Beguiled and Bedazzled

by Victoria Gordon

  A hand snaked out to capture her wrist, whipcord muscles flexed as he lifted her to her feet. Amber eyes burned into her own, holding her as he gathered her in his arms, pulling her against him so that she could feel the heat of his body through the T-shirt.

  "Maybe it’s time we both found out what you want,’ he whispered, his voice harshly soft, but not as harsh as the lips which swooped down to capture her mouth in a kiss that was savage, almost punishing. Colleen’s lips were crushed in the assault, her mouth forced open to admit the explorations of his tongue, seared with the heat of his ragged breath, the fierceness of his passion.

  At first she could hardly breathe, squeezed against his chest, her breasts flattened, her ribcage bound in iron. Then his grip relaxed, though not his kiss, and she felt the fingers of his other hand — those long, sensitive artisan’s fingers, so delicate and yet so intensely feeling as they cupped her breasts, lifting each in turn, then encircled her tiny waist.

  Colleen sighed, her back arched into the cup of his hands. She heard a moan of ecstasy, of pure delight. Hers? His? It didn’t matter.

  He lifted her then, as one might lift a child, holding her up above his head while he rained kisses on her breasts, her belly, her thighs. She gasped with pleasure. Gasped again as she was dropped back into cradling arms, as he turned away to the studio door, kicking it open and thrusting his way through it as he moved towards the house with her in his arms.

  She was vaguely conscious of the big red dog lurching from his nap on the porch, raising a querulous moan that Devon Burns first ignored, then commanded to cease as they passed.

  She was vaguely aware of being carried into the house, down a hall she didn’t know, into an enormous bedroom she’d never before seen, of being gently deposited on the softness of the waiting bed, of fingers touching her shoulders, touching her everywhere, like tiny brands of lightning. Of lips that followed the touch of those fingers — lips that burned, that seared with cold fires, then warm ones.

  She was beyond objection now. Her body burned, flaring to his every touch, to every kiss, every caress, every brush of his muscular torso. Colleen reached up to pull his head towards her, every fibre of her being crying out for more of his kisses, more of his love- making, more of.. .everything!

  Her fingers tangled in the thick hair at his neck, feeling the massive muscles beneath, the warmth of them, the strength...

  ‘Love me.’ Was that her own voice? It rang in her ears, but she was hardly aware of its echo. Her only real awareness was of fingers making magic with her skin, lips that burned, that chilled.

  ‘Love me!’

  Definitely her own voice that time, as fluttery as the mob of butterflies in her tummy, the small furnace beneath them sending wave after wave of delicious heat through her entire body.

  But then came the ice water that dampened the flames, turning it all to black, cold ashes.

  ‘What’s love got to do with anything?’ a sinuous voice whispered in her ear. Ending the magic, ending ... ending everything but the torment caused by the caressing fingers, the greedy heat of the body against her own.

  She wanted to reply, but his lips now stopped her mouth, keeping her answer inside her forestalled by the passion he could create, that she couldn’t resist and yet knew, somehow, that she must resist. Now!

  ‘Stop.’ The word emerged as the barest of whispers against the torment of his kiss, but it slowed him, gave him just enough pause for her to repeat it, louder this time.

  Again his mouth stopped hers, his kiss demanding, insistent. His hands had never paused in their knowing exploration of her body, turning her skin to such a state of sensitivity that she could not suppress a moan of pleasure.

  ‘Please.’ She breathed the word against the welcome but unwelcome intrusion of his tongue, knowing that she was fighting not only Devon Burns now but her own treacherous body, so thoroughly sensitised to his touch that her mind seemed incapable of regaining control.

  ‘Please what?’

  ‘Please stop,’ she insisted, but it was insistence only from her mind; her body was aflame, beyond all control but his. And he knew it.

  ‘Stop what?’ he replied. ‘This? Or this? Or ... this?’ And his fingers, those damnably sensitive fingers provoked answers that refuted her own vocal denials, turned her brain to mush, then stroked once again the fire beneath her fluttery tummy.

