Him, reaching for me, pausing, and our eyes locking. "I'm warning you," I told him, "I was a kick-boxer at Yale. I know how to look after myself."

That hand, clamping around the back of my neck, locking me in place. "I like that," he said, suddenly another Will, a powerful Will, in command, strong. "A bit of fight..."

His other hand in the small of my back, as we paused there at the street door. That hand staying there as we pa.s.sed through into the small lobby and I fumbled with the key for my apartment's front door.

Tumbling into the apartment, bodies pressing together, those strong hands holding me, turning me, his mouth finding mine. A clashing of teeth and lips and tongues, an animal thing all of a sudden.

Pushed up hard against the still-open door, his body against me, one hand pulling at my clothes, the other stealing round to the back of my head, fingers burying themselves in my hair, closing, pulling my head back so that his mouth could work down my neck, teeth and tongue dragging against my skin.

I pushed him back, away, and managed to swing the door shut.

And then he was on me again.

That night in Austria, in the hotel with its view down a snow-bound valley, he'd been strong and tender at the same time, controlling and controlled.

Now... now, there was none of that. There was need, hunger.

My blouse, pulled from the top of my pencil skirt, his hands tugging at it, fumbling with the b.u.t.tons and then, with a grunt of frustration, he just yanked it open, fabric tearing, b.u.t.tons popping.

We stumbled into the apartment, me backwards, him driving me on, until the backs of my legs. .h.i.t the sofa and I went down in a heap.

I could barely breathe, with the intensity of it.

Somehow my blouse had come off. Had he ripped it open, ripped it off my back as we fell?

It was there in his hands, a white rag and then... what was he doing with it? Twisting it into a cord, wrapping it around my wrists, pulling it tight, looping it with a well-practiced twist up over the wooden frame of the sofa, securing my arms above my head, my body exposed.

My bra was next, a delicate lacy thing. He pulled hard at the straps at my back, tore it open, pushed it up and away from my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. One of the straps had broken, and he pushed the bra aside, dropping his head to my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. One hand, cupping and squeezing me hard, a nipple pinched between thumb and forefinger so that a bolt of delicious pain shot through me.

I cried out and then his mouth was on the other nipple, teeth clamped tight, tongue flicking. Pain... but a different kind of pain, a pain that blossomed and transformed.

I felt swamped, overcome, so totally dominated and possessed.

I needed more, and I squirmed against him, shifting position so that he had a thigh between my legs, grinding hard against my wet heat.

"I'm still mad at you," I said, and that made him pause. He raised his head from my breast, found me with those dark eyes, those predator eyes. And then that thigh pressed harder and held there, making me sensitive to every slight movement as he lowered his head again, dragged his teeth down the upper curve of one breast and then latched onto that nipple once more, biting and sucking and sending sharp bolts of that pain-that-was-pleasure right down through my body into my belly, my heat, my desire.

He shifted position, found the catch on the side of my skirt, the short zip, and then with another sharp yank it was down around my ankles and then clear of me, hurled away across the room.

He kneeled back then, surveying my near-naked body. The tiny black thong, the sheer black hold-ups, the Kate Millen wedges.

He pulled at his tie, loosening it, discarding it. He unb.u.t.toned his shirt from the top, revealing that hard torso, the fine covering of dark hair, the tight, well-defined muscles of his chest, his abdomen.

Lower down, he released the buckle of his belt, and my eyes were drawn to the straining fabric below.

He stood and kicked those expensive shoes free, then bent to pull the black socks away.

The belt... he pulled it out of the loops at his waist and for a moment I thought he was going to use it on me and I felt wet and hot and scared all at once, and oh my G.o.d so vulnerable!

He dropped it to the floor, undid the b.u.t.ton on his trousers and eased the zip down.

Just in his shorts now, and my how they strained! He was hard, tenting the black fabric out at the front. He tugged at the waistband and his manhood sprang clear, as long and hard as I remembered it from that night in the Alps.

Two, three nights ago? So recent, and yet it seemed so long ago.

