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  He turned, taking her with him, and in the same movement pushed the froth of lace dress all the way down, carrying her slip with it, so that all she had on was the black silk camisole and her garter belt and french knickers, and the black stockings that clad her long slender legs.

  Aura’s hands fluttered in an instinctive effort to cover herself.

  ‘No,’ he said thickly, his hand roving across the slightly curved surface of her stomach. His forefinger made a slow foray into the tight little indentation of her navel, and to her bewilderment that too was a pleasure point; his touch sent ripples of excitement through her.

  ‘Did you think this might happen?’ he asked, still in that same impeded voice. ‘Did you dress for me tonight, Aura?’

  Shivering, she tried to summon indignation as she shook her head, but his smile mocked her, and those tender, probing, inexorable fingers slid beneath the silk material of her knickers and touched her where she was moist and slick and hot, a mute, truthful capitulation, an appeal for something that had never happened before for her.

  Aura shuddered, her back arcing helplessly as she closed her eyes, unable to meet the unchecked triumph in his face, the consummately male satisfaction that was echoed in his heavy-lidded gaze.

  Rigors of sensation rushed through her; she was helpless before the smooth skill of his fingers, unable to resist, unable to want to. ‘Flint,’ she said weakly, on a sharply indrawn breath. ‘Oh, God, Flint...’

  ‘What do you want?’ His voice was a low growl, the words indistinct. ‘Tell me what you want, Aura, and I’ll give it to you, I’ll give you everything—’

  The fire of his touch began to build, to drag her down in flame and thunder, to—

  ‘Tell me now that you love Paul,’ he said savagely as he got to his feet.

  Paul. Oh, God, Paul!

  Aura’s hand flew up to cover her mouth. Huddling deep in the soft cushions of the sofa, she turned her head away from his unrelenting gaze.

  Paul. She had forgotten Paul, forgotten everything in the sorcery of Flint’s lovemaking. And she had stupidly thought that because she was enchanted, he would be, too.

  But that fleeting glimpse of his face, its hard features clamped in contempt, showed her just how wrong she was. Anger, the bitter inhumanity of betrayal, welled up like black marsh water.

  The wild passion of his lovemaking and her response had sliced through the chains forged by the years and her will around the tempestuous core of her personality, so it was the old Aura who retorted on a rising note of fury, ‘I do love him, damn you to hell, you arrogant swine. This means nothing! Nothing!’

  There was silence. Then, ‘I wish I didn’t believe you,’ he said silkily.

  His eyes were burning trails of ice over her face. Aura dragged a sobbing breath into painful lungs, and found some measure of control. Lethargically, she said, ‘I don’t expect you to understand.’

  She turned her back and began scrambling back into her clothes. His harshly unamused laughter swept her head around.

  ‘Do you understand yourself, Aura, or have you been so brainwashed by your parasite of a mother that you can’t see beyond security?’

  ‘I love him!’

  His laughter was discordant, filled with a rage she understood because it burned within her, too. Long fingers on her shoulder turned her to face him.

  ‘If you love him, why is your breath coming so quickly between your lips?’ His thumb traced the line of her mouth, gentle yet inexorable. Fire seared through her.

  ‘Why do you look at me with a famished desperation?’ He kissed her eyelids closed. ‘Why does that maddening little pulse beat faster than I can count in the ivory column of your throat? You want me, Aura.’

  ‘It isn’t love,’ she said angrily, grabbing at her sanity.

  ‘Who said anything about love? But if you feel like this about me, what sort of marriage are you going to have with Paul?’

  His words beat at her like stones. If she let him see her defeat she was lost. She said mordantly, ‘As good a marriage as I’m likely to have with anyone.’

  ‘Do you really think he’d be satisfied with your sort of love? He’s a man, Aura, a man with a man’s needs, and the milk-and-water affection you’ve got to give him won’t fulfil them. When he takes you into that bedroom on your honeymoon he won’t accept meek resignation; he’ll want a woman who meets his every approach with ardour and passion. Lying back on the sheets with resignation is going to infuriate him; he’ll want you to touch him and kiss him, to open yourself to him and to explore his body with the same desire you’ve shown me, the same desire he is going to show.’