  What was happening was everything she’d dreamed of, but also nothing; Burns’ acid query about love had seen to that. Colleen, in a saner moment and with honesty, would have been the first to admit that she didn’t know for certain just what love really was anyway, but this, she knew, definitely was not!

  ‘Or this?’ he whispered, the devil’s voice in her ear, his fingertips still dancing over her skin.

  Colleen couldn’t reply, didn’t get the chance before his mouth moved to claim her kisses, then to slide in a blinding caress along the hollows of her throat before returning to taste her again.

  And she clung to him; her mind objected but her body had its own rules, and her fingers revelled in the touch of his muscles, his smooth skin. Her mouth rejoiced at the taste of him even as she fought for the control to resist his lovemaking, or punishment ... or whatever it was. Her arms were locked around his neck when he surged up from the bed, carrying her with him, again cradled in his arms.

  His mouth held her lips. Colleen writhed, seeking the freedom she didn’t really want, but his grip held as he reached his feet, turned, moved away from the threatening bed.

  ‘It’s a pity,’ he murmured into her neck. Or she thought he did; the words were indistinct, their tone deceptive. She let go, leaned away to try and see him, perhaps to hear better, but it was too late — he was already dropping her!

  The water in the hot tub had been allowed to cool; Devon Burns didn’t use the gigantic redwood tank often enough to warrant keeping it heated. But to Colleen’s fevered skin the water was icy as she plunged unwittingly into it — dropped from Burns’ arms with total accuracy so that she landed fair in the middle and was totally submerged.

  Surprise had caused her to draw a huge, gasping breath even as she fell, but even so she emerged with a splutter both of rage and inhaled water. Emerged to find him not laughing, as she might reasonably have expected, but standing in the bedroom doorway, arms folded imperiously across his chest, almost a statue in his rigidness. His voice was equally rigid.

  ‘That ought to cool you off a touch,’ he said. ‘I suppose I ought to apologise for all this, but I’m damned if I’m going to. I don’t appreciate being messed about, Ms Ferrar; I don’t appreciate your attempts to manipulate me, or your jolly little games of seduction. That kind of thing has been tried with me before — by experts; and I might say that you are no expert.’

  Then she sighed, but it was a sigh of extreme exasperation, not of weariness. And his eyes remained hostile, bleak.

  ‘I am a professional at my work,’ he said then, and it was said not as a boast but as a simple statement of fact. ‘And I had thought you were too, or I wouldn’t even have begun this ... arrangement. Business and ... pleasure don’t mix well in my world, and I’d have thought you’d have learned that lesson too, from what I’ve heard. Obviously I was wrong.’

  Colleen started to interrupt, but he ignored her.

  "You’re a beautiful woman and I’d love nothing better than to make love to you, assuming the right time and place and willingness on both sides. But not until we’ve finished our business. This man-woman stuff is quite wonderful, in its place, but its place is not involved with my work!’

  Whereupon he smiled, although Colleen fancied that it was more of a sneer than a smile, despite the even white teeth it revealed.

  ‘And, just for the record,’ he said, ‘I’m just old-fashioned enough to want to make the running myself, if you don’t mind. And just experienced enough to be suspicious any time a woman starts using her feminine wiles to get something without telling me what it is she really wants.’


  Again she tried to interject, but was forestalled this time by a dismissive wave of his hand. Colleen was so struck by his accusations that she had ceased to notice the relative coldness of the water, and beneath his icy gaze she had shrugged her way down under the surface so that only her head protruded.

  It was ridiculous, she thought, to be huddled here in a not-so-hot hot tub while this insufferable egoist harassed and lectured her not two minutes after he’d come within a whisker of making love to her. But no, she thought, not making love. Clearly to Devon Burns there was no love involved in this; had he finished what he’d begun, it would have been sex, but not love — not by anybody’s standard.

  No love, then, but a lecture still not complete.

