Kitabı oku: «The British Bachelors Collection», sayfa 17

‘I was only supposed to be here until the end of the week...’

‘You were. And you’re free to go once your week here is over.’ He sat back, angling his body to one side so that he could extend his legs. He linked his hands behind his head. ‘You have a life happening back in London. Of course, I know that I could keep you hanging on, doing what I ask of you, because you would do pretty much anything to save your sister’s skin, but...’ He stood up and walked, loose-limbed, to fetch himself a bottle of water, which he drank in one go while he continued to stare at her.

‘But?’ Violet was still having trouble peeling her eyes away from him.

‘But that could prove a never-ending situation. So once we’re back in London, feel free to jump ship. I’ll sign a guarantee that your sister won’t be prosecuted. She will be free as a bird to roam the Spanish coastline doing whatever takes her fancy. And you can return to your life.’

‘And what would you tell your mother?’ Faced with the prospect of returning to her life, Violet was now assailed by a host of treacherous misgivings that this much-prized life, the one she had insisted was there, waiting to be lived, was not quite the glittering treasure she had fondly described. She didn’t quite get it, but there had been a strange excitement to being in Damien’s company. When she was around him, even when, as had been the case over the past few days, she was keeping her distance, she was still always so aware of him. It was as if her waking moments had been injected with some sort of life-enhancing serum.

‘That’s not your problem. You can leave that one to me.’

‘I’d quite like to know,’ Violet persisted. She should be grabbing at this lifeline. She knew that. ‘I’m really fond of your mother, Damien. I wouldn’t want to think...I wouldn’t want her to...’

‘Be unduly hurt? Become stressed out? Think badly of you? All of the above? Funny, but I wasn’t getting the impression that you were overly bothered. After all, five seconds ago you were accusing me of deliberately blindsiding you by not announcing on the spot that you wouldn’t be back here for weekends...’

‘I thought you would want to start bracing your mother for...you know...the inevitable...’

‘The day before she begins what could be gruelling treatment?’

‘Well...’

‘Dominic has become attached to you.’

‘Yes...’ Just something else to think about, just another link in the chain she would have to melt down when she walked away from his family.

‘When my mother begins her treatment she’ll probably be too weak to help with my brother...’

‘He doesn’t need help as such. I mean, he has his carers for the physical stuff...’

‘But has always relied on my mother for everything else. If she’s in bed, she won’t be able to provide all of that.’

‘Which could be where you step in,’ Violet urged him.

Damien flushed darkly. This conversation wasn’t meant to be about him. Her bright eyes were positively glowing with sincerity.

‘I can’t be on call twenty-four seven. I still have a business to run, even if it’s from a distance.’

‘You wouldn’t have to be on call twenty-four seven. Dominic’s perfectly happy doing his own thing. He’s really got into that website I asked him to try and design... Besides, I’ve noticed...’

‘What? What have you noticed?’

‘You didn’t like it the last time I spoke my mind.’

‘Maybe I’ve realised that it’s about time I stop trying to think of your mind as anything but a runaway train,’ Damien mused under his breath.

‘I don’t think that’s very fair.’ All signs of tipsiness had evaporated. She felt as sober as a judge. Her hands were clammy as she rested them on her knees to strain forward.

‘You speak your mind. Maybe I find that a refreshing change. So don’t spoil the habit of a lifetime now by going coy on me.’

‘Okay. Well, I’ve noticed that you’re making a bigger effort with Dominic. I mean, when we got here, you were hardly on speaking terms with him.’

Considering he had asked her to speak her mind, Damien made a concerted effort to control his reaction to that observation. ‘Go on,’ he muttered tightly, through gritted teeth.

‘You never really directly talked to him. You talked at him, then you turned your attention to someone else or something else. And yet,’ she mused thoughtfully, ‘your mother says you two used to be so close when you were growing up...’

So that was what they talked about, Damien thought tensely. They discussed him. He angrily swept aside the sudden undercurrent of guilt that had been his unwelcome companion over the past few days and rose to his feet.

‘It’s late. We should be heading up,’ he said smoothly.

