‘Goodnight, Navarre,’ Tawny said flatly.
Elise slipped out of the door unnoticed by either of them. ‘I’m leaving tomorrow,’ he told Tawny without any expression at all.
Tawny smiled as brightly as if she had won an Olympic race. ‘Elise mentioned it.’
‘I’ll drop you off at home on the way to the airport. I have your phone number and I’ll stay in touch … obviously,’ he added curtly.
‘It’s not going to happen,’ Tawny responded soothingly, guessing what he meant. ‘My egg and your sperm are more likely to have a fight than get together and throw a party for three!’
His face darkened. ‘I hope you’re right, ma petite. A child should be planned and wanted and cherished.’
Her eyes stung as she thought of how much truth there was in that statement. Her own life might have been very different had her parents respected that example. Struggling to suppress the over emotional tears threatening, she was only capable of nodding agreement, but she was grateful that he wasn’t approaching the thorny subject with hypocrisy or polite and empty lies. He didn’t want to have a child with her and she appreciated his honesty. She shed the robe and got into bed where the tears simply overflowed. She sniffed and coughed, furious with herself. He might have lousy square taste in women’s clothes, but he was fantastic in bed and that was the sole source of her regret where Navarre Cazier was concerned. He would have made a great casual lover, she told herself doggedly, refusing to examine her feelings in any greater depth.
About twenty minutes later, a light knock sounded on her door and she called out, ‘Come in!’ and sat up to put on the light by the bed.
She was stunned when Navarre appeared in the doorway, his only covering a towel loosely knotted round his narrow hips. ‘May I stay with you tonight?’
Her mouth ran dry, her throat closed over, but her body went off on a roller-coaster ride of instant sit-up-and-beg response. ‘Er …’
‘I’ve tried but I can’t stop wanting you,’ Navarre admitted harshly.
And she admired that frankness and the streak of humility it had taken for him to approach her again after he had attempted to close that door and move their relationship into more platonic channels. He was not so different from her, after all, and it was a realisation that softened her resentment when she couldn’t stop wanting him either. ‘Stay,’ she told him gruffly, switching out the light in the hope it would hide her discomfiture.
That she was too weak to send him packing still offended Tawny’s pride. He had suspected that she might be in league with Julie to plunder his life for profitable information that could be sold to the press. He even believed she might have deliberately tried to get pregnant by him because he was a wealthy man. He did not see her as a trustworthy woman with moral scruples. He was rich, she was poor and a gulf of suspicion separated them. She ought to hate him, but when the muscle packed heat and power of Navarre eased up against her in the dimness, a healthy dose of blood cooling hatred was nowhere to be found. Instead a snaking coil of heat uncurled and burned hot in her and she quivered, every nerve ending energised by anticipation.
Navarre had spent the day in an ever more painful state of arousal, which had steadily eaten away at his self-discipline. Throughout he had remained hugely aware that this was the last night he could be with Tawny and the temptation of having her so close had finally overpowered every other consideration. He might be violating his principles, but when had he ever pretended that he was perfect? In any case, he reasoned impatiently, sex was just sex and it would be an even worse mistake to get emotional about a wholly physical prompting. She turned him on hard and fast, she had made sex exciting for him again. What was a moral dilemma in comparison to what she could make him feel?
Having divided his attention hungrily between the large pink nipples that adorned her small firm breasts and discovered that she was even more deliciously responsive than he recalled, Navarre slowly worked his way down her slender body, utilising every expert skill he had ever learned in the bedroom. If she could make him want her to such an extent, that power had to cut both ways and he was not content until she was writhing and whimpering in abandon, pleading for that final fix of fulfilment.
He sank deep into her and an aching wave of pleasure engulfed her, the little shivers and shakes of yet another approaching climax overwhelming her until she was sobbing out her satisfaction into a hard brown shoulder and fallin
g back against the pillows again, weak as a kitten, emptied of everything.
Still struggling to recapture his breath after that wild bout of sex, Navarre threw himself back out of the bed before he could succumb to the need to reach for her again. Once was never enough with her, but he was suddenly in the grip of a fierce need to prove to himself that he could turn away from the powerful temptation she offered. In the darkness he searched for his towel in the heap of clothing discarded by the bed. He shook a couple of garments with unconcealed impatience and Tawny stretched up to put on the bedside light.
‘Where are you going?’ Clutching the sheet to her chest, frowning below the tumbled curls on her brow, Tawny studied him, unable to believe that he could already be leaving her again. A quick tumble and that was that? Was that all the consideration he now had for her? Did familiarity breed contempt that fast?
Navarre snatched up the towel and at the same time what he took for a screwed up banknote on the floor, assuming it had fallen out of an item of her clothing when he shook it. As he smoothed the item out to give it to her he caught a glimpse of his own name and he withdrew his hand and stepped back from the bed to read the block printed words on the piece of paper.
‘If you call …’ the note ran and a London phone number followed. ‘Information about Navarre Cazier is worth a lot of money.’
Seeing that scrap of paper in his hand, Tawny almost had a heart attack on the spot and she lunged towards him with a stricken gasp. ‘Give me that!’
His face set like a mask, Navarre crumpled the note in a powerful fist and dropped it down on her lap. ‘Merde alors! What information about me are you planning to sell?’ he enquired silkily.
After their intimacy mere minutes earlier it was like a punch in the stomach for Tawny to be asked that brutal question. He had simply assumed that, in spite of the fact that he had already offered her a very large sum of money to help him out, she would think nothing of going behind his back to the press and selling confidential information about him. It was a blow that Navarre could still think so little of her morals. She lost so much colour that her hair looked unnaturally bright against her pallor.
‘News of my successful buyout of CCC was in the evening papers so you’ve missed the boat on the business front,’ Navarre derided, winding the towel round his narrow hips with apparently calm hands. ‘What else have you got to sell?’
Tawny breathed in deep and gave him a wide sizzling smile that hurt lips still swollen from his kisses. ‘Basically the story of what you’re like in bed. You know, the usual sleaze that makes up a kiss-and-tell, how you treated me like a royal princess and put a ring on my finger for a few days, had the sex and then got bored and dumped me again.’
Still as a bronzed statue, Navarre focused contemptuous green eyes on her and ground out the reminder, ‘You signed a confidentiality agreement.’
‘I know I did, but somehow I don’t think you’ll lower yourself to the task of dragging me into a courtroom just because I tell the world that you’re a five-times-a night guy!’ Tawny slung back with deliberate vulgarity, determined to tough out the confrontation so that he would never, ever suspect how much he had hurt her.
Navarre could barely conceal his distaste.
‘You still owe me proof that that camera that recorded my supposed theft of your laptop has been wiped,’ Tawny remarked less aggressively as that recollection returned to haunt her.