For Love or Money Bundle (Harlequin Presents)

by Sarah Morgan

  Her body liked his words.

  Her senses welcomed his message.

  And her flesh wanted him closer still.

  With each step he took her further away from the life she knew. With each whirl she felt inexorably, utterly, spun further away from her clinical—practical—medical background. In his arms she felt reckless, a little wild; she felt good.

  He didn’t speak, and she didn’t mind. She doubted she could string two words together right now. Besides, she was too busy enjoying the unfamiliar sensations of being held by the best-looking man in the room.

  His breath glided past her ear, soft and luxuriant, and she felt him draw her even closer. Her heart seemed to stop as their bodies met, the splayed hand at her waist forcing them into contact from chest to thigh, their movements on the dance floor setting up a sensual friction between them, his musky cologne like an invitation, beckoning her to nestle closer.

  The music, the charged atmosphere, his body against hers—it was all so intoxicating. His lips nuzzled at her ear and she tilted her head into his caress, unashamedly seeking more of the warm, tingling contact he was offering.

  ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he murmured softly, and the warm shimmer of sensation bloomed into a wave of heated sensuality that rolled over her and left her breathless.

  She knew he was attracted to her, had sensed he was. His eyes contained secrets and mysteries, but his desire had broken through with a raw intensity that couldn’t be ignored. And yet it was still such a powerful aphrodisiac to hear him say the words.

  Everyone was beautiful here. There wasn’t a woman there tonight whose looks didn’t dazzle, whose bodies weren’t centrefold-worthy, whose smiles weren’t toothpaste-commercial-perfect. And yet, of all the women in the room, he’d said those words to her!

  The hand at her waist stroked higher, breaching the low backline of her gown and startling her with its heated touch. He traced his fingers across her exposed skin, setting fires that burned with lightning bolt impact deep within her flesh and started spot fires low down inside.

  The only part of logic that remained in her mind told her she was being seduced, that this was seduction at its most potent, and that this man was a master of the art. But, beyond that recognition, logic was no help to her now—not when she was being held captive by the spell he’d woven around her. Not when she was being swept off her feet.

  ‘I want to make love to you.’

  She gasped. His directness shocked at the same time as it delighted, sending coiled messages through her nerve-endings to prepare herself for coupling even before she’d had a chance to assimilate his offer.

  What should she do? She could hardly take offence. Not when her own body hungered for the same outcome, was even now preparing itself, tingling with expectation.

  His lips brushed over her earlobe and she raised her chin to give him better access. He took it, his mouth gliding over her throat, turning her nipples achingly tight.

  Vaguely she was aware of the music drifting to a conclusion, of couples around them moving apart.

  ‘Well?’ he whispered in her ear, his deep voice another layer of seduction, another caress. ‘Make love with me, Jade. Make love with me now—tonight.’

  Something about the way he said her name wove its way deep into her senses, trailing a promise of things to come like a silken ribbon tugging insistently and irresistibly around her heated core.

  He wanted to make love to her. To hear his words had sent her into a heady spin. Just the very thought of making love with this man was intoxicating. Because she knew what her body wanted. It wanted her to answer in the affirmative.

  Was it wrong to want to? Was it wrong to want to give in to the desires that were besetting her? Wrong to give in to the forces of passion that were swirling around her—through her?

  There should be one thousand reasons why not. There should be reasons clamouring for attention, pounding on her brain for supremacy. But right now none of them could be found, and rational thought was so heavily weighted with pure physical need thatit threw up arguments instead about why she should make love with him. Arguments like, how could it possibly be wrong when it felt so damned right?

  She lifted her head and looked into his eyes, felt the passion and the need, and knew that she couldn’t bring herself to lie. She couldn’t say no. And yet neither was she able to release herself totally from the constraints of her own upbringing. She’d never been the sort of person who did this sort of thing—meeting up with strangers and agreeing to make love with them.

  And yet here she was…

  ‘You’re a very magnetic man,’ she said, understating the facts by a factor of ten. ‘And I admit I’m attracted…’

  ‘But?’ he urged.

  ‘But I’m not protected,’ she heard herself say—the most honest thing she could think of under the circumstances.

  Something flared into life in his eyes, something that told her he wasn’t disappointed at the naïveté of her confession, that his need was barely contained, let alone extinguished.

  He let his arm peel slowly from around her back, instead winding it through hers and taking her hand as he led her from the floor. ‘Allow me to take care of that.’

  Despite the rush of cool air as they’d pulled apart, moist heat pooled heavy and insistent between her quivering thighs. Her heart thumping, she forced her legs to keep walking to the beat of the pounding in her veins, forced her melting spine to hold her erect. He was leading her somewhere private. He was leading her somewhere to make love to her.

  Her breath tripped in her throat. Had she meant to do that? Had her non-committal answer been designed to give him the chance to take the decision out of her hands? So that she would get what she wanted by default?

  Somehow he negotiated her through the room. The strain of knowing she’d landed herself in this position was threatening to shatter the plastic smile masking her face; the anticipation of what was to come was urging her to move even faster. The crowd was thinning out, people were spilling out into the terraces, and by now there would no doubt be a pool full of skimpily clad young women offering their wares, ready to take on all comers.

