A moment later Fliss appeared, her face creased with concern.
‘I’m sorry, Anna. I’d forgotten how poisonous she is. Or how jealous of you.’
‘Jealous?’ Anna gave a harsh laugh. ‘I doubt it. She’s mummy and daddy’s little princess, rich and spoiled and pampered. What on earth has she got to be jealous of me for? I’m nothing. Nobody. As she likes to remind me whenever we meet.’
Gently Fliss took her arm. ‘Don’t. Come on. Let’s go and get that drink. We may as well get tipsy at her expense.’
‘No.’ Anna pulled away. ‘I’d rather drink cyanide. And I’m not going back in there either. Sorry, Fliss. I’m going to head back to the château—but I really should go and change out of this dress first.’
Fliss shook her head. ‘It’s fine. Keep it—it was pretty much made for you. Are you sure you’ll be all right?’
‘Absolutely.’ Anna looked around for a way out. Several doors led off the dingy corridor and she made for the nearest one. ‘Get back to the party and I’ll call you soon.’
Without looking back, Anna pushed open the door and slipped through.
The room she found herself standing in was dark and smelled of cigar smoke and maleness spiked with excitement. And danger.
She’d found the casino.
Recklessly she strode forward, any hesitancy driven away by the adrenalin rush of fury and the persistent, painful drumbeat of desire in the cradle of her pelvis.
The beat of the music from the party was just discernible, but in here all was hushed. At the tables men in dinner jackets eyed each other through clouds of cigar smoke and spoke only when necessary. Standing behind them, women in evening dresses looked on, mentally spending the money their partners were winning or watching their plans evaporate in a disappointing hand, a luckless spin of the wheel. Their mask-like painted faces gave nothing away.
The tension in the air matched Anna’s own pent-up feelings. Taking a glass of champagne from the tray held out by a waiter, she walked slowly past the roulette tables, trailing a hand along the backs of the velvet-upholstered chairs. She paused. A croupier was swiftly and impassively raking piles of chips off the emerald baize and Anna watched, fascinated, as the men seated around the table replaced them with more. The numbing warmth of the champagne started to steal down inside her, obliterating the pain of Saskia’s venom.
‘Any more bets?’
There was a further flurry of activity. In the halo of light cast by the Tiffany lamp hanging low over the table Anna could see beads of sweat breaking out on foreheads as men moved innocuous-looking piles of chips around.
How much money was represented on that table? she wondered idly. Enough to secure the future of the château?
She felt horribly restless.
The glass of champagne in her hand was deliciously cool against her feverish skin and she pressed it to her cheek, but it couldn’t damp the fire that seemed to smoulder somewhere deep inside her. The back of her neck fizzed and tingled, each hair seeming to respond to some invisible stimulus, and she turned round.
He was standing a few feet away from her, the bright pool of light from one of the low-hanging lamps over the roulette table falling on his mane of dark blond hair and turning it into a halo of gold. One hand was thrust into his pocket, the other was loosely around the slender waist of an obscenely elegant blonde in a scarlet dress. Completely at ease, squinting through the smoke with narrowed eyes, he looked like a particularly wicked fallen angel—beautiful, but menacing. And utterly compelling. The expensively groomed, formally dressed men around him seemed like shadows, or bit players in the presence of his raw, charismatic sexuality.
She heard her own unsteady breath, felt the panicky race of her heart and the searing wild-fire heat of desire scorching through her veins.
And then he looked up.
Angelo drained his glass of champagne and forced himself to focus on the game.
It was one of those nights when he could do no wrong, and the chips on his side of the table were amassing at a rate that had the other men around the table sweating with fear. But he was bored.
When winning came too easily it was time to look elsewhere for excitement.
The man at the head of the table held up his hands in defeat and moved away as the croupier moved his depleted pile of chips away from him. His departure caused a little ripple of unease to go around the table, and the space he had left was not filled.