Naked, he lowered himself between my thighs, reaching down to find the waistband of my thong, pull at it, slide it down my legs.

His hand found me, the thumb lined up along the narrow strip of hair, the fingers cupping me, parting me, entering me. That sudden hardness inside me made me cry aloud again, and then he was stabbing those fingers deep, pulling out and stabbing again, having me roughly with his hand.

It was so intense! I felt totally owned, as he worked me like that.

Then a hand closed around my right ankle, pushing my stocking-clad leg high, my foot over his shoulder. With his other hand he reached down, took my other ankle and pushed it up so that both legs were against his chest, my feet over his shoulders, and he was bearing down on me so hard I felt as if I would snap in half at any moment.

His hardness found me, then, sliding against my wet heat, its length gliding through my folds, grinding against my c.l.i.t as I pushed up to meet every thrust. Then, with a slight twist of the body, he pulled back and the swollen head of his manhood pressed against my opening, slid inside and I felt myself being parted, penetrated, forced open by him.

He drove deep, slowly sinking into me until I was filled and then filled more, and still he kept sliding slowly inside me. Just as I thought I could take no more, his b.a.l.l.s pressed up against my a.s.s, and his pubic bone ground up against my c.l.i.t. I'd never been had so deeply before... I felt so full!

He pushed again, a slight movement, and it was as if every sensation was magnified by the size of him, by how full I was. His length, deep inside me, the pressing of his b.a.l.l.s against my a.s.s, the wetness and heat between us, that grinding... oh, that grinding against me, taking that hot electric feeling and intensifying it, a heat spreading through my belly, a tightening... sudden and unexpected in its intensity.

My entire body bucked against him as I tightened around him and that wave of sheer, intense pleasure swept over my senses, so sudden and overwhelming that I almost blacked out.

And again, a tightening, a wave pa.s.sing through my entire body.

Over and over, until finally each wave was less than the one before. I'd never climaxed so intensely, or for that long, before. I'd never known anything like it.

As I slumped against him, spent, he started to move. Small thrusts at first, then pulling back his entire length before driving hard and deep inside me again.

Normally for me, one big o.r.g.a.s.m is it, but there was something different this time, his sudden rough intensity arrested that inevitable slide down from the peak of climax, drew it out, transformed it, so that each time he slid home there was an echo of what had just happened, a tightening, a surge of sensation welling up inside me...

It was taking me over, swamping my awareness, so that all I was conscious of was each peak of pleasure as he drove his length deep inside me. I couldn't think, I don't think I could even see straight.

He was being so hard and brutal with me, he really was f.u.c.king me senseless.

Harder and faster with each thrust, it felt as if I was about to burst, split open by his need.

His head, his face... they'd been buried into the s.p.a.ce between my neck and shoulder, but now he arched his back, raising himself, and those predator eyes locked on mine and suddenly there was a whole new level of intensity to it all.

With each thrust, I rose to meet him, welcoming him as deep as he could go, reluctantly slumping back as he withdrew, and then rising to meet him once more.

He plunged his head down, and his mouth found mine, a savage, brutal kiss as he drove deep inside me and there was a sudden blossoming of liquid heat in my belly and he stayed there, deep, filling me as he came. And then, as his hardness inside me transformed, started to ebb, I felt a new heat, a new tightening, and I was climaxing again, pushing up against him, keeping him firm inside me as my body spasmed and tightened and then finally, slowly, eased, settled, slumped.

He lay there, on top of me, our hearts hammering in our chests, his face against mine, him still deep inside me, spent, and into his ear I gasped, "I'm still mad at you, remember? I'm still mad."

I was still mad at him. I was confused and mad at the same time.

Mad that I couldn't pin him down. I didn't know him. A man who was so elemental, so variable. Which was the real Willem Bentinck-Stanley? The sensitive yet strong man I was teeteringly close to falling for? Or the bad boy, who more than one person had warned me to steer clear of? The arrogant manipulative man who I always felt was gaming me, or the one so close to spilling tears for a woman who had only ever seemed to cause him trouble? A woman who had died because she had got too close to whatever dangerous activities Will was involved with...

