“Of which you were part,” she said tartly. “You didn’t have to go to their parties if you didn’t like them.”
“I was a little lost.” His silver-green eyes were thoughtful as they stared into the fire. “I was only twenty years old, and after working and struggling all my life, I suddenly had it all. Money, fame, women—everything I wanted was laid at my feet.” His lips twisted bitterly. “And I discovered that I didn’t really want any of it. It wasn’t enough.”
Her troubled eyes widened. “Is that how it’s going to be for me?” she asked, biting her lip. “After all the work and worry, is it all going to be empty?”
“No.” His answer was reassuringly swift. “We’re as different as night and day. Darkness and sunlight. You love skating. It’s part of you and always will be. It enhances and completes you.” He met her eyes steadily. “It was never that to me. I used it to escape from poverty and from being a victim. It was the only emotional outlet I allowed myself when I was growing up. I knew that emotion must exist or the skating had no depth or color.” He shrugged. “Then, after I’d gained all the rewards I’d worked for, I found I didn’t like the idea of displaying my emotions for the audience’s delectation.” He paused. “I’m not a very generous man, Dany. I’m much more likely to take than give.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?” His expression was set and tense, almost pained, and she knew he wouldn’t ordinarily reveal anything like this about himself.
“Because it’s necessary,” he said gratingly. “Do you think I’m enjoying this? I don’t know how to open up and let anyone get close to me. But I have to let you in, dammit.”
“Why?”
“Because if I don’t, you’re going to fall into Kowalt’s bed.” He paused. “And then I’ll probably kill him.”
The words were said with deadly impassivity that was more frightening than anger. She shivered. “You can’t mean that.”
“I mean it,” he said. “When did I ever say anything to you I didn’t mean? That’s why I brought you here. I have to make sure you understand what you’re dealing with.” He closed his eyes, and for a moment there was a look of unutterable weariness on his face. “I don’t want to hurt you, Dany. That’s the last thing I want. But it’s been so damn long.” His eyes opened, and there was a glimmer of pain in their depths. “Too long. I can’t wait anymore.”
“Wait for what?” Her throat was so tense, she could scarcely get out the words.
“You,” he said simply. “It’s always been you.”
She shook her head in instinctive rejection. “No.” She wrapped her arms about herself to still her trembling. “It’s not possible, you never said—”
“I told you it wasn’t easy for me to show my feelings,” he said harshly. “That doesn’t mean I don’t have them. I’ve known ever since you were a little girl that you were going to be mine someday. Mine in all the ways there are. Since the night I first spoke to you. Do you remember that evening, Dany?” He shook his head impatiently. “How could you? You were only six years old.” He gazed unseeingly into the flames. “It was snowing that day too. There was a cocktail party going on inside, and I was feeling practically claustrophobic, so I got my jacket and decided to walk down to the pond to get some air. You were dressed in jeans and a white wool sweater, and your ponytail was like a flame as you practiced your spins on the ice. You looked so grave and intent, yet there was more warmth and vitality in you than I’d ever seen in a human being before. Snowflakes were falling all about you. It was almost twilight and you shone like a bright beacon. I stood on the bank just watching you, and then you saw me and came skating over.”
Anthony’s lips curved in reminiscence. “You smiled at me and said, ‘I know who you are. You’re Anthony Malik and you won a gold medal. I’m Dany Alexander and one day I’m going to win one too. And then everyone will love me.’ ” He looked up from the flames to meet her eyes. “I knew then that one person already … cared for you and was going to for the rest of his life.” His hands clenched involuntarily. “And I knew that it was going to be hell on earth waiting for you to get through all the years that kept us apart. I’ve never been a patient man, Dany.”
“That’s crazy.” She shook her head in bewilderment. “Things don’t happen like that.”
“I didn’t think so either.” His lips twisted in a sardonic smile. “You couldn’t ask for a more cynical or pragmatic man than I was at that time. I believed I could fashion the world and everything in it to suit myself. Needless to say, it came as something of a shock to run across fate in the form of a six-year-old imp who thought of me as just another grown-up.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” she repeated dazedly. “Why me?”
