A Whisper of Disgrace

Something was. She stared down at herself in horror as she realised that she was in a very large bed—and she was completely naked!

Clutching the fine linen sheet to conceal the jiggle of her breasts, she sat up and stared at the man she knew only as Kulal, who was standing glaring at her from the end of the bed, looking like some kind of dark and avenging angel.

‘What happened?’ she demanded.

‘You don’t remember?’

‘If I remembered, I wouldn’t be asking—would I?’

The disdainful twist of his mouth deepened. ‘You want to know if we had sex?’

Rosa felt her cheeks grow hot as she stared at him, appalled by his crude question. But beneath her horror beat the memory of how good it had been to have been held by him on the dance floor and she could feel an unwanted tingling in her breasts. She felt as if she’d left one nightmare and woken up in a different one—and she was going to have to be strong if she wanted to get out of this with any degree of dignity. And she could be strong. She’d proved that, hadn’t she? She had survived her mother screaming vitriol at her as she’d made her vile confession. And she’d faced the unbelievable and heartbreaking truth, that her beloved father—the single rock in her life—was not her father at all.

She prayed for the right amount of bravado as she stared into Kulal’s furious face. ‘And did we?’

At this, he smiled, and it was the coldest smile that Rosa had ever seen.

‘Believe me, garbuua—if you’d had sex with me, you’d remember it, no matter how drunk you were.’

Rosa met the mocking expression in his eyes, telling herself that she wasn’t going to be intimidated. She just needed to extricate herself from this regrettable situation—but first of all she must face facts.

‘So we didn’t?’ she questioned flatly.

‘No.’

She held the sheet a little tighter. ‘Then how come I’m not wearing any clothes?’

‘Because I undressed you.’

‘You … undressed me? Why?’

‘Why do you think?’ he snapped. ‘Because I wanted to feast my eyes on your delectable body?’ And yet Kulal felt the sudden fierce beat of his heart as he tried to subdue the memory of her firm flesh as he had stripped her bare. He’d taken her clothes off on autopilot, averting his eyes when he had slithered that wispy little pair of lace panties down over her knees. In her uninhibited state she had grabbed him and pulled him down towards her—and he’d had the tantalising experience of having his head buried in her magnificent breasts before he had forced himself to move his aching body away. ‘If you must know, I removed your clothes because I didn’t think you’d want to leave here this morning wearing last night’s crumpled dress, or underwear.’

The gap in her memory was making Rosa feel frightened but she wasn’t going to let him know that. ‘Is that so?’ she said.

Kulal heard the disbelief in her voice and felt a slow anger begin to simmer inside him. Didn’t she realise how lucky she’d been that someone like him had been the man she’d targeted last night? That somebody completely lacking in moral scruples could have taken her home and … His mouth hardened. ‘I’ll tell you exactly what happened,’ he bit out. ‘You couldn’t remember where you were staying, and just before you passed out on the back seat of my limousine, you announced that you wanted to stay with me.’

Rosa could do absolutely nothing about the blush which stained her cheeks. ‘I said that?’

‘You did,’ he agreed grimly. ‘Leaving me with little choice other than to bring you back here to my hotel. My plan was to get you inside as quietly and as unobtrusively as possible—but unfortunately, that was not on your agenda.’

She saw the furious accusation which had darkened his face. ‘It wasn’t?’ she questioned as a trace of nerves began to creep into her voice.

‘Indeed it wasn’t. You decided that as many of the people in the immediate vicinity and beyond should know exactly what you wanted—and what you wanted was to go down to the beach and look at the sky… .’

Oh, God. It was all coming back to her now. He’d promised to take her somewhere to look at the stars. He’d said that to her in the nightclub as he’d held her in his arms. And in that moment, she felt as if he’d been offering her a slice of paradise. ‘What … what happened?’ she whispered.

‘I decided that an excess of alcohol, a senseless female and close proximity to the Mediterranean were a potentially lethal combination and so I carried you in here, undressed you—and put you to bed.’