  He looked down at her, contempt and something else turning his face to stone. ‘I’ve seen him kiss you, remember,’ he said uncompromisingly, ‘seen you dance together, and it’s more than plain that although he’s panting with lust, you’re not affected at all. You’ve got him so strung up with your virginal, touch-me-not air that he thinks it’s going to be all right on the night, but it won’t be, unless you’re a far better actress than you’ve shown any signs of being. Because he’ll want a response like the one I got from you. And you won’t be able to give it. You’ll have to act, and lie to him, just as you’ve been lying to him all along.’

  Covering her face with her hands, Aura fought back nausea, and images that terrified her; images not of Paul, but of herself lying in a bed with the man who spoke so cruelly to her now, of his lean body poised to take and invade, of the contrast between her pale hands and his bronze skin as she discovered with loving subtlety all the manifold differences between man and woman.

  Powerful and seductive, the images tugged at her heart, sent heat through her body, yet Flint had offered her nothing, not marriage, not even a love affair.

  ‘Some sort of friend you are,’ she said acidly.

  His teeth showed in a bitter, unamused smile. ‘Yeah. But eventually he’ll thank me.’

  ‘My mother used to tell me that, and I didn’t believe her, either. You’ve got a nerve, abrogating his right to decide.’

  He laughed and touched her cheek, his long fingers gentle yet commanding. Aura resisted, but without hurting her he turned her face so that she had to meet the blazing golden brilliance of his gaze. Even as she shut her eyes she knew it was too late; he had recognised her submission.

  ‘You know you don’t want to marry him,’ he said crisply. ‘Knights in shining armour are not for you, Aura. You don’t need rescuing.’

  ‘You’re cruel,’ she choked, torn in two by hate and desire.

  He laughed again and his finger touched her mouth, sliding between her lips until she opened them. ‘It takes a diamond to cut another diamond,’ he said, stroking the wildly sensitive flesh of her upper lip in a whisper-soft enticement, then running his finger across the sharp cutting edge of her top teeth. ‘You’re cruel, too, cruel and imperious and vibrant with life, with your full, sulky red mouth and those witch’s eyes, like jade sprinkled with gold. You want so much more than he can give you, you want everything that life offers. You won’t get it with Paul.’

  He put his finger into his mouth, tasting her, his narrowed gleaming eyes watching the way her breath hissed through her lips, the subtle droop of her lashes in unwilling response to the primitive little action.

  ‘You don’t know that,’ she retorted, whipping up scorn because she was too close to surrendering.

  He shrugged. ‘I know Paul far better than you do. He’s conventional and rather old-fashioned. Look at his mother; that’s the sort of life he sees you leading. He’ll keep you chained by love until it turns into dissatisfaction and despair, and then into hatred...’

  ‘Not Paul,’ she retorted.

  ‘You’re nothing but a leech,’ he snarled, suddenly furious. ‘At first I thought it was the money, but it’s not entirely that, is it, although the money’s important.’

  White-faced, her eyes gleaming with suppressed tears, she spat, ‘I am not marrying Paul for his money!’
/>   He surprised her by nodding, his gaze never leaving her face. He was pale too, and the scar stood out lividly on his cheek, ending in a devilish flick along the unyielding line of his jaw.

  ‘Not entirely, perhaps. You want his strength and his stability, you want to use him as a shelter from the world, make him take the place of your father and your cousin. Nice, safe relationships, both of them, except that your father left you, and so did Alick in a different way. He got married. You had no one to rely on then, so you went looking for someone who would take care of you.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Oh, yes. Your stepfather killed himself—another man who left you, but this time he left you with a silly, flirting, useless mother on your hands.’

  ‘You are foul,’ she shouted, losing control entirely. ‘I did not “go looking”!’ She mimicked his tone, mocking him with angrily sparking eyes and contemptuous mouth.