  Guests had drifted off into sheltered corners of the garden, or even not so sheltered ones, for their assignations. She’d never been comfortable with this side of celebrity life here in Beverly Hills—and yet wasn’t that what she was now doing herself? Searching for privacy, seeking out what amounted to a love-nest with someone little more than a stranger? Did she really want to be doing this?

  Whether he sensed her reluctance or was merely giving in to the relative quiet and darkness of a sheltered doorway some distance away, she found herself spun back against panelled wood as his mouth crashed down on hers.

  His lips were warm, his mouth was hot, and what he did to her senses sent her temperature rocketing off the scale and forced any returning logic to flee. She’d never before been bombarded with sensations such as these, never before been subjected to the overwhelming drive of passion. And never before could have imagined herself giving in to it. But then, she’d had no idea…

  His hands cupped her behind and she was pulled, full-length, up against his body, the clear evidence of his need pressing into her between them. She gasped into his mouth as she realised his evident size, felt his inherent power. Soon that power would be unleashed within her. She was melting down from the feel of his hands on her, from the touch of his lips, from the anticipation of what was to come.

  He drew his head back the merest fraction, his breathing as ragged and choppy as hers. ‘What’s behind that door?’ he said, his voice husky with desire, his words laced with need.

  ‘The library,’ she whispered back. ‘But it should be locked.’

  One hand left her for the moment it took to test the handle. It gave with the barest snick. Even in the gloom she could see the spark of his eyes gleaming down on her, as if he was closer to achieving some prize. Her heart fluttered as the realisation hit her. She
was the prize. He wanted her and soon he would have her.

  Instead of fear, her expectation cranked up another notch. This feeling was mutual. Because he wasn’t the only one who was going to get something out of tonight.

  Tonight she would have him too.

  His lips came down to meet hers again, this time in a softer caress, his lips massaging hers, his tongue a brief graze across her teeth, and she let herself slide into his delicious touch. The man was good enough to eat, and she planned to relish every taste.

  Loukas turned her then, and silently they slipped into the void opening up behind them. Gently he pressed her back against the wall. Softly he pushed the door closed alongside her. Another tiny snick, but another huge moment. Because that door closing meant that there was no changing her mind.

  It meant there was no going back.

  CHAPTER THREE

  JADE let herself drown in the power of his kiss, giving herself up to his lips and his tongue and his raw masculine heat. Together they worked in a rhythm set by the primitive drumbeat pounding in her ears. He tasted so good—so right—and she answered his kiss with her own, seeking more, wanting more, her lips meshing with his, her tongue greedily seeking out whatever else he could give her.

  She felt one arm circle her neck, pulling her closer to him. The other she felt skim across the skin of her back, setting off a zipper-line of sensation that started with the involuntary thrust of her hips against his and ended with her gasping into his mouth at what she encountered yet again.

  His low, rumbling response told her he approved of her reaction, while his hand shifted to trace the underswell of her breast and then brushed over its surface, calling a halt to her breathing as it glanced over the nub of her tight nipple contained beneath.

  And, like a jolt of electricity, panic seized her, breaking through the magic fog he’d spun around her, forcing rational thought to surface at last and finally find its rightful place in her mind. She hadn’t thought this through! She hadn’t been thinking, period.

  What if he saw?

  Why had she put herself in a position where she could be so thoroughly humiliated once again?

  He’d said she was beautiful. Wasn’t that enough for her? Couldn’t she just have left it at that? She’d thought only of sex; she’d been too blinded by her own lust to see what should have been foremost in her mind: that Loukas would never want her when he knew. That Loukas would never in a million years think her beautiful once he knew.

  His mouth was on her throat, his lips dancing a wild tango against her neck, and her heart was still racing. But now there was fear and trepidation in her mix of emotions.

  She half registered a noise like a grunt, oddly distant when Loukas was so close. When the sound came again she froze.

  Someone else was in the room.

  She snapped her eyes open and peered over Loukas’s shoulder. The pitch-blackness that had met them when they’d entered the large library had given way to a dim grey gloom in which nothing appeared to be moving or out of place between the walls of floor-to-ceiling books. She was imagining things. Against her throat Loukas’s mouth continued to weave magic, complicating the push-pull of her fears and her wants as the sound came again.

  Sounds.

  In tune now with more than just the rush of blood in her ears, this time she heard a softer gasping moan answer the straining sounds. And more sounds, now louder, and more grunting, punctuated by urgent panting and then the unmistakable slap of flesh against flesh, building in speed, steadily and inexorably.

  She squeezed her eyes shut again, wishing she could close down her hearing, afraid to breathe, afraid to move. Someone was making love—right here in the library—and they’d inadvertently stumbled right into their secret tryst.

  But there was no shutting out what was happening, and the sounds fed into her consciousness, reminding her why she’d come there, and setting her flesh to prickling awareness of the man holding her even in her shock.

  Because they’d come here to engage in that same act—to make those same noises, to seek that same inexorable release.

