by Penny Jordan
Somer shrieked protestingly as he let her go, startled by the impact of the cold sea water against her skin, but swimming away as agilely as an eel once she had recovered from the shock. She had learned to swim almost before she could walk and was used to the cold water of the North Sea. As she swam away Chase came after her, grabbing her ankle and tugging her down below the water, following her up to the surface, his hands grasping her waist as he pulled her hard against him, stroking her mouth with his tongue. ‘Mmm. You taste of salt.’
‘So do you,’ Somer responded daringly, letting her own tongue repeat the caress and then breaking away to swim back to the shore. Chase didn’t follow her, and gradually as she watched him Somer felt her pulse-rate subside to normal.
He followed her on to the beach five minutes later, and lay down beside her on his towel, letting the sun dry the moisture from his skin, but not making any move to touch her.
Suddenly sleepy after the physical exercise and mental strain of the morning Somer rolled over on to her stomach, burying her face in her hands. Gradually she felt the tension easing out of her body. She closed her eyes, dimly aware of firm sure hands moving over her back, inducing a delicious sensation of lethargy that made her want to stretch and curl her body like a small cat, but before she could do so sleep claimed her.
Finishing his self-imposed task Chase Lorimer studied the female form stretched out beside him. Very, very enticing; there had been a moment earlier on when he had come dangerously close to losing his self-control. He had thought the first time he saw her in the lift that she was still a child, shy and nervous. How wrong he had been! He grimaced faintly to himself. He ought to be used to it by now; after all she wouldn’t be the first female to pick him up thinking she was taking the first step up the ladder to becoming a top model. A touch of contempt darkened his eyes, his expression faintly bleak. Funny, but this time it really hurt.
Shrugging mentally he got to his feet, telling himself sardonically that he was a fool to let himself get involved, but he knew he wanted her; against all logic and common sense maybe, but still he wanted her. But before he took her he would lay it on the line for her, tell her that no way was making love with him the equivalent of the modelling world’s casting couch. He frowned as he glanced down at her. Lying like that with her head pillowed in her arms she looked like a child, innocent, untouched. He grimaced faintly. He was getting far too sentimental, surely life with Laura had taught him that. He had believed himself in love with her and her with him, but all she had wanted was to use him. She had laughed at him when he proposed marriage, and inflicted a painful blow to his twenty-two-year-old ego, but the tables were turned now; now that she was a fading star, a model who was finding it more and more difficult to get assignments, who needed all the tricks a clever photographer could use to preserve the illusion of youth; who at thirty betrayed in her face the way she had lived—and loved, if you could call the casual sexual encounters she indulged in, that. Now Laura wanted to marry him, especially now that she knew that he was his uncle’s heir, but he wasn’t twenty-two any longer; he had grown older and wiser; there had been far too many Lauras in his life for him to be deceived.
As he glanced down at Somer again his eyes were tinged with sadness and a hint of self-contempt, and here was another. A potential Laura, young enough to have the bloom still on her skin and the illusion of innocence but in reality… Picking up his equipment he headed for one end of the beach and soon became engrossed in his self-imposed task, glancing up only once to stare at the sleeping figure.
CHAPTER THREE
IT WAS the chink of a bottle against glass that brought Somer out of her light sleep, her eyes hazy with uncertainty. The sun was hot on her bare shoulders, its angle in the sky telling her how long she had slept—payment for her inability to do so properly last night.
‘Good, you’re awake, I was just thinking I would have to eat my lunch alone. Are you hungry?’
A picnic hamper was open on a towel next to him, and Somer peered into it, trying to suppress the agitation prickling her skin. Had she been completely mad? she wondered muzzily. Had she really intended to…to seduce this dark, arrogant stranger into making love to her? She jumped when Chase reached across and touched her shoulder, his eyebrows drawn together in a frown.
‘You’re not suffering from sunstroke, are you?’ he queried, letting his fingers absorb the heat from her skin. ‘I did cream your back for you but you have been lying there for a couple of hours.’
