Читать книгу The Devil and Miss Jones - Kate Walker - Страница 6

TWO of a kind?

Just the thought of it took her breath away. It was true that was exactly what she’d done. She had felt that there was no other possible opening before her. But him?

Look at him! Did he look like someone in despair at anything? A man who had felt the need to walk, leave everything behind? A man who had lost…?

No, lost was the last thing he looked. Even with the drizzling rain misting his hair so that it hung damp around his face, the black strands whirled into crazy disarray by the wind, and the white cotton of his tee shirt plastered against the honed lines of his torso, the powerful ribcage, taut muscles, disturbed, or even dishevelled were the last words that came to mind to describe him. Strong, powerful, determined, totally in control fitted him better.

‘You can’t have!’ Disbelief rang in her voice.

‘And why not?’

It was flung at her and the flash of danger in his eyes held a warning that made her take a couple of hasty steps back and away. She had needed this sharp reminder that he was a total stranger and one she didn’t know whether she dared to trust or not.

‘But—don’t you have a job—a home—family who care for you?’

‘I have no home in Argentina now.’

It was a flat, hard statement, and it was only when it died from his eyes, leaving them bleak and opaque, that she realised there had actually been a light in the green depths, one that had made them warmer than ever before. And now she had driven it away with her foolish words.

‘No family either.’

‘I’m sorry… I didn’t mean…’ she began again, but he lifted his shoulders in a shrug that dismissed her concern. He deliberately switched on a smile but it was such a brief, on-off flash of a thing that it had no real warmth or even meaning. And that ‘now’ had had a special emphasis, one that made it plain the loss was of a recent date.

‘Perhaps we’re more alike than you’d think—both on the run, leaving our pasts behind.’

‘Is that really what you’re doing?’ She couldn’t see him running from anything.

But when she looked into those moss-coloured eyes she saw a shadow that swirled in their depths, giving them a look that she recognised. It was the expression that had been on her own face when she had looked in the mirror that morning and known that she was making a terrible mistake. That she couldn’t go through with the wedding to Gavin. It was the expression of someone who knew they had burned their boats and for whom life could never be the same again. And it was carefully masked so that only someone who had been through the same thing would see past the determined defences.

‘Everything?’

His laugh was harsh, dark, seeming to splinter in the damp-laden air like a glass that had been dropped on the stony, wet ground.

‘Take a look around you.’

The wide, vicious gesture embraced the empty, rain-swept road, the parked motorbike.

‘Right now what you see is what you get,’ he declared.

‘That’s all you have?’ she managed, on a very different note from the question she had asked before.

That dark head, the dishevelled overlong hair now soaked by the misty drizzle and clinging to the strong bones of his skull, nodded twice, hard, and undisputable.

‘That’s everything,’ he agreed. ‘A few changes of clothes, some bits and pieces in that bag, and what I stand up in. That’s it.’

‘But you… Why…?’ she began hesitantly but this time he shook his head with a touch of impatience.

‘I could ask the same of you,’ he said and she was relieved to see that at last a trace of lightness had crept into his voice, making it much less frightening, more reassuring. ‘But what would be the point? We’re just strangers, two ships passing in the night. So let’s leave the questions unasked. The whys unsaid.’

‘Not even names? If I’m supposed to head off out of here with you then you could at least give me a name to use.’

A shrug of those powerful shoulders conceded that point to her.

‘OK…’

He took a step towards her, pulling off one glove and holding out his hand to her.

‘My name is Carlos… Carlos Diablo.’

There was a strange break in the middle of the words, almost as if he had suddenly changed his mind and decided not to tell her. But he finished the sentence smoothly enough, looking her straight in the eyes as he spoke.

Diablo. The word spun round inside her thoughts. Diablo. The devil. Carlos the devil. That sounded so ominous. But it was just a name, Martha reassured herself. Nothing but a name.

‘And I’m M…’

Her tongue stumbled thickly on the realisation that she had been about to give away her real name. What if he knew who she was? About the money she had won—the millions that had been all that had attracted Gavin to her. She had no idea how long he had been in England; if he had read it in the newspapers. She didn’t want to take any chances.

‘I’m Miss Jones,’ she said, and winced at just how prim and restrained it sounded. But it would do for now. After all, she had no way of knowing if he had even given her his real name.