I didn't know. I couldn't work it out, couldn't work him out.

And I couldn't quite allow myself to relax into this relationship. I couldn't quite trust it.

He was an evasive man. Quite natural for someone who had every reason to be wary of people, for a man who moved in Government circles, with an office at the House of Lords and frequent trips around the world on G.o.d knows what business. But whatever his good reasons might be, it did little to put me at ease.

We met for dinner. A pretty conventional date, for goodness sake. This was the man who had pursued me with roses, had me driven to meet him for drinks at the House of Lords, who had whisked me off to a hotel he owned in the Alps just for dinner... An evening at a little Soho bistro was such a refreshing change from all that.

He sent a car for me, driven by Maninder, the giant of a Sikh who served as Will's driver, minder, a.s.sistant and who knows what else? I tried to make small talk, but Maninder was a man of few words. He dropped me off at a little place on a side street just off Dean Street, a place with a small frontage of bull's-eye windows. There was a bar at the front, then eating s.p.a.ce stretching a long way back.

Will stood when he saw me, and gestured to the seat opposite him across the small table. I went over, we kissed on the cheek, and for a moment I thought it was going to be all rather formal. Then he raised a hand to my jaw, turned me slightly such a delicate touch, and yet so commanding and kissed me briefly on the lips.

I sat, blushing again, G.o.d d.a.m.n it! How did he do that to me?

Those predator eyes, watching me, a slight smile on his face.

He'd shaved for this evening, and as I returned his look I wasn't quite sure whether I preferred him well turned out like this or just a little rough, a little dangerous. Prompted by that thought, my head suddenly filled with flashbacks to that evening when he'd tied my wrists to the sofa with my torn blouse and had me, quite brutally.

That did nothing for the blushing.

I looked down at the menu, and concentrated on the music playing in the background, Madeleine Peyroux's "Dance Me to the End of Love".

He reached across the table and touched the back of my hand, gently, briefly, and a bolt of desire stabbed through me from that touch. I'd never known anyone who could have such an effect on me. Ask me there and then and I'd happily have skipped dinner.

"Mersea oysters," he said. "The native oysters have just come into season. These ones will have been in the River Blackwater only a few hours ago. You like oysters?"

I nodded. I didn't trust my voice. G.o.d, I felt like a schoolgirl before him!

"Let's have the oysters, then. And a Pinot Noir? Not an obvious combination, but believe me, they have one from New Zealand's Awatere Valley here that's perfect. The vineyard owner made me try it with oysters he insisted it would change my life. He wasn't far wrong."

This was smooth Will, the one who showed me his Rembrandts and van Goghs, who whisked me to the Alps and dressed me in designer dresses and shoes. The one who took all that for granted. Doesn't everyone know vineyard owners on the other side of the world?

"It's okay," I said. "You can relax. You don't need to perform, okay?"

For a moment he looked like he was going to deny it, then a tension seemed to ease out of him and he gave me a boyish grin. "You do strange things to me," he said. "You make me tongue-tied. You occupy my thoughts whenever we're apart. You make me want to show off, be extravagant. I... I don't really do relationships. They never seem to work out. But you... you do things to me, Trudy Parsons. Strange things."

"Good things?"

He just nodded.

"You do things to me, too," I said. "Like rip my clothes off and tie me up to my own furniture and make me feel like I've never felt before. Like... like occupy my thoughts, too. Strange things, indeed."

Just then I became aware of the presence of someone standing at my shoulder. The waiter. How much had he heard, and did I even care?

"We'll have the Mersea oysters," Will said, "and a bottle of The Crossings Pinot Noir, please." Then, to me: "You were saying...?"

When the waiter had retreated, I said, "Tying me up. That's what I was saying." I liked the way his eyes widened just a little when I said those words. They did that at other times, too, like when he was buried deep inside me, barely moving, savoring every sensation. "After you'd ripped my blouse off. Tying my arms above my head so that I was helpless. You've done that before, haven't you?"

"You'd rather I hadn't?" One eyebrow c.o.c.ked, and still that smile.