‘I’m feeling fine,’ she lied brazenly, bending her head over the wicker basket so that he couldn’t see the faint tell-tale flush on her skin. ‘I just couldn’t remember where I was when I first woke up.’
‘Or who you were with,’ Chase supplemented drily, ‘but then I suppose you’re used to that. Pass me something to eat, will you, while I pour the wine.’
Two plates of chicken salad were attractively arranged under a protective film, and investigating the basket further Somer discovered crusty French bread, salmon pâté, and some Brie. In one corner of the basket were peaches and grapes, and the appetite she had lacked earlier suddenly made her feel quite hungry. She handed Chase his plate, trying not to recoil from the brief brush of his fingers against hers.
‘More wine?’
Somer glanced into her glass surprised to see that she had almost drained it.
‘Please.’ She was thirsty and besides wasn’t alcohol supposed to have a relaxing effect on the nervous system?
They ate in silence with Somer stealing brief, nervous glances at Chase’s inscrutable face, her eyes sliding against her will to the broad expanse of his chest with its fine covering of dark hair, and lower, almost hypnotised by that same arrowing of hair over his body.
As he bent to replenish her glass for the third time Chase mocked softly, ‘You’re looking at me as though I’m the first man you’ve ever seen, and it’s having a highly combustible effect on my nervous system.’
‘I wasn’t looking at you, I was thinking,’ Somer lied protestingly, hanging her head so that he wouldn’t see her betraying blush.
‘About touching me instead of merely looking at me,’ Chase agreed. ‘You were looking at me like a little girl let loose inside a toyshop.’
‘I’ve told you I was miles away,’ Somer protested hotly. ‘I’m sorry if you thought I was staring at you…’
‘Why get so het up about it? I’m flattered. Or isn’t that part of the game? Does the man have to let you know how hungry he is for you before you’ll deign to admit you want him in return?’
Somer could only stammer, ‘No…I…I don’t want you.’
‘No?’ Just for a second she had a brief glimpse of something fiercely bitter burning in the depths of his eyes and then it was caged, his voice urbanely amused as he reached out and stroked his thumb across her chin. ‘Peach juice,’ he murmured when she shied away. His fingers curled along her jaw holding her captive, and Somer felt her breath explode in a tight knot inside her chest as he bent his head, his tongue touching her skin as he licked away the small trickle of juice.
Every nerve in her body seemed to lock, and yet at the same time a wild fluttery excitement pulsed through her, her dazed eyes holding the impenetrable gaze of the dark green ones now close enough for her to see their tiny gold specks like a dusting of gold in jade malachite.
A dizzying sensation swept through her and she clutched automatically at Chase’s arm to prevent herself from overbalancing. Beneath her fingers his muscles tensed and then relaxed, his maurauding tongue stroking hypnotically along the tremulous line of her mouth.
As though they were weighed down with lead weights Somer felt her eyelids dropping, a delicious languorous pleasure stealing through her. Deep inside her warning bells clamoured for attention but she felt too pleasurably relaxed to pay any attention to them. Her head swam faintly, her mind muzzy from the wine she had drunk. When Chase pushed her back on her towel Somer murmured a soft protest, but her fingers still clung to
his arms, and every time she tried to open her eyes the world whirled round dizzyingly. No, it was much easier and pleasanter to simply lie here and enjoy the soft drift of Chase’s hands over her skin, stroking her throat, tracing her collar bone. When he removed the top of her bikini she murmured a small protest, but his mouth stifled the sound almost at birth.
‘Open your mouth. I want to taste all the sweetness of you, Somer.’ Too bemused to obey Somer kept her lips pressed together, anxiety briefly piercing her alcohol-induced haze. Her muzzy brain reminded her that she had sworn that no one would ever be able to mock her inexperience again.
‘Somer, stop teasing me.’ Chase’s voice, hoarsely impatient, shivered through her, his teeth nipped at her lower lip, her small cry of pain swallowed up as his tongue gained the access it had been seeking.
Waves of shivering excitement thudded through her, her senses totally bemused by the total seduction of Chase’s mouth against her own. She could feel the heavy beat of his heart against her skin, urging her pulses to match its heady urgency.
