“I’m not through with you,” Beaumont Tillson growled. His large hand shot out to grab Rachel’s wrist, knocking the covering pocketbook away from her face.
The rain trickled down through the separated strands of his sun-streaked hair and into fine, straight dark brows. Rachel caught the full impact of his narrowed glittering look as he bent his head to her.
“I haven’t got time to fool with you, lady.” Drops of water hung suspended in tangled dark lashes. “Three hundred dollars is my offer. You can sign a waiver when I give you the money that you won’t use my road.”
Was he mad? Rachel wondered. Truly crazy? At the moment he looked it. “G-get out of my way,” she said, her voice quavering. She carefully did not try to wrench her hand free from the hard grip that imprisoned it. In the rain, through the wetness of their soaked clothing, she was aware of the sharpened scent of the man’s body, his hair, the soapy aroma of clean male skin. Rachel’s nerves jumped. He was much too close, holding her, threatening her, when all she wanted was to get to her car. “What are you doing?” she cried. “Let go of me!”
His eyes dropped to her soft, partly opened lips. “Why don’t you go back where you came from,” he muttered, “and leave me alone?” A long moment passed, and then the look lifted to her eyes. “You’re causing me a lot of trouble, lady, and I haven’t got time to fool with you. I’m offering you three hundred dollars.”
“That’s idiotic,” Rachel cried. The long hard shape of his thighs were pressed against her; his lower body left a distracting imprint on her own. She was suddenly and incongruously aware of the picture they must make to anyone passing by—a tall man in a soaked business suit and an equally wet young woman trying to shield her head with a pocketbook, pressed tightly together for all the world like lovers having some sort of quarrel.
She tried to break away from him. “You must talk to Pembroke Screven, the lawyer. Call him and make an appointment!”
With an infuriated movement he jammed her tightly against him, crushing her struggles. “Listen, do you think this whole thing is some sort of joke?” His other hand grabbed Rachel’s throat, long fingers holding her easily. That jeweled look was only inches from hers. “I can’t have a public road into Belle Haven—it’s an open door to any developer that wants to get in. Damn, are you listening?”
Rachel stood frozen, her face gone white, the dark velvet of her eyes deepened and wide. Pembroke Screven could deny all he wished that this man was not violent, nor dangerous, but the feel of that angry grip on her throat and the glitter of frustrated fury on that handsome face told her otherwise. The pressure of his hard fingers dug into her soft skin; when she swallowed they seemed to dig against her windpipe, making a growing buzzing in her ears. It occurred to her that he didn’t know how tightly he was holding her. A strange, floating stillness enveloped them, enclosed by the thrumming rain.
“Hell,” she heard him say. His fingers quickly released her throat. His arm still held her tightly, his head bent. Rachel had a blurred glimpse of satiny skin over hard cheekbones, the thick fringe of dark lashes lowering, the sensuous, curving mouth too close. His breath brushed her lips. “Hell,” the husky voice murmured, “why not?”
Beau Tillson’s mouth closed over hers.
It was a seizure by warm, masculine lips that punished, that dominated her mouth with almost reflexive expertise. He moved into her startled gasp quickly, his tongue thrusting deep into her mouth to overwhelm any resistance. Rachel went rigid under the sensuous onslaught. This man had kissed too many women; it was a trick, she realized with a rush of blind shock. A joke. It ravished without ardor, almost scornfully assured of success. And, she found, she was not immune; her knees actually
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