A Reluctant Mistress Read online

  ‘How much longer are you going to keep this up?’ he demanded in a voice edged with desperation.

  ‘Until I finish,’ she said. How could that be her voice? Husky and weighted and slow, each word lagging…

  Clay said roughly, ‘Or I do.’

  She bent and kissed his navel, slipping the tip of her tongue around the tight indentation, and progressed further down with the torturous provocation of fleeting touch after fleeting touch.

  The cords in his neck stood out; flames licked the golden slits beneath his lashes. She heard his breath catch in his throat, and the long groan that erupted was music, all she had ever wanted to hear.

  Through lips that barely moved he said, ‘You’d better be ready.’

  ‘Not yet,’ she said, and began that leisurely, delicate torture again.

  He said nothing, but she could feel the ferocious will-power that chained his instincts to obedience, and knew how much his mastery was costing him.

  It was costing her too; her body was one violent, clamouring ache that screamed for satiation. At last relenting, she straddled him, but stayed poised on her knees, refusing to slide that last inch.

  Eyes swallowed up in darkness, he asked through lips that barely moved, ‘Proving a point, Natalia?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Then move carefully if you want to get something out of this.’

  The inexorable grip of hunger shivered through her every cell. ‘I’ve already got what I want out of it,’ she said huskily, easing herself down.

  She expected him to grasp her hips, but although sweat beaded his forehead and glistened in the fine hair on his chest he didn’t move, and she had to guide herself on to him.

  Clay’s chest lifted suddenly as, moving only her internal muscles, she lowered herself that last inch and began to pull him into her. In spite of a mouth that had tightened into a thin line and a jutting, angular jaw, the hands that fastened around her wrists were almost gentle.

  Sensation raced from the fragile bones beneath his fingers to her innermost core. Green eyes locking with smouldering golden ones, neither conceding an advantage, she enclosed him until he was buried to the hilt.

  Dazed by an unbidden rapture, she froze, but after a few moments summoned enough energy to begin to rock, riding his loins with her own considerable strength, aware that the bracelet of his fingers somehow intensified her pleasure and added an extra dimension to the wildness threatening to overwhelm her.

  His big body shuddered beneath her and she saw an untamed challenge in the tawny eyes, yet he still didn’t move. Sweat gathered on her temples, between her breasts; the heat in her innermost region began to pulse, to spin into waves, forming and reforming from that central part of her where the only reality was the clenching and relaxing of her muscles on the shaft that penetrated her.

  Slowly the relentless inner rhythm built and built until she could no longer control it, tossing her into a whirlpool of sensation. Yet, although lost in the mindless, private paradise of her response, she heard Clay’s long groan and felt the one violent contraction of his body as he reached that place she’d summoned for him.

  Exultantly she had time to think, Yes, this is it, this time the masks are truly off, before her body twisted, convulsed in intolerable, unbearable pleasure, and she fell forward, caught and held by his hands, lowered against him as his driving heartbeat thundered into her breasts and he dragged breath into parched lungs.

  Stunned at the chaos she’d let loose, she lay quiescent, trying desperately to find some stable centre to the whirling disintegration of her world.

  Clay’s arms were gentle around her, his mouth warm on her forehead. ‘Natalia,’ he said at last, his voice still raw with the force of passion. ‘Natalia…’

  This was like heaven, she thought dreamily—like those indolent, flower-filled tropical paradises where sensuality reigned. Alas, like any paradise, a serpent lingered at the heart of it.

  When Clay had gone the next morning, she packed the clothes she’d brought with her, leaving everything he’d bought her except the tiny gold lion.

  Biting her lip, she looked down at the small charm. ‘I’ll buy you a witch on a broomstick,’ she’d said when he’d dropped it on to her pillow, and he’d laughed.

  ‘And a wardrobe too?’

  ‘Oh, yes, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis,’ she said. ‘I adored the Narnia books.’

  ‘Olivia read them to me when she took me home.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘I’d like a witch. Or a mask.’