Angelo looked down at the table. Everyone else was playing cautiously now, and he idly considered walking away and leaving them while they still had something. But the black dog of his old despair was shadowing him and he knew he would keep going. Keep playing. Keep pushing himself to feel something.
Anything.
‘Place your bets now, gentlemen, please.’
There was a rush of last-minute activity around the table as everyone placed their chips.
The blonde pouted and placed a perfectly manicured hand on one silk lapel. ‘Chéri? Rouge, I think this time, don’t you?’
A smile lifted one corner of Angelo’s mouth, but his narrowed eyes were as blank and expressionless as ever. He looked down, moving a towering pile of chips across the baize, pausing as he reached the solitary green marker. Considering.
Green.
The stack of coloured counters represented several hundreds of thousands of pounds, but around them his hands were perfectly steady. Green. It would be like making a bet with himself that he hadn’t been wrong about her or who she really was. The odds might be outrageously, overwhelmingly against him, but there was a spark in the dark, dark, self-destructive heart of him that urged him onwards. The money was easily dispensable, easily replaceable …
It wasn’t about the money.
It was about the danger. It was about that girl.
For a brief second Angelo closed his eyes and allowed himself to imagine the adrenalin rush of taking such a wild gamble— like a shot of alcohol on an empty stomach—astringent, invigorating, intoxicating. Even to lose would be something. Would make him feel something.
A sting.
Pleasure-pain.
Anything.
Opening his eyes again, he caught a flash of movement at the corner of his eye.
In the space left by the departed player, a shadow had fallen across the table. Cast by the light from the low lamps, it showed a woman’s silhouette—the sweep of her shoulder, the curve and swell of a breast that, even though it was only two-dimensional shades of grey made him want to brush it with his fingers.
Her perfume was infinitely subtle, but he picked it up instinctively, like an animal on the scent of its prey. Or its mate. That scent of darkness vibrated like a low note inside his head, drowning out the shriller, sweeter, more sickly perfume of the blonde girl beside him.
Slowly he lifted his head.
Like heat-seeking missiles his eyes found hers, his gaze searing through the space that separated them. His expression remained absolutely still as his eyes travelled over her, taking in her perfect poise, the elegance of the pearlescent dress, the dark silken fall of her hair, stripping them away to try to find traces of the trembling, rebellious girl he knew lay beneath.
And then he noticed her bare brown feet.
Sensation struck him like a punch in the solar plexus. Sharp, breathtaking. Surprising.
A ripple of impatience went around the table and vaguely he was aware of the other players waiting. The croupier hesitated. ‘Monsieur?’
‘No. I’m out. Settle my account, please.’ The croupier nodded respectfully and Angelo felt the blonde at his elbow wilt with disappointment. He didn’t care.
He was fed up with playing, fed up with winning. He wanted the next challenge.
But when he looked up she was gone.
CHAPTER FOUR
ANNA didn’t stop running until she had reached the bottom of the hotel steps and there was a taxi right in front of her. Heart hammering, she wrenched the door open and flung herself
inside.
‘Château Belle-Eden, s’il vous plaît. The beach. La plage.’
She saw the taxi driver glance at her curiously in his rear-view mirror, no doubt wondering why a girl in an expensive designer dress wanted to go to the beach at this time of night, but Anna didn’t care. Anything to put some distance between her and Angelo Emiliani.
Green. He had been going to bet on green. To taunt her with the fact that he recognized her and knew exactly what she was up to. And to show her exactly how wealthy he was, and how little a loss like that would affect him.
She could still picture his hands as they moved the chips across the table. God, they were beautiful: slim, long-fingered, artistic, the skin smooth and golden in the light from the lamp above. Hands that could handle huge sums of money without a tremble—what else could they do?
A small sound escaped her—something between a whimper and a groan—as she stared wildly and unseeingly out of the window into the street-lit dark. It was completely new to her, this maelstrom of yearning that turned every nerve in her body into a taut string, vibrating with sexual awareness. She realized that she was shivering, sitting bolt upright on the back seat of the car, and with a conscious effort leaned back, looking up at the stars through the back window. But it was impossible to relax while every cell in her body was screaming in protest at being torn away from Angelo Emiliani.