‘We? Aren’t you going to work?’

‘I’ll see you up to the bedroom first. My mother would be horrified if you missed your footing on the stairs because you had a little too much to drink and I wasn’t there to do the gentlemanly thing and catch you as you fell...’

‘You’re annoyed with me because of what I’ve said...’

‘You’re entitled to have your opinions.’

‘I never wanted to.’ She rose a little clumsily to her feet and turned in the direction of the kitchen door.

‘Never wanted to what...?’

His breath fanned her cheek as he leaned down to hear what she was saying.

‘Have opinions. I never wanted to have opinions about you.’ She felt giddy and breathless as he shadowed her out of the kitchen and into the series of corridors and halls that eventually led to the staircase up to the wing of the house in which they had been placed.

‘I’m finding that so hard to believe, Violet,’ he murmured in a voice that warmed every part of her. ‘You always have opinions. When you first walked into my office, I took you for someone who had scrambled all her courage together to confront me but who, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t have said boo to a goose. My mistake.’

Violet eyed the landing ahead of her. Bedroom to the right. She thought she had recovered from that momentary tipsiness induced by a little too much wine with dinner but now she felt dizzy and flustered and wondered if she had overestimated her sobriety after all.

She glanced down and her eyes flitted over his lean brown hand on the banister just behind her.

Her heart was beating wildly as they made it to the bedroom door.

‘All teachers have opinions,’ she managed in a strangled voice. She took a step back as he reached around her to push open the bedroom door.

‘There’s a difference between having opinions and being opinionated. You’re opinionated.’ His arm brushed her and, all at once, he felt himself harden at the passing contact. That forbidden excitement coursed through him, reminding him of what she had looked like standing in front of him, naked and unaware. He hadn’t had a woman for over three months. His last relationship, short-lived though it had been, had crumbled under the combined weight of his unreliability and her need to find out where they were heading. Not even her stupendous good looks, her unwavering availability whatever the time of day or night, or the very inventive sex, could provide sufficient glue to keep them going for a little longer.

He firmly closed the door behind him and switched on a side light so that the bedroom was suddenly infused in a mellow, romantic glow.

‘You’re going downstairs to work now, aren’t you?’ Violet asked nervously and he gave her a rueful smile.

‘I’m trying to kick back a little...I think it would reassure my mother that I’m capable of involving myself in family life and leaving the emails alone now and again... You do approve, don’t you?’

Violet found herself in the unenviable position of having to agree with him, especially when she had stuck her head above the parapet to voice her positive opinions on just that point.

‘So...if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go have a shower...’ He began unbuttoning his shirt and was amused when she primly diverted her eyes. This was the very situation most women would have loved. Up close and personal with him in a bedroom. He caught the distinctly erotic aroma of inexperience and her shyness was doing amazing things for his already rampant libido.

He made sure not to lock the door but he took his time, washing his hair and emerging twenty minutes later to find her with all her accoutrements in her hands.

‘Sure you don’t need a suitcase to carry all that stuff through?’ he enquired and Violet blushed.

‘I wouldn’t want to disturb you when I come out. Just in case you’re sleeping.’

‘Very thoughtful.’

Violet backed away, eyes pinned to his face, anywhere but his muscled body, which was completely naked but for the tiny towel he had slung around his waist and which was dipping down in a very precarious fashion.

Did he sleep in pyjamas? How would she know when he had spent the past few nights retiring to bed at after one in the morning and getting up before six to start his day? She certainly hadn’t seen any lying about and she found that her mind was entirely focused on that one small technicality as she lingered in the bathroom for as long as she possibly could.

And for a while after she emerged into a pitch-black room, she actually breathed a sigh of relief that he was asleep. He was nothing more than a dark shadow on the bed. On the very big bed.

Barely daring to breathe, she slipped under the duvet and turned on her side away from him with movements that were exaggeratedly slow. Just in case.

‘You never actually told me whether you’d decided to come next weekend or not. Our conversation must have become waylaid...’

