She swallowed, pulling her mind back to the present. Benedict wasn’t anything like Julian. For one thing he was older and more discriminating, a man who had achieved brilliant success on his own terms, not a spoiled, idle playboy trading on his family name. And he was as patient as he was tenacious, as demanding on himself as on others. He wouldn’t hurt her, not physically, anyway...
‘Of course it worries me...’
He sighed, and to her aching disappointment withdrew his hand from her dress. He removed his glasses and hung them carelessly from his hip pocket, then curved his fingers around her throat as he looked deep into her eyes. Once again, she succumbed to the spell of his mesmerising gaze.
‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured meaninglessly as he applied gentle pressure to the nape of her neck, drawing her down to his mouth.
She couldn’t have resisted even if she had wanted to; the mysterious shadows in those deep blue eyes were simply too alluring. They made her want to know who the man really was behind his self-controlled mask, to find out whether the strange, shivery sensations that radiated through her body at his lightest touch were real or merely the illusion of desire. She forgot that he was her employer, that there were very sound and sensible reasons why this should not be allowed to happen. She drifted into his embrace with a thrilling knowledge of her own daring. He hadn’t been disappointed in her as a lover... She had obviously pleased him and now it was time to discover if he pleased her!
It wasn’t the fierce, hungry kiss sizzling with passion that Vanessa had eagerly expected, but a long, slow kiss of silky exploration...so long that she nearly suffocated in sweetness before he released her to breathe, only to draw her in again, to taste her with luscious bites of erotic pleasure, his teeth sinking into her swollen lower lip, his tongue unfurling inside her to stroke and linger. A lovely, sensual lethargy dragged at her lower limbs. Her arms slid around his waist to cling to the only solid support in a world of dissolving bliss. She had never known there were so many ways to kiss.
‘Why are you sorry?’ she whispered in blurred tones as his mouth shifted to the side of her throat and slid lower to the little hollow where her pulse fluttered madly. Her breasts were hurting against his chest, tight and unbelievably tender. When was he going to touch her there again?
Instead his arm slid around her back and he drew her away from the wall as if they were dancing, his mouth still moving against her long, slender neck as he swayed towards the stairs. ‘Come with me...’
‘Where?’ It was a dreamy request, without force or curiosity. She knew where he was taking her. Up to heaven in his arms.
‘You’ll see...’
He wafted her slowly up into the darkness of the upper floor, stair by stair, kiss by kiss, as if he was afraid that if he let her go for a moment the sensual spell he was weaving would be broken, but, instead of ending up in his bedroom, when he finally wrenched himself away with a soft groan of regret she found herself blinking owlishly in the harsh fluorescent lighting of his studio.
Dazed and trembling, she reached out, but he was already turning away and unrolling something across the draughting-table and clipping the edges flat. His hands, she was glad to see, were shaking as much as hers.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I want you to see this. The perspective drawings that won the award. And photos of the finished house.’
She stared at him incredulously. He wanted to talk about his work, now? ‘Ben...’
‘Please.’ The look he gave her was both searing and pleading. ‘It’s important to me.’ He held out his hand, steady now, and when she took it he drew her hard against his side, his other hand curving possessively over her hip as he firmly directed her attention to the board.
‘You see—it’s built on a steep hillside covered with native bush. For a couple and their three children. They’re both artists. He works with stained glass—that’s why there’s so much used in the design; they wanted a sense of the bush behind drawn inside the house rather than pushed away by four solid walls. And they didn’t have much money, so I had to incorporate a lot of odds and ends that they’d rescued from demolition sites and make sure that a lot of the building work was do-it-yourself capable. What do you think?’
She could hardly think at all, her whole body attuned to the thumb that was stroking her hipbone through the slippery black fabric, but he seemed anxious, so she struggled for a response that would earn his approval. Then, as her interest was caught, she didn’t have to struggle at all.
‘Why, it’s lovely.’ She bent over to study the higgledy-piggledy juxtaposition of shapes, the way the house seem to mimic the uneven growth patterns of the surrounding bush, taking on odd tilts and angles obviously to avoid the necessity for cutting down the mature trees scattered over the site. ‘It’s fantastic!’ She turned dark, astonished eyes to his. ‘You did this?’
‘I should be insulted by that disbelieving look,’ he drawled unsteadily, his expression strangely grave. ‘But yes, I did that, although you’ll notice it’s not signed Savage. I use another professional name for this kind of work, what I call the fun stuff. It’s a way for me to let off steam, to indulge myself and yet not compromise Dane Benedict’s reputation with our conservative corporate clients... although my identity’s no secret in the trade.’
‘What are these here?’ Vanessa was fascinated by the loving intricacy of his detail. Compared to the slick, water-colour washed sketches of his award-winning commercial work that she had seen these were like illustrations rather than designs, maps of the imagination. ‘They look like ladders up the walls. Where do they go? Are these lofts—?’
‘Play-lofts and tunnels between the children’s rooms.’ He gave them a quick, uninterested glance and then deliberately put his hand down over the section she was trying to interpret. ‘Vanessa, I didn’t bring you here to play twenty questions. I just wanted you to see it, that’s all. So that you’d realise that I am capable of being...whimsical and sensitive to interpreting other people’s needs, even if they’re not completely sure about them themselves. I mean, I may come across as a heartless bastard sometimes but—’
‘I never thought you were that—’ Vanessa was driven to protest, the lovely warmth of passion beginning to drain away. Was he trying to let her down lightly? To explain that he had responded to her only because he thought that she had needed the flattery of his desire?
‘Until now.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she asked hollowly, not wanting to know the answer.
He turned her, holding her at arm’s length by her shoulders, his face grim. ‘Just this: unless you lied about sleeping with Wells or have some other secret lover hidden away, there’s no way you can be pregnant.’
For a moment she was puzzled and then she realised what he was admitting and why he looked so tense, almost anguished.
‘Oh, Benedict, I’m so sorry...’ Had he thought that she would think him less of a man because of it? She stroked his taut mouth with tender compassion and he recoiled as if her finger were tipped in poison.
‘You’re sorry?’
‘Are you quite certain?’ she asked, seeing that she had jolted him with her swift understanding. ‘There’s a lot that doctors can do about sterility these days—’