by Robyn Donald
A glance at her watch told her she’d have time for a quick shower as well as unpacking and making her bed.
The unpacking bit took no time, although her clothes looked rather pathetic in the vast wardrobe. So? she thought staunchly, closing the door before taking the towels into the en suite, only to stop in the doorway with an involuntary gasp of appreciation. One wall of the bathroom was glass.
Awed and more than a little wary, she went across to it and looked out. It was completely private. No deck marred the view, and nor was it overlooked by any other part of the house. Her amazed gaze ranged from the empty sea to the headland. Sombre, magnificent, the rocky peak challenged the heaving restlessness of the wide expanse of ocean.
That inner wildness in Sable sang with a new song at the primal energy of the landscape, and the intense power in the never-ending conflict of earth and water.
Was this why Kain had built his house here?
‘No,’ she said out loud, turning away as she dismissed the idea.
That would mean that he and she had something in common, and she knew that wasn’t so. Everything in this incredible day had taught her they shared nothing—not values, not beliefs, not aspirations. Nothing.
Beyond a certain physical lust, she reminded herself distastefully.
The bed made, she stripped her clothes and showered, keeping her head dry because she wasn’t going to embarrass herself by appearing with dripping hair. However, as she put a few things away she discovered a hairdryer, still in its packet.
Who had bought it? Kain? She grinned, then sobered.
Actually, she could see him carrying off the purchase. His authority and confidence would deal with anything.
‘Just as well I washed my hair this morning,’ she said to her reflection, and tied the black length behind her head in a ponytail before getting into a pair of well-cut jeans that had been another good buy in her favourite second-hand shop. Because the air was still warm she topped them with a scoop-necked top in her favourite rose-red.
Then she hesitated, wondering if she should go out without any cosmetics as a sort of symbolic rejection. Too subtle?
Probably, she conceded.
Besides, for her cosmetics were more than an enhancement; she used them as a shield, a smooth, discreet armour to hide behind. But this time she applied the very minimum—a sheer veil of tinted foundation and lipstick the same colour as her top.
However, her final inspection brought her narrow brows together. Would he think she’d chosen that top deliberately because it showed a bit more skin? Did the slight hint of cleavage send the wrong message?
Another glance at her watch told her she didn’t have time to change; for some reason it was imperative she didn’t take any longer than the twenty minutes he’d stated.
Ready for battle, she set her jaw and marched out.
The door into the sitting room was open. After a moment’s foolish hesitation and a swift squaring of her shoulders she walked in.
‘Right on time,’ Kain said smoothly, looking up from a tray. ‘Wine? Something stronger? Or non-alcoholic?’
‘I’ll have some wine, thank you,’ she said, angry with her swift, combustible reaction at the sight of him in jeans that almost matched hers, a T-shirt revealing powerful shoulders and lean hips.
To hide the heavy pulse of her heart in her throat, she walked out onto a wide wooden deck. The glass doors somehow disappeared into the walls so that deck and room became one, and although it had almost the same magnificent, primeval view as her bedroom, it was sheltered from any breeze.
‘I hope you like this,’ he said from behind her. ‘It’s made from viognier, a grape that’s new to New Zealand. I’m not sure we know how to deal with it yet, but this is a pleasant wine.’
‘Thank you.’ Mind racing, she took the glass. Small talk! She needed small talk.
After a cautious sip of the wine she let it slide down her throat before saying lightly, ‘It’s very pleasant. Did it come from your own vineyard?’
‘One of them,’ he told her.
She flushed, and Kain suddenly felt irritated by the casual thoughtlessness of his comment.
He’d been fortunate to grow up with a sound financial backing as well as firm parents with strong ideas on honesty and the virtues of hard work; how would he have ended up if he’d been deprived of real parental support and without any sort of moral values or standards?
Not that her father’s alcoholism was any excuse for her blackmail attempt. Or for accepting a diamond ring from Brent, whom she must see as an easy mark.
And was he allowing himself to be seduced by her cool sultriness into a trap—that of seeking to redeem someone from their sins?
Hardly, he thought grimly, but moderated his tone when he told her, ‘I own several.’
Sable sipped the delicate wine. Perhaps he was one of those enormously wealthy men who made a hobby of growing wine.
Somehow it was difficult to associate him with a hobby—the word seemed too relaxed, too ordinary for the man who’d almost casually forced her into a pretend love affair just to save his cousin from her supposed wiles. Beneath the superb good looks burned a dark fire, his ruthlessness backing up the brilliant intelligence that had taken him to the top of the business world in such a short time.
