Christmas Alpha

by Carole Mortimer

  It all sounded so reasonable when he put it like that. And Eva admitted to being tempted. What woman wouldn’t want to be the subject of a Finn Devlin photograph?

  He was a dangerous man, this wicked Irishman, with his bad-boy good looks, suggestive blue eyes, and that soft Irish brogue that curled itself deep into the pit of her belly and made her ‘cave’ weep with longing.

  Made Eva long to do anything he asked of her...

  “Just a couple of photographs,” she conceded firmly. “And I get the memory card from your camera before I leave.”

  He raised dark eyebrows. “You drive a hard bargain, Miss Shaw.”

  Eva considered for a moment. “How much were you paying the model?”

  “A lot of money.” He smiled. “But she was taking all her clothes off,” he reminded dryly.

  “Even a Finn Devlin photograph with my clothes on has to be worth something.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Definitely.” Eva stood up, patiently waiting for Finn Devlin to do the same, her eyes widening as he did so and she saw the telling bulge stretching the front of his denims.

  He shrugged unapologetically. “It’s from looking at your breasts and imagining having those fat and juicy nipples, plump as berries, in my mouth.”

  “How did you know—” Eva broke off, cheeks fiery hot now.

  She had always hated the size and shape of her nipples, as deep in color as small ripe strawberries, and just as plump.

  “Sure, an’ just the thought of them is enough to kill a man,” Finn deliberately deepened his brogue at the same time as that bulge in his denims seemed to grow larger, thicker.

  Determined not to stare, Eva instead kept her gaze on his face. Only for her fingers to then itch with the need to touch and tug on that overlong and tousled dark hair as she pulled Finn Devlin down into a kiss. Not one of those mouth-open-too-wide kisses Tom had liked to give. She had absolutely no doubts that Finn Devlin would know exactly how to kiss a woman. How to kiss her.

  For goodness sake, she had only met the man an hour or so ago!

  Maybe, but there was something about having the first words out of a man’s mouth—especially a wicked mouth like Finn Devlin’s—asking you to strip naked and wait on the bed. Those words somehow knocked out the first date with a man, the second and third one too, and took you straight to that significant fourth one.

  Except this wasn’t a date, fourth or otherwise, but a world-renowned professional photographer asking to do his job.

  Even if that impressive bulge in his denims quite clearly had nothing to do with professional interest...

  Chapter 4

  “This is amazing...” Whatever Eva had been expecting of Finn’s studio, apart from the obvious expensive photographic equipment—a harem-style bed and tacky-colored satin sheets, perhaps—it certainly wasn’t the stark beauty of the huge mahogany four-poster bed covered with ivory silk sheets and a pile of matching pillows.

  “Thought it might look like a brothel, did you?” Finn drawled knowingly, his cock instantly flexing itself as he watched Eva reach out and lightly stroke the silk sheets.

  Even that brief touch of her fingers against those sheets was enough for Finn to see that Eva’s skin was going to look amazing against the ivory. Luminescent. That long and straight hair would also look the color of rich sable.

  He had picked his original model because she was tall and blond, like Moira. But already he knew that Eva had captured his imagination in a way the original model hadn’t. In a way Moira hadn’t.

  For one thing, he had never, not for one moment, contemplated photographing Moira. Whereas with Eva that need was fast becoming a compulsion.

  “So.” Eva looked uncomfortably across the room at Finn Devlin as he stood quietly near the door, just watching her through those narrowed and sleepy—seductive—lids. “How are we going to do this? What position—I mean, how would you like me—no, that’s even worse!” She gave a disgusted shake of her head. “Help me out here, Finn!”

  “You were doing so well on your own I didn’t like to interrupt,” he came back dryly.

  Eva turned away from the intensity in those bright blue eyes. “Aren’t you afraid, living all the way out here, that someone might break in and steal all your photographic equipment?”