  ‘Why—oh, the masquerade ball.’ Sudden moisture had stung her eyes. ‘Would you wear a charm if I got you one?’

  He’d laughed and promised, ‘Next to my heart.’

  So Natalia had used her allowance to order both—a tiny, bare-breasted witch on a broomstick, and a mask; she’d picked them up only the previous day.

  Now she slipped all three into her bag.

  She wrote a letter. It would have taken even longer than two hours, except that she was afraid Clay might come back and catch her.

  Then she picked up the pack containing the clothes she’d brought from Xanadu, walked up to the shops where she used her card to get cash, and took a bus to the depot. There she bought a ticket in a false name to Palmerston North, because no one would ever think of looking for her in that small southern city so far from Auckland.

  And from Clay.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ALTHOUGH it had been raining heavily for the past three days, Natalia hadn’t bargained on floods. In fact, the weather seemed so attuned to her mood that at first she’d welcomed the driving rain, but only an hour and a half out of Auckland the bus slowed and stopped in a line of traffic beside the huge Waikato River.

  At first she gazed with dull-eyed indifference through the window, but eventually her eyes focused on the bare tops of willows poking up through discoloured water. Her gaze sharpened, for that water flowed with ominous, deceptive smoothness almost at the top of the stopbanks. Working close by, people filled sandbags to reinforce the banks.

  Such frail barriers between rich farmland and the muscular brown river!

  ‘I hope we get past.’ The elderly man beside her frowned. ‘Northbound traffic can’t come through, I know, but surely the southbound lane isn’t closed too?’

  ‘I didn’t realise the river was so close to overtopping the banks,’ Natalia said.

  He glanced at her a bit oddly, as though wondering what she’d been doing these past few days. ‘That rain in the catchment last night was the final straw. It hasn’t reached here yet, but it’s on the way. The dams are full and Lake Taupo’s overfull—they’re hoping they don’t have to let last night’s downpour come through. If they do, these farms are doomed.’

  Natalia dragged herself sufficiently out of her misery to ask, ‘How much will be flooded?’

  ‘A lot of land,’ he said. ‘A lot of broken hearts.’

  She nodded sombrely. ‘I hope they’ve been able to move their stock.’

  ‘They’ve known this was coming, so they’ll have got them away. I suppose that’s some sort of comfort, but I wouldn’t want to be in their boots. Still, they’ve got guts.’ He leaned forward to peer past her. ‘They’re not just sitting back waiting for it to happen. And if it works they’ll save a lot of good farmers from losing a lot of money.’

  Natalia watched the pattern of movements; one person to hold out the sack, another to shovel in the sand, and then the rhythm of wet, tired arms and bodies moving in a wave as the sandbags were passed along a human chain to the top of the stopbanks, where they were dumped into place.

  That was what she needed, she thought. Hard work.

  ‘Can I get past you?’ she asked the old man.

  He rose stiffly from the seat and stood back to let her out.

  She pulled down her pack and went up to the front of the bus. ‘I’d like to get off here, please,’ she said.

  ‘All right,’ the driver said casually, although he made a
notation on his manifest before he let her down.

  Hours later Natalia was passing sandbags up the stopbank, cursing as the rain drove mercilessly down and hopelessness began to draw the faces of the people around her. News crews came and went, both radio and television, but they didn’t go near Natalia so she ignored them, sublimating in exhausting labour the pain that lodged in her throat and squeezed her heart.

  And still the rain came and still the river rose, until it was only a foot below the top of the stopbank.

  Late in the afternoon the woman beside Natalia told her, ‘They’re going to let out the dams.’

  Natalia shook sand down into the bag and handed it to her. ‘What?’

  ‘The hydro-electric dams are too full. They’re trying to let the excess out slowly so they don’t put too much pressure on the stopbanks.’

  She didn’t say any more, but she didn’t need to. If the dams were released, the odds were that all this work would be wasted.

