The Thawing of Mara (16 page)

"My father started the company," Sin continued, pausing to sip his wine. "I inherited it from him when he passed away a few years ago."

The information didn't surprise her. Mara had suspected his wealth wasn't newly acquired. His indifference to the cost of things, this cottage for instance, indicated that he was accustomed to having what he wanted, regardless of the price.

She also guessed, "You took over the company and enlarged it?" He had too much drive to be content with the status quo of things.

Over the rim of his wineglass his blue eyes briefly met hers. "I have expanded it, yes," Sin admitted, but with the attitude that this was an unimportant fact.

The information she was receiving about him was being filed in a haphazard order and merely whetted her curiosity to know more. The food on her plate was being consumed without her being conscious of its delicious taste or quantity.

"Why did you spend Thanksgiving here? With your father gone, don't you have any other family?" Mara questioned.

"I have some cousins on the West Coast and an aunt and uncle, but no brothers or sisters. My mother died suddenly of a heart attack when I was in college." He seemed not to mind her personal questions. "If I'd stayed in Baltimore, Ginger, my cook, would have insisted on fixing a big dinner with all the trimmings. It would have been a total waste for one person. So instead I gave my staff the week off to spend the holidays with their own families, and came here." He glanced at her across the table, an attractive smile curving his well-defined mouth. "As it turned out, I had an excellently prepared Thanksgiving dinner anyway and the pleasure of Adam's company and yours."

Her pulse hammered slightly—whether from his smile or his reference to the pleasure he found in her company, she wasn't sure.

"What do you find to do here, besides jogging, I mean? Aren't you bored?" Mara took a sip of her wine, surprised to find more than half of it gone.

"I do a lot of thinking and planning, dictate correspondence and memos, and go over reports and balance sheets. Mostly I relax." Sin refilled her glass and his own. "Tonight, with you, will probably turn out to be one of the livelier evenings I've spent here."

The others must have been spent with Celene, Mara concluded. "Why don't you bring Miss Taylor here anymore?" she wondered aloud.

"Taken in small doses, Celene's company can be stimulating," he explained dryly. "But over a long period, her attractions begin to pall."

"Too many 'Sin, darlings'?" Mara intended it as a taunt, but it sounded more like a teasing exchange between friends.

"Something like that," Sin agreed, his lazy glance not revealing that he found anything unusual in her new tone. "How was your steak?"

"It was very good." She had eaten it all, not toying with it once from nervousness. "Where did you learn to cook?"

"I picked it up here and there, mostly by trial and error during college, It's a skill that comes in handy when a business meeting stretches until midnight. I don't have to wake anyone up to fix me a meal."

"Does that happen often?" Mara asked.

"Often enough." Sin finished his dinner and straightened from his chair. He took her plate, stacked it on top of his and set it on the sink counter. "Dessert is a plate of assorted fruits and cheeses. I thought we'd have it with the rest of the wine in the living room. I'll clear the table first."

"I'll help you," she volunteered.

"No." He refused her assistance flatly. "You wouldn't let me help you Thanksgiving, so you can't help me tonight. I'll just put them in the sink and wash them later."

His reminder had the desired effect of keeping Mara in her seat while he smoothly and efficiently cleared the table. In the interim, her self-consciousness returned and she felt stiff and ill at ease again. There was a rigidity to her carriage when she rose and carried her wineglass into the living room. Sin followed with the dessert plate and his own wineglass.

The dimness of the living room immediately enveloped Mara in a feeling of intimacy. The fire had died to red embers amid a bed of charcoal-gray ashes, almost the same color as Sin's hair. He set the dessert plate on the wood-inlaid surface of a small serving table in front of the davenport. Mara stood nervously to one side, the cozy atmosphere too much for her.

"Help yourself." Sin gestured toward the fruit and cheese and walked over to add wood to the fire.

Hesitantly Mara took a cube of cheese and nibbled at it. The empty cushions of the davenport were too inviting and the chairs seemed too pointedly isolated. So she remained standing, her shoes sinking into the lush pile of the alpaca rug, while Sin knelt in front of the hearth, poking the embers into flames around the new fuel. Amid all the questions she'd asked him, one came back to her now—the one he hadn't answered.

"About the cottage…" she began as she had before. "When will you be leaving?"

Sin didn't turn around. "When my lease expires next fall."

"But—"

"You signed the contract." He straightened as the fire flickered and blazed. "I expect you to honor the conditions it contains. You were the one who insisted on a year's lease," he reminded her.

"But I thought I was here to discuss when you would vacate." Mara completed the sentence she had begun earlier.

"We've discussed it and I've told you under what conditions I will be vacating the cottage," he replied calmly.

"You had no intention ever, of terminating the lease early, did you?" she accused in a chilling voice. "You only let me think you would."

"No, there was nothing to discuss as far as I was concerned, but you didn't come here about the cottage. You came because you didn't want to be considered a coward," Sin concluded without a trace of doubt.

"I'm not a coward!" Her fingers gripped the stem of her wineglass so tightly that it was in danger of snapping.

He turned his back to the fireplace, the flames crackling and popping over the bark of the new logs. He made no move toward her, although his gaze was on her.

"Adam and I talked a lot about that while you were washing dishes the other day. We talked about many things," he added.

"I can imagine the biased stories he told you," Mara returned bitterly.

"He explained to me how much his divorce from your mother had hurt you." His features were shadowed by the back light of the fire, but she felt the intensity of his gaze.

"Hurt me?" She was incredulous at the statement. "It crippled my mother. Did he neglect to mention that?"

"Don't you believe he cared?" Sin questioned.

"I believe in the fickleness of men," she retorted, and walked to the fireplace to stare into the tire's yellow flames licking hungrily over its wooden food.