  The teasing light faded from his eyes, along with his smile, giving him a tensely dangerously appearance. “I wanted to get away from London for a while.”

  “Why?”

  His eyes hardened as he strolled further into the room, his movements as stealthy as a cat’s. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I… It was just something to talk about.” Eva shrugged, wary at the way he had changed from being lazily charming to a watchful predator.

  “And if I’d rather not talk about it?”

  “Then we won’t.”

  Finn came to a halt just feet away from Eva, realizing he was alarming her with his sudden change of mood. But there was no way he could think or talk rationally about the reasons he had left London. Not yet. Not when he knew Moira and her obsession for him were still out there somewhere. That Jack’s phone call just now meant that she could be somewhere close by...

  He drew in a deep breath. “I don’t mean… Only two people know that I’m here.” That count had just gone up to three, now that Moira knew exactly where he was too.

  “Three now,” Eva attempted to lighten the conversation.

  “Three now.” Make that four people, Finn amended, frustrated. Obviously Eva knew where he was too!

  “I would hazard a guess that one of the other two people is the person who sent you the parcel?”

  “My agent.” He nodded.

  “And the other person?”

  “The owner of this house. A friend.” Although Finn knew that if asked, Lucien would probably dispute that friendship. Lucien didn’t do friends.

  The two men had met a year ago when Lucien Wynter had bought a quartet of Finn’s photographs through an agent. Finn had then offered to deliver the photographs himself since he liked to meet the people who were going to own them.

  At first Lucien had turned down the offer, at which point Finn had then refused to deliver the prints at all.

  Lucien wasn’t a man who accepted being denied anything he had decided he wanted, and he badly wanted to own those four prints. He was a man who surrounded himself with beautiful things, unique possessions.

  That standoff had been the start of their friendship. Lucien could call it what the hell he liked, but as far as Finn was concerned the two men had learned a healthy respect for each other that day a year ago, and the two of them had definitely been friends since.

  To the extent that Lucien hadn’t hesitated to offer Finn the use of his secluded house in Wales after Moira’s last exploit had resulted in another woman needing to visit the hospital. Finn hadn’t been left unscathed either.

  “Your girlfriend...?”

  Finn focused his gaze back on Eva. “A man. Not in my life,” he added dryly, just so that there were no misunderstandings on that score. Although his constant erection, since Eva Shaw’s arrival, was probably a sufficient indication of his sexual preference! “Just for the record, there’s no woman in my life either.”

  Eva sighed inwardly. Not because Finn had denied liking men; his earlier conversation had been a clear indication he didn’t prefer men, without the physical evidence of his attraction to her still pressing against the front of his denims.

  She just wouldn’t feel comfortable, having Finn flirt with her—if his earlier conversation could be called anything as tame as flirting—and be involved with someone else.

  But that didn’t answer why a man as famous as Finn Devlin would hide himself away in a remote place like North Wales.

  Possibly because he was famous, and had needed to get away from the limelight and paparazzi for a while. Or something else. Maybe someone else?

  “Doesn’t your family know where you are?” She frowned at the thought of
the fuss there would be with her own family if she just disappeared.

  Finn moved to turn on and adjust the lights. “I only have my older brother, and his wife and kids. He’s a fisherman out of Galway,” he added distractedly. “I call him once a month on my cell phone, just to let him know I’m alive,” he added dryly. “Liam has never understood my interest in photography.” Finn shrugged as she looked surprised. “He asked me if I was a sissy when I took it up professionally,” he remembered fondly.

  Eva almost choked on her own tongue. “Does your brother need glasses?”

  Finn chuckled ruefully. “I come from a long line of fishermen, Eva. Playing around with a camera in my hand isn’t Liam’s idea of man’s work.”

  “Did he see your ‘War’ exhibition?”

  His eyebrows rose. “Did you?”

  Oh yes, Eva had seen it. She had lined up outside the gallery for an hour just to get into the exhibition after the critics had raved about it in the press.

