Undone By His Touch

CHAPTER THREE

HE NO longer touched her, yet Chloe burned as if still pressed against him.

Shivers trembled down her spine. She had to lock her knees to stand firm. But nothing, not all her willpower, could prevent her dragging in the scent of citrus and man, spice and warm musk, that tickled her nostrils. Her gaze strayed to his half-naked form.

She’d never seen anyone like Declan Carstairs—his powerful, beautiful body and his larger-than-life aura. Unshaven, hard-jawed and scarred he looked more then ever like a pirate. The sort who thrived on danger and the pleasures of the flesh.

Chloe tried to recall Mark’s generous smile, the twinkle of encouragement in his hazel eyes and, to her horror, conjured only the weakest of images. Could she have forgotten in just six years? Or was Declan Carstairs clouding her thoughts? The idea appalled her.

Eyes wide, she retreated a step and put down her bucket of supplies, crossing her arms defensively.

‘Mr Carstairs? If there’s nothing else I really should be getting on.’

A flicker of movement stirred his features as if he’d only just recalled her presence. Why did he look so grim?

‘Actually there is something, Ms Daniels.’

He flexed his hands, drawing her gaze to the sinewy strength in his forearms.

What would it be like to be held by him? Not supported impersonally after bumping into each other, but embraced?

It felt like betrayal of her past even to wonder. Yet she couldn’t prevent the niggle of curiosity.

‘You were working here when my brother came to stay, weren’t you? While I was in China?’

Instantly alert, Chloe darted a look at his face.

‘Yes. I’d been here some time when he arrived.’ Anxiety jiggled inside. Just the mention of Adrian Carstairs gave her the jitters.

How could one brother fascinate and reawaken long-dormant female awareness when the other had left her cold?

‘Tell me, did he bring anyone to stay with him?’

She shook her head, remembering too late that Declan needed to hear her response. ‘No, he came alone.’

‘But there must have been visitors.’ Dark eyes fixed at a point near her mouth, as if focused on her words. She sensed an intensity in her employer she hadn’t encountered before, even when he’d quizzed her about confidentiality.

‘There were no overnight guests.’

‘But for a meal perhaps?’

‘No, not that I recall. Your brother ate alone.’

Except for the days he’d turned up in the big kitchen and insisted on sharing a meal with her.

At first Chloe had welcomed him. Then, when he had grown more intense—his gaze fixing on her hungrily, his moods unstable—she’d taken to eating early in her room or finding an excuse to be away at meal time.

But she couldn’t say that to his brother. There was nothing to be gained by sharing the fact Adrian Carstairs had made her life hell those last weeks. Declan had enough to deal with without her dumping that on him.

‘I see.’ Yet still he frowned, his brows bunched. ‘But it’s possible he had a visitor you didn’t know about?’

‘It’s possible,’ she said slowly. ‘Though not likely.’

Increasingly Adrian had spent his time within sight of her until she’d had to resort to subterfuge to escape him. She’d have been grateful then for visitors to distract him from his fixation on her.

‘He didn’t mention anyone?’ The urgency of her boss’s tone surprised her.

‘I … Not that I recall.’

‘I see.’ Declan’s head sank slowly, as if weighted. The vibrant energy that was so much part of him dimmed and she sensed despair.

Impulsively she lifted her hand to him, then let it drop. She could imagine his sharp rejection of unwanted sympathy.

‘I’m sorry I can’t help.’

His lips curved in a twist that might have passed for a smile if it weren’t for the grim lines creasing his cheek and pulling his scar tight.

‘No matter.’ He lifted a hand to thrust back a lock of dark hair from his brow. ‘But if you recall seeing a woman with gold hair—a friend of Adrian’s—you’ll let me know? I’m trying to contact her. It’s … important.’

‘Of course.’

Chloe frowned. Adrian had never mentioned a girlfriend. He’d seemed a loner.

‘Good.’ For a moment longer Declan stood, as if wanting to prolong conversation. Then he turned and paced stiffly away, arm out in front of him till he reached the hall door and disappeared towards his room.

‘I have a favour to ask.’