‘I am pleased to meet you—Miss Jones…’

He gave the carefully formal name an ironic intonation as if he was only too well aware of the way that she was concealing the truth from him, but quite clearly he didn’t care a bit.

The devil and Miss Jones. It sounded like a gothic romance. Or some blues song.

That hand was still between them, long and brown and strong and totally steady, totally dependable. Surprisingly it put Martha’s mind at ease and had her moving to put her fingers into his, feel them swallowed up in the heat and hardness, the strength and—yes and the comfort of it.

She was totally unprepared for the effect that just that simple gesture had on her. Her hand touched his, warm skin against warm skin, and suddenly it was as if she were in the middle of an electrical storm as sensation fizzed along every nerve. It was more than warmth, more than contact, and heaven knew she needed both of those. It was something deep and primitive, wild and dangerous and yet somehow essential to life. It swept away the chill that had pervaded her body as she’d stood, miserable and lost, at the side of the road and it threatened to splinter her mind into tiny pieces as she fought to get her much-needed control back again.

Suddenly Martha knew a crazy, irrational need to go somewhere—anywhere—with this man—this Diablo. And not just because she wanted to escape from all she had left behind her, but because she wanted to go forward into something new and different—and startlingly exciting.

When she looked up into his face she saw something change there too. A whole new expression suddenly came over his features, softening them, changing them in the most dramatic way. His eyes warmed so that their shadowed green now looked like the colour of the fields where the rainclouds had parted and let the rays of the sun shine through, illuminating them. And his mouth—dear heaven, how sensual was that mouth? It was firm and strong but the fullness of the lower lip gave it a sexy curve that made something tingle right through her body, particularly when he let a tiny hint of a smile curl at the corners just for a moment. His grip on her hand tightened, briefly, conveying a message of support and encouragement that she was anxious enough to welcome hungrily. She even let herself wonder just for one brief heady moment just what it might feel to have that mouth on hers, feel it caress her skin.

‘So now can we get on?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know about you but I’m getting tired of standing here in this wind, getting soaked.’

‘Of course!’ Guilt at the way she had kept him hanging around, the rain soaking into his hair and shirt, made her sound over-enthusiastic. ‘But how do I get on that—in this?’

Her gesture took in the long white silk skirt, sleek and clinging at the waist, hips, around her legs, with just the tiniest flare of material at her ankles. Her delicate veil, soft and flowing when she had put it on an hour or so before, now hung limp and weighted with rain around her face and head.

‘I’m not sure I can manage it.’

Why did women wear those skin-tight skirts? Carlos wondered. He was surprised that she could even walk in that dress, let alone do anything else. It was sexy as hell though, in the way that it shaped her breasts, exposing just a hint of creamy cleavage, the suggestion of seduction so much more enticing than a full-on plunging neckline. The silk then clung to the swell of her hips, taking the eye down the length of her body to the point where the flounces of material kicked out around the knees. Was there anything more calculated to emphasise the womanly shape, the curves that some—mostly other women, he suspected—might consider to be rather fuller and more lush than current fashion demanded?

Not him. He liked a woman to be a woman and that meant that she had to have a female shape. And this Miss Jones certainly was all woman.

‘We’re going to have to do something about that.’

She hadn’t expected to walk very far in the designer dress, he reminded himself. Only down the aisle… Just what the hell had happened to make her run out on her wedding? The need to know was like an itch in his mind though he didn’t feel that she would be prepared to answer if he questioned her about it. Not the woman who only gave her name as ‘Miss Jones’. So what was she so determined to hold back on? What did she have to hide?

And what sort of a groom would be fool enough to let a beautiful woman like this slip through his fingers when she had already agreed to marry him?

‘And what would that “something” we have to do be? How exactly do you expect to manage…?’

‘Easy,’ Carlos drawled. ‘Nothing to it.’

He had enough experience of getting women out of their clothes to have some understanding of how female garments worked. Admittedly, the women concerned had been only too eager to help him. He had never had to plan on dealing with a woman’s clothing so that he could help her run away from another man.

But from his memory of dealing with silk dresses in the past, they offered little resistance to strong hands. Just how hard could it be to get rid of some of that unwanted material?

‘Leave it to me.’

In a moment he was on his knees on the wet road at her feet, long brown hands reaching for her dress, tanned skin dark against the pale material. He gathered it into his fingers, twisting, bunching slightly so that it pulled against her legs, making her take an awkward step back and then forwards again, forced to stay where she was, held prisoner by his firm grip.

