The Mistress Deception

by Susan Napier

  ‘It feels good, too,’ he insisted, pulling the bunched towel back towards his abdomen, which was already perfectly dry. She let go of the plush folds and he staggered, the back of his knees hitting the edge of the bed. He sat down, letting the towel flop onto his squelchy shoes.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, you’re going to make a watermark on the covers!’ With a huff of annoyance Rachel knelt to slide his custom-made shoes off his feet and remove his wringing black socks. His feet were long and narrow, his toes straight and marvellously even. He wriggled them sensuously in her sequinned lap and she pushed them back to the floor, and sat back on her haunches, looking up at him expectantly.

  He looked expectantly back, and she finally accepted the fact that he was so plastered that he wasn’t going to do anything for himself.

  ‘Perhaps I should get a man to do this…’ she said, even as she knew she wouldn’t. There was something too elementally satisfying in having the man who was causing such strife at Weston Security virtually helpless in her hands. On a personal level there was an even more primitive response operating, one that Rachel didn’t wish to dwell on too deeply.

  He clenched his hands on his splayed knees, glowering at the suggestion. “No—no one else. Only you.’

  ‘You’re the boss,’ she said wryly, her conscience somewhat quieted by the arrogance of his plea.

  His narrow white silk cummerbund had twisted on his hips when he had pulled out his shirt-tails, giving her easy access to the fastenings. Undoing the small silver hooks, she pulled it off and draped it over the edge of the brass bedhead, taking a deep breath as she reached out for the top of his trousers. Discovering the succession of tiny buttons was a shock, but she struggled on valiantly, even when it became obvious that the delicate bump and brush of her busy fingers was having an enlivening effect on his depressed nervous system. She heard him groan, and nearly leapt out of her skin when he cupped his hands on either side of her bowed head and began massaging the sensitive skin behind her ears with his thumbs.

  ‘Matthew—’

  His hands tightened on her scalp. ‘Oh, Rachel…’ He whispered a phrase that made her hasten hysterically to her task. Her fingers became more and more clumsy as they negotiated the changing contours of his lap, and as soon as the last button yielded to her feverish persuasion she scrambled to her feet and tugged off his sopping trousers with a final, punishing jerk that sent him sprawling back on the mattress.

  His white designer briefs were moulded transparently to his form, and the sight of his still burgeoning arousal was indelibly printed on her brain in the few seconds that it took to scoop up the towel and toss it across his lap.

  If she’d thought the most awkward part was over she was wrong, for, freed of the constriction of his clothes, Matthew experienced a burst of hyperactivity and decided that Merrilyn would be furious at them for missing her dinner. It took some fast talking, combined with body-blocking techniques learned from years of self-defence classes, to stop him from marching out of the guest-house, virtually au naturel, to deliver his apologies to the party at large.

  Dismissing the shower as a practical impossibility, Rachel tried to convince him that he needed to lie down and rest while he waited for his change of clothes to arrive, hoping that once his head was on the pillow he might lapse into a natural stupor. She coaxed him back onto the bed by turning down the covers and slyly offering to give him a massage, but her cleverness backfired and turned into a physical tussle during which he became feverishly amorous.

  She had figured that it would only take a few minutes of slow, gentle kneading for her to induce a sense of such physical well-being that he would doze off, and when she had informed him that he must lie absolutely still for his massage he had meekly lain back on the cool white sheets. But when she had knelt at his side and tried to get him to turn onto his stomach he had stubbornly refused.

  ‘I want to watch,’ he said huskily. ‘I’ve never had a massage before.’ He pulled her hand from under his shoulder and placed it on his chest, covering it with both of his as he pressed her fingers into the skin over his rapidly beating heart. ‘What big hands you have,’ he discovered in surprise, lifting his captured prize to inspect it.

  Once upon a time such comments had used to hurt.

  She gave her standard tart response. ‘All the better to slap you with.’

  His eyes sparkled darkly with innocent curiosity. ‘Are you into spanking? Is that one of your “unusual vices”?’

