TOWARDS midnight, Navarre strode into the ballroom, his keen gaze skimming through the knots of guests until it came to rest on Tawny.
In the subdued light Tawny shimmered like a golden goddess, red hair vibrant, diamonds sparkling, her lovely face full of animation as she looked up at the tall blond man talking to her with a hand clamped to her waist. Navarre recognised her companion immediately: Tor Henson, a wealthy banker very popular with women. Although Navarre had been absent for most of the evening while
he talked business with Sam Coulter and had left Tawny very much to her own devices, he was not pleased to see her looking so well entertained. She had not gone without amusement; she had, it seemed, simply replaced him. A rare burst of anger ripped through Navarre’s big frame, cutting through his powerful self-discipline with disorientating speed and efficiency. His strong white teeth ground together as he crossed the floor to join them.
‘Je suis désolé …’ Navarre began to apologise to Tawny for his prolonged absence.
At the sound of his voice, Tawny whirled round, her expression telegraphing equal amounts of relief and annoyance. ‘Where have you been all this time?’
‘I gather you don’t read the business papers,’ Tor Henson remarked with a knowing glance in Navarre’s direction for recent revealing movements on the stock market had hinted that major change could be in store for Sam Coulter’s business empire.
Navarre captured a slender white hand in his and held it fast. He wanted to haul her away from Henson and take her upstairs to spread her across their bed, a primal prompting that he dimly understood was born of a rage unlike anything he had ever experienced. ‘Thank you for looking after her for me, Tor,’ he murmured with glacial courtesy.
‘I’m not a child you left behind in need of care and protection!’ Tawny objected, ice-blue eyes stormy as he ignored the comment and virtually dragged her onto the dance floor with him. ‘Why are you behaving like this, Navarre? Why are you acting like I’ve done something wrong?’
‘Haven’t you? If I leave you alone for five minutes I come back to find you flirting with another man!’ he censured with icy derision, splaying long sure fingers to her spine to draw her closer to his hard, powerful body than she wanted to be at that moment.
The scent of him, clean, warm and male, was in her nostrils and she fought the aphrodisiac effect that proximity awakened in her treacherous body. ‘You left me alone for two hours!’
‘Was it too much for me to expect you to be waiting quietly where I left you?’ Navarre prompted shortly, in no mood to be reasonable.
‘Yes, I’m not an umbrella you overlooked and I wasn’t flirting with Tor! We were simply talking. He knows I’m engaged,’ Tawny snapped up at him, tempestuous in her own self-defence.
‘Tor would get a kick out of bedding another man’s fiancée, n’est-ce pas?’
She saw the genuine anger in his gaze and the hard-edged tension in his superb bone structure. ‘You’re jealous,’ she registered in wide-eyed surprise, astonished that she could have that much power over him.
His beautiful mouth took on a contemptuous curve. ‘Of course I’m not jealous. Why would I be jealous? We’re not really engaged,’ he reminded her very drily.
But Tawny was not so easily deflected from an opinion once she had formed it. ‘Maybe you’re naturally the possessive type in relationships … You definitely didn’t like seeing me enjoy myself in another man’s company. But have you any idea how insulting it is for you to insinuate that I might go off and shag some guy I hardly know?’
‘I’d have bedded you within five minutes of meeting you, ma petite,’ Navarre confided with a roughened edge to his voice, holding her so close to his body that she could feel the effect her closeness was having on him and warmth pooled in the pit of her tummy in response to his urgent male sexuality.
‘I’m not like you—I would never have agreed to that!’ Tawny proclaimed heatedly, stretching up on tiptoe to deliver that news as close to his ear as she could reach.
‘Mais non … I can be very persuasive.’ Navarre laced long deft fingers into her tumbling curls to hold her steady while he bent his mouth to hers, his breath fanning her cheek. He was no fan of public displays but in that instant he was controlled by a driving atavistic need to mark her as his so that no other man would dare to approach her again. He crushed her succulent lips apart and tasted her with uninhibited hunger, not once but over and over again until she shuddered against him, her slight body vibrating like a tuning fork in response to his passion.
With reluctance, Navarre dragged his mouth from hers, scanned her rapt face and urged her towards the exit. ‘Let’s go.’
Go where? she almost asked, even though she knew where. She could not find the breath or the will to argue. After all, she wanted to be alone with him. She wanted him to kiss her again, she had never wanted anything more, and where once the presence of others might have acted as a welcome control exercise, this time around it was an annoyance. Objections lay low in the back of her mind, crushed out of existence by the fierce longing rippling through her in seductive waves.
‘This has to be a beginning, not an end,’ Navarre declared, thrusting shut the door of the bedroom.
Tawny didn’t want him to talk, she only wanted him to kiss her. As long as he was kissing her she didn’t have to think and wonder about whether or not she was making a mistake. Even worse, the wanting was so visceral that she could not stand against the force of it.
He unzipped her gown, ran his fingers smoothly down her slender spine and flipped loose her bra. She shivered, electrified with anticipation, knees turning to water as his hands rose to cup the swelling mounds of her breasts and massage the achingly sensitive nipples. He touched her exactly as she wanted to be touched. She had never dreamt that desire might leave her so weak that it was a challenge to stay upright, but now as she leant back against him and struggled simply to get oxygen into her lungs she was learning the lesson. She turned round in the circle of his arms and kissed him, hands closing into his jacket and pushing it off his broad shoulders. For an instant he stepped back, shedding the jacket, freeing his shirt from his waistband to unbutton it.
Just looking at him made her mouth run dry. A muscular bronzed section of hair-roughened torso was visible between the parted edges of his shirt and she wanted to touch, explore, taste … it was as though he had got under her skin and changed her from inside out, teaching her to crave what she had never even thought of before. Now she didn’t just think, she acted. She raised her hands to that hard flat abdomen and let her palms glide up over the corrugated muscles to discover the warm skin and revel shamelessly in the way that her touch made him tense and roughly snatch his breath in.
Navarre lifted her free of her gown and she stood there, feeling alarmingly naked in only her high heels and a flimsy pair of white silk knickers. He sank down on the side of the bed and drew her down between his spread thighs, nibbling sensuously at her swollen lower lip while he eased his hand beneath the silk and rubbed the most sensitive spot of all with a skill and rhythm that provoked a series of gasps from her throat.
‘I want you naked, ma petite …’ he breathed thickly as he slid down her knickers and removed them, flipping off her shoes with the careless casual skill of a man practised at undressing women. ‘And then I want you every way I can have you.’
Navarre bent her back over his arm and brought his mouth down hungrily on the proud pouting tip of an engorged nipple, drawing on the sensitised bud while his hand continued to explore the most sensitive part of her. Her fingers dug into his black cropped hair as he caressed her, a sharp arrow of need slivering through her. ‘You’re wearing too many clothes,’ she told him shakily.
He settled her down on the bed and stood over her stripping. The shirt and the trousers were followed by his boxers. She had never seen a man naked and aroused before and she couldn’t take her eyes off the long thick steel of his bold length. She was both intimidated and aroused by the size of him. Her face hot with self-consciousness, she scrabbled below the covers, her entire body tingling with extra-sensory awareness. He tossed foil-wrapped condoms down on top of the bedside cabinet and slid in beside her, so hot and hard and strong that he sent a wave of energising desire through her the instant she came into contact with his very male physique.
He detached the diamond earrings still dangling from her ears and set them aside, brilliant green eyes locked to her anxious face. ‘What’s wrong?’