his arrangements. His driver was waiting and took him in silence to his destination, dropping him at a pre-arranged point and then driving away, the big car crunching heavily over the snow.

  The landscape was in darkness, illuminated only by the silvering of a crescent moon, which of course was no help to Jake. He had to find his way by instinct and by careful, pre-worked-out calculations, moving as silently and delicately as a mountain cat, keeping his breathing in check until he felt the first step under his feet and knew that his calculations were correct.

  It was a crazy, illogical thing to do, and he wasn’t even sure now why he was doing it, only that it was something he had to do—that he needed to do. Male pride, he acknowledged with cynical self-mockery. Even now, after all he had undergone, there was still that, and yet if he had learned nothing else he had learned that pride was the most wanton and wasteful of all human emotions.

  He had reached the door, and he felt in his pocket for the key… A key he had made himself, having stolen the original and then replaced it. His mouth twisted into a humourless smile. The army taught a man many skills, all of them potentially anti-social.

  He held his breath as he inserted the key and then turned the lock. It moved easily, making a mockery of the building’s sophisticated alarm systems.

  Being blind had one advantage, Jake thought wryly as he moved inside. There was no need for him to worry about the dark.

  He wondered if Silver knew how much she had given away to him about this place, how after questioning her he had virtually been able to draw a plan of it in his mind.

  What he didn’t know was which was her room.

  He tried three before he found it. He could tell she was asleep simply from the depth and rhythm of her breathing.

  He paused for a moment on the threshold of the room. Now was the time to turn back. He hesitated for the space of a heartbeat and then moved forwards.

  Very carefully he paced the perimeter of the bed, and even more carefully found her position on it, and then, swiftly and economically, he undressed and lowered himself down beside her without betraying his presence.

  Her skin smelled of soap, clean and fresh, the scent oddly erotic although he couldn’t have said why. His fingers touched the silk sheets with distaste. Silk was fine on a woman, but he didn’t like sleeping in it. He pushed back the covers and moved alongside her, sinuous and silent as a cat. It didn’t take his hands long to discover her nakedness. That did surprise him, causing him a tiny stab of chagrin, because he knew damned well that she had never slept naked while she was with him. He wondered what her dreams were as she lay asleep, whether they featured the man she had set out to destroy. Did she dream of him here beside her? Did she dream of his touch, of his desire, or did she dream only of revenge?

  And then, deliberately, he clamped down on any thoughts other than those needed to focus his mind on his purpose in being here. His final payment of the account between them.

  And then he reached out and touched her with subtle, knowing hands that disturbed her flesh and her senses while allowing her mind to sleep. That caused her to sigh and soften and turn to him with a voluptuous innocence that welcomed the smooth caress of his touch against her skin.

  Silver was dreaming, a confusing, brilliant dream shot through with sensations dazzling her like a rainbow in the sun, that teased her to pursue them, and that, when she did, retreated, only to beckon and tease again and again so that she chased after them until she was out of breath and out of temper, waking abruptly to find her face damp with tears of emotion and a pulsing between her thighs that made her tense and lift her head off the pillow in confusion.

  And then she froze, her mind and body locked in the same rigour of shock as she felt the lazy, knowing touch of fingers that stroked her intimately and slowly as though they found pleasure in the task. As she lay there, rigid with shock, the caress was repeated and a red-hot wire tugged through her body, making it convulse.

  In the darkness she saw and recognised the familiar outline of Jake’s head and shoulders and her heart stood still, until she was released from her shock by a massive, rolling surge of anger.

  She reached out to push him away and demanded fiercely, ‘Jake, what the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Giving you full value for your money,’ he told her bluntly, easily ignoring her attempts to evade him, rolling her on to her back.

  ‘You’ve given me everything I want,’ she told him in a stifled voice, unable to take in what was happening.

  He laughed then, a savage, mocking sound that made her body tremble.

  ‘Not yet, I haven’t,’ he told her silkily. ‘But I shall.’

  And while she struggled against him she felt the searing heat of his mouth against her skin, burning her throat and then moving down over her body, his hands twisting and turning her until her torso was wet and slick from the caress of his mouth and tongue. All apart from her breasts. He hadn’t touched her breasts. And she told herself she didn’t want him to, couldn’t bear him to, while all the time, against her will, she could feel their sensitive nerve-endings pulsing and throbbing. When his mouth moved over her stomach and his hand slid between her legs, the pad of his thumb rubbing slowly and deliberately over and over her, she clenched her muscles and screamed at him to stop, until her throat was raw and the silent screaming inside her body threatened to overwhelm her determination to withstand what he was doing to her.