‘Just stay there,’ he muttered, a note of command in his tone, one that made her freeze where she stood.

But the small movement she’d made had been enough to make him freeze too—though in a very different sort of reaction. In the same moment that she’d stepped back and forward he had bunched the fine silk of her skirt in his hands, lifting it ready to get rid of the constricting skirt. And that had exposed the slender length of her legs.

Infierno! She was actually wearing stockings and suspenders, the nervous twitch of her body taking the skirt up higher so that the delicate pale blue lace of a garter too was exposed. Clinging round the top of her thigh. For a couple of heart-thudding seconds Carlos’s throat dried shockingly, his hands tightening in the slippery material.

‘Stand still!’

His voice was gruffer this time, and he didn’t care if she thought he was ordering her around. The struggle for control of his own senses, his own body, had put the rough note into his tone. This Miss Jones was one of those women who believed that the pulse point at the back of the knee was a good spot to spray some of her perfume. And she was damn right about that too if the heady, spicy scent that hit his nostrils was anything to go by. Not for Miss Jones the delicate floral perfume the lace and silk of her clothing and the fine blonde hair might suggest. Instead she wore something that spoke more of enticement, of sensuality. Obviously she had been planning on sharing that sexuality with the man she was supposed to have been marrying.

It was damned difficult to concentrate on what he was doing with his body hardening in instinctive response to the closeness of her delicate flesh, the scent of her skin combined with that sensuous perfume. A hot wave of jealousy of the unknown man she had planned to share this delectable body with tonight swept through him, making his fingers clench even more tightly on the white silk. He had to be a total fool to have let her get away—to have driven her away from him.

Well, maybe the fool’s loss was his gain. Miss Jones as a prospective bride he would have had to leave well alone. This woman as a bride who had clearly had more than second thoughts about marrying the man she was promised to and who obviously wanted to put as much distance between her and her groom as possible was a very different matter.

‘I said stand still!’ he repeated as another twitch of her body brought that sexy scent to torment his senses all over again.

‘I am standing still.’

Martha had to mutter the words between clenched teeth in order not to betray the way she was feeling. She just wished he would hurry up and get the job done as soon as possible. She didn’t feel that she could take the screaming tension of her nerves and every one of her senses for many moments longer.

He wasn’t actually touching her, only the material of her skirt, and yet the surface of her skin seemed to tingle as if he was actually stroking it, as if his breath was warm against her exposed flesh. The cold, miserable dampness of the afternoon seemed to evaporate in a second, leaving her body heated from the inside so that she felt sure that she would actually see steam rising from her clothes where the warmth dried them. But she couldn’t drag her eyes away from the man at her feet. Looking down at his dark head as he bent over his task, her gaze was grabbed and held, drawn by a sensual magnetism, and her fingers actually twitched against her sides as she fought the impulse to reach out and touch, stroke the black, disordered strands back into smoothness against the strong bones of his skull.

She wanted to touch him. No, it was more than a want—it was something close to a need. She had to feel him, make some physical contact—something more than just the warm, strong comfort of his palm on hers, her hand held safely inside his. And yet she knew she had to hold back, because if she gave in to this wild, irrational need, broke through the natural, instinctive restraints that held them separate, then some intuitive feeling warned that it would never stay that way.

There would have to be more. She just knew it. No other man had ever made her feel this way. But what if he found her as unattractive as Gavin had done?

… even if I do have to lie back and think of the money. Maybe that will turn me on because she sure as hell doesn’t. She’s so big, it’ll be like sleeping with a horse…

She couldn’t bear it if another man found her so unappealing. It would be like presenting the other cheek after someone had slapped her viciously already.

As if sensing her thoughts Carlos suddenly paused, turned his head, and looked up, straight into her eyes. A burn like a bolt of lightning went straight through her as she saw the new darkness in that green gaze. A darkness that mirrored the way she was feeling, the stinging sensitivity that flooded every nerve.

And that was too much. Already way off balance with all that had happened that day, she could barely cope with her own response. The prospect of having to cope with the fact that he might be feeling something of the same was more than she could handle. For a moment the world seemed to swing round her, the ground rocking beneath her feet and making her feel desperately insecure. In a panic she actually stamped her foot hard on the wet surface of the road.