  His smile was cool and aggravating. ‘I don’t blame you, not entirely. You’ve been well conditioned. Your mother found men she could lean on, so you followed her footsteps and conveniently fell in love with Paul. Of course, he wants you to depend on him because that way he can pretend to be the stronger. But his sort of strength is not what you need. If you marry him, in five years’ time you’ll be bored stiff and giving him hell.’

  ‘Whereas you’re strong, I suppose,’ she jeered.

  ‘I’m strong,’ he agreed, a simple statement of fact by a man who knew himself so well he didn’t need to boast. ‘But don’t think you’re going to change one support for another. I’m not offering you anything, Aura, not a shoulder, not a shelter in bad weather, not anything. You’re not going to be able to say that I seduced you. When you come to me you’ll be free, and you’ll understand exactly what you’re doing.’

  He spoke with a callous detachment that shattered the last shreds of her composure. ‘I want to go home!’ she said raggedly into the aching silence.

  ‘The taxi must be here by now. Just remember one thing.’ His voice hardened, became merciless and unsparing. ‘Sooner or later, whether you marry Paul or not, you and I are going to make love. Ask yourself which will hurt him most.’

  It wasn’t a threat, it was a straight promise. With the implacable words ringing in her ears, echoing through her soul, Aura swung on her heel.

  ‘All this,’ she said in her haughtiest voice, ‘because I refuse to go to bed with you.’

  The instant the words left her tongue she saw them strike home. His smile was devilish, his pitiless eyes lit from within by the fires of hell as with calculated slowness he pulled her into him, letting her feel the merciless, naked force of his sensuality, and the aggression bound up with it.

  She fought, but he was too strong. Not that he hurt her; with insulting ease he let her tire herself out. He was aroused, but instead of the involuntary withdrawal she felt in Paul’s arms she was almost suffocated by a ferocious exultation.

  It was this which made her mind up. She lifted her flushed, passionate face and said between her teeth, ‘If you do anything more I’ll sue you for assault and attempted rape.’

  He laughed, his breath soft and heated across her incredibly tender mouth. ‘And I’ll countersue,’ he mocked. ‘You can’t marry him, Aura.’

  She knew that, but if she said so she would have no protection against the desire that beat through her, linking them in a conflagration strong enough to destroy everything she had ever learned in her life and set her adrift on a sea that was unknown and more perilous than any other.

  Closing her eyes against the command in his, she fixed her jaw, set her mouth into a mulish line. ‘I’ll do what is best for me,’ she said thinly. ‘I’m no foolish girl, to be seduced out of my mind.’

  ‘No, you’re not. That ripe beauty hides a tough little adventuress, determined to keep on a course that you must know will short-change Paul, even if he never learns that you don’t love him.’

  ‘I do love him!’ she swore.

  ‘So you’re going to go through with it?’

  Jerking herself free, she spoke as calmly, as steadily as she could. ‘It isn’t anything to do with you, Flint. I’m going home. Now.’

  His bluntly chiselled face was unmoving, no emotion but residual passion flickering in the depths of his eyes, yet Aura sensed that at that moment she was in greater danger than she had ever been in her life.

  Then, to her astonishment, he laughed. ‘All right,’ he said, and took her down to the foyer and put her in the taxi, saying with sardonic amusement, ‘Thank you for a very interesting evening, Aura.’

  Fury contested with chagrin and a grief so deep she refused to acknowledge it. Staring straight ahead she said tonelessly, ‘Goodnight.’

  By the time she reached home, however, the fury had died and the wilderness of ardour had been swamped by shame; she was left with the bitter taste of gall in her mouth.

  All of her rationalisations were revealed for what they were: specious and self-serving. Flint was right. What she felt for Paul had nothing of the fiery inevitability, the rightness she felt in Flint’s arms.

  And because of that, she couldn’t marry Paul, even though she loved him. She walked slowly up the path towards the front door, twisting Paul’s diamond on her finger, watching the cold light of the moon sparkle within its heart. The starry pink and white flowers of jasmine glimmered in the darkness, their musky, potent scent floating sweetly on the fresh, crisp air.