And she had to respect him for that. Reluctantly, she even respected him for his concern for Brent. Although, she thought vengefully, she’d bet he didn’t take action in his business life on as little evidence as he had with her.
Her stomach hollowed out at the thought of the next few weeks.
‘Wine-growing has to be a rich man’s hobby,’ she said tartly.
He shrugged. ‘Not necessarily. I’ve met quite a few vineyard owners with nothing more than passion and hardwork to back them up. And some are doing brilliantly—making boutique wines that stack up against anything the big players can produce.’
Interested in spite of herself, she said, ‘Is that what your wines are? Boutique ones?’
‘So far,’ he told her, ‘but my cellarmasters have ideas of expansion, so we’ll see where we go. Apart from managing events, what do you see in your future?’
She lifted her glass in a silent toast. ‘I hope there’s some chance of staying out of trouble,’ she said, wishing the flippant words back as soon as she’d said them.
A black brow was raised to sardonic effect. ‘That seems a very limited ambition, and one easily attained. All you have to do is resist temptation.’
She gave a brief, jeering smile. ‘So simple,’ she agreed sweetly.
‘While you’re with me it had better be.’
His cold decisiveness sent a shiver through her, but she countered, ‘There is a problem with that.’
After a charged moment he said icily, ‘Which is?’
‘You seem to be really good at jumping to conclusions.’ She held his gaze without flinching. ‘I do know when I’m outgunned—I’m not going to do anything stupid unless it’s a social slip—but how do I know you’re not going to come up with some other supposed sin from my past to force me into something else I don’t want to do?’
‘It depends on what else you’ve done. If you hadn’t tried your hand at a spot of blackmail,’ he pointed out with lethal contempt, ‘I wouldn’t have had the leverage. How did you manage to persuade Frensham to repay the money you extracted from his clients?’
Sable felt every muscle in her body freeze. So he knew. How? And when? Had he been testing her when he’d spoken only of forgery?
Almost certainly, she realised in bitter self-derision, and like an idiot she’d fallen into the trap, staying silent to preserve what rags of pride she’d had left, and so reinforcing his belief she’d been the perpetrator.
‘Leverage?’ she asked with biting scorn. ‘An interesting term—so much more businesslike than blackmail.’
His broad shoulders moved in a dismissive shrug. ‘I can understand that growing up in poverty, with a father who drank himself in
to a stupor every night—’
‘You know nothing about him,’ she blazed, the stress of the day suddenly overwhelming her. ‘Yes, he was an alcoholic—although he faced facts and called himself a drunkard—but he tried so hard to stop, to be the sort of man he wanted to be.’
And each failure had driven him further into a darker hell where he blamed himself for everything he couldn’t give her. Yet one thing she was certain of—he had loved her as much as he was able to.
Furious with herself for losing control and aware that Kain was watching her with something like pity, she took a deep breath and held her head high, meeting his impersonal, burnished gaze with pride and the pitifully few scraps of dignity left to her. More temperately, she finished, ‘And he didn’t steal. He was the most honest man I’ve known.’
‘A pity you didn’t follow his example,’ Kain said evenly.
CHAPTER SEVEN
NUMBLY Sable said, ‘I don’t have to listen to you insult me.’
Kain’s anger hit her like a freezing blast from the Pole. ‘And I don’t have to listen to any more lies.’
‘Then don’t raise the subject again.’ She struggled to keep the hopelessness out of her tone. Why had it become so important that he believe her?
Apart from a natural dismay at being accused of something she hadn’t done, there was something deeply personal about her reaction. Shocked and bewildered, she realised she desperately wanted Kain to understand instinctively that she was incapable of stealing money from the old man who’d offered her a job.
This hunger was different from the flashpoint of the sexual charge that shimmered between them; it was somehow more intimate, and consequently much more dangerous.
‘I have no intention of doing so,’ he said deliberately. ‘But you need to know that if you give me reason I’ll have no hesitation making good my threats.’
Stonily she said, ‘Surely you can see that this isn’t going to work? I dislike you every bit as much as you dislike me. Everyone—including Brent—will see we’re just play-acting.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said softly, and when she stared at him he smiled and came towards her.
Sable swallowed to ease a dry mouth. ‘What—no!’
But it was too late. He took the wine glass from her nerveless fingers and set it down on the table. The pale liquid shimmered and danced in the glass, and she realised that his hand couldn’t have been quite steady.
A strange, reckless anticipation consumed her, robbing her of rational thought. Silently, helplessly, she looked up into a face honed by desire.