‘What exactly are you doing?’

‘This…’ His response was as curt and raw-toned as her own as he turned his attention back to the task in hand.

She felt a sharp tug, heard a faint sound of something ripping and suddenly there was a rush of cold air around her ankles, her calves. She wasn’t quite sure what he had done until she saw him toss the white frill of silk to one side, having ripped it right off the bottom of her dress. Now she could move more easily. She could walk, might even be able to clamber onto that powerful beast of a bike.

‘Thanks—’

Testing, tentative, she took a step towards it—another—then froze, another thought stilling her feet.

If she got onto that bike then she would have to sit behind him. Close behind him. She would have to wrap her arms around that lean, tight waist, rest her chest, her breasts, against the broad, strong back, feel the heat of his body reaching hers. She would have to open her legs wide, spread them to accommodate…

‘No!’

‘What the hell now?’

Carlos was getting to his feet, wiping his hands down the taut length of his denim-covered thighs. The strange connection there had been between the two of them seemed to have evaporated in a rush and his voice held a thread of irritation that grated uncomfortably on her nerves.

‘Lady, make your mind up. What is it?’ he demanded again.

‘I—I’m scared.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say of what because she couldn’t even start to explain it to herself.

‘I’m a perfectly safe driver.’

‘I’m sure you’re a fantastic driver!’

But that didn’t mean that she would feel safe with him anywhere. And… From nowhere came another thought. One that shook her right through to the very core of her being.

If she felt like this now, with this complete stranger, how could she ever have thought that Gavin was the man she wanted to marry? How could she have been so blind as to think she felt enough for him to say yes to his proposal?

But after three long lonely years of nursing her mother through her last illness, she had been looking for love—for a family—for a future. And she had fallen into his grasp like a ripe little plum. A ripe, stupid, easily deceived little plum. She had needed to be loved, had been in love with the idea of love. At least she had seen sense before it was too late.

‘Isn’t there a law about wearing a helmet on a motorbike?’ she hedged, expecting and seeing his impatience at her reaction.

‘I thought you wanted to get out of here.’

‘I do—but only…’

‘Only if you can do it legally…’

The mockery in his eyes and his tone was open now. And never before had she wanted so desperately to throw off her careful, conventional personality, cast caution to the wind and just go with what life offered her. Being careful had led to her engagement to Gavin and look where that had landed her. She shuddered at the thought of what might have happened if she hadn’t seen sense…

What life offered her now was the chance to escape with this man, this Diablo. She should grab at it with both hands. But even as she opened her mouth to do just that Carlos had tossed his helmet towards her so that she only just caught it, managing to grab it before it hit the ground at her feet.

‘Here—will that suit, señorita?’

The exasperation in his voice was making her see this situation from his point of view, and with that came a strong sense of the absurd. What must he have thought when he had come speeding down the road and seen her—a vision in white silk and lace, in jewelled slippers that were rapidly approaching the consistency of damp tissue paper? She’d chosen those slippers so that she didn’t tower over Gavin, she recalled. There would be no such need with Carlos—he must be—what—five inches—more?—taller than her five feet eight.

‘But,’ Carlos continued, a hint of amusement lightening his tone, ‘there is no way that helmet is going to fit over that…’ He gestured towards the ornate hairstyle, the veil held in place by a delicate tiara.

‘I know—so please…’

Meeting his eyes was a big mistake. With that new warmth in them, it only threatened to set off her thudding pulse all over again. Her heart kicked so hard in her chest that she felt sure he must see it under the fine silk, the delicate lace. And the rush of heat along her veins meant that her throat had dried painfully and somehow she couldn’t swallow to relieve it.

‘Do—do you think that you could help? Can you unfasten this thing?’

She lifted a hand to tug at the securely pinned veil.

‘What am I—a lady’s maid?’ he muttered, but there was no harshness in his tone. And that disturbing gleam still burned in his eyes as he came closer.

‘Just pull them out—get rid of them. If you can rip my dress to pieces then surely you can deal with some hairpins.’

A sudden shocking thrill shot through her at the thought of Carlos really ripping her dress to pieces, not just tearing off the flared skirt, and she could feel hot colour flood her face in response.

‘Por supuesto… Let me see.’