He shrugged. “I just knew you were the only one who could complete me,” he said haltingly, as if the words were difficult to get out. “I told you I couldn’t release emotion like other people. I’ve never been able to care for anyone. You weren’t far wrong when you accused me of being an ice-man. You were everything that I wasn’t: warm, open, giving.” He paused. “Loving. I wanted that warmth, that love. I knew it then and I know it now.”
“I can’t—”
“I’m not asking you to love me,” he said gravely. “I realize I’m not an easy person to love. You may even find it impossible. I’m just telling you I want it. There are other things that we can give each other. I’m not trying to wring any commitments from you. I just want you to know that you’re going to belong to me and that you’re going to want to belong to me.”
“You can’t force emotions like that,” she said huskily. Her chest was tight, and it was painful even to breathe.
“I don’t intend forcing anything,” he said with composure. “You’re going to come to me of your own free will. You’re going to want to be in my arms as much as I want you there. Did you think I’d want anything else?” He shook his head, a slight smile curving his lips. “No gratitude, no obligation, no fear.” His intent glance caught her slight stiffening at the last word, and his voice deepened to gentleness. “Yes, I’ve always known you were a little afraid of me. I suppose it was instinctive. You could sense the intensity of what I was feeling even if you couldn’t understand it. There was so much warmth in you that perhaps you were even afraid if you came too near, I’d extinguish that flame.” There was a fitful spark in his eyes. “I won’t do it, you know. If anything, I’m liable to burn you up.” He stretched out his hand. “Come here and see.”
His eyes were glowing softly, not glittering as they usually were, and they held her own with mesmerizing force. His expression was gentle and more vulnerable than she’d ever seen it. She stood up and moved with a dreamlike lethargy to stand before him. Still holding her gaze, he turned his palm upward. “Come,” he coaxed, and hesitantly she put her hand in his.
She almost jerked it back as she felt the warm, throbbing electricity that seemed to leap between them, but his hand had closed securely around her own. “See, nothing to be afraid of. What you feel is only what’s always going to happen between us from now on. It’s kind of a melting, one into the other.”
“You’re speaking to me as if I were a little girl,” she said. The firelight was playing across the boldness of his high cheekbones, and she could see it mirrored in his eyes. She had a fleeting memory of a torch’s flame captured within moonlit ice, and she felt suddenly breathless.
He parted his legs and with a gentle tug pulled her to the floor so that she was kneeling between them. “I know you’re not a little girl.” He leaned forward, and she could see the sudden cadence of his heartbeat in the hollow of his throat. “Sometimes when you’re frightened or disturbed about something, you lift your chin so proudly that your throat arches like that of a startled gazelle.” His thumb rested lightly on that pulse point, feeling the erratic fluttering. “Lovely.”
“I don’t know why I’m letting you do this.” She moistened her lips nervously. “I think I must be crazy too. I was so angry at you
only a little while ago.”
“You’re letting me do it because you want it.” He tilted her head, cradling her cheeks in his hands to gaze down into her eyes. “You may have managed to smother it beneath a landslide of other emotions, but you want me too, Dany.” His fingertips were brushing lazily over her cheekbones. “Sometimes I believe I’m so sensitive to what you’re thinking and feeling that it’s as if I’m inside of you looking out.” His thumbs moved down to part her lips, rubbing against the warm moisture of her tongue. “I could tell the very minute you began to want me. You were confused and scared, but the wanting was there.” He drew a deep, shuddering breath. “I was teaching you pair skating and we were working on that overhead split. My hands were on your inner thigh, supporting you. I’d held you like that a thousand times but suddenly something changed. You tensed beneath my hand, and I glanced up and you were looking down at me, and it was all there in your face.” His thumb moved lazily over the edge of her teeth. “I felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach. I’d been still thinking of you as a child, and there you were with that look in your eyes that meant I could have you, that I could teach you to belong to me as a woman.”
