Bittersweet Love - Cathy Williams [36]
He bent over to kiss her neck, and as she arched back to accommodate him his hand found the full swell of her breast. He caressed it, his fingers playing with the hardened peaks of her nipples through the lace.
‘This is madness,’ Natalie groaned unevenly. ‘Eric…’
‘Is still lustily singing in the bathroom.’ His mouth closed over hers once again, as she made a small movement to push him away, and her hands curled helplessly around him. He moved lower to cover her breast with his mouth, dampening the lace so that it clung to her form, outlining her nipple, which was hard and aching and pushing through one of the gaps in the delicate material. He nibbled against it, then with a deft movement he dislodged the slender strap from her shoulder and scooped out her breast. Natalie watched his dark head lowered over it and yielded to his heated onslaught.
It was only when he raised his head to look at her that the first drop of sanity began to return. She heard it as clearly as he did: the silence in the bathroom. Eric was no longer singing.
With a desperate movement, she wriggled free into a less compromising situation, tugging back on her nightie, while Kane sat up on the bed and carelessly ran his fingers through his hair. He didn’t look as though he cared one way or the other whether Eric caught them at anything.
He might not care, Natalie thought, but I certainly do.
‘A little late for pursed lips, don’t you think?’ Kane commented harshly, standing up but continuing to stare at her. ‘You weren’t exactly pushing me away a moment ago.’
Natalie struggled to find some reasonable explanation for her behaviour, some excuse that she could hurl at him that might make it all forgivable, but she couldn’t think of a single thing. She could still feel her skin tingling from where he had touched it, and the one thought that kept revolving in her head was that she must have been insane.
‘You’d better go,’ she said stiffly, and Kane looked at her with freezing disdain.
‘Does Eric know exactly what sort of person you are?’ he asked with a cool, assessing smile.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do I have to spell it out in black and white?’ His voice was rapid and hard and every word was aimed to wound. ‘You’ve shared your bed with Eric, but you don’t exactly mind sharing it with me as well, do you?’
“That’s not true!’
‘Isn’t it?’ He stuck his hands in his pockets and stared at her coldly. ‘Dear me, maybe I misread the obvious. Did you share your bed with Eric?’
‘That’s none of your business…!’
‘I rest my case.’
They stared at each other in thick silence, then Natalie felt the stirrings of anger. Just who did Kane Marshall think he was? The patron saint of good behaviour? Oh, he didn’t mind standing there and making his insinuations, but he wasn’t exactly making them from a position of moral superiority, was he?
‘You would rest your case,’ she said bitterly. ‘You’ve reached your conclusions and that’s the end of the story as far as you’re concerned. Not,’ she added forcefully, ‘that I have any intention of defending myself anyway——’
‘Very wise, considering you would find that a little on the difficult side…’
She ignored his interruption. ‘I would just like to ask just who the hell you think you are, anyway! You with your women. So what if I choose to sleep with one man, or a thousand men for that matter? It would only be on a par with you!’
His face reddened but he didn’t take his eyes off her. ‘Don’t you dare lecture to me on my love life,’ he grated.
‘Then don’t lecture to me on mine!’ She was clinging to her duvet cover and her knuckles were white. Her body was burning all over, with rage and that dreadful, impotent feeling of having been unjustly condemned—and with the awful knowledge that she had allowed herself to be humiliated for the stupidest of reasons—she had wanted to taste him, to feel him after waiting for so many years.
‘You’d better leave,’ she told him.
‘Gladly,’ he murmured, turning and walking out without a backward glance.
As the door shut quietly behind