by Penny Jordan
Ricardo started to frown. Her answer wasn’t the one he had been expecting. Or the one he had wanted?
‘It wasn’t just sex for you, though, was it?’ he challenged her.
Carly couldn’t look at him. Prickles of warning were burning their way into her head, triggering her defences.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘A woman doesn’t get to your age still a virgin unless she’s either too traumatised to want sex or she’s waiting to feel as drawn to a partner emotionally as she is sexually.’
‘No, that isn’t true. The reason I haven’t had sex before now is because I haven’t wanted any emotional involvement, not because I have.’
Ricardo could hear the panic in her voice. No matter how old-fashioned it might be, every instinct he possessed told him that she had to have very deep emotional feelings for him to have responded the way she had. His male logic couldn’t accept that, given her virginity, it could be any other way.
‘Human beings are allowed to have emotions, you know,’ he told her wryly. ‘But my guess is that you are afraid of emotional vulnerability because of what you experienced as a child. Your adoptive parents rejected you, gave their love to their own daughter whilst withholding it from you.’
Carly was too intelligent to try and deny what he was saying.
‘I may have been an emotionally needy child, but I have no intention of allowing myself to become an emotionally needy woman.’
‘There’s a huge difference between being emotionally needy and loving someone.’
‘Maybe. Or maybe, just as some people are genetically disposed to be more vulnerable to drug addiction, some people might be genetically disposed to emotional vulnerability. I prefer not to put my own resistance to the test.’
‘How did your adopted sister die?’
His question caught her off guard.
‘She…she was a drug addict. She died from an overdose of heroin. She started using drugs when we were at school. She was a year above me, and in a different crowd. I…It never appealed to me. I told you that my mother was one of three young women who died in a house fire. They were probably all drug addicts. I never…I couldn’t…I know that, deep down inside, my adoptive parents blamed me for her addiction. My adoptive mother admitted as much. She said that she felt by bringing me into their lives they had brought in the evil of drug addiction.’
‘Rubbish,’ Ricardo announced briskly. ‘It strikes me that they were looking for someone to blame and picked on you.’
‘Maybe, but I still feel guilty. They loved her, not me, and now she’s dead. All they’ve got left is me. I’ve tried to do what I can to help them, to repay them for everything they’ve given me.’
‘Everything they’ve given you? Such as what?’
‘A chance to live a normal life. My education. Without them I could have ended up making a living selling myself on the street, like my mother probably did.’
‘No,’ Ricardo told her firmly. ‘No, you would never have done that. Somehow you would have found a way to set yourself free.’
Carly could feel emotional tears prickling her eyes. Emotional tears?
‘I want you, Carly, and not just physically. You touch my emotions and delight my senses. When you aren’t with me, I want you to be. You’ve become integral to my pleasure in life—to my happiness, if you like. I want to explore with you what’s happening to us. I trust you enough to tell you that, and to tell you too that emotionally I am vulnerable to you. Is it really so hard for you to do the same?’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ she admitted shakily.
‘Then don’t say anything,’ Ricardo told her. ‘Just allow yourself to feel instead. And when we’re together you do feel, don’t you, Carly?’
‘I…I know that when we have sex it gives me a lot of pleasure.’
She answered him primly, but prim was the very opposite of what she felt. Just talking with him like this had made her body begin to pulse with sensual need. It seemed a lifetime since they had last had sex, though in fact it was less than twenty-four hours. Already she was longing for the opportunity to spend more time with him in intimate privacy. Her legs were weak, and she had to make a small denying movement in her seat to clamp down on the sensation pulsing inside her.
She could feel Ricardo looking at her. She turned her head and looked back at him. He knew! Somehow he knew what she was feeling. The car was an automatic, and he reached for her hand, placing it against his own body.
It wasn’t the answer he wanted, but it would do—for now. If her sexual response to him was her area of vulnerability, then he would have to use that to try and break down her emotional barriers.
Ricardo was hard!
Carly tried to swallow, and for one wanton shocking moment she actually found herself wishing she were the kind of woman who felt comfortable abandoning her underwear, and that only the lightness of a thin summer skirt, instead of jeans and beneath them her thong, separated her from Ricardo’s intimate touch.
‘Don’t,’ she heard Ricardo growl thickly. ‘Otherwise I’ll have to stop. And the back of a car just doesn’t have room for what I want to do with you right now…’
‘What do you want to do?’ Carly encouraged him huskily.
She felt his momentary hesitation mingling with her own shock that she could be so enticing.
‘I want to spread you out in front of me, your body naked and eager…just like it was that first time. I want to start at your toes, touching every inch of you, tasting every inch of you. I want to bring you to orgasm with my hand and my mouth, and watch you take your pleasure from me…’
Carly let out a soft beseeching moan. ‘Stop it,’ she begged. ‘I can’t—’
‘Wait?’ he demanded softly. ‘Do you think it’s any different for me?’