  It had taken only the first few photographs for her to know that this wasn’t the blood and guts of war but the devastation war left in its wake.

  A line full of laundry left blowing in the wind next to a completely demolished house.

  A man drinking water from a puddle in the road.

  A dog left to starve in a garden, the owners having fled or dead.

  There had been thirty photographs in the exhibition altogether, from no specific country, all of them heartbreaking. A stark and terrible reminder that it was the innocents who really suffered in war.

  They weren’t photographs taken for their commercial value. Not the sort of thing anyone would want hanging on the wall of their dining room. They were the heart and soul of people. All people devastated by war.

  “You won numerous awards for that exhibition. Were given a Fellowship by the Royal Photographic Society,” Eva recalled wistfully.

  “So I was.” Finn nodded. “Liam thought one of the awards was something I used to prop the door open,” he recalled affectionately. “He loves me, but he doesn’t understand what I do for a living,” he explained at Eva’s shocked expression. “My grandfather was a fisherman, my father too, and now Liam does the same. It’s what he knows. What he’s comfortable knowing.”

  And into that practical and obviously loving family had been born a man with the heart and soul of a poet. Except Finn talked with the keenness of his eye, through the lens of a camera, rather than with a pen and words.

  “Will you be going home for Christmas?” The holidays were still four days away, but surely the storm would be long gone by then, and hopefully the roads all reopened for the people traveling to family and friends for Christmas. Besides which, the fact that there wasn’t a single Christmas decoration up in the house seemed to imply he wouldn’t be staying here over the holidays.

  Finn shook his head distractedly as he stepped back, obviously pleased with the lighting for now. “Those kids I mentioned? Six of the little darlin’s, aged from one to eight—Liam had a bad back that one year.” He grinned. “Not that I don’t love every one of them, Liam and Ailish too, but I’d go insane with the noise of them all after an hour!”

  It was the poet in him that needed the calm and quiet, Eva realized. She was the same when it came to history, and could spend hours in a museum, imagining the people, the time and the place, whom all those artifacts had once belonged to.

  “Does that mean you’re staying here for Christmas?”

  “You sound surprised?”

  “There’s no Christmas decorations, not even a tree.”

  He shrugged. “Men don’t bother with things like that when they’re on their own, you know.”

  No, Eva didn’t ‘know’. She had just assumed that everyone at least had a tree—

  “I’m ready for you now, Eva.”

  “What...?” She had totally forgotten their reason for being here as they talked.

  Finn obviously didn’t suffer from the same distraction as he now patted the sheets invitingly.

  Eva’s gaze dropped from meeting his as she once again pulled on the neckline of her jumper. “It’s even hotter in here than in the hallway and kitchen!”

  “I told you, I was keeping the house warm for when my model stripped off.” He grimaced. “At least take off your sweater, Eva,” he added impatiently as she continued to look uncomfortable. “I’m guessing you have a t-shirt on underneath it?”

  “Yes...” Eva eyed him warily.

  First he invited her to take off her sweater. And then what? Would her t-shirt be next? Her denims?

  Wasn’t that what she had agreed to do if these initial photographs turned out as Finn expected? “Do you have a name for this exhibition?”

  “I do,” Finn bit out, more than a little annoyed with himself for having just revealed so much about himself and his family, and to someone he had just met. Eva was just so...forthright, it was hard not to answer when she asked.

  “Well?” Eva looked at him expectantly.

  He drew in a deep breath before answering. “It’s called ‘The Mistress’.”

  “‘The Mistress’?” Eva repeated doubtfully. “As in a woman that a man is involved with that isn’t his wife?”

  “Or a woman paid to be his companion, yes.”

  “Your mistress?”

  His jaw tensed. “No.”

  “You sound angry.”

  “Do I?”

  “Oh yes.” She nodded with certainty.

  Possibly because he was! Because he had been used. By Moira and her married lover.