I shook my head. "I liked it," I told him. I wondered then if I should tell him that I'd done that kind of thing before, too. A neck-tie around Charlie's wrists; the handcuffs Charlie had surprised me with one day, how he'd kept me locked to the bed frame for nearly an hour one time, drawing everything out deliciously...

Now, as if reading my mind, Will reached for his neck-tie and loosened it a little, undoing his top b.u.t.ton. He smiled. He knew what he was doing. Were we really talking bondage on our first normal date?

I looked down again, then away.

The oysters and wine came, and Will was right. The light fruitiness of the Pinot Noir went perfectly with the saltiness of the oysters, bringing out their meatiness and highlighting the metal tang of their aftertaste. I watched as he raised each oyster to his mouth, tipped and swallowed, and all the time, his eyes never left mine.

I stretched one leg, curling my foot around his calf, and his eyes widened again.

I leaned towards him, touched the back of his hand, just as he had touched mine, and said, "We should be naked." Then I took another oyster and downed it.

Those eyes. Those dark, intense eyes. In those eyes I was naked already, I knew.

"In your head," I said. "Tell me what's in your head."

"You," he said. "Just you. Everything that is you."

I'd expected him to be more graphic. To tell me his fantasies, what he wanted to be doing with me right then. But those few words... They did so much more than that.

I ordered quail b.r.e.a.s.t.s, remembering that he had ordered them for me in Austria. There were probably less subtle ways to tell him I was his, but I liked the symmetry of me choosing what he had chosen. He ordered steak, and I wondered whether there was meaning there too: red meat, man food, the alpha male a.s.serting himself. Or maybe he just fancied steak.

We talked a little about day to day things: my work at Ellison and Coles, the food and wine I'd gone on to a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc with my quail; he'd stuck with his favorite Pinot Noir we'd talked of Ethan and Eleanor, and the fact that they had returned from their honeymoon in the Maldives that afternoon.

There was history between Will and Ethan, and Charlie, my ex. The Cabal, and Sally Fielding.

I remembered a conversation with Julie, then. We were talking about how she researched her books and I remembered her saying, "Research? Always go to the source, Trude. Always go to the source. Everything else is just hearsay. Chinese whispers."

So I asked him.

"Are you going to tell me what happened back then? You, Ethan, Charlie. Sally Fielding. That whole Cabal thing?"

He shrugged and all of a sudden he was transformed again, to the slightly fl.u.s.tered Englishman persona, that Hugh Grant thing he sometimes did. "Oh, you know," he said, knowing d.a.m.ned well that I didn't.

"Don't tell me," I said. "Young men, the college high life, all a bit of fun, a bit of a lark..." I hadn't meant it to sound so harsh, but that's just how it came out. I hadn't realized how much I'd been bottling it up the curiosity, the resentment at how he would just brush the subject away with a few dismissive strokes.

"I... well, yes," he said. "It was a long time ago. Look, do you really want all the gory details about my sordid past? It was nothing. Just a bit of fun that got out of hand."

"A bit of fun that ended up with rehab, blackmail, and a woman dead."

He put his hand on mine, and the contact was perfect. I didn't want to be confronting him, but I didn't like feeling that I was being kept in the dark, either. That touch reminded me of what we had between us.

"Sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to..." His hand tightened on mine, cutting off my apologies.

"It's fine, Trudy," he said. "I know there's... well, there's a lot of s.h.i.t in my life and I have this stupid protective thing where I just want to shelter people from it. It kicks in automatically. I'm not deliberately keeping you in the dark."

I decided then not to press, and almost immediately I wondered if that was exactly what he had intended. d.a.m.n, but this man generated so many mixed reactions in me! So many good ones, but also this paranoid suspicion, this feeling that I was being gamed, played like a fish on a line.

But then, after a pause, he went on, and I felt bad for ever doubting him.

"There's not a lot to say," he said. "Me, Ethan and Charlie, we were really close for a time. We used to party together. We had fun. There were girls. Girls like Sally. Sometimes the girls would move around between us: one week with me, the next with Charlie or Ethan. It was fun and we were young."