Uncaged by Lucy Gordon Read Free Book Online Page A

excuse and got out, almost running to his own room. There he shut the door firmly and sat down on the bed, trying to stop himself from shaking. He stayed that way for a while, then went downstairs, hoping that a snack might restore his sense of proportion. But that didn’t work, either.
    He was thunderstruck, shattered by the unexpectedness of the moment and what it had done to him. It had been so fast, leaving him no time to steel himself against it.
    Until now it had never occurred to him to see Megan as a sexual being. He’d loved his wife deeply, and her brutal death had numbed him to all normal instincts and sensations, so that for the past three years he hadn’t desired any woman. He’d vaguely assumed that this would continue.
    In one blinding instant everything had changed, not because he’d seen Megan’s naked breasts, but because she’d hastened to cover them. That instinctive movement had betrayed an awareness of herself as a woman in the presence of a man, and by rejecting the possibility of sexuality between them, she had, paradoxically, made him conscious of it.
    Memories and impressions crowded in on him: the sight of her in the park, her thin, sodden nightgown clinging to her; the feel of her near naked body in his arms as he’d carried her to the car; the sight of her pale, smooth flesh as he’d stripped off the nightgown and dried her. All these things had seemed to pass him by, leaving him free to act impersonally. But in fact they’d been lying in wait until the moment he was ready to recognize them. Now that moment had arrived, and suddenly there they were, running on feet as soft and silent as a tiger’s, to spring at him out of the darkness. His senses were pervaded by her, possessed by her. His flesh seemed to sing with the memory of her. Every encounter had imprinted itself on his subconscious, waiting to be played back later with such vividness that it was like living them all over again.
    He could almost have laughed out loud at the irony. It was a disaster, a hilarious disaster: a black, bitter joke against him. Was there a woman in the world who hated him more? Did he have a more relentless enemy? How crazy for him to become so blazingly aware of her! How ridiculous for his loins to ache for her, his heart to beat faster at the thought of her beauty. Ridiculous. Illogical. Outrageous. Absurd. Catastrophic. Something that shouldn’t happen, that couldn’t happen.
    But it had happened.
    * * *
    For the rest of the night Megan lay very still in the darkness, listening to Daniel moving about the house. She heard him return to his bedroom and leave again after only a few minutes. There was the sound of his footsteps going downstairs, followed by the faint clatter of china in the kitchen. Then he went into the back room, and Megan heard the video-player being switched on. She could even make out the sound of her own voice, faint but perceptible.
    She found it was easy to follow what was happening to him, what he was thinking. She’d been desired by too many men not to recognize the signs. The revelation that he wanted her had been like a flash of lightning, illuminating the landscape for one fierce, blazing second, showing her undreamed-of possibilities.
    Newton’s words came back to her. Having managed to get this man on your side, your sensible course would surely be to make use of him.
    She’d dismissed the suggestion, but that was before she discovered that she had power over Daniel Keller. It had been there in his eyes, shocking him as much as it had shocked her. She’d seen that, too. Right this minute he was trying to fight it. His restless movements told her that. But he wouldn’t succeed, because she would make sure he didn’t.
    She had a strange sensation of seeing everything in her life in clear, hard outline. What she was planning would once have been anathema to her, but prison had taught her endurance and survival. She’d always been a strong woman, but now she was strong