Chloe spun round to find her employer leaning against the doorjamb as if he’d been there for ages, watching her.

Her pulse accelerated. Though he clearly hadn’t been watching, she was unsettled by the notion he’d been there, listening to her potter in the kitchen, humming under her breath.

Yet even as the thought surfaced, she realised it wasn’t anxiety she felt. Not like when his brother had stalked her, silently watching with an intensity that had given her the creeps.

No, this was different—a spiralling drop of excitement that drew her skin tight and clenched her stomach muscles in awareness. It had everything to do with her inability to blot Declan Carstairs from her brain.

His charismatic presence had banished the last shadows of anxiety she’d felt about returning to Carinya.

At least now her dreams weren’t all nightmares, she admitted with a grimace. The last few nights she’d woken hot and shaken by vivid fantasies featuring Declan in glorious, nude detail. An insidious little tremor shot through her at the memory.

‘Yes, Mr Carstairs?’ She injected her tone with a brisk efficiency she was far from feeling.

He straightened and stepped into the room, turning to the sound of her voice.

‘I have a meeting in Sydney and I want to be rid of this beard.’ He lifted one hand ruminatively to his chin and Chloe heard the scratch of bristles.

For one insane moment she was tempted to lift her hand so they rasped against her palm. She could almost feel the rough pleasure of that tickle on her skin.

The realisation hit her like a hammer blow, robbing her of speech.

How had she grown so desperate for this man? Just imagining the scrape of his unshaven skin made her insides liquefy. How could that be? They weren’t friends or anything like lovers. She barely knew him! With Mark, desire had grown with liking, with love. By comparison this was a smash-and-grab raid on her senses.

‘David’s gone on ahead so I wondered if you’d oblige. I can just about get by with an electric razor but it’s pretty haphazard.’

‘Of course, Mr Carstairs. I’m happy to help. But I should warn you, I’ve never shaved anyone.’

‘Then I’ll be your first.’ His mouth widened in a slow smile that snagged her heart mid-beat. ‘A first for us both.’

Not once in these last weeks had he smiled at her properly. Chloe wished fervently he hadn’t decided to begin. She sagged against the worktop, her hand to the pulse trembling in her throat. Just as well he couldn’t see her.

Even blind and scarred the man was devastating. What would he be like if he set his mind to seducing a woman?

She should be grateful for his usually brusque manner. It was a buffer to what she guessed could be formidable charm. His rare smile set her heart hammering.

‘Shall we say my bathroom in five?’

Though she’d lived with Mark for almost a year, Chloe hadn’t realised how intimate shaving a man could be.

Standing between Declan’s splayed knees as he sat on the bathroom stool, jammed between the basin on her right and the wall at her back, she felt hemmed in. Not by the room, but by his proximity.

Her breathing shallowed as she slid the razor over his foamy cheek, too aware of the soft puff of his breath against her shirt and the heat of his legs around hers.

Her hand trembled and slowed.

‘Like this.’ His hand closed on hers, guiding her. She tried to concentrate on the shape of his jaw, the need to be careful. Yet her mind kept straying to the way his long fingers encircled hers.

‘Got it?’ His hand dropped and she sucked in a breath.

‘I think so.’ She cleaned the blade then made herself lean in, stoically ignoring his citrus scent and concentrating on the next stroke of the blade.

He sat statue-still and she told herself this would get easier. Except she made the mistake of looking into his eyes between strokes, intrigued to find they weren’t blank as expected. Even unseeing they fascinated her. Deepest brown, so dark they hinted at blackness, yet rayed at the centre with a rim of golden shards.

‘Chloe?’ The question in his voice focused her wandering thoughts.

‘Yes, Mr Carstairs?’ This time she dared to tilt his chin for better access, telling herself the faster she got this done the sooner he’d leave and she’d be alone, safe from these unsettling feelings.

‘Just checking,’ he murmured. ‘Given the circumstances, you can drop the “Mr Carstairs”. It sounds too formal when you’re holding a razor to my throat.’