Violet gave a squeak of horror that he was not only awake but, from the sound of his voice, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. She heard him adjust his position on the bed and when he next spoke she knew that he was now facing her.

‘I think we lost track of the point when you decided to congratulate me on my sterling efforts with my brother...’ He reached out to place a cool hand on her shoulder and Violet’s blood pressure soared into the stratosphere. ‘I hate talking to someone’s back.’

Violet froze. She felt trapped between a rock and a hard place. She was in this bed with this man and she either turned round to face him, thereby instantly diminishing the generous proportions of the bed, or else she remained as she was, with her back to him like a petrified object, desperately hoping that hand would go away and not do something more exploratory to urge her over onto her other side. She reluctantly shifted her position and was screamingly aware of the rustle of the duvet and the soft deflation of the pillow as her body shifted.

Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness in the bedroom and her mouth went dry when she realised that he was bare-chested. Propping himself up on one elbow, the duvet was down to his waist, allowing her an eyeful of his perfectly muscled, sinewy chest with its flat brown nipples and just the right amount of dark hair to make her breath catch painfully in her throat.

‘That’s better,’ Damien said with satisfaction. ‘Now I can actually see your face. So what’s your decision to be?’

‘Can’t we discuss this in the morning?’

‘I’m a great believer in not putting off for tomorrow what can be done today and that includes decisions.’

‘I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to come down next weekend,’ Violet mumbled. Underneath the prim fleecy pyjamas, she could feel the heavy weight of her unconstrained breasts, which in turn made her remember that very moment when she had realised he had been watching her as she had emerged completely naked from the bathroom. Those twin attacks on her crumbling composure sent a wave of heat licking through her.

‘My mother and Dominic will both be pleased.’ Damien’s voice was low and unbearably sexy. ‘As,’ he continued, ‘will I...’

‘You will? You don’t mean that. You’ve barely spoken to me all week.’

‘I might say the same for you. But we’re talking now...’

‘Yes...’

‘Feels good, doesn’t it?’

Violet could hear the rapid rush of her own breathing. His low, husky words were a backdrop to something else. She felt it with an instinct she wasn’t even aware she possessed. He wasn’t touching her but it felt as though he might be and, although she knew that he couldn’t read her expression any more accurately than she could read his in the darkness, there was still a crackle of high voltage electricity between them that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

Was he going to make a move on her? Surely not! And yet...now was the time to briskly bring the conversation to an end by turning away. Sleep might be difficult to court with him lying right there next to her on the bed, but he would get the message that she had nothing more to say to him when she coldly turned away. And if she couldn’t see him, then this weirdly unsettling awareness that was making her pulses race would be extinguished at source. He would probably be gone, as usual, before she woke up in the morning and they would be back to keeping a healthy distance from each other, only breaking it in front of his family.

Violet knew exactly what she should do and how she should react and instead, to her horror, she found herself reaching out to touch that hard, broad chest. Just one touch. Where on earth had that dangerous thought come from? How had it managed to slip through all the walls and barriers of common sense and self-protection she was frantically erecting?

And where had that soft gasping sound come from as her fingers rested briefly on his chest?

Damien felt a kick of supreme satisfaction. Never had a woman’s touch felt so good. It was hesitant, timid, a barely-there sort of touch, and it ignited his blood, which was burning hot in his veins as he pulled her towards him...

CHAPTER SEVEN

HIS LIPS MET hers and Violet was lost. While a part of her knew that this shouldn’t be happening, the rest of her clung to him with shameful abandon. She couldn’t get enough of touching him. She wanted to explore every inch of his body and then begin all over again. The urge was nothing like anything she had felt before in her life. For her, love-making always seemed a calm, pleasant business, but then her one and only lover had started life as a friend. Damien was certainly no friend and this was not calm. She feverishly traced the muscled contours of his shoulders and she could feel him smiling against her mouth.

She ran her foot along his calf and shivered as her knee came into contact with the rigidity of his erection. When he flipped her onto him, she arched and threw her head back as he undid the buttons of her top, to reveal breasts that dangled tantalisingly by his mouth. She straightened to fling the constricting fleece off her.

