‘Not many men own properties all over the globe,’ Sara pointed out.
‘I consider myself very fortunate in that respect.’
Sara toyed with the stem of her wine glass.
‘I’m surprised you haven’t been snapped up by now.’ She wanted desperately to remember how she was going into this, with her eyes wide open and cold-bloodedly aware that hers was a game without emotion. She didn’t want to succumb to any phoney charm. She’d already gone down that road. ‘Eligible playboys are always the first to go.’
‘That’s been your experience, has it?’ The lazy smile dropped from his face. ‘And I’m not a playboy. In fact, the very description is an insult. Playboys travel from party to party, spending Daddy’s money and chasing pretty young things.’
‘And you don’t chase pretty young things?’ She gestured around her. ‘This isn’t Daddy’s? You don’t party with the best of them?’ She dared him to contradict her, to put her back in the angry frame of mind she needed to keep her perspectives within sight.
He looked at her carefully, as if he was making up his mind about something, then he smiled.
‘Actually the building belongs jointly to my mother and me now, not that she ever gets the chance to come down to London except for Ascot and Christmas shopping. Sometimes it’s odd to think that she was once a model jet setting all over the world.’
Sara was well and truly deflected. ‘Didn’t she miss…all of this?’
‘Oh, she took a little while to settle, she once told me. She missed the shops and the hectic travel and the buzz, but then after a few months she found herself being drawn in to village life. And, of course, she adored the old man. Apparently, she returned to London a few months after she had moved up and found that a lot of her friends were not quite the exciting young things she thought they were.’
A bit like me, Sara thought bitterly, except the only male who stood any chance of holding back her return was five years old. The friends aspect she could understand. They hadn’t changed, it was her lifestyle that had altered. But as for being drawn into village life, she couldn’t see it happening. She still had one foot up north, one down south and no one to help her make her mind up.
‘How are you finding life in the Highlands?’ he asked curiously and immediately her antennae were up. This would be his first step, she thought. He would never come right out with his plan to buy the house from under her feet. He would gently but relentlessly move in and use whatever was necessary to get what he wanted.
‘Different.’ Sara stood up and stretched. ‘Do you mind if I remove my jacket?’ Without giving him time to answer, she pulled off the short cream jacket, which left her only in her tight top that fell neatly to the waistband of the skirt.
‘Not going to carry on? Shame.’ His hooded blue eyes lingered on her. ‘I like the thought of my woman doing a striptease in my kitchen.’
His woman. Sara felt a shiver of pleasure at the possessive terminology. Possessive but frankly meaningless. The only thing that really got to this man when it came to women was sex. And she wanted to get to him, didn’t she?
She pulled the top over her head and dropped it on the table between them. Her fingers had been trembling when she did that, but as his eyes drifted over her breasts pushing against the lacy bra she felt the same rush of power that had surged through her earlier. The silence between them was erotically charged, only broken when he pushed back his chair and hooked one ankle around another so that he could pull it towards him, enabling him to stretch out his legs and continue his lazy, broodingly sexy appraisal of what she was doing.
In that instant it occurred to her that she would never have been able to do what she was doing if she hadn’t been genuinely and intensely attracted to him. She wanted to touch him and have him touch her and she would, but in due course, when the build-up had left them both weak with need.
He had tipped his head back so that his eyes appeared drowsily half-closed as he watched her.
Sara unhooked the bra and slowly pulled each strap down, then the lacy piece of not much was off and joining the discarded top on the table.
Her breasts pointed proudly out for his inspection. She heard his swift intake of breath and half smiled.
She shimmied towards him until she was standing right in front of him, then, very slowly and not taking her eyes away from his darkly flushed face, she rid herself of her skirt. She almost wanted to scream out loud with her desperate craving to be touched. When her body did finally make contact with his, she was sure that she would explode into a thousand fragments.
It almost did. It felt as if it would anyway as he dropped his legs from the chair so that he was holding her between them and then flicked aside the crotch of her panties so that he could lean forward and deeply inhale the scent of her dusky womanliness. He filled his nostrils with it and she allowed herself to drown under the weight of mindless sensation as he ruffled the fine hair between her legs, blowing against it, preparing her for the delicate probing of his tongue on the tip of her swollen, sensitised clitoris.
With a muffled groan, Sara clasped the back of his dark head with her hands and arched back, shifting her stance slightly so that she could more easily open herself up to accommodate the dark head there between her legs.
At one point she heard herself pleading with him to stop in a voice that she barely recognised, and when he did draw back she was still shuddering from the impact of his ravaging, intimate kiss.
‘Sit on my lap,’ he commanded shakily and she obeyed. He tilted her back and then subjected her throbbing breasts to the same oral exploration that he had afforded her most private parts.
He sucked on each nipple, drawing the roused bud into his mouth so that he could tease it with his teeth and his tongue. His moist mouth was connecting to invisible sensory lines within her body, shooting pleasure straight from the tips of her nipples to those parts of her body which could only be appeased when she rubbed them against the rough fabric of his trousers.
