A Vow of Obligation (Marriage by Command 3)

Bending over the case, Tawny reckoned that that would impose no great sacrifice on a man famous for never staying long with one woman and she murmured flatly, ‘None of my business.’

Navarre breathed in slow and deep while on another level he drank in the intoxicating glimpses of slim, shapely thigh visible through the split in the back of her skirt. She straightened to shed her cardigan. Hunger uncoiled inside him. Every time she awakened his libido the effects got stronger, he acknowledged grimly, noting the way her bright rippling curls snaked down her slender spine, somehow drawing his attention to the fact that the top she wore was gossamer thin and revealed the pale delicate bra that encased her dainty breasts. Merde alors, he was behaving like a schoolboy salivating for his first glimpse of naked female flesh!

The chosen outfit draped over her arm, Tawny moved towards the wardrobe to hang the garment and as she did so she collided with Navarre’s intent gaze. It was as if all the oxygen in her lungs were sucked out at once. Her heart went thud and she stilled in surprise as she recognised the sexual heat of that brutally masculine appraisal. ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she told him gruffly.

Navarre reached for her. ‘I can’t help it,’ he purred.

‘Yes, you can,’ she countered shakily, longing with every fibre of her rebellious being to be drawn closer to him while her brain screamed at her to slap him down and go into retreat. But there was something incredibly flat

tering about such a look of desire on a handsome man’s face. Navarre had the ability to make her feel impossibly feminine and seductive, two qualities that she had never thought she possessed.

One hand resting on her hip, Navarre skimmed the knuckles of the other gently down the side of her face. ‘You’re beautiful, ma petite.’

Tawny had never seen herself as beautiful before and that single word had a hypnotic effect on her so that she looked up at him with shining ice-blue eyes. Teased for having red hair at school, she had grown into a sporty tomboy who lacked the curves required to attract the opposite sex. Boys had become her mates rather than her boyfriends, many of them using her as a step closer to her then best friend, a curvy little blonde. Curvy and blonde had become Tawny’s yardstick of beauty and what Navarre Cazier could see in her was invisible to her own eyes.

Indecent warmth shimmied through Tawny from the caressing touch of his fingers and she wanted to lean into his hand, get closer on every level while that tightening sensation low in her body filled her with a sharp, deep craving. Struggling to control that dangerous sense of weakness, Tawny froze, torn between stepping closer and stepping back. While she was in the midst of that mental fight, Navarre bent his arrogant dark head and kissed her.

And it wasn’t like that first teasing, tender kiss in London, it was a kiss full of an unashamed passion that shot through her bloodstream like an adrenalin rush. One kiss was nowhere near enough either. As his hungry, demanding mouth moved urgently on hers her fingers delved into his luxuriant black hair to hold him to her and she felt light-headed. His tongue delved and unleashed such acute hunger inside her that she gasped and instinctively pushed her taut, aching breasts into the inflexible wall of his broad chest. Gathering her closer, his hand splayed across her hips and she was instantly aware of the hard thrust of his erection. Her knees went weak as a dark tingling heat spread through her lower body in urgent response to his arousal.

He lifted her up and brought her down on the bed, still exchanging kiss for feverish kiss and suddenly she was on fire with longing, knowing exactly what she wanted and shocked by it. She wanted his weight on top of her to sate the ache at the core of her. She wanted to open her legs to cradle him but, ridiculously, her skirt was too tight.

In a sudden movement driven by that last idiotic thought, Tawny tore her lips from his. ‘No, I don’t want this!’ she gasped, planting her hands on his wide shoulders to impose space between them.

Navarre immediately lifted back, face rigid with self-discipline. He vaulted back off the bed to stare down at her with scorching green eyes. ‘Yes, you do want me as much as I want you. Together we’re like a fire raging out of control and I don’t know why you’re imposing limits, unless it’s because—’

‘No, don’t say it!’ Tawny cut in, sitting up in a hurry and raking her tumbled hair off her brow with an impatient hand. ‘Don’t you dare say it!’