  The sad part was that Finn had thought he and Moira were both just having fun. He hadn’t seen—hadn’t wanted to see—the truth of what their relationship really was. Until Moira and her married lover had forced him to see. At which point Moira had decided that it was Finn she wanted rather than her elderly lover.

  Finn had walked away. Disgusted by both Moira and the whole sick situation. Moira had had other ideas and become obsessed with him, convincing herself it was only a matter of time before Finn came back to her.

  She began to follow Finn everywhere he went after he changed the number of his cell phone and she could no longer call him day and night. She accosted him in restaurants. In shops. Anywhere he appeared in public, she would make a nuisance of herself. Finn had finally had enough after she raked her claws down his face and smashed a glass in a woman’s face in a fit of temper when she found the two of them in a restaurant having dinner together.

  He believed the series of mistress photographs to be his way of exorcising Moira and what she had done to him.

  And along came Eva Shaw, only a decade younger than him in years, but a lifetime in experience. Those moss-green eyes glowed with the joy of life rather than Moira’s sensual avarice. The sweet curve of Eva’s cheeks, the fine line of her jaw, the warmth of her smile, all spoke of a lack of guile rather than Moira’s lust and calculation.

  Finn gave a self-disgusted shake of his head. “This isn’t going to work. It was a mistake to ever think you were capable of being what

  I want.” He turned sharply on his heel and strode out of the studio.

  Eva felt as if Finn had just physically slapped her in the face. As if he had just thrown her sexuality back at her as if she were lacking in some way.

  Just who the hell did he think he was? Well, he was obviously

  Finn Devlin, photographer extraordinaire.

  She didn’t give a damn who he was, he didn’t get to talk to her like that, to dismiss her like that, after persuading her to pose for his damned photographs!

  Eva pulled her sweater angrily up and over her head, her hair crackling with electricity as she breathed a sigh of relief at how much more comfortable she was now that she wasn’t being suffocated in wool.

  Once she had started she didn’t stop. Her t-shirt went next. Then her boots, denims and socks joined the rapidly growing pile of clothes.

  They would see who wasn’t good enough to be in a Finn Devlin photograph.
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  Who couldn’t be what Finn Devlin ‘wanted’!

  Chapter 5

  “I’m ready for you now, Finn—unless you would rather just sit there drinking coffee all day!”

  Finn almost spat that coffee all over himself in surprise as he turned and saw Eva standing in the kitchen doorway.

  Holy-fecking-hell!

  That glorious midnight-colored hair crackled and swirled about her bare shoulders as if it had a life of its own. She was wearing only a black lace bra and matching panties, her breasts spilling over the top of that black lace, her waist long and slender, with only a small triangle of black lace visible between her thighs.

  A triangle so small, in fact, that some of her black curls should surely have been showing...

  “Do you wax?” He sounded as if he had something stuck in his throat.

  Probably his balls—they had certainly jumped high enough when he turned and saw Eva wearing only her underwear!

  Her chin rose slightly. “Yes.”

  Finn’s mouth instantly went dry. “How does that feel against the lace?”

  “Sexy. Sensual. Arousing,” she answered honestly, despite the rising color in her cheeks.

  He didn’t take his eyes off her for even a second as he slowly stood up. “I want to photograph you looking just like that to begin with.”

  A few seconds ago Finn had been sitting cursing his stupidity in having thought he could ever use Eva as the model for his mistress photographs, glaring moodily at the snow he could still see falling outside the window.

  Now all he wanted was Eva back in his studio, draped over those ivory silk sheets and wearing black lace.

  “Fine,” she nodded abruptly before turning on her bare heels and walking back down the hallway.

  Finn followed as if attached to an invisible piece of string, his gaze fixed on the proud set of Eva’s shoulders, the curve of her back, and the sensual sway of that wild black hair as it almost touched the firm globes of her bottom, her legs slender and shapely. Even her feet were slim and elegant.

  Eva Shaw was a rare beauty.