  She rubbed her cold arms, listening to a siren wobbling along the motorway, spreading fear and desolation. An ambulance; she spared a thought for the person it carried, or was heading towards.

  She didn’t want to be here. She wanted to be in the country somewhere, where the only night noises were pleasant, unthreatening rural ones, dogs howling a lullaby to the moon, moreporks calling wistfully from the bush, the soft liquid chuckle of a stream running through paddocks.

  It was utter cowardice, of course. She just wanted to run away from the mess her life had suddenly become. Only there was no one else to deal with it. It was her mess, and she was going to have to clean it up as best she could.

  When Paul came back from Samoa she’d have to tell him that she couldn’t marry him. After that, it would be Natalie’s turn. All the people they had invited to the wedding, as well as the florist and the caterer and a dozen others, would have to be told. The presents would have to be sent back. And she’d have to do it all, because Natalie wouldn’t be able to.

  Her heart quailed. It was going to be awful, and the years that followed would be awful too, with her mother constantly casting it up at her that she had whistled away security for them both on a whim. Natalie would never do such a thing. And Aura wasn’t going to be able to tell anyone, much less Paul, why she had changed her mind.

  Flint had made it obvious that he didn’t see any sort of future for them together. She couldn’t hurt Paul even more by telling him that she had fallen in lust with his best friend.

  Because that was all it was. She had no illusions about that. Love implied shared interests, shared commitments. She had that with Paul. This overwhelming hunger that had her caught fast in its thrall was superficial, a thing of dazzle and flash with no substance to it. She and Flint shared nothing except a flaming attraction which would peter away in time. That time couldn’t come too soon for her.

  Aura had always thought that it was mainly men who were able to separate their emotional lives, loving in one compartment, lusting in another, and no communication between the two. Perhaps there was something wrong with her.

  Or perhaps, she thought, unlocking the door, it was just bad luck, like being caught in an earthquake or a tidal wave. Flint had had much the same effect on her life as a natural disaster.

  When she woke after another almost sleepless night it was to hear Alick’s voice outside.

  A moment later there was a tap at the window. ‘Are you awake?’ he asked.

  Aura groaned. ‘Just. Wait a minute.’

  By the time sh
e opened the door Laurel was standing there while Alick appeared to be examining the connection where the power line went into the unit.

  ‘He thinks it looks a bit wonky,’ Laurel explained.

  Aura liked Alick’s wife very much, but at that moment she didn’t want to have to meet her too perceptive, golden-brown eyes.

  ‘We thought you might like to have a quiet day with us,’ she went on, eyeing Aura with exactly the shrewd glance she dreaded. ‘Actually, it will be with Alick. I’m spending the rest of the day with my mother, but Alick says it’s months since he had a cousinly chat with you.’ She followed Aura into the room and closed the door behind her, confiding with a twinkle, ‘I think he’s rather jealous. He’s always had a special feeling for you, and now that you’re going to get married—what’s the matter?’

  Aura shook her head, but Laurel’s slim figure wavered through the tears in her eyes. Laurel looped her arms around her. ‘I don’t know anyone I’d rather confide in than Alick,’ she said, holding Aura gently.

  After an inelegant sniff Aura said on a wobble, ‘No, I don’t either.’

  Laurel squeezed her then let her go with a little push towards the bedroom. ‘So put some clothes on.’

  Obediently, Aura dressed, went in to tell her mother what she was doing, and left.

  Because this was a flying visit, the children, two sons and a charming, self-possessed three-year-old called Miriel who was Aura’s goddaughter, had been left at Kerikeri. The apartment seemed empty without their voices, like little birds, in every room. Within a few minutes of their arrival Laurel left them.

  It was a superb day, blue and gold and green, so fresh and clear that it tasted like wine on the tongue.

  ‘Let’s go out on to the terrace,’ Aura said. ‘How’s the weather at Kerikeri? It’s been just awful here, rain and more rain and winds from every point of the compass but mostly from the south and west, and bitterly cold.’

  The sun lapped her in a tide of warmth. Still babbling about the weather, she collapsed on to a lounger.