  ‘So if we’re going to finish this project — and I assume you want that much,’ he said, with that half-sneer still evident, ‘then we will do so without any more of your little games and deceptions. I trust that is quite clear.

  Now I am going to give my honest dog a good long run, which should give you ample time to tidy up and get dressed. When I get back, the splendid pot-roast I’ve been preparing for our dinner should be ready, and I assume you might have settled down sufficiently to give it your total attention, which it deserves.’

  He turned towards the door, half opened it, then turned back to face a still astonished, still silent Colleen.

  ‘You might, I suppose, be just cranky enough to tell me where I can put my pot-roast, et cetera, et cetera, but since I also suppose you still do intend to keep to your side of this idiotic bargain, to the benefit of your father’s birthday and my impending exhibitions, perhaps you could just put all that emotional stuff on hold, at least until after dinner.’

  He was gone before she could reply, the door slamming behind him. Colleen couldn’t even move, much less speak; she squatted in the tub, her soaked hair streaming down over her face and shoulders, totally flabbergasted by the intensity of his assaults but unsure whether it was the lovemaking or the lecture which had upset her the most.

  It was bad enough to realise that she was quite hopelessly in love with a man who didn’t even believe in the word, but to be accused of being no more than a manipulative schemer was adding insult to injury.

  ‘And I suppose I’m just expected to accept all this like a good little girl, even ignore that bit about my not being any sort of expert in seduction,’ she muttered as she combed back her hair with her fingers and prepared to clamber out of the tub. ‘Well; have I got news for you, Mr High-and-mighty Devon Burns!’

  Except for her hair, it was the work of moments to get dried off, and then Colleen was free to prowl the room, her still wet hair confined by an impromptu turban formed from the towel. A glance out of one window revealed Devon Burns far out in a paddock, throwing retrieving dummies for the big red dog and obviously intending to do just what he’d said he would.

  The bedroom was almost Spartan in furnishings; those there were, however, had quite probably been handmade and most had obviously been carved by Burns into the bargain. There was a double bed, so tightly made that even their earlier writhings had barely disturbed it, an enormous wardrobe, several bookcases and a chest of drawers that ranged right across one end of the large room. The hot tub and adjoining bathroom took up the other end.

  Each piece of furniture was superb in itself; each drew the eye and held it — to the point where it took a moment or two before Colleen realised that none of the pieces matched. The fact tweaked her curiosity, but not enough to give her much pause; a moment later she was standing in his kitchen, hands on hips, fiercely debating with herself whether to spike the pot-roast with liberal lashings of cayenne pepper before she dressed and left.

  ‘What a good idea,’ she muttered aloud, but with second thoughts she set it aside in favour of returning to the studio where her clothes awaited. It seemed ridiculous but she felt a sudden apprehension about still being half-naked should Burns return before she could escape the place.

  She spared another quick glance up to the paddock as she crossed between studio and house. Yes, he was still working with the dog and now even further away, probably heading for the big dam where she had helped him train Rooster by throwing dummies on a previous visit. She entered the studio and quickly changed into her jeans and T-shirt, wishing for a moment that she’d had the sense to put on a bra before starting out. At the time it had seemed irrelevant — she was only going to take it off along with almost everything else — but now, surprisingly uncertain, made self-conscious by Burns’ lecture, if not his lovemaking, she wished...

  ‘It hardly matters if you’re not going to stay for tea,’ she rebuked herself. And staying was not, she determined, a part of her plan. Not any more. She didn’t have to give up on the project, didn’t have to renege on their agreement; she would uphold her end of the bargain as agreed. But not now, not today. ‘Besides, 1 agreed to model, not to provide stimulating dinner conversation,’ she said.

  And she was turning to the door, handbag in her hand, when the enormity of Burns’ accusations struck her in a rekindled flurry of anger.

  There, not fifteen feet away, was the carefully screened, burlap-shrouded figure that he had been so absolutely insistent she must not see. For reasons that made no sense whatsoever! And there, many hundreds of metres away, was the man himself, safely and handily out of the way along with his lectures and his silly superstitions.