  ‘I don’t want this,’ she told him, over and over again, as though by saying the words and holding on to them she could make them true. But she knew already that they were lies, and that there was nothing she wanted more now than the heat of his mouth on her skin, the bite of his teeth against her aching, needing flesh, the penetration of him so deep inside her that she would feel him there for the rest of her life. And, while she fought frantically against what was happening to her, she tried to understand why it was happening. She had been so careful, so conscious of the danger of this kind of intimacy, so mindful of avoiding it, of allowing him nothing of herself, that she couldn’t understand where he had got this intimate, dangerous knowledge of her. How he had known that she would be vulnerable to him like this. How he had known that her flesh would melt and burn for his mouth and his hands. And she tried desperately to cling on to her determination to reject him while all the time she felt as though she was drowning beneath tides so heavy that nothing could withstand them
.

  His thumb stopped tormenting her, his hand slid back to her waist and she trembled in relief, her body quivering like a finely drawn wire and bathed in sweat. She thought he had given up, but she should have known better.

  His mouth touched her skin between her breasts, beneath them, above them, almost touching them, almost, but not quite, and as she felt the silky drift of its heat against her she acknowledged that her impatient twistings and turnings were not because she wanted to escape but because she wanted that heat on her breasts, between her legs… Her body shuddered and out of the darkness she heard him ask softly, with appalling awareness of her need, ‘What is it you want, Silver? Is it this?’ His mouth brushed the curve of her breast and she shuddered wildly. ‘This?’ His tongue traced its hard tip and she bit the inside of her mouth to stop herself from screaming out loud. ‘You only have to ask, you know,’ he tormented her, laying his head against her, his hands either side of her ribcage, his breath warm against her skin. ‘Just ask me, Silver, and I’ll do anything you want… please you any way you want…’

  She shuddered again, like a soul in mortal torment. How easy it would be to give in, to submit; she didn’t even need to say anything. She could simply turn her body, place her hands on his head and guide the tormented pinnacles of flesh into the soothing balm of his mouth. The mere thought of what it would be like to have the pain drawn from her by its slow, thorough suckling made her break out in a fresh wave of sweat.

  ‘Is it really so hard?’

  He seemed almost amused. He moved and blew gently on her hot skin and then licked languorously at the beads of sweat drenching it. She couldn’t bear it. She was going to die, to fall apart, to dissolve in a massive explosion of pain and need.

  ‘Too proud to ask?’ he taunted softly, and then added shockingly, ‘I could make you.’

  It was no less than the truth, and something inside her broke apart at the knowledge. ‘But this is payment of a debt between us, not punishment, so I’ll make it easy for you, shall I?’ he told her.

  And his hand slid down over her hip and along the outside of her thigh, and then the inside, while he moved against her in that slow, drugging rhythm that had been one of the first things he had taught her; and as though her body recognised a command indelibly imprinted on it, it started to move with him, so that her pulses fluttered beneath her skin and her heart thudded frantically beneath the weight of his head. His head moved, his mouth touching her breast, his tongue curling round the hard, eager tip, his teeth dragging so tormentingly against it that she ground her teeth in an audible agony of need.

  As he opened his mouth fully over her swollen nipple, she fought desperately to break free of the current dragging her down into darkness, drowning her in its hot, sweet tide, but it was too strong for her; he was too strong for her. Suddenly she stopped fighting and allowed herself to be pulled down, down, down into the hot, suffocating darkness of her own passion, abandoning herself completely to sensation.

  She surfaced once, briefly dragged out of the welling pleasure by the sharp sound of her own voice, and she realised that the salt taste in her mouth was his flesh and the hard thud beneath her palm his heart, and that at some stage she must have reached out and touched him, caressed him as he had taught her. She just had time to be shocked by the mindless sensuality of her own hedonistic and unthinking abandonment of her defences before she sank back into the darkness where there was nothing but the taste and feel of him, where nothing mattered more than the sensual glide of his hands on her body as he touched her, turned her, stroked her with his hands and mouth until her bones turned liquid and the ache inside her was the focus of her whole world.

  When he entered her she shuddered beneath the weight of her need and her awareness that she would rather die than withdraw from him now. She reached for him, digging her nails into his flesh, arching desperately beneath him, begging him with incoherent pleas not to stop what he was doing to her. The heat and weight of him surrounded her, engulfed her; the scent of him, the feel of him around her and within her overwhelmed her. She raked her nails against his skin, arched her throat, and then moved her head restlessly from side to side, taking quick, short snatches of air as he started to move inside her.