If she carried on doing this she knew that she would not be able to stop bringing herself to an uncontrollable climax, and as if sensing this he pulled back from her throbbing breasts and roughly told her that he needed to get out of his clothes now.
What he didn’t tell her was that he had never felt so wildly, devastatingly out of control before. He could feel himself bulging against his trousers and it physically hurt.
It didn’t take him long to divest himself of his clothes, practically ripping his shirt off his back, popping a couple of buttons in the process which bounced across the kitchen floor.
This time when their bodies met, flesh against flesh, there was no room for seductive foreplay.
Their bodies were hot and slick and ripe to be melded together as one. He pulled her back onto him, letting her have just the merest build-up as he clasped his big hands on her waist and encouraged her to feel that intensely arousing friction once again as she rubbed herself wantonly and rhythmically against his hardened shaft. This time there were no knickers and no trousers to impede the heated satisfaction of feeling him massive between her thighs, each thrusting movement bringing an incoherent moan from her parted mouth.
Then with an unsteady groan he inserted himself into her, his powerful body shuddering with satisfaction as she began to undulate on top of him, steadily up and down, increasing her tempo so that her beautiful, bountiful breasts bounced just there by his mouth, just there where he could almost catch them. And God, he wanted to taste them again.
As she moved, his hands swept upwards to capture one jiggling breast and he sucked fiercely on the engorged pink nipple.
It was too much. Did she cry out? She didn’t know. Her eyes were closed, her head thrown back, the upper part of her torso pushed forward to accommodate his devastating mouth on her breasts, and then she was free falling through space and time, tumbling over the edge and feeling him taking the same electrifying ride that she was on.
Their bodies were locked in
to one another and Sara felt that first burst of shattering sensation give way to climactic ripples that took her to a series of peaks that had her sagging when she finally came back down to earth.
It felt somehow right when he drew her to him and wrapped his arms around her, slowly tracing the line of her spine with his fingers. She was so peaceful that she could very easily have nodded off.
‘I hope you’re not too tired…’ His voice was a low, husky murmur in her ear and she opened her eyes drowsily to find herself staring at his firm jawline and a glimpse of his mouth that told her he was smiling. Her fingers itched to stroke the edge of his mouth and she resolutely kept them still.
‘You couldn’t…’ Her voice was as husky as his and she didn’t recognise the sexy laugh as belonging to her when he informed her that she really shouldn’t say things that could possibly constitute a challenge to a man like him.
‘But this time I think we’ll be a bit more conventional and avail ourselves of my king-sized bed.’ He kissed the tip of her nose and she straightened to stare down at him, unbothered by her nudity. They walked with their fingers linked out of the fabulous open area towards one of the doors, which opened into an equally impressive master bedroom.
This section of the house was carpeted and plushly so. Her toes squirmed delightedly into the thick pile and he tugged her towards the bed.
This was a big bed for a big man and the linen was uncompromisingly masculine, a mixture of dark greens and vibrant burgundies that would have left a perfect stranger in no doubt as to the sensual nature of their occupant.
And, just in case she was in any doubt herself, he spent the next hour and a half showing her just how sensual he could be. The frantic urgency of their first bout of lovemaking, when they had been devoured by a consuming need to get to one another, driven by a primitive sexual craving that had left them spent and breathless, was replaced by a lingering, almost tender and equally fulfilling exploration of each other’s bodies. It was a slow, melodic dance that took them both to the same dramatic heights, but via a different route.
Afterwards, with her brain in neutral and her senses swimming pleasurably in the aftermath of their lovemaking, Sara coiled herself on her side so that they were facing one another with their bodies lightly touching.
‘I should be going back to my hotel,’ she murmured half-heartedly and he stroked some hair away from her face.
‘I can’t think why.’
Sara’s brain struggled to get a grip of something very important that was edging there just out of reach.
‘I can’t stand the thought of your hanging on to your past, you know.’ James’s voice was deadly serious and he found that he was staring down at her with such ferocious intensity that he forced himself to dilute it with something like a low laugh.
‘I’m not. Not any more.’
‘Tell me about him. Tell me what went wrong.’
‘Everything went wrong and it’s too long a story to tell, anyway. Long and tedious and unnecessary.’
‘We have time.’ He found himself driven to glimpse that part of her life that was capable of making his teeth snap together in frustrated anger.
‘You mean you’re not going to suggest that we…indulge again?’ Sara enquired lightly to break the sudden tension, and the ploy worked. He smiled. Did he know how much younger he looked when he smiled?
‘I’m no longer a teenager,’ James said drily, because he wanted her to talk and sex would wait. He smiled again and that smile did it. What harm was there in spilling out a bit of her personal history to him? It wasn’t a state secret, for heaven’s sake!
So she found herself telling him about her background, about growing up in the East End of London, helping her father with his market stall, a very thriving market stall, but a market stall nevertheless. She was an only child with a quick brain and her parents had lovingly fostered her talent for schoolwork. By the time she was nine she could run the market stall as efficiently as the best of them and she had enjoyed it. She’d learnt to barter, begun to predict trends in what sold and when it sold and why it sold.