‘Stop the car! Arret!
‘Mademoiselle? Are you OK? We are almost there—at the beach. You want me to stop now?’
Up ahead Anna could see the turning off the main road on to the private track that led down to Belle-Eden’s beach. In desperation and despair she rubbed her fingers over her stinging eyes.
‘No. Sorry. Carry on. The beach will be fine, thank you.’
Pulling up at the top of the track, the driver looked worried. ‘Ici, mademoiselle?You will be all right on your own out here?’
‘Fine, thank you. I’m home now.’
Stepping out into the warm night air, she breathed in the salt wind and heard the bass beat of music from the beach below. Hurriedly she paid the driver, suddenly desperate to get back to the uncomplicated company of her GreenPlanet friends and drink beer and dance.
Her bare feet sank into the sand as she ran to the edge of the dune, from where she could see the camp fire on the beach and the writhing bodies of people dancing to the music that came from some unseen source. Stumbling down towards them, she hitched the silk dress into the denim hotpants and put both hands up to her head, burying them in her hair, messing it out of the silken sleekness achieved by Fliss. The warm salt breeze caressed her bare skin. Every nerve-ending seemed to have heightened sensitivity and to be crying out for more.
‘Anna! You’re back! Cool dress …’
She moved through the crowd, closer to the camp fire. Normally there were only about twenty GreenPlanet campers, but tonight there were maybe double that number as friends had joined them. Gavin, one of the group’s founders, broke away from the people he’d been talking to and came over, holding out a beer.
‘OK?’
She nodded. ‘I met him.’
Behind his small wire-framed glasses Gavin looked momentarily bewildered. ‘Who?’
Anna almost wanted to laugh. How bizarre that Gavin shouldn’t know who she was talking about when Angelo’s face, his voice, his scent was filling her head and blurring the rest of the world behind a haze of longing.
‘Angelo Emiliani.’
Even saying his name set fireworks off in her pelvis. She took a mouthful of warm beer and continued slightly breathlessly, ‘I think you might be right about the pharmaceutical connection. I overheard him on the phone mentioning Grafton-Tarrant.’
Gavin nodded slowly, thoughtfully. ‘Wow. Righteous. I’ll get a couple of animal rights mates on to that in the morning. They might have heard something.’ He had started to drift away towards some more people who had just arrived, but turned back and called over his shoulder, ‘Nice one, Anna.’
She closed her eyes, inhaling deeply, feeling the rhythm begin to steal down inside her. It was more mellow than the vibrating wall of sound in the nightclub, but no less insistent for that. All around her people were swaying, together or alone, their eyes closed, their voices muted, totally relaxed.
With a thud of misery Anna knew she didn’t fit in here either. She had told Fliss this was where she belonged, but looking around at the peaceful, carefree faces in the firelight she knew that wasn’t true. Maybe it was all that talk of karma and chi, but these people had an inner peace, a deep-down conviction that Anna completely lacked. They had a passion for their cause.
She had passion. Passion that before now she had never imagined. The difference was that hers wasn’t going to be satisfied by saving the nesting sites of a few woodpeckers.
Her throaty moan was lost beneath the music. Snaking her arms above her, she let her head fall backwards and circled her hips as all the pent-up tension of the last few hours seeped out of her and the music took over.
Anna knew plenty of people who had sought the solution to their problems in drink and drugs, and had seen the fallout that followed. The cure for the frantic beating of her heart and the tingling adrenalin that was surging through her veins was not to be found in the bottom of a bottle or the contents of a syringe, but in music.
When she was dancing she forgot everything. The past blurred into insignificance beside the rhythmic immediacy of now. It was the closest she ever came to being simply herself.
Above her the sky was vast and dark indigo, studded with stars. Underfoot the sand was soft and caressing, and around her the low murmur of conversation gradually faded as everyone lost themselves in the dancing.
