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‘Fro at him Two spots of colour burned in her otherwise deathly pale face, disbelief and distaste warred inside her

‘As it happens you’re wrong’ Slade had turned his back to her and Chelsea had no‘Strange as you ht find it,’ he added coolly, ‘you’ll be the first woman I’ve ever had to bribe to share my bed Normally…’

‘They pay you?’ Chelsea suggested sweetly, gasping with shock as he turned with the swiftness of a supine panther

‘I’m a man,’ he told her contemptuously, ‘with all that the word implies I don’t sell myself’

‘Neither do I,’ Chelsea told him proudly

‘It’s too late for backtracking now You cheated on et aith First you’re going to payvalue forto an arranges first Oh no,’ he told her in a perfectly normal conversational voice as she turned for the door ‘I shouldn’t try that—not unless you want ood deal more impatient than I a tone, ‘like you did in Melchester’

With sickening certainty Chelsea knew that she wasn’t going to be allowed to leave the bedrooe He reached for her, and she started to tremble

When he took her in his ar her throat instead of the violent approach which she had expected, she didn’t understand, and her bewilderment increased and showed in her eyes Slade’sher barriers His hands moved from her shoulders over her back and then beneath the fine wool of her juainst her spine She opened her mouth to protest when he unclipped her bra, but the words were muffled beneath the explosive warmth of his kiss Weakly she closed her eyes Sensation after alien sensation coursed over her

‘No!’

Her protest was totally ignored as Slade picked her up and carried her over to the bed, deftly re body

He seemed totally impervious to her bitterness Her skirt followed her other clothes on to the floor along with Slade’s jacket

‘I want you,’ he told her slowly, his eyesto want me too, Chelsea, no matter how indifferent you’ve been to all those who came before me’

It was then that she knew that he wasn’t going to be satisfied with si her physically; he also wanted from her a response, total capitulation to his possession, and as she looked up at hi the silky-skinned curves of her body Chelsea knehy she had run out of his flat and why she was tre to do with Darren, and everything to do with the way her body reacted to Slade; the physical responseat him aroused inside her; the terrible need to yield to the ive herself up to him so completely that she became part of him

Roht feverishly They called them ‘love’, but it was i that greith ti, raw desire that burned to fever pitch inside her

‘No!’ she protested, blindly trying to escape fro her throat ‘No!’

‘It’s too late for that now,’ Slade told her harshly ‘Although I don’t doubt you mean it Women like you alant to be in control, don’t they? They like to be the aggressor, the hunter, the one who arouses desire but never truly experiences it’

Chelsea could feel hi slowly over the pale flesh he had exposed Her heart ha ht above her as he leaned on his side to study her, and then his hands wereall her preconceived ideas and prejudices She had si such pleasure Hazily she tried to think back Had she ever felt like this with Darren? She knew she hadn’t Her love for hi, co to life inside her now Pride and pride alone was all that kept her own hands rigidly at her sides away from Slade She ain through her brain in a mindless litany which she used to try and blot out the sensations he was arousing, as though somehow she could divorce herself fro

She had expected, when he talked of her paying her dues, that he intended sio, but she had underesti to be satisfied with simple physical domination

‘Open your eyes’

The softly spoken co as his hands ers teasing her nipples Panic storh her as she tried desperately to avoid his touch, squeezing her eyes closed as though by doing so she could obliterate the memory of how it had felt to have him touch her so intimately Even when his hands returned to her waist she couldn’t stop quivering Hiss her skin Despair and fear of her inability not to betray her feelings to hie to say coolly, with just a hint of boredom in her voice,

‘Look, why don’t you just siet it over with? I don’t…’

‘Have a lot of tiered by her taunt ‘I like to take my pleasure slowly and enjoy it,’ he said softly ‘Don’t you?’

A suffocating heat seeendered by what he had said or the way he was looking at her Chelsea didn’t know

His hands ile bones Tension locked every muscle in her sto her as though he derived intense sensual satisfaction froainst the paleness of her own flesh His thuhtened like fine-draire

‘Don’t!’ The word jerked involuntarily past her lips

‘Touchher hand inside his shirt His skin felt curiously vulnerable; soft and war the tender flesh of her pal his ribs, startled to feel the powerful beat of his heart beneath her fingers It was ridiculous to realise at her age that she had never touched a man so intimately Her heartbeat sounded unnaturally loud in her ears, and somehow of its own accord her other hand started to explore theunder his breath and discarded the shirt coleamed like burnished wood, tanned and healthy, and Chelsea’s eyes see in every feature His hands fra her hands between them as her lips parted instinctively beneath his mouth

Sensation after sensation rolled over her, all coherency lost as she was enveloped in a neorld which contained only tactile sensuality

Slade’s hands held her hips, hs, his lips exploring the soft slope of her shoulder and thenthe curve of her breast, his face buried against the warmth of her

So, an unbearable tension holding her in its grip Di didn’t penetrate, until Slade swore suddenly and thrust himself away from her, his face unreadable in the darkness as he coel ha

s suddenly coe is back,’ he added when she continued to look befuddled He laughed softly ‘Perhaps it’s no bad thing after all; it h when you ran out on ht Dreams are no substitute for reality, as I’m sure you’ll soon realise’

His eyes rested on the provocative thrust of her breasts and Chelsea reached hurriedly for her juerously—and how easily—she had succumbed to his sensual expertise Even nohen her ht Mrs Rudge back, her body was treacherously aching for Slade’s touch She glanced quickly at hie to reach out and touch hiers, and the ware of what those feelings meant rocked her back on her heels

CHAPTER SIX