Sophisticated Seduction

by Jayne Bauling

  His anger receded, and he stood there inspecting her with a slight smile playing about his mouth.

  ‘To get you into bed?’ he suggested teasingly.

  Bridget stared back at him, the wariness occasioned by his words subsiding as she understood that he was only teasing.

  ‘No, I don’t think you’d do a thing like that,’ she decided slowly.

  But if she knew he had told her the truth about his ostensible involvement with Troy Varney, why couldn’t he have believed her when she had told him that there had been no real relationship between her and Loris?

  Her eyes were dark and bewildered, reflecting her struggle to understand the unfair differences between them. Nicholas was just too cynical, she supposed finally; additionally, he knew his cousin too well, and her not well enough.

  ‘Thank you,’ Nicholas was saying simply.

  He had been scrutinising her, and he continued to do so now when Bridget failed to respond. She simply couldn’t speak for the moment, at the mercy of a terrible tension as she found her gaze drawn and locked to his as if by some irresistible magnetic force.

  She swallowed, nerves a fluttering riot as she saw the increase of awareness in his eyes. She recognised and understood it, for all that she had never had a man look at her in quite this same contradictory way before, somehow managing to mix hotly possessive interest with amused confidence.

  The appalling weight of her own awareness finally panicked her into speech.

  ‘But I was going to say that knowing what really happened doesn’t change anything. Excuse me, please, I’m going to bed. Goodnight.’

  Nicholas laughed softly. ‘What happened to that beguiling tendency to consider my comfort regardless of how hostile you might be feeling? Aren’t you going to ask me if there’s anything I need first?’

  Bridget paused on her way to the door. ‘No, because I know what your answer would be.’

  ‘So why deprive me of the fun of giving it?’ he asked, with a lazy charm that came close to flirtation.

  ‘Will you please excuse me?’ Bridget demanded tightly, unable to cope with it. ‘I’m flying to Varanasi in the morning so I have to be up early.’

  Annoyance promptly replaced his enjoyment. ‘When will you be back?’

  ‘Monday.’

  ‘By which time I’m likely to be in another part of the country.’ Nicholas continued to look frustrated for a moment, before gesturing decisively and smiling brilliantly. ‘Then we’ll just have to make the most of tonight, won’t we? Come here, Bridget.’

  But Bridget couldn’t move, despite a sense of danger that was urging her to flee now, before something—anything—happened.

  The word that had occurred to her on a previous occasion occupied her mind once more, as dark and significant as a threat, and yet primitively thrilling at the same time. Potent. Standing there in his well-fitting jeans and a casual shirt, the open neck of which kept providing tantalising glimpses of golden-brown skin and dark hair beneath his throat, Nicholas was overwhelmingly male and ultra-confident, her opposite in every way.

  After a moment he came to her, and Bridget drew a sharp little breath, but, instead of the masterful assault on her senses that she was preparing herself to resist, he disconcerted her completely by taking her face between his hands.

  ‘Bridget,’ he murmured thoughtfully, almost as if he was testing the sound of her name. ‘Bridget… Oh, you are so very lovely, aren’t you, sweetheart?’

  Bridget felt hypnotised, or trapped in some kind of tender enchantment. Still in contemplative mode, Nicholas kissed the centre of her forehead, his hands calm and sure as they continued to hold her face, and she shivered involuntarily with a flare of feeling as unexpectedly emotional as it was physical. She swayed towards him in unthinking surrender, her body slender and pliant, ready to shape itself to his demands.

  ‘Nicholas…’ She lifted her hands to the warm hardness of his chest, fingers uncurling compulsively. ‘No! Stop this! Stop this right now!’

  ‘And so feminine and so very seductive,’ he was continuing musingly, ignoring the command she had finally found the strength to issue. ‘But let’s get rid of this, shall we?’

  He lifted a hand to the tortoiseshell clasp which held her long hair back, and Bridget heard the familiar click a moment before she felt the silken weight of her hair come tumbling and slithering down around her neck and shoulders.

  ‘No, don’t—please!’ she protested sharply and way too late as he tossed the clasp on to the nearest chair.

