Hold Back the Night (6 page)

'I know perfectly well who you are,' Sander sliced in. 'You'd be surprised how fast it got around that Le Basque's little lovebrat was living in the house.'

Domini gasped. In all her life no one had talked to her like that! Instantly her chin lifted, challenging him. 'I'm proud of my ancestry,' she flashed, trembling. 'Can you say the same of yours?'

For a brief moment his dark eyes silvered with building anger, Domini's first sight of the phenomenon. And then to her astonishment he threw his fine dark head back and laughed, long and uproariously. She made fists of her fingers, raging inside. People didn't laugh at her like that!

Sobering, but with his dark sardonic eyes still mocking her, he said, 'You're perfectly right, we are from different sides of the track. I grew up in genteel poverty ... which is a polite way of saying a slum.'

From what she had heard about slums, Domini could believe that he had. He was hot-tempered, mercurial, and aggressive, and she didn't like him at all. Injured by his mockery, she was still glaring at him angrily when he made a sweeping gesture at his sculptures. 'Be my guest,' he said, 'I'm afraid most of my work is at the dealer's. Not selling yet, I'm sorry to say ... , ' he sets too stiff a price on the stuff. 'That's why I'm anxious to get at this commission.'

'I think I just changed my mind,' Domini replied tautly. 'I don't want to see after all.'

She rounded on her heel to go, but Sander was too fast for her. He moved like a panther on his bare feet, and his arm shot out to bar her way. 'Oh, no you don't,' he ordered coolly. 'Now that you're in the door you can damn well stay.'

'I don't want to see your work!'

'Ah, but I want to see you.'

His hands closed over her unclad upper arms, the grip light but firm. Domini started to pull back and then stopped, her eyes widening, her anger evaporating as swiftly as it had appeared. His palms were callused, his fingers rough with incessant exposure to hammer and chisel. They were the hands of a day labourer and yet they were not, for the fingers were long and strong and sensitive, the hold of the palms light but persuasive on her flesh, like fine sandpaper grazing over satin. His touch was a new experience, and not an unpleasant one. Little tingles started to travel along her bare arm?

He pulled her to the best-lit part of the shed, the place occupied by the big marble block. Without hurting her he held her against it, pinning her there with those powerful hands. She didn't try to protest. The male scent of him filled her nostrils, causing an intense exhilaration Domini did not at once understand; the closest sensation she could remember had been caused by a particularly wild storm in the mountains, terrifying and thrilling all at once.

'I couldn't see you too well in the doorway, with the sun behind you. I'm curious to know if the famous Didi lives up to her father's vision.'

No instinct told her to resist now, any more than she had resisted the excitement of that long-ago storm in the Pyrenees, which she had watched from her window with dancing eyes. When his hand came up to twine lightly in her hair, she didn't cry out. When he tilted her head to the light, resting it against the marble block, she permitted it although the bend of her throat was sacrificial. Fearless, she gazed up into his probing eyes, filled with a wonder beyond telling.

For now she understood. She had read enough and heard enough and seen enough, and it only surprised her that she had not understood at once. In her youth her father had never tried to protect her from the knowledge of why he kept a mistress to warm his bed, nor from the sight of mating animals, common enough in the open, mountainous countryside where walls hid no secrets. It was perfectly right, perfectly natural that she should thrill to the touch and the smell and the heat of a man. In body Domini was an innocent, but in her heart she was a pagan.

'Extraordinary,' he breathed.

He was hardly making bodily contact at all, only that hand twisted in her hair and one palm against her shoulder, resting against the thin cotton. And yet she could feel the male textures of him as if they touched her ... the stretch of tendons, the roughness of chest hair dampened by exertion, the firmness of flesh, the scratch of denim that didn't quite connect with her thinly clad thighs. She quivered to close the gap.

'Why, you're still a child,' he murmured half in wonder, as if speaking to himself.