Navarre frowned in bewilderment. ‘Say what?’

‘Offer me more money to sleep with you … don’t you dare!’ she launched at him warningly.

Navarre elevated a sardonic black brow and stood straight and tall to gaze broodingly down at her. ‘Mais c’est insensé … that’s crazy. I have not the slightest intention of offering you money for sex. I don’t pay for it, never have, never will. Perhaps you’re angling for me to make you that kind of an offer before you deliver between the sheets. But I’m afraid you’ve picked the wrong guy to work that ploy on.’

As that derisive little speech sank in Tawny went white with rage and sprang off the bed, the wild flare of her hot temper giving her a strong urge to slap him. But Navarre snapped hands like bands of steel round her wrists to hold her arms still by her side and prevent any other contact. ‘No,’ he said succinctly. ‘I won’t tolerate that from any woman.’

High spots of colour bloomed in Tawny’s cheeks as she jerked back from him, his icy intervention having doused her anger like a bucket of cold water. It didn’t prevent her from still wanting to kill him though. ‘I wasn’t trying to put the idea in your head … OK? It’s just I know what guys like you are like—’

‘Like you know so many guys like me,’ Navarre fielded witheringly.

‘You’re used to getting exactly what you want when you want and not taking no for an answer.’

‘Not my problem,’ Navarre countered glacially.

Tawny got changed in the bathroom. Her mouth was still swollen from his kisses, her body still all of a shiver and on edge from the sexual charge he put out. She mouthed a rude word at herself in the mirror, furious that she had lost control in his arms. She had genuinely feared that he might offer her money to include sex in their masquerade and she had tried to avert the risk of him uttering those fatal humiliating words, which would have reduced her to the level of a call girl. Unfortunately for her Navarre had actually suspected that she was sneakily making it clear to him that the offer of more money might make her amenable to sex.

Rage at that recollection threatening to engulf her in a rising red mist, Tawny anchored her towel tighter round her slim body and wrenched open the bathroom door in a sudden movement. ‘I’m a virgin!’ she launched across the room at him in stark condemnation. ‘How many virgins do you know who sell themselves for money?’

I am not having this crazy argument, Navarre’s clever brain told him soothingly as he cast down the remote control he had used to switch on the business news. She’s a lunatic. I’ve hired a thief and a lunatic …

‘I don’t know any virgins,’ Navarre told her truthfully. ‘But that’s probably because most of them keep quiet about their inexperience.’

‘I don’t see why I should keep quiet!’ Tawny snapped, tilting her chin in challenge. ‘You seem to be convinced that I would do anything for money … but I’m not like that.’

‘We’re not having this conversation,’ Navarre informed her resolutely, stonily centring his attention back on the television screen.

But a flickering image of her entrancing slender profile in a towel with damp ringlets rioting round her small face still stayed inside his head. He didn’t pay for sex. That was true. But there had definitely been a moment on that bed when, if he was equally honest, he would have given her just about anything to stay there warm and willing to fulfil his every fantasy. The ache of frustrated desire was with him still. Taking the moral high ground had never felt less satisfying. Even so his naturally suspicious mind kept on ticking. Why was she telling him that she was a virgin? Hadn’t he read about some woman selling her virginity on the Internet to the highest bidder? Could Tawny believe that virgins had more sex appeal and value to the average male? Surely she didn’t think that he would actually believe that a woman of twenty-three years of age was a total innocent? Did he look that naive and trusting?

Clad in a modestly styled green cocktail dress and impossibly high heels, Tawny descended the stairs by Navarre’s side. They pretty much weren’t speaking, which felt weird when he insisted on holding her hand. She was looking eagerly around her when Sam came to greet them, ushering them to the fire and the drinks waiting in the Great Hall. Having answered her questions about the old property, he offered them a tour.