  For some reason, having her hair freed like that made her feel totally vulnerable, as naked and panicky as if he had torn the clothes from her body, and yet she frequently wore it loose in home’s cooler climate.

  ‘Why not?’ Nicholas was entwining his fingers in the straight, satiny fall. ‘It’s such beautiful hair, too, smooth and so shiny and dark.’

  But he was darker still, face as well as hair, and for a few fanciful moments Bridget saw him as the fallen Lucifer to whom Virginia had likened him, and wanted him as such, because a kinder, less cynical man would not be this man.

  It was a wild, stray scrap of thought which meant nothing. The only thing she knew with any clarity was that she was being seduced and must do something to stop itl

  Yet Nicholas hadn’t even kissed her properly yet, and the absence of the all-out sensual onslaught she had anticipated was at least partly responsible for her present inability to resist him.

  ‘This—this isn’t—’ Bridget broke off in dismay as she discovered that her arms had found their way about him—that she was holding him, rather than the other way round.

  ‘No, it’s not fair, is it?’ Nicholas prompted on a note of almost sympathetic agreement, his smile indulgent.

  Then, at last, he was kissing her, lips parting hers, his invading tongue scandalously sensual. He kept one hand beneath the cascade of her hair at the back of her neck, firm fingers gentling themselves to its smooth curve.

  His other arm drew her in, moulding the slim suppleness of her softly yielding body to the tense, vibrant strength of his. Eyes closed, mind adrift, Bridget only knew that she was dangerously at the mercy of burgeoning desire, that slow, softly unfurling feeling of receptivity deep in her loins with the piercing sweetness of need at its heart.

  She was clinging to him with all the power of her strong, slim young arms, and once again it seemed to be Nicholas alone who was determining and controlling the pace of her arousal, Nicholas who dictated the swell and surge of sensation now ruling her.

  A hand at the low hollow of her back, pressing her in still closer to the taut maleness of him, made her tremble convulsively, a small sharp sound of complete helplessness rising to her throat.

  That was when he ended the kiss, drawing back a little, and her eyes flew open in distress to find him studying her, his dark face so intent and still that he seemed almost arrested by whatever he was seeing.

  ‘Listen to me!’ she urged in an intense whisper through swollen and wildly shaking lips. ‘I do not want this, Nicholas!’

  ‘But you do, Bridget. You want it as much as I do.’

  ‘No! I don’t want you.’

  ‘That’s not what your mouth was telling me, without words, a moment ago, or what your body is telling me now.’

  Then his eyes seemed to become sightless although they still rested on her, or else possibly they looked inward, examining his own reactions to what was happening.

  Suddenly Bridget was conscious of a long, flowing caress running the length of her body, from her gracefully sloping shoulder to the tautness of her upper thigh, and she leaned back instinctively to give him the space to complete the caress. Her legs weakened beneath her as his fingers paused to play, and then the caress came a second time, in the opposite direction now, and she gasped softly as she felt the easy, knowledgeable passage of his fingers over one delicate breast, the sensitive nipple already tight and hard.

  After returning briefly to her shoulder, his hand
dropped once more, this time to the neckline of her cotton top, fingers tracing the inside of the V with exquisite sensitivity, the light warmth of his touch against her skin making her shudder. Then Bridget’s breath caught in her throat as thumb and forefinger finally came to her top button, beginning to undo it.

  ‘I’d need to be mad to want anything to do with you, any sort of involvement at all,’ she tried again, knowing she had to resist him now or it would be too late.

  ‘Desire is a kind of madness. No.’ Nicholas changed his mind, taking his hand away altogether, and in her debilitated condition she might have collapsed but for his other hand still supporting her, virtually holding her up now. ‘Let’s get ourselves along to my bedroom first. Then we don’t need to move again all night.’

  ‘I can’t—’

  ‘You can!’

  ‘I am mad!’ she discovered agitatedly, realising that she was letting him usher her out of the living-room, and he laughed, a sound of sheer enjoyment.

  ‘We both are.’

