‘Not at those prices, Van,’ he said as he turned back from ordering. ‘I was with you when you bought it last spring, remember? You didn’t want to part with that much until the woman told you everything she did was strictly one-off.’
‘Rather like having a personalised number-plate strapped to your finger,’ murmured Benedict maliciously. ‘Distinctive and gratifyingly easy to trace.’
Vanessa’s nerve broke, her hand lifting in a helpless warding-off gesture. ‘Mr Savage, I—’
He caught her hand in an unpleasantly tight grip and returned it to the table. ‘Is this your dessert arriving with my drink? It looks delicious.’
Vanessa looked at the sticky chocolate concoction placed before her. What had made her mouth water fifteen minutes ago now made her feel ill.
‘What’s the matter? Digestion playing up?’ Benedict taunted over the top of his whisky glass.
Gotcha! his expression said, and like an automaton Vanessa picked up her spoon, deciding she would eat the damned thing if it killed her. Perhaps it would be better if it did!
The decision was taken out of her hands when Benedict intercepted her first spoonful by guiding it, not to her own mouth but to his.
‘Mmm, whisky and chocolate, a heady combination...’
She watched mesmerised when his lips slowly parted and his tongue curled under the bowl of the spoon as he took the spoon into his mouth. Her pulse began to thump against the fingers that had encircled her wrist. There was something disturbingly erotic about the way he fed from her hand. His jaw flexed, cheeks hollowing as he sucked the smooth chocolate mousse from the spoon. He seemed to take an inordinate length of time about it, although it was only a few seconds of real time, and when he released the spoon his tongue ran lightly across his upper lip, collecting the residual sweetness. Helplessly she wondered what his mouth had felt like on hers. Had he licked her as delicately and sensuously as he’d feasted on the chocolate? A tingle shot through her body and her lips parted in unconscious imitation of his actions. Her eyes rose, to be captured by his, a fiercely knowing look in them that made her want to sink through the floor.
She knew she was blushing wildly and she looked hurriedly at Richard but he was content, enjoying his own serving of apple pie, blissfully unaware of the sizzling tension across the table. Oh, Richard! She felt a fleeting sense of despair for something slipping irretrievably beyond her grasp.
She looked nervously back at Benedict. His eyes had shifted from grey to blue and for the first time she appreciated the true meaning of the phrase ‘looking blue murder’.
He looked as if he could cheerfully throttle her, and yet there was another emotion there that was even more terrifying, a tigerish gleam of primitive masculine triumph that hinted that it wasn’t her mere death that he was contemplating.
Oh, God, surely she hadn’t made any reckless promises to him in the throes of drunken passion? Surely he couldn’t expect to hold her to anything she might have said or done in a state of alcoholic irresponsibility?
‘Mr Savage—’
His smile was cruelly brilliant at her breathless plea. ‘Oh, call me Ben, please...after all, you’re off duty tonight and that makes us equals. Besides, such overt formality is rather silly in the circumstances, isn’t it—Vanessa...?’
Somehow he made her name redolent with sin, the ‘s’s sliding slowly off his tongue like lazy serpents and coiling seductively around her throat, making it difficult to breathe, let alone defend herself.
‘I—’
‘One taste just isn’t enough...may I have another? I’ve just discovered an insatiable appetite for your delights.’
He was looking at her mouth and for a moment she misunderstood his husky plea and glared at him in seething outrage.
‘The chocolate mousse, Nessie,’ he clarified limpidly, guiding her hand with gentle force back to her plate, his forearm brushing the outer curve of her breast as he made her dip and lift the spoon again to his mouth.
She let the handle go and was relieved when he released her without fuss to take hold of it himself.
‘You may as well eat the whole thing,’ she said, shoving the plate sourly in his direction, realising that his tormenting had only just begun. Well, she might have to take it but she didn’t have to like it. If he claimed they were equal then she was going to act it by asserting what little pride she had left. ‘And please don’t call me by that ridiculous nickname.’
His eyebrows rose, deliberately misunderstanding her. ‘Nickname? You mean Van? I must admit, it is rather terse and unattractive.’
Richard looked up at the mention, his handsome brow wrinkling with concern as he regarded her irritated expression. ‘Don’t you like it? But all this time...why on earth didn’t you say—?’
‘No, I meant Nessie—as he knows very well!’ Vanessa struggled not to let her resentment at Benedict spill over on to the only innocent party at the table. ‘It makes me sound like somebody’s old nanny.’
‘I was thinking more in terms of the Loch Ness monster,’ said Benedict glibly, taking another leisurely swallow of her dessert. ‘You know—mysterious, elusive, appearing when you least expect her...’
‘Sounds like rotten butler material to me, Savage,’ Richard joked.
Benedict looked at him with a pleasant smile that Vanessa instantly distrusted.
‘On the contrary, it makes her ideal. “The noblest service comes from nameless hands, and the best servant does his work unseen”.’