‘I never realised it was a talent that would get me where I eventually got, but I was good at…well, trading, I suppose…’ She sighed and stared mistily into the distance. Once started, she was discovering that the torrent was unstoppable. Phillip had met her at a social occasion when her star was beginning to shine. He had zeroed in on her and, fool that she had been, she had taken him at face value, she was clever but not clever enough to spot the snob behind the charming veneer.
‘So I never thought twice about telling him all about my parents, where I had grown up. He was appalled. Not,’ she added truthfully, ‘that I think that that was the reason it all went pear-shaped. But it certainly didn’t help matters. He had no need for bright stars with dubious backgrounds. In fact, as it turned out, he had no need for bright stars at all. He’s marrying someone with no pretensions to a career but presumably good breeding stock. Unlike me. The pregnancy was the last straw. He felt guilty to start with, he wasn’t a complete monster, but soon he began implying that, since it was my fault, he had no duties to deal with it, with his own son. Every so often he would come around unannounced, I suppose when one of his twinges of guilt got a little hard to handle, but all that stopped after a while. He hadn’t wanted a child and he especially couldn’t deal with a son who wasn’t the picture of robust health.’ Sara sighed and managed a weak smile. ‘So there you go.’
‘Market trader,’ James murmured softly, reaching to place a kiss on her mouth, ‘I like it.’ And he did. Although if anyone was to ask him precisely why, he would not have been able to provide an adequate answer.
CHAPTER EIGHT
BY THE middle of August, Sara realised that her initial decision to leave Scotland in time to get Simon back to London for school at the beginning of September was no longer on the cards. She had done nothing about arranging somewhere to live, had checked out no schools either in or around London, and whenever she thought about it her mind went unhelpfully blank.
She blamed James. For someone who worked and lived in London, he had certainly found it inside himself to break with his routine so that he could see her, sometimes two or three times during the week, always in the evening when Simon was not around. When he came up on the weekends, all three of them, she insisted that they meet only at night. She said that her days were just too full trying to get the house together and seeing about the million and one things that still needed doing. In fact, she made sure not to be around on the Saturdays she knew he would be travelling up to his estate.
She arranged to explore anywhere and everywhere. She took her shopping trips as far away from home base as she could. She even made a mammoth effort to take Simon across to Edinburgh, giving themselves a little stay-over treat, although all she could think about was the prospect of seeing James when she got back on the Sunday evening.
She adored the way he waited impatiently for her. She could imagine him striding through the millions of rooms in his mansion, frowning with his hands shoved into his pockets, waiting for her phone call informing him that Simon was settled.
‘It’s ridiculous,’ he had ground out the weekend before, when she had calmly informed him that no, she couldn’t possibly go out with him during the day. ‘ I need to be in your company and yet when I come up here you do nothing but insist I keep away.’
Her laughter had managed to coax a reluctant smile from him, but pretty soon she knew that she wouldn’t be able to hold him at bay by telling him that those were her rules and she wanted them respected. He had held off so far but he was like a caged tiger, biding his time until he could push further forward.
She also knew that pretty soon she would have to do what she had set out to do—confront him with his own unpleasant little scheme to buy her house and declare herself the winner, show him that she was nobody’s fool and that she could play the sex game as competently as he thought he could.
She was sittin
g in the garden, half reading a book and half keeping an eye on Simon, who was busily digging up some weeds for her in the hope of finding either worms or buried treasure. She rested her head back, closed her eyes for a few seconds, and when she opened them again it was to see James standing in front of the French doors, watching her.
Sara sat up and blinked but the vision refused to disappear. In fact, the vision strode towards her, long, lean and unfairly sexy in his lightweight trousers and short-sleeved shirt that hung over his trousers.
‘I thought you had a thousand things to do and weren’t going to be around,’ he said, finally standing in front of her and staring down at her flushed face.
Simon had stopped his energetic exploration of the flower bed so that he could look at James.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘You know, you’re doing very little for my concentration, lying there in next to nothing.’ He smiled very slowly. ‘Now, what if some passing stranger had called round and found you dressed like that?’
‘Dressed like what?’ Sara peered anxiously over to Simon and smiled reassuringly at him. James followed the direction of her gaze to smile at the boy, who grinned back and looked prepared to launch into conversation. Sara thought she’d better nip that in the bud so she told him cheerfully that if he dug a bit deeper she was sure he would find what he was looking for.
‘Which is what?’ Blue eyes that had the power to scorch refocused on Sara’s flushed face.
‘Buried treasure or worms. Either is equally acceptable. And you still haven’t told me what you’re doing here, not,’ she added as a postscript, ‘that it isn’t very nice to see you.’ Except not here and not now. She had managed to make very sure that contact with her son was minimal and things weren’t going to change there.
Settling scores, which was the object of the exercise or so she kept telling herself, was one thing. She could handle the consequences, but Simon had to be protected from involvement with James.
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