by Maggie Cox
As he settled the material around her, her trembling would not cease, and she was mesmerised as, with his hands either side of her arms, he directed her slowly round to face him. Something in his eyes transfixed Sophie, and bolted her feet to the floor. A scorching look so hot and desirous that beneath the luxurious coat she’d reluctantly tried on for his benefit, her limbs had all the strength of cotton wool.
Dominic was staring at her mouth. With the barest hint of raspberry lipstick, her pretty lips were temptingly ripe and plump, and too inviting for words. Knowing the delights that they promised, he wanted to plunder them, taste them,ravish them, until a rising tide of passion swept over them both, consigning them willingly to a little divine madness that they wouldn’t soon forget. Lust rose up inside him so strongly that for a moment it was all Dominic could do to remind himself that if he capitulated to such desire Sophie would—in all likelihood—run a mile, and never see him again.
Or would she?
Realising that she was trembling, and that the blue irises of her lovely eyes had turned fascinatingly dark, Dominic quickly reassessed his opinion. She wasn’t asimmune to his attraction as she clearly wanted to convey. His little brunette spitfire still desired him as much as he desired her—only she was apparently determined to ignore it.
The knowledge ignited an almost dizzying satisfaction deep inside him—a victorious gratification that right then gave him far more pleasure than any multimillion-dollar property deal.He would have her in his bed again soon, and the result would be even more sensational and breathless than the first time; an electrical storm that would not so soon die out.
Keeping his desire and his intention deliberately in check, Dominic stood back to admire Sophie wearing the beautiful cashmere coat. It suited her without a doubt, as he’d known it would, and all of a sudden he was determined that she should keep it—despite her protestations to the contrary.
‘See how well it looks.’ He led her over to the large gilt mirror above the marble fireplace and saw that a rosy hue had invaded her cheeks and heat had made her eyes sparkle.The betraying heat of sensual awareness…
Gazing back at her reflection in that huge mirror, unable to hide from the slowly dawning truth that her attraction for this man had deepened more than it had diminished, Sophie wondered how on earth she even kept her balance. Her shocking feelings had betrayed her, as if paying herwill no intention at all. How had she come to find herself in such an unbelievable situation? With Dominic’s hard-angled and handsome face staring at her from behind, his large square hands firmly on her shoulders in the luxurious coat so reluctantly donned, it was hard to think of anything except to recall how those selfsame hands had felt when touching her bare skin. She almost swayed.
More affected than she wanted to be by her wild, racing thoughts, Sophie spun round, determined to make herself come to her senses. Stalking back to the couch, she felt a tide of embarrassed heat wash over her making her body feel awkward and too self-conscious to be natural.
‘I’ve got to go. Really…I have to.’
The coat came off and she laid it over the arm of the couch. Then she straightened, and stared at Dominic with her arms folded protectively across her chest—if only to hide the fact that her aching, tingling nipples were fiercely pressing against the cool cotton of her bra, and would no doubt betray her desire more emphatically than words ever could.
‘I want you to keep the coat.’
His voice was husky, clearly affected by the shocking charge of primal electricity that had just ebbed and flowed between them. His hooded emerald eyes looked drowsy and heavy…aroused.
‘No.’
‘Yes, Sophie. I bought it for you and I want you to have it.’
If she made any more fuss about the infernal coat she was going to embarrass them both, Sophie realised. Reluctantly, hesitantly, she picked it up, and stroked over the soft wool with the flat of her hand. ‘Very well, then. I…thank you. But I want you to know that I don’t make a habit of accepting expensive presents from men.’
‘Good. Then perhaps I am the first? That pleases me. Now, tell me—do you have a boyfriend? Are you seeing anyone?’
Her mind whirling with all the possible implications of such an unexpected question, Sophie stared. ‘No. But why should that—?’
‘Come to my house for dinner tomorrow night. I will send Louis for you at seven-thirty.’
‘I’ve already made you the list you wanted regarding Diana’s present. Why do you want me to come for dinner?’
Dominic’s arresting green eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t pretend to misunderstand me, Sophie. You know very well why I have invited you to dinner.’
The unspoken erotic tension that Dominic hinted at lay between them, hardly managing to stay beneath the surface of the polite civility they both struggled to maintain. Realising it, Sophie was genuinely terrified. She’d convinced herself that Dominic meant the gift of the coat as an insult to make her feel cheap, because she’d slept with him, and now she had to reassess the situation completely, because he seemed to be expecting something more from her than a one-night stand.
‘You didn’t invite me,’ she retorted, her eyes bright with renewed indignation, welcoming the emotion to hide behind. ‘Youordered me!’
‘I do not particularly care how you interpret my invitation. I just want you to be ready when Louis comes to collect you at seven-thirty. Am I making myself clear?’
She saw then the steel that his business associates and clients must regularly come up against, and her knees threatened to buckle. When this man wanted something, was there anything or anyonethat would evendare to stand in his way? she thought in fright. Probably not, considering his vast wealth and influence in the world that he moved in.