Chloe rinsed off the razor and tilted his head further to the side, trying to ignore the fact his face was bare inches from her breasts. And that her nipples puckered flagrantly against the lace of her bra.

‘You are my employer,’ she protested, clinging to formality to counter the rising tide of utterly inappropriate feelings. She looked down, registering the way his jeans clung to solid, muscled thighs and felt a jab of longing deep in her belly.

‘So, if I don’t mind you calling me Declan, there’s no reason to refuse.’

Silently she shook her head and ventured another stroke down the hard line of his cheek. The scrape of the blade against his skin was curiously sensuous. There was something intriguing about revealing the strong contours of his face with each careful stroke.

‘Do it, Chloe.’ The words feathered the bare flesh above the top button of her shirt and a line of tingling fire ran from her tight breasts to her groin.

‘Sorry?’

‘Say my name.’

‘I really don’t think …’ It was stupid to refuse, but at some instinctive level she knew she’d be crossing into dangerous territory from which there’d be no retreat.

‘Are you contradicting me?’ His deep voice slid like silk across her skin.

‘Are you ordering me?’

She watched his mouth lift at one corner.

‘How did you get this job when you’re so unwilling to comply with reasonable requests?’

It was on the tip of her tongue to say that calling him Declan wasn’t reasonable. That it might reveal the pent-up longing she’d been trying so hard to repress, the very unprofessional thoughts she’d been able to hide only because he couldn’t see.

‘If that’s what you want,’ she said grudgingly.

‘I want.’

His eyes lowered. Did he realise he appeared to be looking straight at her breasts? Was that why a smile flickered at the corner of his mouth? She made to step back, only to find his thighs imprisoned her. A pulse of sensation throbbed low in her body.

‘As you wish.’

‘Out loud, Chloe.’

She drew a deep breath, telling herself she was making a mountain out of a molehill.

‘Declan.’

There. It was done. The word was easy and she sounded confident.

So why did she lick her lips as if she’d just tasted a forbidden delicacy? Why the jitter of excitement at the echo of his name on her tongue?

‘Good. Now, stop delaying. I know it must look appalling but it’s just dead skin.’

For a moment Chloe stared, uncomprehending. Then finally she realised. His scar. She’d stopped before shaving there. He thought she was wary of touching it.

Carefully she rinsed the razor.

‘It doesn’t look appalling.’ The words emerged, a hoarse whisper, before she knew they’d even formulated in her mind.

‘Don’t give me that!’ The lingering trace of amusement died and his lips thinned in a cruel, hard line. ‘I don’t need lies to keep me sweet. I know I look like the very devil.’

‘No.’ The choked protest welled from her.

That long, mobile mouth twisted in a sneer. ‘No?’ His nostrils flared as he dragged in a breath that pumped his whole torso. ‘Then what, pray tell, does it look like?’ Cynicism skeined through his words like silk.

The venom, the strength of his anger, was a vibrant, living force, pulsing from him in waves. Instinctively Chloe stepped back, or tried to. His thighs, iron-hard and unmoveable, trapped her. Something hot twisted low in her belly.

‘Come on, Chloe,’ he taunted. ‘I deserve to know.’

Her mouth flattened at his baiting tone, even as she realised his fury stemmed from issues that had nothing to do with her. That he was still coming to grips with the legacy of the accident that had blinded him.

‘I didn’t say it’s beautiful.’

‘Ah, at last, something like the truth!’

Her hands fisted as she stared down into his grim face. ‘But it’s not as bad as you think. It gives you … character.’

No way could she be frank enough to add that the way it followed the natural line of his cheek complemented his strong features. Or that she’d come to appreciate the asymmetrical cast of his face that saved it from being too dauntingly perfect.

It made him look dangerous and sexy and far too intriguing.

‘Character!’ A jeering laugh burst from his lips. ‘That’s a good one.’

‘It’s true.’ The fire inside, the heat of unwanted arousal, twisted and morphed into a dangerous mix of distress and anger.

He shook his head, his hands clamping on his thighs as if to restrain himself from pushing her aside and shooting to his feet.