She looked down at him, breathing hard, her hair tumbling past her shoulders. His skin was golden-brown, a natural bronze that contrasted dramatically against her own paleness. She reached out and flattened the palm of her hand against him and felt the ripple of muscle under her fingers.

He pulled her into him and half groaned as her breasts squashed against his chest. This time, his kiss was long, lingering and never-ending. It was a kiss that was designed to get lost in. It was a kiss that allowed no room for thought.

The warm fleece of her pyjama bottoms felt itchy and uncomfortable. Her underwear was damp with spreading moisture. She parted her legs and, through the fleece, she felt the hard jut of his erection.

‘We shouldn’t,’ she moaned, instantly negating that passing thought by moving sinuously against him.

‘Why? We both want it...’

‘Because you want something doesn’t mean that you should just go right ahead and have it...’

‘Are you telling me that you want to stop?’ She could no more do that than he could. Damien was aware of this with every fibre of his being. He pulled her back down against him, stifling any protest she might have come up with, and Violet ran her fingers through his hair. She loved the feel of its silky thickness. Touching him like this...it felt decadent, taboo, weirdly wicked. Even though she was supposed to be his girlfriend...

She felt like a Victorian maiden on the verge of swooning when he eased her up and hooked his fingers into the waistband of the pyjamas. Her breasts were tempting and luscious, but first...

He tugged the bottoms and watched with satisfaction as she quickly slipped them off. When she reached to do the same with her panties, he stayed her hand. He could see the dampness darkening the crotch as she straddled him and he placed his palm against the spot and moved it until he could feel the wetness seeping through to his hand.

‘Enjoying yourself?’ Anticipation was running through his veins. Making his blood boil. He intended to take things slowly, but it was hard. All he could think of was her settling on him, feeling her softness sheathing him and her tightness as she moved on him. ‘Touch me.’

Violet quivered. The underwear had to come off. She was going crazy. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and kicked it free, then turned back to see him watching her with a little smile as he touched himself. He was huge. A massive rock-hard rod of steel nestled in whorls of dark hair. She was mesmerised by the sight of his hand lightly circling himself, moving lazily, biding his time until she could pleasure him.

‘I’d rather you were doing this...’

Violet made her way over to him so that she was within touching distance...within licking distance...

Damien groaned and flung his head back, eyes closed, enjoying her tongue and mouth on him. He curled his hands into her hair, cupping her head. He had to steel himself against a powerful urge to let go, to release himself. He was in the process of physically losing control and he almost failed to recognise that fact because it was not something with which he was familiar. For him, making love had always been a finely tuned art form, where mutual pleasure rose along a predictable, albeit pleasurable, incline.

With a shudder, he reluctantly pulled her away from him and took a few seconds to gather himself.

Violet experienced a heady feeling of power. That this beautiful, desirable alpha male had to steady himself because of her...

She revelled in the unusual situation of really and truly, for the first time in her life, letting herself go. She felt as though she had had years of always having to be the one in control. Even in her one and only relationship, she had remained that person—the person who always thought before acting, the person who was always responsible. In giving Phillipa permission to be exactly the person she wanted to be, Violet, without knowing it, had tailored her own responses, had become the one who held back because someone had to, in the absence of parents.

Now...

She licked his rigid shaft once again and felt the roughness of veins against her tongue, a contrast to the silky smoothness at the top.

She had a moment’s hesitation as her ever present common sense cranked into gear.

What was going on here? So yes, he was an intensely attractive man. It was perfectly understandable that she might be attracted to him. Attraction and lust had nothing to do with love and affection. She knew that now. But why on earth did he find her attractive? He was a man used to supermodels. She had seen pictures of them and, on his own admission, his first impressions of her had hardly been positive. So was he here now because a certain amount of boredom had met a similar amount of curiosity and the two, in this strangely charged situation, had combined to produce desire? Had the charade of playing their respective parts spilled over into reality?