No one noticed that they were being watched.
Angelo got out of his chauffeur-driven car and leaned against it, looking down over the beach.
A slight breath of wind caught his hair, lifting it off his forehead, and carrying to him the salt tang of the sea and, beneath it, the more earthy scent of woodsmoke from the fire.
There were more of them than he’d thought. But he could still pick out Felicity Hanson-Brooks without even having to try. It would have been much harder to ignore her presence, as his eyes seemed to be irresistibly drawn to her as she swayed and writhed to the hypnotic beat of the music.
So his instinct had been right and his private bet had been a winner. She was a spoiled little society princess who stayed in one of the best rooms at the Paradis and came down here to play at eco-warriors between social engagements. The smile that curved his lips in the darkness was one of triumph mixed with disdain.
Her money and status no doubt made her more of a dangerous adversary, but in many ways it made his position much simpler. So much easier to bring her to heel now he had lost all respect for her.
Swiftly he bent and unlaced his shoes, then took them off and tossed them into the back of the car. His socks followed, joining the dinner jacket and black silk tie he had discarded on the journey here, as he had followed the taxi.
‘You want me to wait, sir?’ The chauffeur’s voice was entirely expressionless. ‘Will you be going back to the hotel tonight?’
Angelo considered for a moment. ‘No. Ask Paulo to prepare the yacht and send the tender down to the far end of the beach in—’ he glanced at his watch, calculating ‘—half an hour.’
‘The far end of the beach, sir?’
‘Yes. Down there, where the forest slopes down to the water.’
‘Very good, sir.’
Slamming the door, Angelo rolled up his exquisitely tailored trousers and set off at a run.
The music was loud, pulsing, good.
Anna scooped her hair up from her hot neck and held it loosely on the top of her head while the breeze cooled her skin. She was hot, she was tired, but she didn’t want to stop dancing. As long as she kept moving she could deal with the torrent of emotions that raged within her. The torrent of desire.
It hadn’t subsided. If anyt
hing, the music had intensified it, so that with every flick of her hips, every snaky undulation of her spine she could almost feel invisible hands upon her, holding her as she longed to be held. Every so often one of the boys would sway against her and the sheer nearness of another human being was like a spark on the dry tinder of her longing. But none of them even came close to providing what she needed.
She felt as if she were burning from the inside, and threw her head back to gasp for air. The music slowed, seguing seamlessly into Nina Simone, singing ‘I Put a Spell on You'.
Anna shuddered with need and frustration and longing, sliding her hands through the tangle of her hair and arching backwards as two hands slid around her waist.
Strong hands, slipping down to her hips. She felt them writhe sinuously beneath their touch. Eyes closed, she leaned back against him as an image of Angelo Emiliani’s beautiful hands swam into her head. Helplessly she found herself imagining that the hands that were now resting on the flat of her belly were his hands, that it was his strong thumb which was slowly caressing her quivering flesh.
A shot of pure molten desire shuddered through her.
With a low groan of anguish she wrenched herself away, but those hands pulled her back. Her eyes flew open and for a second she found herself staring into the narrow gleaming eyes that had haunted her all evening.
Her overwhelming feeling was of relief. He had found her. He had picked up the desperate signals her body had been sending out to his and responded. Thank God. Thank God. He was here. There was nothing more to do than give in to it. This was her passion. The white-heat generated by the friction between their bodies as they danced, his chest hard against her shoulders, his hands moving across her midriff, spanning her ribs, cupping her breasts—that was what she lived for.
She couldn’t have said how long they danced like that, his body curved around hers in a way that was simultaneously passionate and protective and possessive. It was everything she wanted, but at the same time it wasn’t enough. Her hands were raised above her head, knotted around his neck, her fingers exploring the hardness at its nape and the little dip at the base of his skull, then matting themselves into his hair. She loved the feel of him, but she needed more. She needed to see him.
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