by Penny Jordan
'More wine?'
Should she? Carly stared into her empty glass. 'No. No more,' she told him firmly, aware of how quickly what she had already had to drink had gone to her head.
It had been heaven eating out here on the secluded patio. The night air was soft and scented, the smallest of warm breezes was caressing her skin, and the moon was a fat yellow disc up above them.
She gave a small sensual shiver, acknowledging that the memory of those few minutes in her bedroom had left a very erotic imprint on her body.
'More lobster?'
Carly shook her head.
'No?' Ricardo questioned softly. 'You're satisfied, then, in every single way?'
He reached across the table and took hold of her hand, caressing it lightly.
How on earth could Ricardo touching her hand cause her throat to constrict? Carly wondered helplessly as she gazed at him, unable to speak.
She was extremely clever, Ricardo acknowledged. She obviously knew from past experience that men liked to do their own hunting. She had let him know she was available, and now she was sitting back and letting him set the pace.
He released her hand and stood up. Carly looked up uncertainly. Ricardo smiled back at her and held out his hand. A little breathlessly, she pushed back her chair and stood up herself. Holding her hand, he drew her towards the low wall that separated the terrace from the rest of the garden.
'Wait,' Carly protested, just before they reached it.
He watched her as she wriggled swiftly out of the robe. She had been aching to do it all through the meal, unable to stop thinking about how she had felt and how he had looked at her earlier on. She had never previously given any thought to her own nakedness in terms of its erotic appeal, but now she was acutely aware of the warm touch of the night air on her skin, and the gloriously wanton feeling that knowing Ricardo couldn't stop looking at her was giving her.
Ricardo felt as though the air was being ripped out of his lungs, whilst at the same time the darkest kind of male pleasure was exploding inside him.
He took hold of her, imprisoning her between his own body and a thick mass of geraniums tumbling over the wall, his hands at the curve of her waist, his mouth fastening on hers.
Carly melted into him, her lips parting eagerly in invitation, her arms winding round his neck. His tongue, deliberately pointed and hard, thrust against her own, its stabbing movement making her moan and shake with pleasure. She wanted him to give her more of it, to fill the hot, wet cavity he was pleasuring until she could take no more of him.
She whimpered in pleasure and arched her body into his, removing one hand from his neck to unfasten his shirt buttons.
She was just as he had known she would be! Just like every other woman who had looked at him and seen an easy future for herself, Ricardo told himself. But his hands were still sliding up over her ribcage to mould the warm weight of her breasts; his fingers were seeking the eager hardness of nipples as swollen and firm as small thimbles.
She moaned against his tongue as he played with them, caressing and rubbing them, and her own fingers struggled with his zip before she finally managed to slide it down.
He had expected her immediately to touch him intimately, but instead she moved closer to him, rubbing herself sensuously against him with a soft sound of pleasure.
Her height meant that she fitted him as perfectly as though they had been made for one another. He released her breasts and allowed her to rub their sensitive tips against his flesh, his hands supporting her back and then massaging it, shaping her spine and going lower, to cup the rounded curves of her buttocks, hold the bones of her hips. His hand slipped lower, his fingers finding the cleft between her legs. He might not be able to see the ripe readiness of her desire-swollen lips, but he could feel it. His fingers dipped seductively into the wetness of her sex.
She made a sound deep in her throat and moved eagerly against him, the movement of her body against him in time with the thrust of his tongue within the soft, dark cave of her mouth.
His body was straining against her, and the moment he moved she looked down, her gaze fastening on the swollen, darkly veined head of his sex.
His fingers stroked the length of her wetness, caressing her more intimately with each stroke until she felt hot and open, her eager moans inviting him to plunge deeper. Her fingertips were just skimming the hard out line of his penis, almost as though she was afraid to touch it. Or was she simply enjoying tormenting him because she knew how much he wanted her?
Perhaps he should punish her a little for doing that to him?
Punish her and please himself, he thought hotly, as his fingertip massaged the slick wetness of her clitoris and he felt her whole body jump and then shudder wantonly.
Her fingers were circling him, holding him, exploring him, her touch cool against his own heat. He had to have her.
Carly made a small mewling sound of pleasure deep in her throat and reached out for him, cupping his face with her hands and pressing her mouth passionately against his. All she wanted—all she would want for the rest of her life—was this, and him.
Abruptly she pulled back from him.
Her heart was thudding unevenly with the shock of her thoughts and feelings. Her emotional thoughts, and her equally emotional feelings. She felt sick and shaky as reaction set in and she recognized her own danger. How had this happened? How had she gone from wanting to have sex with to him to wanting him?
'What's wrong?'
She was too engrossed in her own thoughts to hear the sharp warning of male frustration in Ricardo's voice.
'I'm sorry... don't think this is a good idea...'
Ricardo could taste the raw savagery of his own furious disbelief. How could he have been such a fool as to let her play him so cleverly? To let her arouse him to the point where nothing mattered more than him having her?