  His brain might be partially on hold, but there was evidently nothing wrong with his short-term memory.

  ‘Certainly not!’

  ‘Oh.’ He had the nerve to sound slightly disappointed. ‘Look,’ he murmured, meshing their fingers together to measure their length. ‘We’re both the same size.’

  ‘No, we’re not,’ she refuted. ‘I’m taller, stronger and fitter than you are.’

  But not smarter. His darting smile was the only warning she got before he pulled her sharply across his chest, sweeping one lean leg around the back of her knees and trapping her legs together within her narrow skirt as he rolled them both over until she was squashed beneath him, her hands pinned on either side of her head. She felt a brief shudder of sick panic as her mind slipped back into the distant past, and then her superb conditioning kicked in and they were rolling back and forth in a brief struggle for ascendancy.

  Brief, because Rachel almost instantly realised that, whatever strength Matthew Riordan possessed, his stamina was sorely depleted and his alcohol-impaired motor skills made it simple to speedily counteract his clumsy moves. Never having wrestled with a semi-naked man before, she was seriously distracted by the slippery threshing of his limbs and the sinful pleasure that came from riding his squirming body, feeling all that latent male power quivering beneath her bare hands.

  A dampness that had nothing to do with his fever bloomed on his skin, exuding a musky scent and belatedly making her realise that he wasn’t fighting for victory so much as enjoying the arousing effects of a full body-to-body massage. The threat of physical harm, which had never been very real, was now eclipsed by a far more insidious menace.

  ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ she hissed as he slowly rotated his hips against the crush of her belly and uttered a sexy little moan.

  ‘This is so fantastic…’ he dreamed with closed eyes, his lower body undulating, his hand insinuating itself into the parted slit in her skirt, sliding up the back of her crooked leg towards the fullness of her bottom. ‘You feel so different than I’d imagined…firm, yet so deliciously soft where you’re most a woman…’

  ‘Stop that!’ she elbowed his arm away and straightened her leg with a jerk, and he groaned again as her knee dragged heavily across his swollen groin.

  His hands moved over her sequinned back. ‘Oh, yes…do that again. I like it when you’re rough with me…’

  ‘Matt!’

  He opened his eyes and gave her a glazed smile. ‘Are you going to take all your clothes off now, so we can have sex?’

  The suggestion almost blew off the top of her head. ‘No!’

  His sultry certainty didn’t waver. ‘When we’re both nude I’ll be able to feel every part of you against me…’ His voice was thick with excitement ‘Feel and see everything while we’re making love—’

  ‘We’re not going to be making love!’

  ‘Why?’ He regarded her with heavy-lidded confusion. ‘We’re already in bed together—’

  ‘We’re on a bed, not in it,’ she clarified. ‘You’re supposed to be resting—’

  ‘But I don’t want to rest. I want you to make love to me—’

  To? Not with? Rachel’s imagination ran riot even as she choked out, ‘You can’t always have what you want.’

  ‘But you want it too,’ he insisted. ‘I know you do. I can feel it—I can see the way you look at me.’

  He knew and felt and saw too damned much for a man who was supposed to be drunk and incapable!

/>   It had been two years since she had experienced any sexual stirrings, and Rachel was unprepared for the sudden reawakening of her dormant feelings. She lashed herself with the knowledge that her carnal curiosity was shamefully inappropriate: he was too young; he wasn’t in the full possession of his senses; he was, if not her enemy, then at the very least a serious opponent of her professional interests; and he was already involved with another woman. To succumb to his drunken seduction she would have to be both mad and bad…

  ‘Stop it—Matthew, I’m serious! I don’t want to have to hurt you,’ she threatened, fending off his wandering hands.

  ‘You won’t hurt me…it’s only women who sometimes find it painful,’ he murmured bemusingly, his eyes hot and smoky. ‘But I’m ready for you, Rachel. You can do whatever you like to me—I promise I’ll like it.’