Diana had mentioned on more than one occasion that when it came to property Dominic Van Straten had the same awesome expertise and authority in the arena as a certain renowned media tycoon had on newspapers. Sophie only had to glance round the room at the probably million-dollar paintings so liberally lining the walls to know that. The man was successful beyond imagining.
‘You have made yourself perfectly clear. But nobody orders me to do anything I don’t want to do! Do I makemyself clear?’
Dominic laughed, and Sophie’s already compromised knees almostdid give way at the sound. That laugh immediately and worryingly provoked fantasies of naked bodies entwined on sheets of pure luxurious silk and, to her consternation, Sophie found that the images she’d conjured up, were not so easily dispelled.
‘All right, Sophie. Since you are so anxious to leave, I will let you go. But you will come back tomorrow with Louis at the time I suggested…Yes?’
She wanted to be able to rewind the tape. To go back in time to the moment she had given him Diana’s list. If she could go back to that moment, Sophie knew with certainty that she would not have stayed or been persuaded to try on the coat. Not now she was only too aware that the powerful undercurrent of attraction that she was being propelled upon towards this man was too strong for her to fight.
Unable to deal with this new, highly unfair tactic of unbelievable charm, Sophie released a pained sigh, wondering what price fate would exact on her for relenting to such a crazy attraction for even a second. ‘Just dinner, then. Afterwards I’ll go home, and that will be that.’
‘Do you think so?’
Dominic’s voice was gently derisive, and a small shiver of delicious awareness, like a shower of soft summer rain, cascaded down Sophie’s spine.
‘Ido think so.’
‘Sophie?’
‘What is it?’
She had reached the door, her hand about to grasp the doorknob. When she turned her head to glance back at Dominic he was smiling, and the sight of that arresting, ruthlessly in control, undoubtedly sexy gesture almost snatched her breath away. She knew he was using it to illustrate to her thathe was the one calling the shots, not Sophie. She should have left, right then, not waited for him to speak.
‘Tomorrow, please wear something a little more feminine to dinner.For me.’
Biting her lip, lest she retaliate with somethingnot so ‘feminine’, Sophie left the room, and the house, without another word.
The following day Dominic flew to Manchester on business. He was negotiating a deal to purchase some premier land in the city, on which to build three blocks of penthouse apartments with prime views. In a bidding war with a rival developer, Dominic had done his homework, considering all the angles and loopholes where he might gain an advantage over his rival.
Maintaining his customary cool, he emerged from the meeting five hours later, with the deal tied up and a sharp appetite for lunch. He ate at one of the best restaurants in town, met for drinks afterwards with the heiress daughter of a wealthy friend—owner of that same restaurant and several others round the country—declined her hopeful offer of going on to somewhere ‘a little quieter’ afterwards, and jumped on a plane back to London.
Throughout the day, behind the sharp dealing and the ruthless determination to come out on top in a deal he’d decided months ago would be his, Dominic’s thoughts had strayed briefly from time to time to Sophie. Every time they had done so, a warm buzz had filled his body, making him long for the day to draw to a close and slide into evening so that he could see her again.
It had been a while since the possibility of a heated sexual encounter had filled him with such desire and anticipation—but then he had already had a taste of what was in store. Together, he and Sophie were combustible.Even if the little schoolteacher seemed to resent him with a vengeance. It would make her complete capitulation to their mutual desire all the sweeter. But, that said, it was not in Dominic’s mind to rush things, like a bull at a gate. He would take it very slowly this time: tease her a little bit, play with her, harness in his own needs with just the right amount of check—so that after a while she would be as crazy in lust for him as he was for her…
By the time he arrived back at the house in Mayfair he was in avery good mood indeed.
CHAPTER FOUR
TWICEduring the day Sophie had slipped out of school, once in the morning and again at lunchtime, to ring Dominic’s phone number. Both times all she’d got was the response of an answering machine, and both times she had decided against leaving a message. To leave a message on his machine telling him that she was declining his dinner invitation after all seemed cowardly in the extreme, and would probably earn her nothing but his undying scorn. She had her weak points, but cowardice was not one of them.
When Sophie reflected back on last night she could hardly believe that she’d been so hypnotised by the man that she’d agreed to see him again. Now, when she thought about it in the cold light of day, the whole idea seemed like madness. A disturbing and hot sexual attraction had briefly taken the edge off her dislike, and had hoodwinked her into thinking she’d actually like to experience more of the same with this enigmatic man. An extremely wealthy and powerful man, so far above her up the ladder of success that Sophie couldn’t even see the soles of his shoes.
They were so mismatched it was laughable! She couldn’t even afford to replace her clapped-out old car with a second-hand one, much less jet off to another part of the globe at the drop of a hat. And as well as the chasm-size gap in their social conditions, she didn’t evenlike him. She really didn’t. She told herself the only reason he was interested in her in any way was probably because he saw her as grateful and an easy conquest. Now and again perhaps he thought it a novelty to slum it a little, with girls from ‘downtown’ instead of ‘uptown’. No doubt he played such games with women all the time…just because he could.