  ‘I suppose it was worth a try,’ Natalia said dully, stretching her aching arms. A month was all it had taken for her to get out of condition. A month of intense, distilled joy that she was going to live off for the rest of her life. Her eyes burned as she shovelled sand into yet another bag.

  The woman shrugged, her short grey hair dank and draggled under her rainproof hat. ‘That’s all anyone can do,’ she said calmly. ‘Trying beats not trying any day.’

  For some reason her words echoed in Natalia’s brain as an early dusk fell heavily about them. Had she given up too easily?

  ‘You’re looking pretty tired,’ one man said to her at last, shining a torch into her face. ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He nodded, not startled. She wasn’t the only person who’d felt compelled to stop and help. ‘The marae is open all night,’ he said. ‘Grab a bed there.’

  The marae—the meeting place of the local Maori people, a complex of buildings set up with sleeping and dining halls around a ceremonial open place—was on the top of a low rise. Its committee had opened it for the workers; the dining hall had been where she’d forced herself to swallow some food several hours ago.

  She’d go later. Ignoring the protest of abused muscles, Natalia fell back into the rhythm of filling and handing on, filling and handing on…

  When a vehicle drew up behind her and she heard her name, she automatically swung around. Clay, tall and dark and grim, those lion’s eyes flat and deadly, got down from a four-wheel drive.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he demanded furiously.

  ‘Working,’ Natalia said huskily, her heart leaping to meet him. ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘Television. I recognised you in a long shot.’ Clay’s hooded eyes devoured her face as he reined in his anger. ‘You’re exhausted.’

  ‘Tired,’ she admitted.

  ‘All right, get in.’

  The weariness she’d been fighting suddenly overwhelmed her. She staggered, and Clay caught her, his arms tight and hard around her.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said wrathfully. ‘You’re out of here.’

  She let him bundle her into the vehicle out of the rain and slam the door on her. Someone pointed out her pack, and he threw that in the back. Needles of rain slanted relentlessly down as he strode around the front of the vehicle and got in.

  Without speaking, he put the vehicle in gear and set off down the road, past the marae—

  ‘Hey,’ she exclaimed hoarsely, adrenaline surging through her, ‘that’s where I’m going to sleep.’

  ‘If the stopbanks go the marae might too. I want you well away if that happens.’

  Natalia looked at a profile carved in stone, every angle and plane imperviously carved. He wasn’t going to give an inch. ‘I’m not going back to Auckland,’ she said stubbornly.

  ‘I’m not either—the less time we spend on the road in this weather the better. I’ve booked us in into a hotel on the Thames road.’ His voice was cool, remote and utterly inflexible.

  Natalia chewed her lip. The previous night she’d been making love to him as a farewell gift; now she felt as foolish as an angry child brought back home after running away. ‘I meant what I said in my letter,’ she said after a moment.

  “‘Dear Clay, I’m sorry but I don’t want to stay with you any longer. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me—I really appreciate your kindness. Yours sincerely, Natalia,”’ he quoted cruelly. ‘It read like a kid’s bread-and-butter letter.’

  ‘What did you expect—half a book?’ she flashed.

  Oncoming car lights caught his face in a swift murderous grin. ‘That sounds more like the Natalia I know. Tell me why you took off after that bravura performance last night.’

  She summoned her sweetest tone. ‘Sometimes it must occur to men that sex isn’t the only important thing in a relationship. I know it doesn’t happen often, but surely it does occasionally.’

  To her profound fury he laughed. She jerked up against the seat belt, bitterly aware that she’d come alive again, that his presence would probably call her from her grave. He was so vital, burning with a fierce contained energy that struck sparks from her. She’d resigned herself to never feeling like this again, and it was tearing at her because she was going to have to say goodbye to him once more.

  ‘Oh, it occurs to us now and then,’ he drawled, ‘but you must admit that you weren’t thinking of anything else last night, and neither was I. By the time you’d reached my chest with those infuriating little caresses, it was all I could do not to throw you down flat and sink myself into you for as long as I could last. The only thing that kept me sane was the fact that I knew you felt the same.’