She didn’t know if it was to hold her still or to soothe her, ease away the nervous mood that was making every muscle taut with impatience, but unexpectedly he lifted a hand to her face. Softly, almost delicately, he cupped her cheek, curving his hard palm over the soft skin as he angled her head to one side, turning it so that it caught the best of what dull grey light there was.

And that action seemed to freeze her where she stood. In a day of shocks, confusion and bewilderment, the effect of that light, gentle touch was the most mind-blowing of all. It was warm and soothing, easing the restless stinging in her nerves and making her feel as if she were melting from the inside out. She wanted to turn her face into his hand, rest her cheek more firmly against his palm and just let the feelings of tension seep away.

She expected that those big hands would fumble with the task before him. That at least he would tug at some of the pins, twisting them free. She knew that she would have done that herself, particularly if she was impatient to have the job done as she sensed that he was. He might have himself carefully under control but there was a tautness in the long powerful body next to hers that communicated the fight he was having to do so. She recognised it from the tension in her own body.

What was it he had said? That he had just taken off, leaving everything behind. Leaving what behind? And where? That accent didn’t belong here on the moors of the north of England. And the tanned olive skin, the polished jet hair marked him out as someone as alien to this landscape as if some sleek, powerful jaguar had suddenly stalked the mist soaked hills. Just the thought made her gasp in reaction.

‘Qué?’

Carlos had caught the tiny indrawn breath, pausing in this task, the deep green eyes going sharply to her face and locking with her widened grey ones.

‘Am I hurting you?’

‘Oh, no. No.’

‘Hurting’ was not the word for what was happening to her. She only knew that all the nerves in her stomach were tangling into tight, uncomfortable knots, and the stinging sense of tension might have ebbed away but only to be replaced by a new hot, tingling sensation, running like electricity over her skin. A yearning that was uncoiling deep inside and that made her want to reach out to this man. Be closer to him. She wanted more of that touch. More of him.

‘I want to get out of here.’

With you. She only dared let the words echo inside her head; too afraid, too unsure to actually let them out into the air. She didn’t know what she would be unleashing if she did.

‘So let’s do this…’

Carlos’s eyes locked with hers, lingering for a darkly revealing moment, before he bent his head again, turned his attention back to the task in hand. And it seemed that with each pin that was eased from her hair, tossed with the tiniest sound of metal hitting tarmac onto the road, something in her mood, her body, her whole life lightened and eased. She felt the knots untangling from her nerves, the tension leaving her muscles so that she could stand taller, straighter, easier. Something of the horror and the pain that had slashed at her soul seeped away, filling her with a new sense of anticipation and hope.

‘So, your wedding—just why did you run out on it? What did this guy do to you?’

She didn’t know if he was asking to distract her from the time it was taking to free her from the veil or because he really wanted to know but because she couldn’t see his face and, more importantly, he couldn’t see hers, she found it surprisingly easy to answer him.

‘Why did I turn round and get out of these as fast as I could, never looking back?’ she asked, trying to bring her chin up in defiance, adopt an I-couldn’t-care-less attitude that she felt might not be fully convincing.

‘You have to admit it’s not the usual way these things go. Normally by this time the bride and groom would be…’

‘Gazing into each other’s eyes as they made their loving vows? So are you feeling sorry for my poor, deserted groom, now that his wife-to-be has run out on him? Well, don’t—he’ll be more than happy having hot, passionate sex with my chief bridesmaid—that is if he hasn’t already exhausted himself shagging her on the bed we were supposed to have shared tonight.’

‘The bastard did that?’

A blazing sense of outrage was like a wildfire in Carlos’s voice and his hands tightened in her hair, twisting sharply so that she caught back a cry of pain. But in the same moment that she felt the small discomfort in her scalp, she also knew a sudden rush of relief mixed with a surprising bubble of unexpected delight. He cared enough to be angry at what Gavin had done. His outrage was like a balm to the wounds she’d carried with her from the Hall. Some of them at least.

‘I walked in on him—on them—while they were hard at it. I walked out again pretty damn fast,’ she added with brittle flippancy. ‘I don’t think they saw me—they were… totally absorbed. I managed to get out of the place without anyone seeing me and after that I just ran and never looked back.’

Until she had reached the road across the moor and, too tired and too cold and miserable to go any further in her stupid wedding finery, she had stopped on the verge and tried to hitch a ride.