"I first thought you'd built those invisible walls around you so people couldn't get close to you. I was half right," he observed. "You want to keep everybody away so they'll never be able to hurt you. You're determined not to care about people because they might leave you the way your father did."

"Don't you think that's wise?" Mara challenged, and took a sip of wine to show her indifference to his remarks.

"It may be wise, but it's hopelessly impossible." After sending her a sideways glance, Sin moved to stand behind her. "You can't roll all your emotions and feelings, passions and desires into a neat little bundle and stuff them in your hind pocket."

Mara hugged an arm across her stomach, trying to ward off her awareness of how close he was to her. She was conscious of the height and breadth of him and felt the warmth of his body, although no part of him was touching her.

"Even if you could," he continued, "your body is designed to perform certain biological functions that respond to outside stimuli." His hands curved onto her slender waist. When Mara tried to step away, their hold tightened. "It doesn't matter whether you want to feel the way I make you. It's a reaction of our two chemistries."

"Sexual attraction." She referred to the term he had used before, a breathlessness to her words.

"Yes. It doesn't do any good to fight it." He reached around her to take the wineglass from her unresisting fingers and set it on the mantelpiece.

She was drawn backward until her shoulders were against his chest and her hips felt his solidly muscled thighs. The outline of his hard male frame seemed to burn its impression into her. It started quicksilver fires that flamed through her limbs. His arms overlapped across the front of her stomach, his fingers spreading across her rib cage below her breasts. An aching tension twisted her stomach in knots.

Her hands crossed each other to seek his wrists. When they found them, she could only hold them in the same position. The thought of removing them had fled the minute her fingers felt the wisps of masculine hair growing on his arm. Her sensitive nerve ends vibrated with the sensual contact.

His head was bent toward hers, his jaw and chin brushing near her ear, his warm breath stirring the silken shortness of her dark hair. The scent of him was a mixture of wine and smoke and the heady fragrance of an elusive cologne. Her heart tripped wildly against her ribs. She closed her eyes against the quaking reaction of her senses to Sin, but the darkness only increased his potency.

"It's natural for my touch to excite you." His voice was pitched low, soothing in its warmth and disturbing in its huskiness. "It's a physical response that has nothing to do with what your mind wants. You have to learn to separate the two."

But the thought of him was dominating her mind, too. There wasn't room for anything else. He crowded into every nook of her being, dominating it until she could only shake her head in dazed protest.

"When will it stop?" she wanted to know.

"The only cure I know for sexual attraction is prolonged exposure." His mouth explored the side of her neck, sending delicious shivers over her sensitive skin. "Tonight can be the beginning of a series of experiments."

"Yes," Mara agreed, her voice hardly above a whisper.

Sin nuzzled her ear, his strong teeth gently nipping at the lobe. The caress unleashed a torrent of reactions. She melted against him, his outline more sharply defined against her curves. An arm was removed from around her as his mouth lingered near her ear, then moved away.

"Here's your wine," he said in a prompting voice.

In confusion, Mara blinked at the glass he held. She had no desire for wine, but he seemed to want her to take it. She took it from his hand to hold it unsteadily in her own. A second later Sin was bending and lifting her off her feet. Her arm automatically curved around his neck as he carried her effortlessly to the couch. There he sat down, cradling her on his lap.

"Drink up." His hand closed around her fingers holding the glass and moved it toward her lips. At her apprehensive look, a faint smile alleviated the firmness of his mouth. "Don't worry, I'm not trying to get you drunk. But the wine will help you relax."

His reasoning made sense. Mara knew a fine-boned tension was making her hold herself stiffly in his lap. She kept wondering if she was too heavy or if he was comfortable in this position.

With dark smoky blue eyes he watched her sip the wine. His fingers slid partially down her hand, his thumb rubbing the inside of her wrist and making exciting forays to her sensitive palm. When she lowered the glass from her mouth, his gaze studied her lips, faintly moist from the wine.

"We need to get you used to being touched and held first before we can graduate to other things," Sin told her huskily. The mantel clock chimed the quarter hour and Mara started guiltily, only to be restrained by his arm. "Do you see what I mean?" He gave her a lazy look filled with knowledge.

Leaning slightly forward, he reached for the dessert plate on the serving table and set it on the seat cushion beside them. Mara watched him separate a pale green grape from its cluster and offer it to her.

"Have a grape," he suggested. "It's the seedless variety, so you don't have to be concerned about how you're going to dispose of the seeds." He carried it to her lips and hesitantly she let him slide it into her mouth. The brush of his fingers evoked provocative thoughts. "Good?"

"Yes." But Mara was struggling with a whole new set of erotic sensations.

"Have another." This time Sin offered her the cluster so she could pluck her own grape.

At his insistence, Mara ate two more. When she took the fourth he set the cluster on the plate and captured her hand before she placed the grape in her mouth. Instead, he carried it to his own. Her fingers trembled as they touched his mouth to slide the grape inside. Her pulse raced madly through her veins from the sensuous implication of her actions.

After that the grapes were divided between them and Sin took sips from her wine. Once he kissed her, the taste of grapes and wine mingling together with their lips. Her position on his lap became more natural; in spite of its intimacy, she became more relaxed.

When the wine was gone, Sin put the glass and the dessert plate on the table. The emptiness of her hands made them feel useless until Sin found a purpose for them. He cupped one to his face, kissing the palm, then letting it slide along his jaw.

Her breath became choked off by the sudden tightening of her throat as his head slowly bent to hers. The kiss that followed was a leisurely exercise. Instead of Mara having to feel her way through her relative lack of experience, Sin was showing her the way.