'So what would make it a good idea?' Ricardo demanded bitingly, gripping her arms and swinging her round so hard that she almost stumbled. 'Or should I say how much would make it a good idea? Five thou sand? Ten? Carte blanche on a credit card?'
Carly stared at him in bewildered shock.
'And you can cut that out,' Ricardo told her. 'I've known what you are from the start. Nick Blayne made it plain enough—not that he needed to. It was obvious what you were from the night I saw you in that damned club, letting someone else's husband paw you.'
A slow, achingly painful form of semi-numbness was creeping up over her body, paralyzing her ability to move.
'Well? Come on—answer me. Obviously the promise of a ''loan'' wasn't enough. So what else are you after? A new designer wardrobe? A Cartier diamond? Nick told me that you were good at recognizing how to get the maximum amount of financial benefit out of a relationship.'
Belated anger seared through her. 'I'm certainly good at recognizing what he's doing to the business—and ultimately to Lucy,' Carly told him hotly. Humiliation was scorching her skin as she absorbed what Ricardo had said to her—what he had said about her.
'Well?' Ricardo demanded again, ignoring her furious outburst. 'How much?'
'Nothing,' Carly told him proudly. 'You could have had me for nothing, Ricardo. For no other reason than that I wanted you, for nothing other than the benefit to me of having sex with you.'
'What?' He gave her a derisively cynical look. 'We both know that that's a lie, and it's not even a good one. You are the one who called a halt.'
Yes, she had. But not for the reasons he was so insultingly suggesting. And she certainly couldn't tell him now why she had wanted to stop.
'You are so wrong about me. I would never—have never—' She stopped as she saw the contemptuous look in his eyes.
'What about the money you asked me for?'
The money she had wanted to borrow from him? Of course—in his eyes that had damned her.
'You don't understand—that was just a loan. I will pay you back,' she told him quietly.
Ricardo was in no mood to be plac
ated.
'Oh, I think I do understand. Let's see. You pretend to lose your suitcase, then you come on to me, expecting that I will take the bait. Then when I do you immediately back off, thinking that I'm going to ache so damned much for you I'll do anything to have you. How complicated to understand is that?' His mouth twisted in open contempt.
She had thought she knew what it was like to have her pride ripped from her, leaving her exposed to people's contempt, but she had been wrong, she recognized through the blur of her shocked, anguished, furious humiliation. But what was even worse was that she now knew exactly what he had really been thinking about her.
Automatically she tried to defend herself, protesting emotionally, 'You're wrong!'
But he stopped her immediately, challenging her. 'About what? You coming on to me?' He shook his head. 'I don't think so. Not that you didn't get some thing out of it yourself, so don't bother trying to pretend you didn't. No woman gets as hot and wet as you did and—'
It was too much. Carly reacted immediately and instinctively, her pride driving her to react in a way that was pure, instinctive, emotionally wounded female.
She raised her hand, but before she could do any more Ricardo was gripping her wrist in a bruisingly painful hold.
'If you want to fight dirty that's fine,' he told her softly. 'But remember I grew up on the streets. If you hit me, then I promise you I shall retaliate in kind.'
When he saw her face he laughed. 'No, I don't hit women. But there are other ways of administering punishment!'
'You are a barbarian!' Carly whispered shakily. 'And you have no right... You are totally wrong!' Tears of reaction were stinging her eyes now, but no way was she going to let him see that. 'I only asked to borrow the money because I didn't want to worry Lucy.'
'Yes, of course. Blame someone else. Women like you are very good at that.'
Carly had had enough. 'You don't know the first thing about a woman like me!'
'On the contrary, I know a very great deal.' Ricardo stopped her sharply. 'I know, for instance, that you are the product of generations of so-called good breeding, that your parents are wealthy and well connected, but that you yourself do not have any independent means. You also went to one of the country's top schools. In short, you believe you have an automatic right to the very best of everything and an even more deeply in grained belief that because of what you are you are superior to those people who have not had your advantages. You expect to be granted a first-class passage through life, preferably paid for by someone else. You are a taker, a user—a gold-digger.'
Something—a bubble of either pain or hysterical laughter—was tightening her chest and then her throat.
'And I know that you are a prejudiced, ill-informed misogynist. And—as I've already said—you know nothing about me,' she told him shakily, before turning on her heel and walking away from him.
Alone in the safety of her room she gave in to the tremors of aftershock racking her body, holding onto the back of a chair to steady herself. One day—maybe— she would look back on this, on him, and what he had said to her, with irony and perhaps even amusement. Because he was so breathtakingly, hugely wrong about her.
But for now... For now she would be grateful to him for showing her how easily she could have slipped into the emotional danger she had always feared and for going on to destroy every single tendril of those tentative feelings. At least now she was safe from feeling any thing for him other than furious outrage.
Were it possible for her to do so, she would leave the villa immediately. But she had Lucy and the business to think of, and Carly had been taught from a very young age to carry a dual burden of gratitude and responsibility.
She would have to stay, and she would have to re member why she was here and why he was here, and behave towards him with all the professional courtesy she could muster.