Emotionless sex! Ricardo knew perfectly well that he was brooding too much and too betrayingly over Carly’s attitude. She had no idea just what emotionless sex actually was, he told himself fiercely. She had already admitted to him that she was simply trying to protect herself from being hurt, as she had been hurt as a child. And because of that she was refusing to admit that her emotions were as dangerously involved with him as his were with her. After all, she had given herself to him totally and completely as his, and he had claimed her in exactly that same way.
The figures he had been working on for making a bid for Prêt a Party were in front of him on the table of the small café where they had stopped for drink. He glanced uncaringly at them whilst he waited for Carly to return from the lavatory. He no longer cared how profitable it was, or indeed whether or not he acquired it. In fact the only acquisition he was really interested in right now was the total and exclusive right to Carly herself—preferably by way of an unbreakable and permanent legally binding document.
Where was she? His muscles tensed, and then started to relax as he saw her hurrying towards him. Two men at another table were also looking at her, and immediately he wanted to get up, lay claim to her.
‘We need to stop at a chemist,’ he told her as he signalled for their bill. When she looked at him in concern, he explained succinctly, ‘Condoms.’
‘Oh!’ Carly could feel her face going pink.
‘Not that I think there’s any risk to either of us from a health issue point of view, but I assume you aren’t protected from pregnancy?’
‘Yes. I mean, no. I mean, no—I’m not protected,’ Carly confirmed guiltily. How could she have overlooked something as basic and important as that?
The chateau owned by a famous rock star and his stunningly attractive American wife was in the Loire valley, home to some of France’s famous wine-growing districts. Carly had seen photographs of the chateau in a magazine article about the star and his family, and she knew that his well-born wife had scoured Europe’s antique dealers and employed the very best craftsmen in order to restore the building and turn it into a modern home. A mirrored ballroom similar to that at Versailles was the showpiece o
f the restoration work, along with the gardens.
This event was by far the largest of the three they had attended. Just about everyone who was anyone had been invited. Five hundred celebrity guests in all, mainly from the world of rock music, films, the upper classes and fashion.
In addition to a six-course dinner, the menu for which had been organised by one of the world’s leading chefs, and the regulation post-dinner dancing, the rock star’s wife had chosen to have magicians moving amongst the tables, performing a variety of tricks. Cream, gold and black were the colours she had chosen, insisting that the flowers used for table decoration must not have any scent as she wanted to have the huge marquee scented only by the special candles she had ordered in her favourite room fragrance.
The marquee itself was to be black, ornamented with cream and gold, the dining chairs were cream with black rope ties, and the floor a dazzling gold that looked like crushed tissue paper beneath glass.
The house Ricardo had rented was in a small picturesque town a few kilometres away from the château on the bank of the River Loire, a tall, narrow honey-coloured stone building wedged in amongst its fellows on a dim, narrow, winding cobbled street, with its own private courtyard at the rear and a balcony on the second floor which overlooked the Loire itself.
It came complete with Madame Bouton, who was waiting to introduce herself and the house to them, explaining that she would come every morning to clean, and that she was willing to buy them whatever food they might require.
‘What’s that look for?’ Ricardo demanded as soon as Madame had gone.
‘I’m just so hungry for you,’ Carly told him simply.
A sensation like a giant fist striking his chest hit him with a combination of unfamiliar emotions spiked with warnings. And then he looked into her eyes, at her mouth…
They didn’t make it out of the kitchen. They didn’t even make it out of their clothes. The sex was hot and immediate. Ricardo’s hands cupped the bare cheeks of her bottom as he lifted her onto the table, and Carly wrapped her legs tightly round him.
She had been waiting for this and for him all day—thinking, fantasising about him, longing for him—and just the sensation of his mouth against her naked breast as he pushed aside her clothes took her to such a pitch of excitement that she thought she might actually orgasm there and then.
But, as she quickly discovered, she had more things to learn from Ricardo about the pleasure of sex. A lot more!
When he had delayed both their climaxes to the point where Carly was ready to scream with frustration, he finally complied with her urgent demands, and the intensity of orgasm that followed left her lying limply against him whilst her body shook with tremors of sensual aftershock.
Wearing her cropped jeans, a tee shirt, and a hat to protect her head from the heat of the sun, Carly stood listening to their clients as the three of them discussed the event.
‘I really like the interior of the marquee, but I’m not sure now about the flowers. I think I want to change them,’ Angelina Forrester informed her. ‘I love the drama of having black. Perhaps if we changed things so that the tablecloths are just barely cream and the flowers black…you know, very heavy and oriental-looking. Sort of passionate and dangerous!’
Carly’s heart began to sink as she recalled the trouble and the expense they had gone to in order to comply with Angelina’s initial demand for scent-free blooms.
‘Bloody hell, Angelina, does it matter what colour the bloody flowers are?’
The Famous Rock Star looked and sounded angrily impatient, and Carly could see the pink tinge of temper creeping up his wife’s perfect complexion.
‘Perhaps if we added one or two dramatic dark flowers to the table decorations?’ Carly suggested calmingly, mentally deciding that if Angelina agreed to her suggestion the extra flowers would have to be artificial—or sprayed. No way was there time to source black-petalled flowers for tomorrow night! She would need to speak to the florist as well…
‘Well…I’d have to see what you mean…’ Angelina hesitated.