‘I do not need your sympathy.’ Each glacial word dropped with the pinpoint accuracy of a precision bomb, designed with lethal intent.

A shiver sped up Chloe’s spine and her skin iced. She hunched her shoulders.

‘No, but you need to stop feeling so sorry for yourself.’

The words burst into echoing silence.

The razor clattered, unheeded, into the sink and Chloe found herself standing, arms akimbo, staring furiously down into eyes that darkened to ebony. A pulse jumped at his temple and the air throbbed with a surge of dangerous power.

Silence stretched till her nerves were taut with expectation. She couldn’t believe she’d answered back that way. He was her boss. The man who paid her wages.

Yet she cared about him. Cared enough, it seemed, to risk the sack to tell him the truth.

The unnerving realisation froze her while the ramifications played out in her mind.

Abruptly he raised his hand, fumbling in front of him till long fingers touched her hip. She told herself she imagined the imprint burning through her skirt. But she didn’t imagine the burst of heat when his fingers found hers, locking them hard and tight in his hold.

He yanked her hand to his face, to the point beside his eye where the scar ended.

A tremor hit her as he pressed her finger on the damaged flesh so she felt the ridge of healed tissue. But her overwhelming impression was of heat and excitement—an illicit thrill that skirled in her abdomen, clenching muscles.

Slowly, oh so slowly, he dragged her hand down, her fingers to the scar, her hand dwarfed by his.

Through the shaving cream, centimetre by centimetre the skin-to-skin contact continued. It was a punishment, a challenge, yet to Chloe it had the force of a caress. Potent, provocative, drawing out hidden longings and exposing them, raw and unvarnished, to the light of day.

His warm skin scent was inside her; his heat infused hers. The prison of his long legs evoked a delicious, terrible thrill she fought and failed to conquer.

Now her hand was beside his mouth, pressed there, feeling the supple skin stretch as he spoke.

‘You have the gall to call that character?’

She opened her mouth but before she could speak he dragged her hand away. A blob of shaving cream fell from their joined fingers.

Did he know he held her so tight that the sensation bordered on pain?

‘Or this?’ He slammed her hand, palm down on his thigh, right up near his hip.

Chloe’s heart galloped high in her chest as she looked at her fingers splayed under his, moulding the wide muscle of his upper leg. Her breath came in raw, shallow gasps at the intensity of the contact.

At his fury. His frustration. Her regret, sorrow and still, through it all, the unrepentant hum of sexual energy that furred her nape and drew her breasts tight and full and heavy.

Under his guidance her hand slid down over soft denim that covered hot flesh and uneven scar-tissue.

The wound was long and jagged.

‘What would you call that, Chloe?’ The jeering note had faded from his voice, replaced by a weariness that betrayed the effort it took to face the world as if it was his for the taking.

These last weeks she’d marvelled at his confidence, his ability to adapt within mere months to his life-changing injuries. His ability to stride without pause through the open French windows of the study, unerringly cross the flagstones and dive without hesitation into the pool. To run a multi-national company despite his impairment.

He even had time to parry and riposte verbally whenever their paths crossed, as if drawing her into conflict was a challenge that afforded him pleasure.

Now, feeling the tremors running through his thigh, the fierce clench of his hand, she glimpsed a fraction of what it cost him to appear in control.

Her heart missed a beat as another protective layer crumbled. Soon there’d be nothing left to keep her safe.

‘Well, Chloe?’ His voice dropped low, reverberating right through her. ‘Is that full of character too? Should I be grateful for the accident that blinded me?’

‘Maybe it sounds trite, but there are lots of people worse off than you.’ Chloe drew a slow breath, refusing to be cowed by his anger. ‘You have your health. You’re mobile. You have the satisfaction of running your own business. You have enough money to live in comfort. Millions of others aren’t that lucky.’

She spoke from experience. Her own foster father, Ted, had been an active, energetic man whom nothing could daunt. Now, still grieving the loss of his wife, he was confined to a rehabilitation clinic, recuperating slowly from the stroke that had immobilised one side of his body and robbed him of speech. And then there was Mark. His death at twenty-two had been fate at its cruellest.

