It ended in a clinch, her body pinned to his by a clamping arm, both of them breathing hard, chests heaving, eyes blazing with aggressive primal instincts. Spectators’ applause crashed around them. For several highly charged moments, Fletcher held her tight, his gaze simmering down to her panting mouth. Then his fingers dug into her waist and he swung her out of his embrace to face the crowd of people encircling the dance floor, still clapping and calling out, ‘Bravo!’
Somehow Tammy seized the presence of mind to drop into a curtsey as though she’d just given a professional performance. Fletcher instantly took his cue from her, bowing and waving her upright again.
‘More, more!’
It was Angelo calling out, clapping his hands over his head and grinning from ear to ear.
‘No! Enough!’ Tammy said decisively. What she felt with Fletcher Stanton was not a spectator sport. She turned to him, working her mouth into a coolly appreciative smile. ‘Thank you. I have to concede you did dance me off my feet. Please excuse me now.’
‘Cha-cha coming up,’ the DJ announced.
‘Tamalyn…’ It was a gruff, gut-wrenching demand for her to stay.
‘You brought a partner with you,’ she tersely reminded him as the music started up again.
‘And if I hadn’t?’ he parried—a strike below the belt, delivered with a tense air of recklessness that had Tammy hesitating, unsure if he was actually prepared to dump Heidi to be with her.
‘You made a choice. Deal with it,’ she shot at him.
Other dancers were moving onto the floor. She wriggled her hand free of his and dived between two couples, so churned up inside that escape was her only thought. Angelo was standing somewhere on the sideline. He had got her into this. He had to get her out.
Before she could reach him, an arm hooked around her waist and she was scooped hard against Fletcher’s side, forced to match steps with him as he virtually marched her away from everyone else, taking her towards the verandah at the opposite end of the restaurant to the courtyard—the verandah that overlooked the vineyard. The shock of his abrupt abduction turned her legs to jelly, her stomach to mush. Only her heart seemed to have any strength, hammering with an intensity that didn’t allow any sensible thought to enter her mind.
Out on the verandah, heading for the far end where the light from the restaurant didn’t reach, where no wedding guests could readily see them. Tammy sucked in the cool night air, an insistent thread of sanity telling her she had to say something, needing breath to do it. She couldn’t just let him carry her away like this.
‘What…what do you think you’re doing?’
As a protest it was hopelessly weak, her voice shaking from the tempest inside her…excitement, fear, anger, all speared through with a terrible yearning for Fletcher to say something that would make it possible for her to tell him about the baby, and give her hope that somehow everything could turn out right between them.
‘Taking what I want.’
He swung her into his embrace, slamming her against him, leaving no space for her to try to push away. His mouth crashed down on hers, intent on passionate plunder, and any idea of resistance collapsed in Tammy’s mind. The intimate invasion of his tongue triggered a wild outburst of need in her.
Heidi Bergman was totally forgotten. This man was hers. A primitive sense of possession seized her and her arms wound around his waist, hugging hard. He sucked on her lips. His tongue scoured her palate for every taste of her. And she did the same, months of hunger pouring into kiss after kiss. Her body strained even closer to his, wanting the power of his strong maleness to flow into her, exulting in the erection that was furrowing her stomach. His hands slid down the pit of her back, clutched the soft cheeks of her bottom, lifted her into a more sexual fit with him. She was aching for him.
His mouth broke from hers, words jerking out in rasping urgency. ‘We have to move from here. You must have a room.’
Her head whirled. A room…yes…but it was shared with Jennifer and Hannah. Were they likely to go there while the party was still raging? The door could be locked. They’d left the key hidden in a pot plant so any one of them could get in at any time. The fever in her blood demanded this time with him.
There was a flight of steps down to ground level at the end of the verandah. They could go without being seen, have the privacy needed. She unwound one arm from him to wave at the steps. ‘This way.’ And afterwards, when everything felt good between them—if it did—she would tell him about the baby. Their baby.
He swept her towards the steps in a rush of eagerness, then halted on the edge of the verandah, holding her back, his hand lifting to grip her chin, turn her face to his. His eyes warred between lust on fire and enforced restraint.
‘Tamalyn, are you still on the pill?’
Pill…the pill that hadn’t worked. ‘No. No, I’m not.’ She wasn’t yet prepared to say it was impossible to prevent a pregnancy that already existed.
‘Damn, damn, damn!’ he cursed in furious frustration, shaking his head in anguished denial. ‘I didn’t bring any protection, didn’t plan for this. Can’t take the risk.’
Of course not, flashed into her mind, a cold steely shaft of painful truth. A pregnancy would force him into a relationship that was not on his terms, burden him with a commitment he didn’t want. She’d been a fool to think, even for one moment, that having sex with him would change anything.
‘Better go back to Heidi,’ spilled out of her mouth on a wave of bitterness. ‘I bet she’s all geared up to take you on.’
She wrenched her chin out of his grip and stepped back, pushing his other arm away from her.
‘No, wait!’
He caught her hands, kneading her palms with his thumbs, clearly in some agitation of spirit. She faced him belligerently, her eyes demanding why she should wait. His jaw was clenched, his eyes stormy, his mouth no longer soft and sensual, lips drawn into a compressed line.
‘Heidi…’ he bit out. ‘She’s nothing to me, nor I to her. She’s the sister of my German colleague. In Sydney on some modelling job. It’s her first time in Australia. Hans asked me to call her, give her some back-up if she had any problems. I invited her to the wedding because I wanted to goad some reaction out of you, Tamalyn.’
‘What? By showing that I meant nothing to you?’
‘That’s what you’ve been doing to me,’ he flashed back at her. ‘And it’s a lie. We both know it’s a lie now, don’t we? You want me as much as I want you.’