The pool of light spilling across the floor from the lamp behind her was more than sufficient to reveal that the occupier was a man. He was sprawled on his stomach, his arms spread-eagled, his face buried in one of four huge pillows that were propped up in a row against the headboard.
Vanessa closed her eyes and shook her head sharply, sure that it was a fatigue-induced illusion.
She looked again, moving hesitantly towards the bed, still unwilling to trust the evidence of her tear-swollen eyes.
Above the white silk sheets, which were bunched carelessly low on his hips, the interloper’s long, naked back was lean and densely muscled, faintly gleaming in the muted light, as smooth as tan-coloured satin and rippling faintly with each slow, sensuous breath. Under the arm outflung towards her she could see a thick drift of silky-soft black hair and, just above the edge of the sheet, the taut rise of the twin globes of his buttocks revealed a dusting of similar, very fine black down.
A powerful sense of bitter outrage gripped Vanessa. How dared he?
She began to bend and suddenly every muscle in that long, sexy, naked male back tensed and he rolled over and she found herself staring into a very wide-awake pair of grave blue eyes.
‘Hello, Goldilocks. What took you so long?’
She was stun
ned by the warmth of desiring in that soft, whimsical growl. ‘W-what are you doing—how did you get here?’
He shook his head back and forth against the pillow.
‘Oh, ye of little faith,’ he murmured, with such aching gentleness that she felt weak. Her knees swayed against the mattress and he came up on one elbow and caught her wrist, applying just enough pressure to sit her down on the edge of the bed, facing him. In her shock she forgot that she was nude and he ignored her state of innocent unawareness with gentlemanly tact.
‘Where else should I be but here—with the woman I love?’ he asked quietly.
It was a dream, a wishful dream.
‘This is Dane’s bedroom—’
‘Oh, no.’ His mouth curved at one corner. ‘My friend has much better preservation instincts than that. This is my apartment, Nessa. That’s where you were always going to eventually end up. In my bedroom, in my bed...in my life.’
The last was the most devastating. She trembled, brushing at her damp hair with her free hand, unaware that her bare body was revealing the welcome that she could not yet dare admit. ‘But...you can’t be here—’
He kissed the strong, slender wrist that he held, watching her intently as he drew her hand down to his chest and she couldn’t help noticing that he had a number of reddened marks which were the feminine version of the brands she wore. He held her hand against his strongly arhythmic heartbeat. ‘Does this feel like an illusion?
‘Dane called me on his cell-phone from the first garage he called at. I made him promise to bring you here but to delay long enough to let me get here first. Thank God the pilot who flew your dress down is a teetotaller, because I’d invited him to the party and I just grabbed him and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. I wouldn’t even let him stop to change on the way to the airport. It’s the first time I’ve ever flown anywhere with a giant bat at the controls.’
Vanessa almost giggled in spite of herself. Then she remembered, and her face acquired a painful stiffness.
‘W-what did your parents say?’
He sat up, the sheet dipping dangerously in his lap, his faint smile fading as he said, choosing his words carefully, ‘They’re my parents, Vanessa. I may not like them very much sometimes but they’ll always be my parents. If you’re going to be a permanent part of my life then they’ll be a permanent part of yours, and we’ll have to learn to deal with them together. But last night I had to let them run out of steam before I had any hope of getting them to listen. I know from bitter experience that trying to argue with them point by point only lets them control the confrontation. So they stated their ignorant misconceptions, and afterwards I set them straight. I told them that I loved you. That if it came to forcing me to choose between them and you, you would always win. They probably won’t speak to us for a couple of years after we’re married—in fact, if we’re lucky, for more than a couple of years—but I’m their only son and I doubt if they’ll risk cutting the ties completely...’
Vanessa’s eyes were dark with anguished desire. He was talking about permanency...about loving her. About marriage...as if they both knew they were foregone conclusions. ‘The things they said— When you told me to be quiet, let me go like that, I thought—’
‘I told Lacey to leave, too,’ he interrupted flatly. ‘There were some things that I needed to say to them in private—old scores to settle, you might say, and some ground-rules to lay for the future. They won’t ever speak to you or of you like that again.’ He sighed. ‘I suppose I should have realised that any mention of the fatal word “scandal” was bound to spook you badly. My only excuse is that at the time I was so euphoric that you had trusted me enough to mention love that it never occurred to me that you would suffer another crisis of faith so soon afterwards...’
‘I—you just looked so shocked when I said it—’
‘I was. I couldn’t believe it was so easy. I knew I could make you feel passion, and I was using that for all I was worth, but I didn’t think that I had yet impressed you sufficiently to winkle your heart out of its tight little refuge...’
‘Oh, I found you very impressive!’ Vanessa teased, suddenly brimming with confidence as she ran her hand down the centre of his chest to his navel, and below to where his skin began to pale. ‘Arrogant, but extremely impressive.’ Her fingertips dipped under the sheet.
He sucked in his belly with a savage hiss. ‘Brazen hussy,’ he said thickly, reaching out to cup her breasts and massage the stiffened nipples. ‘No wonder you create a scandal wherever you go. You won’t have to inject me with anything lethal, darling; just keep on doing what you’re doing with that hand and I’ll have a little death all on my own...’
He had thrown out the metaphors deliberately, but Vanessa’s radiance remained undimmed. Her certainty that she was loved gave her the security to laugh at her former fears. Her eyes gleamed with wicked, sultry knowledge as she chuckled huskily. ‘Is that your idea of trying to desensitise me?’
He groaned, his hips arching off the bed, thrusting himself into her hand. ‘I think it’s me who needs desensitising. I meant to take it very slow with you that first time because I was afraid of hurting you, but then you were so damned responsive, I got carried away. I was afraid you might think I was no better than that bastard who hurt you...that you were disappointed...’
‘It all happened so fast, I didn’t have time to be disappointed,’ said Vanessa, so blandly reassuring that for a moment he took her seriously and looked deeply chagrined.