“You sent me away from Briarcliff,” she said haltingly. “I could see by your expression I’d given myself away. I thought I had made a complete fool of myself.”
He shook his head. “It was either send you away or ruin everything I’d waited for.” His voice was harsh with frustration. “You were only fourteen, for heaven’s sake! If I’d kept you with me, you’d have been my mistress by the time you were sixteen. I wouldn’t have been able to help myself.”
No, Dany thought, and she wouldn’t have been able to help herself either. She’d been trying to blot out that painful memory from her consciousness for the last six years, yet he had only to touch her as he was doing now and she remembered the deep throbbing ache for completion she’d known that afternoon when she’d crossed the boundary from childhood to womanhood. “It won’t work, you know,” she said, closing her eyes as she felt the waves of heat wash over her. “We can’t found a relationship on something as insubstantial as desire. As you said, we’re complete opposites.”
“We can start there.” His thumb was beneath her tongue, urging it to venture from her lips. “I feel a hell of a lot more than desire, but I can accept that from you and build on it.” He slowly lowered his head, his warm lips rubbing sensuously against her tongue. “I’ll try to make it so good for you, it won’t matter to you if you can’t feel anything deeper for me.” He inhaled deeply. “Now, hush. I want to kiss you, taste you.”
His lips closed slowly, carefully on hers, fitting and blending with a gentleness that was all the more moving for the leashed savagery she could sense beneath it. His breath was warm and minty. His tongue, as it licked teasingly at the corner of her mouth and then traced the fullness of her lower lip, was exquisitely arousing. He raised his head and drew a deep, shaky breath. “Do you know how often I’ve wanted to do that? How I’ve lain awake and wondered how you’d taste? How you’d feel? I’ve known your body so well over the years. I’ve handled you, held you in my arms, even made a parody of love to you on ice, but I’ve never felt you respond to me as a woman. Respond, Dany. Lord, I need that.” She could feel his heart thundering under the rough wool of his sweater as he drew her head to rest against it. “I want my hands on you,” he whispered into her hair. “Will you let me touch and learn you?”
Her heart jerked. “I don’t know.” It was all happening too swiftly. She felt as if she were drifting through a sensual dream. The warmth of the fire, the roughness of his sweater against her cheek, the scent of clean soap, the feel of him. How long had she wanted him to hold her like this and suppressed it into oblivion? It seemed as if it must have been a lifetime. Now he was here, not remote, not cold, wanting her. It was too much. “I think you’re right. I think I am afraid of you.”
“That’s why you should let me love you.” His hand was moving deftly in her hair, removing the pins that held her bun in place. “Then you’ll know there’s nothing to be afraid of. The last thing I want to do is hurt you.” Her auburn hair tumbled down her back in a shimmering cloud, and he threaded his hands through it with lazy sensuality. “I’m not going to rush you. I know what pressures you’re going to be under for the next month, and there’s no way I’m going to ask you for a final commitment until you’re clear of that.” One hand was beneath her hair, massaging the coiled tension at her nape. “We’re just going to learn each other’s bodies.” His lips touched her temple. “You’re going to find out how much I want you and you’re going to want me too.” His teeth nibbled at her ear. “You’re going to sleep naked in my arms so that you’ll know you belong to me as I belong to you. And that there’s no possibility of either one of us belonging to anyone else from now on.”
His teeth moved down to pull gently at her lower lip. “I wanted to wait but I couldn’t have you turning to Kowalt because I hadn’t shown you how sweet it’s always going to be between us.” His lips fastened hungrily on hers and he gave a groan deep in his throat as he kissed her with almost frantic urgency. His hands were suddenly on her hips, moving the thigh-length sweater up her body. He dragged his mouth from hers and pushed her body a little away, and then the sweater was over her head and tossed carelessly aside. He held her startled gaze with his own as his hands moved to the front clasp of her bra.