  Did she dare? ‘Do I dare not?’ she muttered, already moving towards Burns’ improvised barrier, already more than half-committed.

  An instant later she was poised, fingers hovering over the burlap shroud and fairly quivering with anticipation. Or was it fear? she thought, turning quickly to scamper over to the window, from where she could double-check on Burns’ location. Reassured, she returned and plucked away the burlap before her courage failed entirely.

  Then she could only stand there, shaking her head with bewilderment and total confusion. There was no black-heart sassafras figure there, no half-naked sea-witch siren with flowing hair and a face supposedly like her own.

  Perched in the wood-carver’s vice, grinning up at her with an evil, lolloping-tongued grin, was a nearly completed sculpture, in what she could now recognise as Tasmanian myrtle, of Devon Burns’ damned dog!

  It made no sense. Colleen looked round the studio, her eyes darting from one burlap-covered article to another and then back to the piece in front of her.

  It isn’t possible; he didn’t have time ... he couldn’t have had time ... it’s ... it’s just ... madness... The words and phrases rushed helter-skelter through her mind as she put the burlap back in place, carefully arranging it to be exactly as she’d found it.

  And her mind was still whirling madly as she scampered again to the window, then returned to prowl the entire studio, lifting and replacing each individual covering on each individual piece of work in the place.

  No siren. No human figure of any kind whatsoever! Even more confusing — no piece of work involving the Huon pine she’d brought him. Not a one. She couldn’t believe it — refused to believe it. Ignoring now the marginal risk of getting caught out, she went through the room in a deliberate, systematic search, looking beneath benches, into what were obviously storage places, checking spaces that were laughably too small or obviously empty.

  ‘It doesn’t ... make ... sense,’ she muttered over and over and over throughout her extensive and totally futile search. And it didn’t! But it would, she determined, after looking out of the window to see Burns and Rooster heading home again.

  She was waiting, although certainly not patiently, when they entered the house yard. She even had her mouth open to start the war when she suddenly realised that she couldn’t!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The realisation struck her like a hammer blow just as Burns and the dog rounded the corner of the house, and Colleen could only stand there, her mind in shredded disarray, and watch as they approached.

  She couldn’t — didn’t dare — laun
ch into the scathing attack she had planned, demanding from Burns an explanation about how he could justify having her pose half-naked for a sculpture of a dog. How could she? It would be a tacit admission that she was guilty of exactly what he had accused her of — snooping and deception.

  Although, she thought, he had a cheek even to mention deception, given what he’d been up to. Having her pose like that. not once but several times, and now she didn’t even know if he’d ever actually used her posing for the siren sculpture she had seen only when it was partially completed.

  The whole thing made no sense whatsoever; any way she looked at it, Devon Burns had been leading her down some garden path or another right from the start, and Colleen wished for an instant that she had spiked his pot roast — with arsenic. But of course she hadn’t; nor could she.

  But neither could she obey her earlier instinct just to get dressed and get out before his return; it was far, far too late for that.

  And, what was worse, Burns somehow knew. There was that look in his eyes again — the one that told Colleen he knew, either of her predicament or her deception or both. A look that also told her he was certain of his ability to be in control, to maintain that control. Because she was in love with him, and she very much feared that he knew that too, and that he wasn’t above using the knowledge as it suited him.

  Well, he wouldn’t, she decided. He wouldn’t be allowed to because she wouldn’t let him, although just how she was going to achieve that bit of magic she wasn’t at all sure. But as she stood there, arms folded across her bosom in a half-conscious gesture of defiance which Burns appeared to ignore, Colleen began to lose her feeling of uncertainty.

  She wasn’t some teenager, a victim of a calf-love crush on a screen idol. She was a woman grown, and even if she wasn’t, as Burns had indeed suggested, any expert at seduction, she was certainly old enough and experienced enough to keep this insufferable egotist from winning every hand, from taking every trick. There was an explanation for all this; there simply had to be. And she would have that explanation or know the reason why!