No. The more Sophie deliberated on the matter, the more she was utterly convinced she should just tell him to his face that she wasn’t interested.
If only she’d told him that shedid have a boyfriend. But lying was not something that came naturally to Sophie, either—even if it meant protecting herself from billionaire predators like Dominic Van Straten. So she decided she would go with Louis at the appointed time, when he came to collect her, then ask if Dominic could come to the door and confront him head-on with the fact that she’d made a mistake in agreeing to see him again, that she’d thought about it, but decided it wouldn’t be a good idea.
Feeling pleased with the innate good sense of her proposal, Sophie returned to her class of enthusiastic five-year-olds, and threw herself with relish into an afternoon of finger painting.
A soft spring rain was falling as Sophie waited outside Dominic’s front door that evening. He’d asked her to wear something feminine, but beneath her ordinary black coat—she’d deliberately not worn the one he’d gifted to her—she was wearing a plain, nondescript black sweater and jeans. She had not dressed up at all. What was the point when she’d only gone there to tell him that she’d changed her mind?
But when Dominic answered the door himself, filling the very air with the force of his charisma and looks, arrestingly handsome in a black tuxedo, his light-coloured hair gleaming beneath the chandelier-lit entrance hall behind him, Sophie’s resolve about not seeing him again was swiftly blown away, like fragile autumn leaves clinging precariously to a branch.
‘I won’t come in,’ she started, flustered by the fact she’d deliberately dressed down. ‘I only came to tell you that I won’t be joining you for dinner after all. In the cold light of day I’ve had some—I’ve had some doubts.’
Her cornflower-blue eyes were enormous in her pale oval face, and the rain had bestowed a myriad of crystals in her glossy black hair. Disappointment cut a deep swathe through Dominic’s chest, along with fury that she should reject him so easily. And underlying both those emotions was a desire that could hardly be contained. He’d waited all day to see her again, and now she was telling him that she had some ‘doubts’. No woman had ever rejected his advances before, and he was adamant that Sophie wasn’t going to be the one to ruin such a long-standing record.
‘Come in,’ he told her, holding the door wide. ‘You’re getting wet, standing out there in the rain.’
Turning down her coat collar, Sophie reluctantly stepped inside. The warmth and light of the magnificent entrance hall enveloped her in a different world entirely from the one that denoted her own daily existence. Great wealth had a certain ‘scent’, she decided, even without all its more obvious trappings. And Dominic Van Straten exuded that scent.
As he closed the door and turned back to study her, his green eyes assessed her figure as thoroughly as if she were a painting he was considering buying, then hovered with slow deliberation on her face.
‘I have friends waiting to meet you, Sophie,’ he remarked, indicating the closed double doors of the drawing room at the foot of the beautiful winding staircase. ‘Will you deprive them of your company as well?’
‘Friends?’ Sophie repeated in alarm, astonishment making her light-headed. ‘But I thought that it would be just you and—’ Biting off the end of her sentence as Dominic narrowed his emerald gaze with a slightly mocking glint, she swallowed hard. ‘You didn’t tell me it was a formal invitation.’
Her cheeks went from alabaster-pale to a vibrant rose-red in the space of just a few short seconds. Her unspoken belief that Dominic had been planning dinner for just the two of them hovered treacherously in the air, making Sophie feel like the biggest of fools there ever was.
‘Were you hoping it would just be the two of us?’ Soft-voiced, Dominic alarmed her even further by moving closer to her, so that Sophie was suddenly on intimate terms with every straight blond eyelash and each beautifully carved plane and angle of his arresting face.
He smelled good too…too good.Under siege, her heart began to race.
‘No!’
Denying the charge with a passion, she wished the opulent marble floor would do her a huge favour and part like the Red Sea beneath her feet. Anything to save her further ghastly embarrassment beneath this man’s all-seeing, mocking gaze.
‘I wasn’t ‘‘hoping’’ f
or anything. Would I have come here to tell you that I was declining your invitation if that was the case?’
‘I’d like you to stay, Sophie.’ He said this in such a way that Sophie had no doubt that it was practically an order.
But there was no way on earth that she wanted to meet his more than likely equally well-heeled friends dressed as if she’d just walked out of a dusty classroom…which she practically had. There were even stubborn traces of coloured paint left under her fingernails from her afternoon with the children! Remembering, Sophie curled her hands and immediately dropped them down beside her.
‘I really can’t. Thank you for asking, just the same, and for—for sending Louis to collect me. I didn’t want to just leave a message, you see. I wanted to tell you in person.’
He admired her integrity, he really did. But he wasn’t a man readily to concede defeat—no matter what the odds. Not when he knew for a fact that the little schoolteacher was fighting as strong an attraction as he was. She was scared, that was all.