For whatever reason, this man wanted her and for even more nebulous reasons, and against her better judgement, she wanted him. She knew what she should do. But suddenly she thought of her sister, flitting around in Ibiza, doing exactly what she wanted to do while she, Violet, remained behind to pick up the pieces. She thought of herself, always travelling in the slow lane, always taking care, while the fast-paced rush of the unexpected and the novel flew past her, leaving her in its wake.

Why, she wondered with a spurt of rebellion, shouldn’t she jump on the roller coaster for once in her life? Why should she hold back at this eleventh hour? Would it be fair to herself? It certainly wouldn’t be fair to him.

So what they had wouldn’t last but what did she stand to lose? Damien meant nothing to her emotionally. He turned her on but she would always be able to walk away from lust because, sooner or later, her common sense would once again kick in, telling her that it was time to move on. When that time came, she would get back out there and jump back into the dating game, find herself a nice guy. She would never look back and have regrets that she had had her one window to be reckless and she had chosen to primly shut it and walk away.

She raised her head to meet his eyes and read the naked desire there.

‘You’re fabulous,’ he said roughly, and Violet smiled and blushed because she couldn’t think of a time when anyone had called her that.

‘You’re just saying that...’

‘Don’t tell me you haven’t driven your fair share of men crazy before...’ He raised himself, pulled her towards him and kissed her with driving urgency, stifling any confirmation. He didn’t want to think of her with any other man. It was an unsettling and momentary pull of possessiveness that was completely alien to him.

His mouth never left hers as he found one breast and massaged its plumpness, finding the erect peak of her nipple to tease it until she was squirming.

In shocking detail, his voice rough and uneven, he told her exactly what he wanted to do with her, where he wanted to touch her, what he wanted her to feel.

Violet’s skin burned hotly with the thrill of what he was saying. True, her experience when it came to the opposite sex was limited to one guy, but even so nothing could quite have prepared her for this sensory overload. His husky sex talk was doing all sorts of things in her mind while his hand, which had moved from her breast to caress the fluffy downy hair between her legs, was having a similar effect on her body.

She writhed and moaned softly, lowering herself to rake her teeth along his shoulder. He flipped her over so that he was now on top of her and she watched the progress of his dark head as he trailed a blazing path with his mouth along her shoulders to clamp on her nipple. Her nails dug into his shoulder blades then moved to tangle into his hair so that she could urge his mouth harder on her sensitised nipple.

He told her to tell him what she liked. Violet blushed furiously and thought that that was something she would never be able to do in a million years.

‘So...’ Damien was inordinately thrilled at her shyness. On so many levels he had been spot on when he had told her that she made a refreshing change. He had raised himself up now, his powerful body over hers, his hardness pressed against her, which made her desperate to open her legs and guide him inside. He laughed when she tried and told her that he was having none of that. Yet.

‘You don’t talk during sex...’ He slipped two fingers inside her, felt her wetness and began teasing her, rubbing the throbbing little bud of her clitoris until she was gasping, only to move his attention elsewhere so that she didn’t peak.

‘Damien...’

‘How do you expect me to know what turns you on if you don’t tell me...?’

‘You know what turns me on... You’re...you’re...’

‘Doing it right now?’

‘Please...’

‘I like it that you’re begging me...do you enjoy it when I talk...?’ He whispered a few more things in her ear and Violet groaned. ‘Well...?’ His exploring fingers drove deeper inside her and she tightened her legs.

‘Yes,’ Violet whispered, then she shot him a devilish smile, ‘although right now...there’s other stuff I’d like you to do...’

‘Tell me...’

‘I...I can’t...’ She felt as green as a virgin.

‘Of course you can,’ Damien coaxed. It was taking a massive amount of willpower to maintain this leisurely pace. Her body pressed against his was beyond a turn-on and the slippery wetness between her legs was something he could barely think about because, if he did, he knew that he would lose control.

‘I like it when you...suck my nipples...they’re very sensitive...’ Violet could feel her skin burning as though she was on fire. She felt forward and wanton and thoroughly debauched and she wondered how it was that she had never, ever been tempted to let go like this before. For a second she panicked at the notion that a man with whom she had nothing in common had been the one to rouse her to these heights.