‘Somer.’ Slowly Chase lifted his mouth from hers, rasping her name, twining his fingers in her hair as his lips traced the vulnerable curve of her throat closing over the pulse beating so wildly at its base.
Something wild and pagan seemed to have taken over her body, Somer thought dazedly, there could be no other explanation for the surge of response sweeping through her; the almost primaeval reaction of her body to his touch, as though all her life-forces flooded to the point where his mouth absorbed the texture of her skin.
When he lifted his head dark patches of colour stained his high cheekbones, his eyes almost black as he muttered hoarsely, ‘You make me want to do things no woman has ever made me want to do before. I want to absorb you completely into me, to possess you in such a way that you’re part of me for ever.’ His voice, thick and slurred, touched some deep part of her consciousness making her body shiver in his arms, the fingers covering the pulse in her throat registering the shattering impact his words had on her.
‘Tell me you want me the same way, Somer,’ Chase groaned into the valley between her breasts. ‘Tell me you feel the same spell; the same need.’
As though his hunger was too great to allow finesse lean fingers cupped her breast, and Somer felt the shudder that rippled through his body as Chase let his tongue seek its soft pink peak. His heartbeats thudded against her like a sledgehammer, pleasure piercing her; exploding inside her as she felt the rough caress of his tongue against her nipple. ‘Somer,’ he muttered her name with a thick raw hunger, that pierced through her alcoholic daze, panic racing through her as she felt the heat coming off his body, and its fine tremble against her as he muttered something unintelligible, the words buried in his throat, his mouth closing over the aroused crown of her breast.
Panic was forgotten as Somer gave in to the violent tide of feeling coiling through her body. Any type of lucid thought was totally impossible, her slender frame responding convulsively to Chase’s heated suckling.
‘Somer, you’re a witch, do you know that?’ Chase groaned rawly against her skin. His free hand caressed her hip; found the barrier of her bikini briefs, his fingers tugging impatiently at the confining bows.
‘Somer, I want you so badly. Help me…touch me.’
Her fingers were curled into his shoulders and she tensed, trembling as he reached up and released one hand. ‘Why are you tormenting me like this?’ His tongue found her open palm and caressed it with rough warmth making her shiver with the weakness that invaded her body. ‘Make love to me,’ Chase urged huskily, his breath warm against her skin. ‘Can’t you see how hungry I am for your touch?’
He tugged gently on her hand placing it on his hip and Somer trembled, acutely aware of the warmth of his skin and the bone and muscle it clothed. He moved, the dark hair on his chest and legs faintly abrasive against her tender skin, and yet it was an abrasion that hinted at pleasure. Feeling as though she were teetering on the edge of a precipice Somer closed her eyes and let her fingers explore the alien male shape of him, moving upwards over his flat stomach, tracing the arrowing of dark hair and feeling the contraction of his ribs as he breathed in sharply, trapping her fingers against his skin.
‘So you do feel it too.’ There was fiercely male exultation in the words. ‘You want me as much as I want you, so stop tormenting us both, Somer. Take me inside you. You must know how much I ache to be there.’
His body shuddered and he pulled her against his body, letting her know the extent of his arousal. It shocked Somer into brief awareness of what she was doing; of the fact that she was lying naked in the arms of a man who was virtually a stranger and that she was there because she wanted to lose her virginity; and that he thought… She shuddered, forcing herself to face up to what Chase thought. He thought she was as experienced as he was himself and that she was simply not touching him to tease him, but the truth was that she daren’t touch him; that the maleness of his body excited and alarmed her, and yet somewhere deep inside her she knew with a knowledge too deeply embedded to be denied that this was the man she wanted as her first lover; that something fierce and elemental in him called out to her own core of femininity and that her body responded to him in a way that had nothing to do with the emotions Andrew had aroused in her. Sexual chemistry, she told herself bleakly. That’s all it was, sheer sexual chemistry, more potent and far more dangerous by a million degrees than she had ever dreamed in the days when she had smugly mentally criticised her peers for giving in to it.