  Nothing like this had ever happened to Bridget before. She had never been led by a man to his bedroom, their progress slowed by further kisses and caresses, and until tonight she would never have believed that she could allow such a thing when the man concerned was one she disliked, and by whom she ought to have been repelled. Nor would she have believed that she could ever find herself so completely subjugated to physical sensation, this sweet, heavy tide of honeyed desire dragging at her womanhood.

  Bridget had looked into the room Nicholas now occupied on arriving in Delhi, rejecting it as it was so obviously the main bedroom and there was always the chance of someone from Stirling Industries arriving and expecting to use it. But she hadn’t dreamed of that someone being the head Stirling himself, any more than she had imagined herself being invited into the room and going, half willingly yet knowing she should not.

  Nicholas closed the door and turned to look at her in the soft glow of the single light he had switched on. With space between them, Bridget was capable of a moment’s sanity, and she wondered wildly what she was doing here.

  ‘What about Wanda?’ she demanded tautly.

  ‘Wanda isn’t here.’

  ‘But she’d like to be, wouldn’t she?’ she guessed. ‘Here instead of me, I mean.’

  ‘Perhaps, but it’s you I want here,’ Nicholas asserted easily just before his expression softened, becoming almost indulgent for a few seconds. ‘You have got a sensitive conscience, haven’t you? But don’t worry about Wanda, Bridget. She has no claim on me.’

  Then he was reaching for her and kissing her again while one hand busied itself with her buttons, and the brief revival of her resistance was defeated.

  He was leisurely about undressing her, first removing her fitted top, then easing her skirt down over her smooth hips. As she stepped out of it automatically, Nicholas dropped to his knees in front of her with breathtaking grace. Obediently, she let him lift each foot in turn to take off her simple sandals, her breathing growing shivery and uneven in response to the caressing way his fingers lingered about her slim ankles and long narrow feet.

  As Nicholas straightened up again, his gaze swept over her as she stood there unresisting, tall and slender in her pretty cotton undies, and the expression Bridget saw smouldering in the grey eyes made her suddenly shy.

  ‘Ah, but you’re so simple and accepting about it all, no showing off or trying to turn this into an exhibition of your worth,’ he murmured in a tone of teasing admiration, his arms coming round her once more, and she felt him deftly unfastening her bra before he drew back slightly to remove it and look at her. ‘So womanly… and a lady, even when you’re half-naked. I think you’re very gentle in bed, aren’t you, Bridget?’

  His glance skimmed her breasts, small but perfect, the tawny-pink nipples proudly erect, before following the curve of her ribs in to her waist and the flatness of her stomach. Then his gaze moved up again, and she felt it like an actual caress over the flowing line of her shoulders and neck before it came to rest on her face, lingering especially on her vulnerably trembling mouth and awed eyes.

  He began to unbutton his own shirt, still watching her, and Bridget was suddenly unable to sustain that knowledgeable gaze any longer. She turned away to look wonderingly down at the wide, low bed. Were they really going to occupy it? Use it? And together?

  A pair of arms came round her from behind, pulling her back, and she realised that Nicholas had discarded his shirt. His chest was hard and hot, and the fine hair covering it rough yet soft at the same time against the silky smoothness of her long back. One of the arms that bound her to him rested just below her breasts, the hairs of his forearm brushing their lower swell, the sensation exquisite. His other arm remained wrapped around her waist for a moment before his hand began a deliberate descent.

  Something, perhaps only the natural reticence of her inexperience, made her reluctant to receive the coming caress, and she turned sinuously in his arms, the movement graceful and almost languorous. Nicholas smiled slightly at the hot, drugged expression softening her eyes as her hands began to stroke the polished darkness of his shoulders.

  ‘You are magnificent,’ she offered shyly, discovering powerful muscles.

  ‘I hope to be,’ he returned drily, lowering her to the bed and following her down.

  Bridget lay looking up at him as he turned towards her, propping himself up on one arm in order to study her from above, his other hand left free to touch her shoulder as he possessed her soft mouth with his. She felt that hand move to one breast after a moment, covering it lightly, and her languor instantly became a thing of the past. The sensation that convulsed her was a frantic thing, part helpless rapture, part a shrinking from a hitherto unknown intimacy, and it arched her body tautly. The kiss ended, his mouth now nuzzling erotically at the underside of her jaw, but his hand continued to hold her breast within its warm hollow, fingers exploratively fondling now.