‘Your wish is my command...and I have other things in store for you...’

Violet decided not to think. She immersed herself in sensation after sensation as he suckled on her nipples, his tongue darting and rubbing and licking and then she gasped, shocked, as his wandering mouth travelled southwards. When she stammered that she had never...he couldn’t possibly mean to...he laughed, deep-throated and amused, and proceeded to precisely what she had never...

His head between her legs made her want to cry out loud. Of their own volition, they parted to accommodate his ministrations and he was very thorough. He teased her with his tongue until she knew that she couldn’t stand it any longer, then he angled his big body so that she could pleasure him just as he was pleasuring her.

Her legs were spread wide as he continued to feast on her. His tongue probed every bit of her and she did likewise to him, taking his bigness into her mouth, tasting it in every way possible. Only when she knew that they were both about to tip over the edge did he raise himself up, pulling apart only to ask her if she was protected. He was breathing heavily.

Why on earth would she be? Violet wanted to ask. But she knew that, for Damien, his relationships would always have been with women who travelled prepared. She was certain that had they fallen into bed in his house or flat or apartment, or wherever it was he lived, there would be ample supplies of condoms in a bedside cabinet. She shook her head. She searched his face for signs of impatience and frustration but there were none. Instead, he rubbed himself against her and murmured that full intercourse would have to wait.

‘There are other ways to keep busy...’

Violet was lost for words at his generosity. She wasn’t completely naive. She knew that a lot of men would have been angry, enraged even, to have had their pleasure curtailed, even if it wasn’t the woman’s fault. A lot of men were selfish. Contrary to first impressions, Damien clearly was not one of those men.

Something shifted inside her but it was something she didn’t stop to analyse. Just at that moment, her brain wasn’t up to doing anything analytical. Not when he was touching her once again, burying his head between her thighs, relentlessly teasing her throbbing clitoris with his tongue.

Their bodies seemed to fuse into one and when, finally, she climaxed, thrusting up against his greedy mouth, she felt utterly spent. She blindly reached for him, felt his hardness and curved her languorous body so that her mouth met it, so that she could take him to the same heights to which he had taken her.

Their bodies were slick with perspiration and the room filled with the miasma of sex. He tugged her off him before he came and she felt his ejection on her face and body. It mirrored her own wetness that glistened on his face. When they kissed as he returned to Planet Earth, it was the most sensuous thing she had ever done. She felt giddy from such complete loss of her self-control.

‘I think tomorrow we might pay a visit to the chemist...’ Damien was on top of the world. What was it about this woman? They hadn’t even indulged in full intercourse and why kid himself, no amount of inventive touching could compare to the unique sensation of penetration. Yet he was infused with a feeling of absolute well-being. On a high. He wanted to start all over again, touching, tracing her body with his hands, tasting...

He pulled her against him and relished the softness of her full breasts squashed against his chest.

‘I don’t know how this happened...’

‘Are you saying you wish it hadn’t?’

‘No,’ Violet admitted truthfully, ‘but I’m not the kind of girl who falls into bed with men...’

‘Not even with the boyfriend you happen to be deeply in love with?’

It took a couple of seconds for it to register that he was teasing her. ‘Ha, ha, very funny...’ she said weakly. But what happens next? she wanted to ask. Except the question seemed strangely inappropriate.

‘This complicates things...’ she said instead.

It was precisely why he had made such a big effort not to go there. Even when he had acknowledged that he was attracted to her, even though he was a man who had never missed a step between attraction and possession, it was precisely why Damien had stepped back. Because he had acknowledged that to sleep with her would be to complicate an already complicated situation.

Now, with her sexy, luscious body pressed against his, there was no room in his head for thoughts of complications.

‘That’s one way of looking at it. On the other hand, you could say that it makes the situation much more interesting.’

‘I’m not an interesting person.’

‘Leave the character assessment to me...’ He smoothed his hand over her thigh, slipped it underneath, sandwiching it between her legs, his own personal hand warmer.

Violet knew exactly what sort of character assessment he was talking about. It had nothing to do with her personality.