  Loukas’s mouth stilled and he pulled back as he too realised what was happening. He touched one finger to her lips and pulled her closer against him, as if sheltering her from what was happening while he edged a look over his shoulder. They had to get out of here. He would surely know that as well as she did. But before they could make a move a sound and a sudden movement in the low light drew her eyes directly to the source—and she found them.

  Mostly hidden from view, sheltered from the door behind a long sofa, it was no wonder that whoever it was had been too absorbed to realise they had company. She was just about to turn her face away when the man rocked back on his knees and she recognised him.

  Mayor Goldfinch!

  No wonder the library door had been unlocked—Grace must have brought him here.

  Now Jade had to get out, and take Loukas, before either of them saw her. She would never in a million years subject Grace to that kind of embarrassment. She couldn’t let her find out that they had inadvertently stumbled upon them during such a private act.

  She prodded Loukas to leave, but he stilled her movements. ‘Wait,’ he whispered, so quietly she half wondered if she’d inhaled his words instead. ‘Wait just a moment.’

  But she didn’t want to stay. She didn’t want to hear any more, to be witness to anyone’s lovemaking—least of all to Grace’s. More than anything she wanted to get out, now, and it took supreme strength of will to remain cradled in Loukas’s arms while she waited seemingly for ever for the pair to resume their frantic activities.

  The sounds of motion and mounting excitement finally resumed, telling her Mayor Goldfinch had Grace exactly where he wanted her once more. She wanted to close her ears as every sound, every whimper, fed into her own needs, making her overwhelmingly aware of what she herself might be doing right now, of what she’d given her tacit agreement to. Her flesh shimmied into action where Loukas held her, where she brushed up alongside him, as the aura of coupling wrapped itself around them.

  But at last they were moving out of here. Loukas was just manoeuvring her closer to the door, ready to bundle her out, when she heard gruff words.

  ‘Oh, Rach. Oh, sweet baby, I’ve missed you.’

  For a second she thought she’d misheard the name—it had to have been Grace that he’d said—but then she spied the lush sheen of red satin slung over the settee, had recognised the young, drawling tones responding enthusiastically to the Mayor’s encouragement and cold revulsion worked its clammy way up her spine.

  Because it wasn’t Grace that Mayor Goldfinch was entertaining. It was Rachael Delaney!

  She almost cried out with the shock, but a large firm hand clamped down over her mouth, rendering her mute. Under cover of the noise of the couple’s latest activities, Loukas had the door pulled open and whisked her back outside before she could react—and before the couple could know what was happening.

  She burst free from his grip and threw herself along the passageway, gulping in great mouthfuls of air, trying to clear her lungs of the filth of that room.

  ‘Jade!’ she heard him call. ‘Jade!’

  She couldn’t answer—wouldn’t stop as she fled. She wanted to go upstairs to her suite but, knowing Loukas might follow her, she made for the safety of the crowded ballroom. Did Grace have any idea the man she was hoping would propose was busy slaking his lust on one of her guests? Did she have any idea the man she was hoping to marry was such a low-class act?

  She had to get away. Away from the betrayal going on behind her. Away from the cheap act that she herself had been about to take part in.

  Loukas had said he wanted to make love to her, and she’d let herself be swept away—yet it wasn’t love that people made in secret trysts like the one they’d just happened upon. There was no love involved. It was just sex—pure, unadulterated animal lust—and she’d just about let herself cave into the same base desires.

&nbs
p; She felt sick to the stomach.

  A steel band took hold of her arm, wheeling her around. ‘Stop.’

  She looked up into his eyes, wanting but unable to contain her desperate need for oxygen.

  ‘Let me go,’ she insisted.

  ‘You were happy for me to touch you before.’

  ‘That was before. I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I should never have gone with you. I should never have led you on like that.’

  ‘You didn’t lead me on. We both wanted to make love. Still want to make love. You can’t deny that.’

  ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head wildly, as if to shake out the soiled images and damning sounds that replayed endlessly through her mind. ‘Not like that. That wasn’t love that was being made in there. I was wrong. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Come with me, then. We’ll get out of this rats’ nest and talk.’

  ‘No.’ She held one hand up as she backed away. Her skin burned with both humiliation and embarrassment. It was bad enough having lived through the experience without having to analyse it. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Demakis. There’s nothing to talk about.’ Then she turned and fled into the ballroom.

  ‘This isn’t over!’

  There was no point arguing with him; she just kept right on surging away from him. He’d picked the wrong woman, that was all. No more explanations necessary.

  If it was just quick sex he was after she had no doubt he’d find someone else for the night—a woman who would be more accommodating and who had less hang-ups, who wouldn’t be fazed about sharing a room with another couple hard at it, a woman who would happily look elsewhere if she was in that situation. And there was every chance he’d find that woman here.

  With his looks he’d have his pick. And she’d almost fallen for him—hook, line and sinker. To think he’d swayed her so much with that line of his—‘I came here to meet you.’ She’d played right into his hands. Thank God she’d had enough sense not to take him upstairs to her suite—there would have been no escape then.