  Bridget struggled to contain all that she was feeling, but the upward stroke of a single fingertip over her nipple ended the fight, and her reaction was expressed in the sharp, gasping little cry that broke from her.

  Then his mouth was where his hand had been, incredibly hot and voluptuous, taking her in, tongue caressing. His dark head lifted, and then her other breast was subject to the same sweet devastation and Bridget’s fingers were in the darkness of his hair as desire became sharp need, coursing powerfully through her. Her nipples hurt pleasurably, and tremors racked her entire being as the hunger in her lower body grew into the aching need to accommodate him.

  Her soft moan of supplication made Nicholas raise his head.

  ‘You don’t pretend, do you? But then there’s nothing pretentious about you.’ The quick smile he gave her was slightly strained. ‘Slow down, sweetheart, or I won’t be able to.’

  Bridget hardly knew what he meant, but she couldn’t have subdued her response to him if she had. She writhed against him in a helpless, abandoned passion, igniting an even greater passion in Nicholas suddenly. His mouth seemed to be on fire now, hard and demanding wherever it went, and his hands were urgent, sweeping all over her body.

  ‘Nicholas…’

  Momentarily, the rampant, inexorable strength of a man’s passion scared her because it made him seem so dominant, a conqueror, and her voice sounded anxious.

  ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart.’ Nicholas heard, but misunderstood the cause. ‘You will be quite safe.’

  Bridget was in no state to know what he meant, although she would understand when she remembered later. Acute awareness of his male rigidity banished the anxiety, and she was conscious of nothing save an engulfing need to open herself to him, to take him in and know him at the central heart of her womanhood.

  The need found expression in hoarsely throbbing entreaties, mostly wordless but profoundly eloquent, and Nicholas was unbuckling the belt he wore with his jeans, then pausing to hook his fingers beneath the edge of her bikini pants.

  At first
the jangling clatter of sound seemed to be part of the frantic, churning chaos that was sweeping her along, so appropriate did it seem to the turbulence.

  Then, as Nicholas groaned and swore, Bridget realised that there was a phone plugged in beside the bed.

  ‘Nicholas!’ Her tone was wildly protesting as he relaxed his hold on her and reached for it.

  ‘I must, it might be important—one of my family,’ he muttered tensely, his free hand encircling her arm. ‘Don’t go away.’

  As he spoke irritably into the phone, Bridget struggled to sit up, but he pulled her back down to him, and she subsided helplessly, unexpectedly discovering a new erotic pleasure in the feeling of his perspiration mingling with hers.

  ‘Yes, she is! What do you want her for?’ Nicholas had made a sharp movement and Bridget blushed self-consciously as he continued speaking and she became aware that whoever was at the other end of the conversation was someone who knew her. ‘Why should I have mentioned it? Originally I was unaware that you knew her, and subsequently I didn’t think you’d be interested in her whereabouts… No, Virginia is in the States… What about? Wait!’

  Abruptly, Nicholas released his hold on Bridget and she stiffened warily as he held out the receiver to her in grim silence.

  ‘What?’ she asked uncertainly.

  ‘Your boyfriend,’ he told her bitingly, eyes dark with rage, and when she continued to stare at him blankly he added savagely, ‘Well, how many have you got? Loris!’

  As Bridget took the receiver reluctantly, he eased himself up off the bed.

  ‘Loris?’ she muttered distractedly into the phone.

  ‘Bridget, darling!’ Loris sounded both delighted and reproachful, but she was more aware of Nicholas scooping up his shirt and beginning to stalk from the room. ‘Why didn’t you let me know you were going to India? I thought we meant something to each other! I couldn’t imagine what had happened when I kept failing to get you on the phone. Eventually I went round to Ginny’s—only no you and no Virginia. Luckily someone there was able to tell me where you were, and I guessed you’d probably be at the Stirling company house as that’s where Virginia always stays. When are you coming home? I can’t wait to see you.’