She tensed slightly for the first time but made no move to struggle, and the directness of her gaze shifted only in that it returned to his eyes. She had been feasting on the shape of his mouth, exulting in its firmness and virility, dwelling on a particular curve of lip that she imagined would be hard and soft and sensuous all at once. She wondered what he tasted like. 'I'm eighteen,' she said levelly. 'I'm not a girl, I'm a woman.' Her blood sang with triumph because it was so.

He smiled and freed her shoulder, but his right hand remained very lightly laced in her hair because he was not through with his inspection yet. She wished his fingers were stroking her scalp or her temples or her eyelids.

'I was speaking relatively,' he returned in a dry voice. 'When you reach the ancient age of thirty, as I have, you'll know what I mean. Anyway, I wasn't speaking of age, I was speaking of something else. Call it purity. Innocence. Lack of worldliness. Lack of fear. That total trust ... although God knows why you trust a perfect stranger like me. You shouldn't trust men at all. Do you know, I believe I could free your hair and you wouldn't even move away?'

But his hand remained where it was, as though he were reluctant to end the light contact, while his gaze dropped to her mouth. Intuitive in her reactions, Domini knew instinctively that he was wondering about the texture and taste of it, just as she had wondered about his. Her head and her back and her bare arms still rested against the unyielding marble and that was part of the excitement rising in her, because her skin had grown very heated despite its pervasive chill. She had wondered sometimes if she was going to have a passionate nature; now she knew. She moistened her lips.

'Please make love to me,' she whispered simply, certain that he must want such a thing as surely as she did.

He reacted as if she had slapped him, jerking away swiftly and forcefully. He stared at her disbelievingly and swore softly in English, some raw, explicit words he probably thought she couldn't understand. She had heard them before and wasn't shocked. Then he returned to French. 'My mind must be playing tricks,' he muttered,. 'You can't mean that.'

'But I do,' she smiled. 'Please make ... '

'Don't bother repeating yourself!' he thundered. He was truly angry, even angrier than he had been at first, his brows drawn together in rage and his eyes glittering with an unholy light that seemed out of all proportion to Domini. What she had asked for was very simple, wasn't it? He did it all the time.

'I don't know why you're so angry,' she said, honestly puzzled. Papa had always been very direct about such things with his mistresses, even in Domini's presence. 'Come, we make love,' he would say to his companion of the moment, and Domini would be left to play alone for a time. Making love was as natural as breathing, as laughing, as running in the rain. 'You should feel complimented,' she added. 'I wouldn't want to have sex with just anybody.'

'Good God.' With a short harsh laugh that held no amusement, Sander cast his eyes skyward towards the block and tackle and rubbed a hand around the back of his neck. Then he looked back at Domini, less enraged than before but no more encouraging in his mien. 'You're a virgin,' he said tightly. 'And don't bother denying it, because I'm as sure of that as if I'd tested the evidence with my own hand. When I said you were a child, that is the precise thing I had in mind ... your virginity. You are a child:

'Is that all that's stopping you?' she said, her expression sombre. She was a little hurt by his rejection, but she could still see no reason to be ashamed of her directness. 'I can't be a virgin forever,' she pointed out with great reasonableness. Even Papa had told her that.

'You can as far as I'm concerned,' he gritted through his teeth, the words barely audible.

'Or is it just because you made love to Nicole last night?' she asked seriously. 'I heard you, you know. I always hear you.'

He looked shaken by that, so she added, 'Well, not the words or anything, just the bed. I can't help it, I have the bedroom directly below.'

'Mother of God,' he muttered, staring.

'You haven't promised to marry her, have you?' Domini asked anxiously. 'If I thought so, I'd never have made the suggestion. The other boarders told me you were just having an affair, and the landlady mentioned you'd had several mistresses before Nicole. It made me think you must be very good at making love.'

Sander groaned to his depths and swivelled on his heel, putting his back to her and moving another step away in one single fluid movement. Then he flexed his shoulder muscles deeply as if to ease stress, a slow, effortless motion that only accentuated their power and male grace and made Domini feel sure he wasn't quite as immune as he pretended. Nor did she think there were any promises between Sander and Nicole, who often flirted with other boarders in the house.