  She felt a deep, erotic thrill. ‘For God’s sake, Matthew,’ she whispered. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing—’

  ‘So? You can show me. Please…I’ll be a good lover. I’m a very quick study and it won’t take me long to figure out what you like best.’ The phrases tumbled over one another, each word slurring into the next. He tried to slither clumsily on top of her, and in a flurry of sequins she pinned his back to the bed, hitching up her gown to straddle his hips with a pincer movement of her strong thighs, bracing herself above him on stiffened arms, her hands flat against his shoulders.

  ‘I said no!’

  ‘But Merrilyn told you to make sure I had everything I wanted,’ he reminded her soulfully.

  ‘She said need, not want.’

  ‘But I do need you, Rachel.’ His black eyes burned with passionate conviction. ‘I need you now.’ He dug his heels into the mattress and arched his hips, pushing himself up between her spread thighs in an attempt to demonstrate just how urgent was his desire. The swollen hardness barely contained by his damp underwear nudged at the gauzy lace covering the core of her feminine being, sending a secret tingle shooting along the cluster of exposed nerve-endings.

  ‘You have to help me…you’re the one she chose to soothe the savage beast.’

  ‘Breast,’ Rachel corrected automatically, and inwardly groaned at her stupidity as his steamy gaze obediently sank to her cleavage, brandished almost under his nose. ‘It’s savage breast, not beast,’ she explained quickly. ‘People often misquote that line.’

  His mind did not appear to be improved by her informative little lecture.

  ‘Your breasts don’t look savage to me,’ he told her gravely, his flattened hands creeping up her sides. ‘They look like velvet pillows, all big and plush and soft.’ He lifted his head from the pillow and drew in a deep, sighing breath. ‘They smell nice, too…sweet and warm and spicy…’

  His head sank back as his questing hands slid the final distance to cup the ripe fruit dangling so tantalisingly within his reach, cupping their overflowing weight in his hot palms. ‘And they make an incredibly sexy handful…’

  As Rachel looked down in shock he pressed a gentle, exploratory finger against one springy mound and watched in fascination as it sank deep into the creamy, resilient flesh. She sagged onto one arm, her biceps bulging with the effort of supporting her whole weight, and caught hold of his wrist in her strong fingers. ‘Don’t—’

  ‘Why not? Don’t you like me playing with them?’ he asked huskily. ‘I’ll be very gentle…’

  She felt a hot flush sweep over her body. ‘Just keep your hands to yourself.’

  The fingers of his other hand curled over the top of her gown. ‘But I can prove that you like it…’ He yanked down strongly and Rachel let out a little screech as a warm wash of air flowed across her freed breasts.

  ‘I knew it was too low-cut for you to wear a bra,’ he crowed smugly, shoving the tight bodice clear down to her tapered waist. ‘See…your nipples are already excited.’ He touched one ruffled raspberry peak. ‘Would you like me to suck them?’ he offered dreamily. ‘I think I’d like to do that more than anything…’

  Gasping at his audacity, and appalled by the sizzling temptation of his touch, Rachel reared up and gathered both his wrists in one hand, slamming them forcefully up over his head.

  He laughed feverishly, treating it as a teasing new game, kicking his legs and bucking and twisting his body so that her breasts bounced against his sweaty chest. Desperate to control both him and the wayward desires still pulsing through her veins, Rachel snatched the cummerbund hanging from the shiny top rail of the bedhead and looped it tightly around his straining wrists, threading the free ends through one of the wrought-iron bars and securing it with a rough knot. As she did so her flushed breast brushed his cheek, and she felt his head turn and the hot, wet lash of his tongue…

  Rachel’s hands were shaking when she rolled off his body and dragged her bodice up to cover her sensitised breasts, shielding them from his regretful gaze. To her relief their final bout seemed to have left him weak and lethargic, and he made no attempt to escape from the bond which he could have quite easily pulled free with a little concentrated effort. Instead he lay quietly beneath the sheet that she tucked over him, following her around with his dark, brooding eyes until she agreed to release him on a vow of good behaviour.

  He was still shivery, still feverish and disorientated, and Rachel managed to extract the name of his doctor from him and looked up the medical listings in the phone book by the bed.

