Chapter Fourteen
Star
Three Weeks Previously
“You are the most beautiful woman in this room, Star,” Nigel says, looking into my eyes.
“Oh yeah? And that brunette I saw you looking at just now?” I tease.
“What brunette?” he asks innocently. The candlelight falls on his cheeks making him look even more irresistible than he normally does.
I lift my wine glass and take a small sip. “Look. I really don’t mind if you look at a beautiful girl. I would look at a beautiful man too. There’s no harm.” I grin. “Looking at the flowers in other people’s gardens is allowed. You just can’t pick them.”
“You would look at a beautiful man?” Nigel asks. He is still smiling, but there is a slight tension in his jaw.
I shrug. “Just the same way I would look at a beautiful piece of art. I wouldn’t want to take it home with me.”
“But if you’re looking at a man, you must be thinking sexual thoughts about him,” he insists. I can see that he is getting a bit annoyed.
I look deep into his eyes. “I swear that from the day I met you I have never had a sexual thought about any other man. Not one. Ever.”
He grins happily. “Good. That’s the way it should be.”
“Bet you can’t say the same,” I challenge. I know men are different than women. They have sexual thoughts all the time about random women they meet on the street. I once read in a magazine that men will pass a woman in the street and get a hard-on thinking about having sex with her. Incredible!
“Believe it or not, I haven’t thought of another woman like that since you seduced me at that party.”
“I didn’t seduce you,” I protest. “You came on to me.”
“Only after you batted your eyelashes outrageously at me.”
“I did not,” I say with a laugh.
He reaches for my hand. “No, you didn’t. That’s why I liked you. You were so innocent you blushed when I came up to you.” He pauses. “Look at you. You’re blushing now.”
A waitress comes to our table. “Would you like to have a look at our dessert menu?”
Nigel doesn’t let go of my hand. “No, I’m having my wife for dessert,” he says.
“Nigel,” I gasp, and look up apologetically at the waitress.
She smiles politely. “How about some coffee then?”
“Nothing for me and a black coffee for my wife,” Nigel orders.
The waitress moves away.
“Why do you do that?” I scold. “It’s embarrassing for me and her.”
“Why should either of you be embarrassed? It’s the truth. I’m having you for dessert.”
“There is no hope for you,” I say.
He grins and looks at his watch. “I have to make a quick call to New York. Can you amuse yourself for ten minutes?”
I smile. “I have to go to the Ladies, anyway.”
“Good girl,” he says, and leaves the table.
I stand up and start to walk in the opposite direction he went. As I get to the corridor that leads to the toilets I turn back to see if I can still see Nigel and suddenly I slam into a wall. My head snaps back and I nearly die.
It’s not a wall.
It’s a tall, broad man with raven black hair, an arrogant mouth, sensual lips, and a square jaw. His clothes are expensive and yet his shirt is unbuttoned casually. His throat is brown. His shoes are immaculate.
He is beautiful, not the way a male model is, but the way a sleek, shining panther stalking its prey is. His hooded silvery-gray eyes look down at me without any expression in their depths. There is something cruel and indifferent in his mesmerizing eyes.
His presence is so powerful that I feel a shiver go right through me. He stares down at me with those strangely impassive eyes. Eyes that should belong to a predator cat. I stare back unable to look away. Something alive and electric sizzles between us.
My lips part to apologize, but I am so shocked by him, no words come out. My tongue comes out to lick my dry lips, and his eyes drop to my mouth. My knees feel as if they will not support me. I realize then that his hands are curled around my upper-arms. What the hell am I doing? I should break away.
“Sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going,” I whisper.
“No problem,” he says, his voice deep and velvety, and supremely indifferent. He is foreign.
His hands leave my upper-arms. He steps away from my body and the strangest thing happens. My body misses him. The way it has never missed Nigel. The desire for him is so strong, my hands claw: I want to reach out and press my body into his. I want him inside me.
He nods distantly, and walks away.
For a few seconds, I can do nothing. Shaken to my core, I draw deep, even breaths. Then, I take a step towards the Ladies. In that briefest of encounters, I have learned something about myself. I am not as pure as I imagined. Nigel is not as safe as he would like to believe.
My resistance is nothing more than a house perched at the edge of the cliff top. One bad storm and the raging sea will tear my house to smithereens.
Chapter Fifteen
Nikolai
Me And Mrs Jones
She stares at me in shock, her beautiful eyes wide, her mouth parted, and a river of primitive possessiveness rushes through my veins. I’ve got her. She’s mine now.
“Did you … are you Nikolai?” she gasps.
“If he’s not me, then he’s one lucky bastard,” I say.
Her mouth snaps shut and she squares her shoulders.
“Would you like a drink?” I ask.
“No thank you,” she says stiffly.
I smile and walk to the liquor cabinet.
“Sorry, but can we please get on with this?” she shoots. Her eyes are combative. She wants to take control of a situation where she knows she has none.
“We already have. You are here under my roof, are you not?”
Her eyes regard me with hostility. “Why did you bring me here?”
“I wanted you,” I say simply, watching her.
Her dowdy appearance cannot disguise her unique beauty. Her long golden hair tightly pulled back only serves to highlight her flawless skin. Even in this most intimidating scenario her eyes sparkle like brilliantly cut blue diamonds as she calculates her situation.
“And if you want something you just reach out and take it.” Her voice drips with scorn.
“That’s the genera
l idea, yes.”
“Even if that person is already married?”
“That does complicate things a little, but where there is a will there is always a way.”
“So you’d have a woman who doesn’t want you,” she asks derisively.
I place a short glass tumbler on the polished wood of the bar and look up at her. “Are you trying to imply that you don’t want me?”
Her face floods with pretty color. She’s as delightful as a butterfly. “Did you somehow get the impression that I do?” she asks.
“Yes, I got the impression you wanted to be in my bed.”
Her eyes widen. “Is that why you went to all this trouble to get me here?”
I hide a smile. “Yes.”
She shakes her head, her forehead creased in a frown. “I’m so sorry. There has been a terrible misunderstanding. I don’t want to be in your bed. Not at all. I’m very much married. I love my husband with all my heart, and he is the only man I want.”
Her words infuriate me, but I smile politely. “Prove it.”
She frowns. “What do you mean?”
I lift a shoulder casually. “Show me how much you don’t want me.”
She folds her hands in front of her. “Tell me how to and I’ll do it.”
“Come over here and kiss me,” said the spider to the fly.
She recoils, actually recoils as if I really am a spider. Her back becomes ramrod straight, and when she speaks her voice is hard and violent with anger. “I was given the impression that everything had to be consensual.”
I nod. “That’s a pretty accurate impression.”
Her shoulders almost sag with the relief that pours through her system. She takes a deep breath and prepares for a battle that she has already lost. “So I evoke my right to say no to such a repulsive request.”
I lift the crystal stopper off the decanter, and pour myself a glass of cognac. “Are you sure I couldn’t interest you in a glass of something?”