‘You’re right,’ he snapped. ‘It does sound trite.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Not for speaking the truth, but that he obviously wasn’t ready to hear it.

His sightless eyes glittered with barely leashed emotion.

‘Do you have any idea how infuriating it is to be lectured about looking on the bright side? About how lucky I am? To have false hope of recovery held out like a holy grail?’

‘No.’ She stood stiffly.

‘No.’ His expression was grim. ‘How could you know?’

Abruptly he stood, making her shuffle a half-step into the corner to give him room. Still, he held her hand and she wondered if he’d forgotten it.

But then, with a sudden, unerring accuracy, he lifted their joined hands to her cheek. Together they stroked the contour of her cheekbone and her skin came alive at the incredible intimacy of their joined touch.

‘You’re whole,’ he said, so low it was like a vibration rather than a sound. ‘Your life hasn’t turned upside down so that everything you took for granted—everything—is now exponentially more difficult if not downright impossible.’

Their hands traced down to the corner of her mouth and a ripple of awareness shook her.

‘You’re not dogged by regret over what you couldn’t do, that you failed the one person who above all relied on you.’

He was talking about Adrian, she realised, and her heart squeezed. She wanted to tell him she knew the guilt that came with loss. She’d spent so long bedevilled by guilt because she hadn’t recognised the signs of meningitis early enough to save Mark.

But it was too soon for Declan to listen to reason. His fury was too fresh, too raw.

Perhaps she shouldn’t have stood up to him. He was still coming to grips with his changed lifestyle and his loss.

Suddenly he loosened his hold and let her hand fall. It tingled as blood rushed back.

Yet he didn’t move away. His tall frame crowded her into the corner, making her acutely aware of how her wayward body responded to him. Even tipping her head up to look into his face shot a tiny thrill through her.

He was her employer. Feelings of this sort were totally inappropriate.

That didn’t stop anticipation swirling through her.

His hand settled on her face, fingers spreading to mould her jaw.

Chloe sucked in a startled breath as he slid his hand over her, cupping her chin and circling her cheek almost as if he could picture her face through touch.

Each stroke reinforced the urgent, eager need for more. It was all she could do to stand still, not tilt her head into his hand.

Her response scared her.

With Mark there’d been fun, shared joy, respect. She couldn’t remember anything like the visceral urgency she felt when Declan Carstairs merely brushed his hand over her skin in the questing gesture of a blind man.

‘How old are you, Chloe Daniels?’ His voice hit that low, rich note that made something curl inside her.

‘Twenty-seven.’ She straightened and tilted her chin higher, only to find his hand dropping to her throat as if she’d invited his feather-light caress there.

Had she?

Whorls of lazy heat eddied at his touch and her head eased back.

She gulped, desperately trying to regain her composure. ‘How old are you?’

Long fingers stroked her lips, cajoling her into silence.

‘Thirty-four.’ His head tipped towards her as if, even blind, it was important that he look her in the eyes.

‘Thirty-four, blind and scarred. Not the man I was.’

His voice was an indictment, as if he saw himself as less a man than before.

He leaned towards her and her breath caught.

‘And you, Chloe, are smooth and young and unscarred.’ He paused while his hand traced her nose and returned with heart-stopping intent to her mouth. Her lips felt swollen and pulsing, as if waiting for more than the touch of his hand.

Fire sparked in her veins and she found herself straining towards him.

‘You’re whole,’ he murmured. ‘And I’m …’

He shook his head, his mouth grim, even as he framed her face with his fingers, letting them slide through her hair. Tremulous delight filled her at his gentle massaging pressure.

Then, with an abruptness that floored her, his hands dropped and he stepped back, his shoulders stiff, his face a forbidding mask not even the smear of shaving cream could humanise.

‘I don’t want you here.’

The statement, so simple, so unambiguous, stuck in her dazed mind as if he spoke in a foreign tongue.

When she didn’t move, his brow pleated in a ferocious scowl. His hands curled into tight fists.

‘Get out of here, Chloe.’ Words spat from him like bullets. ‘Now!’

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