  She cried out that she couldn’t bear it and moved frantically beneath him, her movements impatient and untutored, but explicit enough to make him surge inside her and hold her head still on the pillow while he silenced her husky litany of need with his mouth, so that briefly she surfaced from her mind-destroying passion to the knowledge that he was kissing her, really kissing her, something he had never done before. And more: that the hard, sure pressure of his mouth was setting off cataclysmic, seismic reactions inside her… that the scent of him, the taste of him, the reality of him was feeding her hunger so that she kissed him back, biting at his mouth, letting him coax and seduce her with his tongue, letting him cause her to want him in a way she had never dreamed was possible. Her heart gave a frantic leap and then started hammering against her ribs. Her eyes opened on his face and saw with a tiny stab of compassion that his were closed. Almost wonderingly she reached up and touched him, feeling the alienness of his stubble beneath her fingertips. And then he moved inside her, fiercely, urgently, compellingly, and she forgot reality and clung to him, driven by the ache that pulsed inside her.

  When she felt the first convulsion of pleasure she stiffened and cried out sharply, trying to deny it, the doors of her mind, closed by the need he had awakened within her, bursting open to admit the shocking reality of what was happening. And now, when it was too late to stop it, when it was too late to do anything other than let the pleasure pulse through her in convulsion after convulsion, she knew who it was whose arms she lay in, whose body filled hers, whose mouth and hands had so skilfully drawn from her a response she would have given a hundred thousand lifetimes to have suppressed.

  And, even worse, as he lay with her, waiting for her laboured breathing to slow down, holding her in an embrace she could not break, was the knowledge that while he had driven her into a frenzied abandonment of herself to the passion he had induced, he had not similarly lost control.

  When she could finally breathe evenly enough to speak, she said roughly, ‘All right, you’ve done what you came to do. Now would you mind leaving and letting me get some sleep?’

  She expected him to withdraw from her and make some taunting comment, but instead, shockingly, he did not. Instead his hands tightened almost possessively on her body in the darkness, and against her ear he mouthed softly, ‘Not yet… That was for you… Now this is for me.’

  For him, he had said, and that might have been his intention, but whatever pleasure he took from her he gave her back tenfold, so that she touched him, caressed him, pleasured him with her hands and her mouth without a thought in her head other than a driving desire to wring from him the same submission he had got from her.

  And when she did, when he groaned her name and shuddered, holding her, filling her, flooding her with the evidence of his arousal, her own body dissolved in heat and fierce, sharp pleasure.

  When she woke in the morning he was gone. The events of the night seemed unreal and dreamlike, clinging to her consciousness like threads of mist on sun-touched hedgerows of Kilrayne. But he had been there; it had happened; and the evidence of his presence lay on her skin in small passion-given bruises; it lay within her body in the unfamiliar satiated ache of her muscles. But most of all it lay across her mind, an irrefutable knowledge she had fought against accepting, an awareness she would have destroyed mountains not to have had, a learning that she already knew could alter the whole direction of her life, if she allowed it to do so. If… but there would be no ifs in her life… no uncertainties… no doubts.

  What had happened was unfortunate, unnecessary from her point of view—unwanted and undesirable. It would never happen again. Never.

  PART TWO

  Geraldine Frances

  CHAPTER SIX

  IN PARIS Sil
ver shopped, with the single-minded determination of a woman who knew exactly what it was she was shopping for, rather than the bored self-indulgence of a woman with too much money, too much time, and too much loneliness.

  In the couture houses the vendeuses raised their eyebrows and hardened their mouths, wishing they could tell her that what she wanted was impossible. They didn’t like her, this tall, silver-haired woman who refused to play the game by the rules, who refused to treat the matter of buying couture clothes with the reverence and seriousness it deserved. Vendeuse after vendeuse found herself giving way and agreeing both to discounts and alteration dates that made them wonder, once removed from the compelling determination of Silver’s presence, if they had gone a little mad.

  A month in Paris, buying her new wardrobe, polishing her new personality, watching assiduously for flaws in the new role she had created for herself, and then she was ready to go home…

  Home… Her mouth twisted cynically. Where was home? The castle in Ireland… the shooting lodge in Scotland… the apartment in New York… the Palladian mansion near Bath which had been the principal seat of the Earls of Rothwell since the end of the seventeenth century and which was now inhabited by her cousin?

  At Charles de Gaulle she boarded the plane and lay back in her seat closing her eyes. Her luggage was all stamped with her initials, S.M., and her new identity was to be that of a widow of an extremely rich and reclusive Swiss businessman… the daughter illegitimately of a long-dead English peer whose name she was not allowed to mention; a woman whose past was spiced with a small amount of teasing mystery; a woman whose dress, whose manner, whose looks whispered subtly that she was an enchantress, and dangerous.

  The metamorphosis was complete. Silver wondered what her father would have thought of her had he met her now, and her smile deepened, betraying a soul-deep awareness of the irony of what she had become… what, in choosing to abandon her real identity, she had voluntarily given up.