  She didn’t answer, and he asked with a sudden savage fury, ‘Why the hell did you take off today?’

  A voice echoed in Natalia’s mind, a voice she’d heard often that day, and always with a kind of resigned strength. ‘Trying beats not trying,’ the woman had said once, and those words had sunk into Natalia’s brain.

  If I don’t try now, she thought, I’ll never know.

  She said, ‘I—want more than you can give me.’

  ‘More what?’

  She didn’t blame him for his exasperation. ‘I’m making a hash of this.’

  ‘And you must be bloody near exhausted,’ he said curtly. ‘Leave it for now—we’re almost there. We’ll wait until tomorrow and then we’ll talk. But no more running away, all right?’

  ‘All right,’ she said.

  There was a moment’s silence before he asked, ‘Promise?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her heart twisting. ‘I promise.’

  The hotel turned out to be a far cry from the doublestoreyed Victorian building she’d expected; he’d booked them into a modern resort set amongst trees and vineyards in a valley that faced the west. Had Natalia been less tired she might have been self-conscious at her condition; even through her fatigue she was glad that the desk clerk and porter were too well-trained to show any surprise at the layer of mud and sand that covered her.

  Once they’d been shown to their room Clay ordered, ‘Into the shower.’

  She obeyed, walking fully-clothed into the stall, sighing with intense relief as the warm water cascaded over her aching body. After several minutes Clay got in with her, matter-of-factly removing her clothes.

  ‘Warm enough?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’ And the muscles that had stiffened in the car ride were now deliciously loose again.

  ‘OK, out you get.’ He rubbed her down briskly with a towel, then picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. He’d spread a white bath sheet on the bed. Lowering her on to it, he said, ‘They do a nice line in toiletries here. I’ll work some of the knots out of your shoulders.’

  Tiredness and simple gratitude at being cared for kept her silent and limp as he smoothed warm oil that smelt of lavender into her skin, and then with strong hands massaged her shoulders and back and hips, the long muscles of her thighs, an
d even her upper arms.

  When her muscles had dissolved into jelly and she’d been reduced to a collection of responses, he switched off the light, tucked her into bed, and got in beside her, saying, ‘Sleep now.’

  It was still dark when she woke, and the radio was on. Locked in Clay’s arms, she listened as the announcer continued, ‘…the stopbanks were overtopped. Flooding is widespread, and it’s expected that the farms will be underwater for anything up to two weeks. However, forecasters believe that the worst of the weather is over, and the high now on its way across the Tasman Sea should ensure several days of fine weather.’

  Clay moved and the radio clicked off. Natalia couldn’t stop the slow build of tears, the choking gasp against his warmth.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said roughly, kissing the top of her head. ‘I know how hard you worked for those people. When you do something you fling your heart and soul into it.’

  ‘I’m sorry for them,’ she said, wiping her eyes with her hand, ‘but not sorry I tried. A woman there said that trying beats not trying.’ She paused, aware of the stirring of his body, the physical signs of need he never tried to hide. Even if he didn’t love her, surely he felt something more for her than uncomplicated lust?

  ‘You’ve always been a trier.’ His voice rumbled against the persistent chattering of the rain on the roof. ‘I wanted you the first time I saw you, but I think it was your obstinate, pig-headed determination that got to me. I couldn’t see how anyone as delicate and sexy as you could be so determined and stubborn. I knew I should stay away from you, but I couldn’t.’

  ‘Why should you have stayed away—oh, of course. Dean,’ she said, stiffening.

  Firmly tucking her back against him, he said, ‘I saw you first when I looked out of the land agent’s office in April, about two months before we met at the masquerade ball, and you were outside talking to Phil. You laughed. And the land agent said that you were a very generous girl, and that you’d had an affair with Dean. He also insinuated that you were looking for someone to get you out of the hole you were in.’