She wasn’t going to tell him the rest. She couldn’t yet even bear to look at those other words for herself and take in just what Gavin had said. She hadn’t even been a woman to him—not a real person, just a source of a future income.

‘I’d like to deal with this snake. No man should treat a woman that way. You should let me take you back there.’

‘And do what?’ Martha challenged, finding the disgust in his voice almost too much to bear. ‘Storm into the Hall, all guns blazing, and challenge him to a duel? No, thanks! That way everyone would know exactly why I’d pulled out of the wedding—just how badly humiliated I’d been—instead of just thinking I’d got cold feet at the last moment.’

A raw, bitter laugh bubbled up in her throat, almost choking her. She’d had pretty cold feet by the time he’d found her. She could swear that it was only now that they were fully thawed out.

‘Which actually was the truth. And I’d much rather that Gavin think that I’d walked out on him before I found out how he’d been spending the hours before our wedding. He’ll never know for sure whether I caught him with his pants down or not—’

And would never have the cruel satisfaction of knowing that she’d heard herself described as someone he would have to lie back and think of the money when he slept with her.

‘That’s definitely the way I prefer it. Besides I can fight my own battles, thank you. I’ve been doing it for long enough.’

‘How so? What about your family?’

‘I don’t have one. I never knew my father—he ran out on my mother as soon as he knew she was pregnant, so it was always just the two of us. Three years ago, Mum was diagnosed with liver cancer—she died last summer.’

And it had been in the aftermath of that loss that on an uncharacteristic impulse she had bought the winning lottery ticket that had changed her future. If only she could have done that earlier so that she could have made her mother’s last months more comfortable. If only she hadn’t spent those years isolated as her mother’s carer so that she had no experience of life and men that might have helped her realise just what Gavin was up to, see past the pretty lies he told her.

‘I’m sorry.’

His words were kind, as was his tone, but Martha still found that they made her tense in nervous apprehension. If he made a move towards her, if he touched her, perhaps tried to take her into his arms to express his sympathy, then she would shatter, go to pieces, and she had no idea how she would ever put herself back together again.

But perhaps something of her mood communicated itself to the man at her side. The sympathy she’d feared—dreaded—didn’t come. Instead Carlos tossed one last pin away, completed his task and straightened up. The tiara dangled from one set of strong fingers, the veil clenched in the other hand. He held them out to her.

‘There.’

With the new sensations buzzing inside her it felt almost as if she had been set free, released from something that was more than just the restrictions of the wedding finery. She’d hit the lowest point just hours before. And if that was the lowest point in her life then surely the only way was up.

‘Now I can move on—leave it all behind me. You know, I’m not running away but going forward—getting away from what would have been a terrible mistake, starting again.’

She moved forward to take hold of them. But the new lightening of her mood pushed her feet further than she had anticipated, the lift in her spirits making her almost dance towards him. And suddenly she was on tiptoe, leaning forwards, reaching up to plant an impulsive kiss on the lean plane of his cheek.

‘Thank you!’

And that was when everything changed. When it seemed as if the world stood still, the countryside freezing around her in the same moment that her breath stopped in her lungs. The birds in the trees stopped singing, the wind stilled in the branches, dropping into sudden silence. The skin of his face was cold and damp against her mouth, the taste of his skin suddenly intense and smoky against her tongue. She was frozen where she stood, looking up into his eyes so that she saw the sudden darkness in them, the way that the irises had expanded until there was only the tiniest line of deep green at the rim.

She read what was coming in those eyes. Read it and welcomed it, her heart kicking sharply against her ribcage as she held her breath. She didn’t have to wait long. His arms came round her, warm and tight, strong as steel bands, lifting her even further off the tarmac and crushing her firmly against the powerful toned shape of his chest. His head came down fast, his mouth coming over her own, hot and hard, demanding and powerful. Her lips were crushed, parting slightly on a gasp of shocked response as she gave herself up to the pressure of that kiss.

She had never known anything like it, she recognised hazily, struggling to bring her thoughts under any sort of control. Never experienced a kiss—or a response—like this at any other time in her life. She had kissed, of course. Kissed and been kissed, but it had never been anything like this. And the caresses she had exchanged with Gavin had been like tepid water when compared with this deluge of red-hot lava swamping her, taking her control, her senses and her ability to think at all rationally with it. Her heart was pounding, her head whirling.