In the beige lace bra Dany was all soft gold and shimmering ruby in the firelight, her eyes dark with bewilderment and desire. Anthony’s hands were shaking slightly as he undid the clasp, and he drew a long, shuddering breath. Careful, he told himself. He had to be careful not to show her the need that was tearing him apart. He could feel himself harden and the muscles of his stomach clench painfully. He wanted to tear off her clothes, throw her on the floor, and bury himself in her. Damn, he wanted that. The thought of her legs curving around him, her body arching to him, her dark eyes staring up at him clouded with desire, was driving him berserk.
He’d been so sure he could keep control of the situation. His lips curved in a mirthless smile as he remembered how he’d assured her he wouldn’t ask for a final physical commitment. He knew she wasn’t ready for that yet. This was all too new and bewildering for her. He’d happily mutilate Kowalt for precipitating his plans. He’d wanted to wait. No, he’d felt it would be fairer to Dany to wait—wanting had nothing to do with it. He’d been in a blaze of heated need for Dany since that afternoon six years ago. Fourteen years old. Lord, he’d felt as shocked and disgusted with himself as if he’d actually taken her instead of sending her away. He’d tried to smother it beneath the tenderness and love he’d felt for her since the first moment he’d seen her, but every so often he’d feel a stab of desire so intense, it had been actual pain. He’d constantly reinforced his vigilance but he’d known it was there, just waiting to burst free. And was he supposed to keep that passion under control while he teased them both into a frenzy? He would have to if he hoped to block Kowalt from her mind and still leave her free. Hell, Anthony told himself, what was a little more torture after what he’d gone through for the past six years?
He parted the bra and slipped the straps slowly over her shoulders. Lord, she was beautiful. Small, but perfectly formed, her breasts tilting up perkily with the deep pink rosettes hardening even as he looked at her. Hardening for him. He could feel the swelling in his loins reach painful proportions as he watched her body flush and tauten, readying itself for his touch, his possession.
“Come to me,” he said thickly. “Please, Dany. I want to kiss them, love them.” He was drawing her from her knees onto his lap and he could see her eyes widen as she felt the evidence of his bold arousal against her. It didn’t frighten her though, thank heaven. It only caused her eyes to darken to midnight softness and her pulse to accelerate in the hollow of her throat. She was so responsive, Anthony thought. His eyes narrowed as he arched her up to rub those beautiful, sensitive breasts against the
rough wool of his sweater. She gave a little gasp, and he could feel her tense.
“No, don’t. It hurts.”
He froze, his gaze flying down to meet her eyes in surprise. He’d purposely kept the caress feather-light. “Hurts?”
“No.” She shook her head in confusion. “Not hurts. Burns. I don’t know. I can’t stand it.” She felt as if her heart were going to burst through her chest. How could she explain the wild, heated sensation that had flamed through her, sending out signals to every part of her body? Signals she didn’t understand. But Anthony understood. She could tell by the way his lips were curving tenderly as he looked down at her.
“Too rough?” he asked. “Let’s see if we can find them something softer to nestle against.” He pushed her away a little and swiftly pulled off his sweater and tossed it aside. He rapidly unbuttoned the black shirt beneath it. When it was completely unfastened, he paused. His eyes were glowing silver in the firelight as he urged her quietly, “Take it off me, Dany. Take what you want.”
Take what you want. The philosophy was easy for Anthony to expound. He’d always taken what he wanted from life with a bold incisiveness. But he wasn’t taking now; he was giving.
Her hands came hesitantly up to his shoulders and closed on the dark cotton of his shirt. She gave a shuddering sigh and her eyes closed as she slowly slid the shirt from his shoulders and down his arms. The hard tips of her breasts swung gently against his hair-roughened chest with the movement, and she heard Anthony’s harsh inhalation as her head sank to rest against him. His heart was thundering explosively against her ear, and she rubbed her cheek back and forth with the sensuousness of a cat. He smelled so good. Slightly spicy with a musk base that was all clean, virile male. She wanted to stay here forever just breathing in the fresh vitality of him. She ran her tongue over one hard male nipple. He tasted good too. Slightly salty, yet warm and smooth. Her lips pressed around the hard nub as she sucked gently, feeling a strange primitive enjoyment as the arched tenseness of his muscles increased tenfold.