Page 41 of Once an Angel
the dead." Her voice was as brittle as her stance as she swung around to face him. "Where are your followers? I expected you'd be trailed by a veritable parade of blind men and paralytics."
Her mocking tone stung him less than the depth of her emotion. It was not a child's petulance he read in her darkened eyes, but the anguish of a woman.
He stretched out his hand, no longer able to keep from touching her. She recoiled visibly and his fingers slowly curled into his palm.
He fought to keep his voice steady. "You're not the only woman to flee to this country to escape an intolerable past. If someone has hurt you ... if a man has hurt you . . . ?"
Justin's compassion stabbed Emily like a blade. She wanted to scream, "You! You've hurt me!" but the words were locked inside some dark, secret place.
Her gaze raked him with all the cool contempt she could muster. "I'm not like them. You're not my savior. I'm not compelled to spill my sins to the mighty Pakeha."
He stepped back, and she suddenly knew what made his face so compelling. His features came alive
with every emotion. Even pain. A desperate need to comfort him flooded her. Fighting it, she struck
out like a wounded animal.
"What is it, Mr. Connor? Haven't I put you high enough on my pedestal?" She stalked him, spurred by some dangerous need to move him, to elicit some reaction that would prove he was no marble saint, but only a flawed creature like herself. "You enjoy their adoration, don't you? It must be very gratifying for
a man like you."
A moment earlier she wouldn't have thought it possible, but his face had closed now, gone as immobile
as a Maori totem. His words were clipped. "What sort of man might that be, Emily?"
"Patron to valets. Friend to lizards." She drew the crimson flower from her hair and ran it up his muscular arm, tracing teasing swirls on his sun-heated skin. "Is that what you want from me? Blind adoration?"
His body was rigid with tension, but the uneven rhythm of his breathing warned her she had affected him.
Tilting her face to his, she rubbed against him with a boldness that would have shamed a feline. "Shall
I fall on my knees and wash your feet with my tears?"
Emily was mocking him. Mocking his faith and his life. And all Justin could think of was the kittenish softness of her breasts pressed against his chest. He wanted to free them from their thin band of calico,
to feel their lush curves brand his skin with their naked splendor, to stroke their coral tips to aching fruition with his fingertips. The velvety petals of the bloom opened against his skin just as her lips might open to his tongue's invasion, her body to his fierce possession.
She must be truly mad to taunt him in such isolation. His senses sang with the relentless rhythm of the sea. How easy it would be to push her down on the bed of sand and take her without any of the niceties society demanded.
He wrapped one arm around her and pulled her crudely and deliberately into the cradle of his thighs.
Emily hung in his embrace, her courage melting in the heat of his wary, smoldering gaze. Somehow he had seized the moment and made it his own. She trembled with a primitive fever, but still she met his gaze squarely, refusing to lower her lashes, refusing to shy away from his blatant need.
He pressed against her, moving, seeking, showing her without words how easy it would be for the contours of their bodies to mold into one. He was marble, yes, but molten marble, not cool and distant, but hot and seething. He was not a saint, but a man. All man.
"Which of your foolish lads taught you to play such a dangerous game?" he asked.
"You don't like danger, do you, Mr. Connor?"
"I don't like games."
As she gazed deep into his eyes, his pupils seemed to swirl in a sea of amber. Her need. His power.
Her temptation. His challenge. Emily dropped her head back, going light-headed with fear.
He caught her by the shoulders, his face darkened with emotion. "I never asked you to worship me, Emily. All I wanted from you was a little common courtesy."
He thrust her away from him and strode down the beach. Emily knew he was lying. He wanted her. Badly. And that was one weapon she'd never thought to hold. Shaken, she sank down in the sand and watched the encroaching tide crumble her castle.