'I'd like to be taught by you,' Domini said. With that she stepped forward and touched him lightly on the shoulder, a contact that caused a cataclysmic chain reaction. He started violently, shoulder blades springing backward as if she had scalded him, and rounded on her like lightning. Enraged, he swept her towards the door.

'Out!' he roared. 'Out! And don't come back, or I'll spank your backside till it burns!'

The next day, when they happened to meet in the hall outside her bedroom, he stopped long enough to exchange a brief, reserved greeting. 'I'm not always so angry when people walk in on my work,' he said. 'But the first cut is the worst. Another time, I might not even have noticed you.'

Encouraged, Domini smiled, the engaging, eager smile that her father's paintings had captured so often. 'Does that mean you're not angry at me now?'

'No, I'm not angry. I've been thinking about it. I realize you meant no harm.' His expression eased marginally, returning some of the warmth in Domini's. 'In fact, if you want, you can come out to the shed this morning and have a look at those sculptures. It's a little messier today ... chips and marble dust all over the place. But you're welcome, if you want to see.'

'I've been thinking about it too,' sighed Domini. 'I realize I made a bad mistake yesterday.'

Sander looked definitely relieved. 'We all make mistakes.' He shrugged.

'Can you come into my room for a minute? I want to show you something.'

He looked briefly taken aback but then smiled in quite friendly fashion. 'I'll give you one minute,' he agreed, stepping in at Domini's invitation. 'That's all I can spare. Nicole is waiting for me in the shed.'

Sander walked into the room. Evidently assuming that she was about to show him some of her work, he strolled over towards an easel where one of Domini's watercolours rested. Domini closed the door, leaning on it so he could not leave until his minute was up. At once she started to unbutton the shirt that topped her casual jeans, hurrying because she had so little time. She had been taught no false modesty, but all the same her fingers trembled a little and she was biting her lower lip with nervousness as she looked down to negotiate the fastenings. Would he like what he saw?

'What in God's name are you doing!' Sander exploded. He had turned, and his eyes were riveted by the sight of Domini's young breasts. She had thrown the top aside and was starting to unzip her jeans.

'I'm showing myself to you,' she said, her hands pausing in their task. Troubled, she gazed at the black fury blazing out of those eyes, the silver pinpoints of anger fastened on the soft curves she had revealed. What had made his mouth turn so grim this time?

'I realized I should have shown you before,' she said hesitantly. Her heart was palpitating in extraordinary fashion. She had not expected to be embarrassed by a man's eyes sweeping her like that, but she was, and embarrassment was a new sensation for her. But she didn't try to cover herself, because Papa had often told her she should never be ashamed of her body. 'I knew I'd made a terrible mistake yesterday,' she went on helplessly. 'I should have let you see, before I asked. That's why I'm undressing now.'

'The hell you are,' he snapped. He reached to the floor, snatched up Domini's garment, and flung it at her. 'Now put that top back on, and thank your stars that I'm not whaling the daylights out of you. And don't go around displaying yourself in front of other men either!'

'I wouldn't,' she said, dismayed and hurt. Nervous now, she held the shirt against her young breasts, sure they had not met with his favour. 'But I thought . . . well, Papa always used to choose new women by looking at them first. His models have been undressing for him as long as I can remember, even Berenice. I thought you might change your mind if ...'

'I'm not in the market,' Sander interrupted, his voice brutal. 'I make love when I choose, and I don't choose to make love to a muddle-headed teenager who doesn't even know the meaning of the word no! Hasn't anyone ever told you it's the man who does the asking?'

'I thought . . .' Domini swallowed, bewildered. 'Well, I've read about women's lib. Nobody told me it was wrong. In fact, I thought it was the thing to do nowadays.'

Sander muttered under his breath, hooked his thumbs into his hip pockets in a gesture of resignation, and said wearily, 'Will you please move aside? And don't bother coming to see my work. Obviously you're not safe to have around!'