For the rest, she would rather go naked than ask him for so much as a rag to cover her—would rather starve than accept a crust from his table, rather die than let him see how very much he had hurt her and in how many different ways.
'I know what you are,' he had said.
But the truth was he did not know her at all.
The truth was... The truth was a secret, and so painful that she could not bear to share it with anyone.
CHAPTER FIVE
Carly stood on the harborside, her eyes shaded by dark glasses, as she and the chefs ticked off the items being delivered.
It was eleven o'clock in the morning and she had been up since half past five. Luckily she had managed to persuade a taxi driver to pick her up from the villa, despite the earliness of the hour, initially to go to the flower market with the florist, Jeff, and his team to en sure that the freshest and most perfect blooms were purchased for the party, and then to accompany the two chefs when they bought the fresh produce they needed.
She was trying very hard not to keep looking at the strip of pale flesh where her Cartier watch had been. She had loved it so much—not because of its monetary value but because of what it represented. The owner of the small shop she had found tucked down a narrow alley had expressed neither curiosity nor surprise when she had handed over her watch in return for a wad of euros and a pawn ticket. Once she got home she in tended to speak with her bank and arrange to either take out a loan or realize some of her assets so that she could both buy it back and give herself a small cash reserve. She hated the idea of being in debt, but there was nothing else she could do.
As soon as she could snatch an hour she intended to replace the lost clothes as best she could. Which wasn't going to be easy. True, she had seen a wide variety of trendy shops and boutiques on her way to and from the market, but the clothes at the cheaper end of the market were really only suitable for the very young, whilst those she would have considered suitable were way, way out of her price range.
Luckily, on her way back from the flower market she had spotted a stall selling casual holiday wear and had been able to buy a pair of three-quarter Capri pants and a couple of tee shirts. Buying new underwear had proved a little more difficult, but eventually she had found the small shop she had been recommended to try, tucked down a side street off Rue Georges, and had been able to buy a pack of plain white briefs and a simple flesh-colored bra.
Behind them the harbor was filled with the huge white luxury yachts of wealthy visitors, but the yacht belonging to Prêt a Party's client surely had to be the most expensive and glamorous looking of all.
Carly had been given a tour of it earlier by Mariella D'Argent's PA, Sarah, who had also generously offered Carly the use of her own small cabin to change in, and had then insisted on taking her travel-worn clothes to the yacht's laundry, promising that Carly would have them back before evening.
'It's a pity we aren't the same size, otherwise I could have loaned you something,' she had commiserated when Carly had told her what had happened with her luggage. 'Mariella is, though,' she had added thought fully. 'Okay, she may be a bit taller...'
'And at least two sizes thinner,' Carly had tacked on, laughing.
Mariella D'Argent, their client, had been one of the fashion world's best known and best paid top models before her marriage to her financier husband, and even now, at close to forty, she was still an exceptionally stunning and beautiful woman. And an even more exceptionally spoiled one, Carly had decided, after listening politely to her fretful demands.
'Mmm, and guess how she stays that way.' Sarah had grimaced. 'I swear to heaven one of these days she's going to get it wrong—sniff Botox up the new nose her surgeon has had to construct for her and inject cocaine into her wrinkles. And then, of course, there's always the danger that she might take his Viagra whilst he takes her Prozac—or at least there would be if they still shared a bed.'
Carly had tried not to laugh.
'Anyway, what about one of those fab silky floaty cotton kaftans that are all the rage? A short one, worn over some slinky cream or white pants, and perhaps a stunning belt—that
would look terrific. Or a sarong tied round them, perhaps? That's a very cool look now,' Sarah had suggested helpfully.
Carly had nodded her head and smiled, even whilst knowing that the type of oh, so casual but oh, so ex pensive items Sarah was referring to were completely outside her budget. She had seen the kaftans Sarah had described on her way down to the harbor this morning. Gorgeous, silky fine floaty wisps of cotton, with wonderful embroidery and a price tag of well over a whole month's salary!
The party was due to start at ten o'clock in the evening, prior to which the D'Argents were holding a 'small' dinner party for fifty of their guests onshore.
'So, what do you think of this?'
Dutifully Carly gave her attention to the clever arrangement of greenery and mirrors the florist had used to create a magical effect, making the small reception area appear far larger than it actually was.
'Very impressive, Jeff,' she told him truthfully.
Their own construction crew were speedily finishing erecting a framework for the tenting fabric, which was cream with a design on it in black to complement Mariella D'Argent's theme for the evening: cream, black and gray.
Currently a redhead, she, of course, would look stunning in any combination of such colors!
Looking at the fabric, Carly thought briefly of persuading the man in charge of the construction crew to give her a piece. Wrapped around plain black trousers it would look stunning—but perhaps just a bit too obvious? On the other hand, wearing it, she should be able to melt into her surroundings!
A rueful, mischievous smile illuminated her face— and that was how Ricardo saw her as he drove into the harbor area.
He had thought at first when he got up that she was still sleeping, and it had been nearly midday when he had finally decided to go and check on her.