The Famous Rock Star swore crudely. ‘All this because you’ve changed your mind about your bloody dress!’
The pink tinge had become distinctly darker.
Discreetly Carly excused herself, explaining that she needed to speak with the hired entertainers.
Arms folded over his black-clad chest, his long chino-covered legs stretched out in front of him, Ricardo propped himself up against a nearby wall and watched her.
She had good people-managing skills, and she was able to establish a genuine rapport with those she worked with. She treated them well, and with respect, and they in turn were obviously prepared to listen to what she had to say. But he didn’t want her as an employee. He wanted her as a woman. He wanted her exclusively and permanently as his woman. He had, he admitted, fallen deeply and completely in love with her.
He heard a burst of laughter from the mainly male group surrounding her and immediately his muscles contracted on a primitive surge of male jealousy.
He was halfway towards her before Carly became aware of his presence, alerted to the fact that something was happening by the sudden silence from those around her.
She turned round and saw Ricardo striding towards her, and her heart turned over inside her chest with need, her whole body going boneless with the pleasure of just looking at him.
‘I thought you might be ready for some lunch.’
‘Yes, I am. I think there’s a sort of workers’ canteen affair set up somewhere.’
Ricardo shook his head and then took hold of her arm, deliberately drawing her away from the others.
‘No. Not here. I was thinking of somewhere more…private.’
She knew he could feel the betraying leap of her pulse because his thumb was resting on her wrist.
‘Yes!’ she told him unsteadily. ‘Yes.’
Their clothes lay abandoned on the bedroom floor—Ricardo’s tee shirt and her top, his chinos and her cut-offs, the smooth plain Calvins in which he could have posed as effectively and even more erotically than any male model—or so at least Carly considered—her bra, and finally the tiny side-bow-tied silky thong he had given her only yesterday. A gift for her that he would ensure brought pleasure to them both, he had told her seductively.
They lay skin to skin, Ricardo’s hands slowly shaping her whilst she lay in the luxurious sensual aftermath of their earlier urgent coupling.
‘You’re quiet,’ Ricardo murmured.
‘I’m just thinking about how perfect this is and how happy I am,’ Carly admitted.
Ricardo looked at her, and then cupped her face and kissed her.
‘So you’re ready to accept that we do have something special, that it isn’t just sex, then?’ he said softly.
He reached for her hand and twined his fingers through hers, holding it—and her—safely. She had fought so hard to deny what she felt, but today, lying here in the sun with him, she knew that she couldn’t deny her love any longer.
‘I…Ricardo, I…I do feel emotionally connected to you.’
‘“Emotionally connected”?’ Ricardo queried, shaking his head as he continued tenderly, ‘Is the word “love” really so very hard to say? Or are you waiting for me to say it first?’
Without waiting for her to reply he kissed her gently, saying, ‘I—love—you—Carly,’ spacing out the words between kisses.
There could be no greater happiness than this—no greater sense of belonging, no deeper trust or awareness of being loved, Carly decided as she let him walk into her heart.
‘Ricardo, we ought to get dressed.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m supposed to be working,’ she reminded him, trying to sound as though she meant it.
‘Mmm…’
Ricardo had slid his hand into her hair and was kissing the sensitive little spot just beneath her ear. But it was too late. Her own reminder to herself that she should be working had made her uncomfortably aware that sh
e still had not dealt with the problem of Nick forging her signature.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing’s wrong. What makes you think that there is?’
‘You’re anxious and tense, and you’re avoiding eye contact with me,’ Ricardo told her wryly. ‘So much for me hoping that you’d finally let me in past the barricades.’
‘No, it isn’t anything to do with that,’ Carly assured him.
‘Then what is it to do with?’
He had caught her neatly with that one. There was no point in her trying to pretend now that she wasn’t worrying about anything.
‘It’s…It’s something that doesn’t only concern me, Ricardo.’
‘The business?’ he guessed.
Carly nodded her head.
‘You’re a potential client, and…’
He reached for her and looked into her eyes. ‘I thought we’d gone way beyond that. What we have means that our personal bond with one another comes way, way before our loyalties to anything or anyone else. Surely you know that you can trust me?’
‘Yes.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
Hesitantly, she started to explain.
‘You mean to say that he’s forged your signature so that he can steal from his own wife?’ he said incredulously.
‘I don’t know that, but it does look that way. I’m just so worried about what I should do. If I tell Lucy she’s going to be so hurt, and she may not even believe me. I’ve been in touch with the bank and told them that no cheques are to be allowed through the account for the time being, so at least that should stop him from drawing any more.’
‘How much has he taken?’
‘A lot. In fact so much that the company just won’t be viable by year-end unless Lucy makes up the shortfall from her trust fund.’
‘So as of now the business is a sitting duck for any lurking predator?’
‘Well, yes, I suppose it is. Although I hadn’t thought of it in that way,’ Carly admitted. ‘My concern has been for Lucy and how this is going to affect her.’