She couldn't hide her expression from him; the bleak misery that filled every part of her mind and body as she acknowledged what he was saying.

Of course he wouldn't touch her again . he wouldn't have touched her at all if it hadn't been for Helene. Suddenly she was too miserable and exhausted to conceal the truth from him any longer.

She could not go on working for him feeling the way she did about him.

at this moment in time she simply didn't have the energy or the willpower to fabricate a suitable lie. Perhaps after all it was better to tell him the truth. After all he had never deliberately set out to hurt her. It was hardly his fault that he didn't want her love. How much easier everything would have been if there had simply been that one night between them. If they had never met again. But that wouldn't have stopped you loving him, an inner voice told her.

"Sarah, what is it?"

Wearily she told him.

"It isn't the fact that you touched me. Joss."

She shut her eyes as her throat closed on a tight ball of pain, and admitted huskily, "Far from it. It's the fact that you were using me as a subst.i.tute for Helene..."

There was no mistaking the quality of the stunned silence that followed her announcement. Joss sat up and grasped her arms, pulling her half upright and snapping on the bedside lamp so that he could see her properly.

"Say that again?" he commanded thickly.

Hesitantly Sarah did so, fascinated by the way his fingers tensed into her skin, his eyes closing as he tipped his head back and swallowed deeply.

When he spoke his voice was unfamiliar, thick and clogged with a rawness that made her own pain intensify.

"Like h.e.l.l! For G.o.d's sake, Sarah! I was making love to you quite simply because not to do, was driving me completely out of my mind...

You are driving me out of my mind," he underlined, shaking her and then before she could stop him dragging her into his arms, his mouth blindly searching for and finding her own.

He was kissing her . touching her like a man starved of any physical contact over a period of months rather than minutes, his mouth moving on hers with an absorbed intense hunger.

"I love you, Sarah... Surely you realise that?"

She felt the movement of his lips against her own, heard the words but could not take them in.

"Say something, dammit." He was shaking her again, or was it he who was shaking, his face drawn and strained, his eyes almost black, burning in a face suddenly gaunt with need.

"But how can you?" She was whispering the question, reaching out to touch his face with her fingers, registering the convulsive hunger with which he pressed them to his mouth, feeling the rapid thud of his heart beneath the palm she had placed against his body to support herself.

"But how can you love me? You never...1 thought you wanted to get rid of me that I would read more than you intended into what had happened between us ... and then there was Helene."

"A smoke screen who I used to stop myself from frightening you off..

and I admit, who I also used to try and make you feel jealous.

Helene has never meant anything to me, Sarah. She's shallow and vain.

the sort of woman who's more of a turn off than a turn on. "

"But that night at my flat when you stayed with me ... when I wanted you."

She saw the look of pain cross his face.

"Did you think I had rejected you?" He shook his head.

"You were so vulnerable that night, Sarah ... too vulnerable. I daren't risk taking what you were offering me in case you regretted it in the morning. Suddenly, tonight I was tired of playing games, Sarah, of holding off in case I frightened you away. Whether you're ready to hear this or not, it's too late...1 love you, Sarah...1 fell in love with you the moment I saw you at the ball. I couldn't believe what was happening to me. how I felt about you but you seemed to feel it, too..." He shook his head like a man coming out of a dream and Sarah felt her heart contract with love and joy.

"I told myself it was all too good to be true, that I was going headlong into danger, but my heart wouldn't listen," he told her wryly.

"You've no idea what it did to me when I woke up and found you gone."

His fingers traced the shape of her mouth.

"I.

wanted to put you through h.e.l.l for that. for the agony you caused me.

"But you didn't try to find me."

He didn't deny it.

"No... I'd already taken too much of an emotional beating to risk any more pain. You see, Sarah, when you came to me... gave yourself to me the way you did I thought it was because you shared my feelings...1 thought that when we made love we had established a rapport, a relationship, that went far beyond the merely physical. For the first time in my life I was experiencing the reality of love.. when I woke up and found you gone I knew that reality had only been an illusion.

Your very absence proclaimed more loudly than any amount of words, that you did not share my feelings ... that what for me had been a unique experience I wanted to treasure for the rest of my life, was for you something you wanted to put behind you and hide from."

"I had no idea you felt like that...1 thought I was just ... just a one-night stand."

He grimaced faintly.

"Thanks very much. Didn't I tell you at the time that I didn't go in for them? You hurt me, Sarah, and badly...1 was only just beginning to come to terms with what happened when I walked into Leichner & Holland and discovered--' The sitting there..."

"Mmm ... and obviously as embarra.s.sed and resentful as h.e.l.l to discover I was going to be a permanent feature of your working life.

I almost wanted to kill you when you told me why you'd made love with me', he admitted rawly, pain reflecting in his eyes for a moment as he stared down at her.

"I was twisting the truth for self-defence," Sarah admitted.

"Oh, Jane and I had talked about me protecting myself from David by taking a lover, but I would never have done it." She smiled mischievously up at him.

"I saw you before the ball you know...1 was shopping in town with Jane."

"And?"

"And quite unconsciously I wondered what you would be like as a lover...1 told myself it was because of what Jane and I had been discussing, but it was more than that... It was you. Joss," she admitted huskily, 'although I wasn't ready to admit with my mind then what my heart was telling me. It sounds so ridiculous, falling in love with a stranger. "

"Ridiculous.. and at times excruciatingly painful," Joss agreed wryly, 'but nevertheless a reality. "

"Yes. That's why I ran away ... why I left that morning. I woke up and looked at you and suddenly I was scared. I knew what we'd had wasn't enough.. but how could I believe you would feel about me as I did about you? For all I knew you might just have wanted a light-hearted affair, and I knew I couldn't have endured that ... it seemed safer simply to run."

"But now I've caught you."

"Yes." Her voice was a breathless tremor.

"And since you're my captive, you're mine to do with as I please..."

"Yes."