‘Somer.’ Chase’s voice was hoarse, his face suddenly frighteningly familiar.
‘But you haven’t photographed me yet.’ She pouted the words up at him, amazed to hear them leave her lips, amazed at her own ability to play for time. She saw his expression and said provocatively, ‘I thought you always photographed the women you made love to.’
‘So I was right, that’s what this is all about.’ His expression changed so quickly it was frightening. One minute he was a passionate lover, the next a cold-eyed stranger. ‘I suppose I ought to have known. Well, you don’t have the body to make a model,’ he told her disparagingly. ‘So I guess your ambition is to grace the centre-fold of some girlie mag, or one of the trashier newspapers. Well, who am I to disappoint you, especially when you’ve gone to such trouble.’
Before Somer could voice any protest he pinned her back on the towel, imprisoning her there with his superior weight, silencing her with the harsh pressure of his mouth, kissing her until red and black whorls flashed fierily behind the closed eyelids, her breasts peaking shamefully under the expert ministrations of his hands, her body so deeply awash with pleasure that it took several seconds for her to assimilate what was happening when he suddenly thrust her away from him and got up, striding over to where he had left his equipment.
‘Now I’ll photograph you,’ he said harshly, ‘now, while your body still bears all the signs of my lovemaking. The girlie mags will leap at the photographs I’m going to take, and when their customers look at you they’ll be able to imagine they’re making love to you; that they’re the ones to bring that blind look of passion to your eyes and the tormenting fullness to your breasts. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’ he demanded savagely, moving round her all the time he was speaking, his fury lashing down on her, keeping her motionless with dread on her towel, unable to do more than whimper a protest as the camera flashed. ‘And again…’ Chase taunted. ‘Look at me this time. No, not like that.’ He came over to her, watching her flinch away with cold anger as he bent towards her, his thumb rubbing provocatively across her bottom lip until she was shivering with the response she could not conceal. ‘That’s better.’ The camera flashed again.
‘No, please, you don’t understand.’ Somer was mortified. How could he think she wanted him to photograph her like this? It had just been a ploy to distract him, to buy time for herself while she plucked up the courage to go through with her plan, but it had all gone dreadfully wrong. She had neve
r expected him to get up and leave her. She had wanted him to soothe and comfort her body into relaxed acceptance of his lovemaking, she admitted achingly, but instead…
‘Please, Chase, you don’t understand.’
He flung his equipment to one side, replacing his camera in its case, his face almost black with anger as he turned and came back to her. ‘I understand all I need to. You invited yourself here today so that we could make love; so that you could get your photographs. Well, you’ve got them, now it’s time to pay for them,’ he told her crudely. ‘Not so very long ago you were inviting me to make love to you, and by Hell I’m going to. There’s just enough adrenalin pumping round my body now for anger and contempt to be an adequate substitute for the…the need I had of you before, and my hormones are still so crazily responsive to you that…’
‘But you’re so angry with me, you can’t…’ still want me, Somer had been about to say, but she realised before the words left her lips that they were hopelessly naïve.
‘Oh I think you’ll find that I can, and adequately enough for you not to be too disappointed,’ Chase assured her unpleasantly.
He came down beside her, gathering up the small fists she beat impotently against his chest, laughing deep in his throat, a sound which turned to a growl as he imprisoned her wrists, fastening her arms above her head.
Trembling with rage and humiliation Somer refused to give in to the urge to close her eyes, to blot out his bitterly triumphant smile and the green glitter in his eyes as his glance moved slowly down over her unprotected body. She could see her heart thumping beneath her ribs, hate quivering through her as Chase looked his lazy fill.
‘My payment for doing what you wanted,’ he said smoothly at last, ‘and don’t bother pretending you haven’t used your body like this before. Your timing was too good for that. Wait until the poor guy’s so wound up that he’ll agree to anything to have you, is that it, Somer? Wait for the right psychological moment and you can get him to promise you the earth? Well, you made some promises of your own, and I’m going to see that you keep them, but I’m sure you’ll understand and forgive me on this occasion if I simply take what you owe me without indulging in any further bargaining.’