  Fortunately his physician was at home, and not so overcautious or fee-conscious to think that a house-call to his wealthy patient was essential. He listened to Rachel describe the symptoms and cheerfully informed her that a short dousing was not going to turn a slight case of flu into galloping pneumonia.

  ‘It’s probably more the excess of alcohol he’s suffering from than anything else,’ he said. ‘Just make sure there’s plenty of fluids on hand to counteract the dehydrating effects and let Matt sleep it off. He’ll probably have a king-sized headache in the morning, but you can tell him from me that from the sound of it he deserves the hangover!’

  Rachel had no intention of doing anything of the kind. Having always been the type to learn well from her mistakes, she waited only until he slipped into a restless doze before sneaking out to order one of the security guards to patrol his door. Then she breezed back to the party, bearing the convenient news of Matthew’s medically confirmed illness with which to disarm the gossips.

  She had basked in Merrilyn’s profitable gratitude and had privately congratulated herself on her handling of an extremely tricky situation.

  Until now.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  RACHEL flipped down the sun visor at the top of her windscreen and scrunched down behind the steering wheel as Matthew Riordan came down the steps from the restaurant, his lean body already at an impatient angle as he stepped onto the footpath.

  She stuffed the remainder of her sandwich in her mouth and looked at her watch, noting the time in the spiral notebook lying open on the passenger’s seat. Only half an hour for lunch, and a business lunch at that, she thought as she watched him briskly shake hands with the two business suits who were with him before striding off in the direction of his car.

  For the past two days, ever since she had received his torrid threat, Rachel had been investigating her blackmailer, and amongst other things she had learned that he was not a man who liked to waste his time or energy on inessentials.

  She watched him circle to the driver’s side of his gleaming black Porsche, pausing to shrug off the jacket of his lightweight grey suit before sliding behind the wheel. She had been surprised when she had discovered the kind of car he drove. Somehow she had assumed that he would travel as his father did, in a chauffeur-driven limousine with a fax and a phone so that he could work while he travelled. But then, as she had already learnt to her cost, Matt Riordan was full of surprises.

  In retrospect Rachel was extremely glad that she hadn’t given in to her first impulse yesterday morning, which had been to storm straight over to his office and
confront him with his moral depravity. As she had left the house and slammed her way angrily into her car she had been mentally composing a blistering lecture on his disgusting lack of ethics, vile cowardice and base ingratitude!

  Then it had struck her that that was probably what he was expecting her to do…that he might be banking on provoking her into a panic reaction rather than a carefully considered response, and if she didn’t go in extremely well armed for a fight then she could be setting herself up for another lesson in humiliation.

  She had forced herself to calm down as she’d driven to work. She needed hard facts rather than wild theories before she decided what action it was safe to take. Whatever happened she had to keep a lid on things until Robyn and Bethany were safely gone.

  She had still been debating whether to come clean with Frank as she’d parked her car and walked into the low-rise commercial building which Weston Security Services shared with a fax bureau and a firm of accountants.

  ‘You’re late,’ had been his blunt words of welcome as she’d walked through the door, and she was instantly on the defensive.

  ‘Things were a bit hectic at home,’ she told him, regretting the unproductive half-hour she had spent simmering over the photographs, now stashed in her briefcase. She paused to greet Lannie, their receptionist, and accept a small pile of mail.

  Frank frowned. With his stocky build, wheat-blond hair and blue eyes he sometimes reminded her joltingly of David, but he possessed little of David’s personal warmth. Frank was an abrasive type A personality, who was driven, rather than inspired, to succeed.

  ‘When you rang you said you’d be in by eight-thirty, so I arranged a debriefing on the Johnson insurance case. Everyone else was on a tight schedule so we had to go ahead without you. I know your sister’s leaving in a few days but we still have a business to run here,’ he grunted.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that something came up after I rang…’

  She knew how much she owed Frank. He could have made it impossible for her to work alongside him, but although he had been originally reluctant, and had constantly tried to fob her off with make-work tasks, she felt he had grudgingly come around to accepting her right to the partnership.