Yet when his mouth came down on hers she didn’t move; he kissed her with such formidable passion that she caught fire. Her legs failed her, and he gave a kind of muted groan and brought her closer so that she could feel the power coiled in his lean body, the hunger that aroused him as potent and erotic as that untamed fever burning inside her.
When he lifted his head it was her turn to give a soft little sound, a plea for more.
Before she had time to feel ashamed of her open, naked need, he said in a taut, raw voice, ‘What has liking to do with this, Sable?’ and crushed the words into silence as he took her mouth again.
Without volition her arms curled around his neck, her breath sighing through her parted lips. This time he found the junction of her neck and shoulder and gently bit the acutely sensitive skin there.
A surge of sheer, animal pleasure from that light graze of his teeth sizzled through her like lightning, and in that flashpoint of desire she truly understood what longing meant. Then he nipped the lobe of her ear, his breath an erotic caress on her skin, and, panic-stricken, she thought that she was different now from her previous self, altered in some fundamental way by this man’s expertise in lovemaking.
When he picked her up she didn’t resist. Instead she buried her hot face in the angle of his neck, inhaling the faint body scent that had been sending such subliminal messages to her, and oddly—stupidly—basking in a sense of utter protection.
His arms tightened as he sat down with her on the huge leather sofa. At this evidence of his great strength a faint wisp of common sense struggled into life, only to vanish when he turned up her chin. Lost in the fathomless depths of his eyes, she felt her heart buck as he slid a finger beneath the neckline of her top.
‘I’ve kissed all your lipstick off,’ he said, that exciting roughness still in his voice. ‘Why do you wear the stuff? Your lips are red and soft and delicious enough without it.’
Every sensory nerve quivering, she felt his finger move a little further beneath the soft material of her top. When he’d carried her—or perhaps when he’d sat down on the sofa, she was in no state to remember—the hem of her shirt had ridden up, and his other hand now rested on her bare skin, warm and strong and compelling.
‘I like the colour,’ she said inanely, then flushed, because he laughed quietly, his eyes narrowed and glittering.
Lord, was that her voice—a betraying mixture of huskiness and a breathy hesitance she’d never heard before?
He kissed her again, and when he let her surface from the mists of sensuality he was stroking the upper part of her breast, setting off more fires through her body with each slow caress.
Sable fought the need to squirm against him, but failed. His response was instantaneous and abrupt; he pulled her further into his lap so that the rigid length of his penis pressed against her. His free hand swooped up under her shirt, and cupped her other aching, pleading breast.
Kain looked down at her. ‘We seem to be stretching the fabric of this pretty thing. Would you be more comfortable if I took it off?’
He waited for her response, aware that he was giving her an out. Would she take it? Her slumbrous, dark eyes were half-hidden by heavy lashes, and her cheeks were warmed by a delectable soft glow, her mouth sensuously pouting.
However, he wanted no angry denunciations later, no accusations of forcible seduction. Sexy and utterly desirable as she was, he didn’t trust her an inch. She was going to have to give her assent every step of the way.
Every muscle in his body clenched with an aching hunger. Damn, but he wanted her!
‘Sable?’ he asked again, when she said nothing.
Lifting drowsy lashes, she smiled. ‘T-shirts are inclined to stretch badly,’ she said in that smoky voice.
Clever, he thought—neither a yes or a no. Paradoxically her quick mind inflamed the desire that had been building in him ever since he’d first laid eyes on her.
But he wasn’t going to let her get away with it. ‘Answer me, Sable.’
White teeth closed a second on her tender lower lip. Then, as colour swept across her magnificent cheekbones, she murmured, ‘It has to be a yes, I suppose.’
And that, he decided, was as close to a straight answer as he was likely to get from her. Resisting a surge of hunger so acute it damned near unmanned him, he waited for her to take the pretty ruby-coloured thing off.
When the only movement she made was to turn her face into his throat again, he prompted, ‘Sit up, then.’
Languorously she obeyed, her slender body causing mayhem in his every cell when she eased the shirt over her head.
Kain fought back a guttural exclamation and the inclination to clench his hands. God, the last thing he wanted to do was mark her satiny skin! She was sleek and sinuous, and that blush had travelled upwards from the edge of the delicate scraps of silk that protected her high breasts.
Surely she wasn’t as inexperienced as that enchanting colour made her seem?
The primitive desire to be the man who initiated her into the delights of passion caught him by surprise; even as he tried to control it, he wondered at the astonishing pleasure gripping him.
But Sable was no virgin.
Another wave of heat burned through Sable as she felt the impact of Kain’s scrutiny right through to her heart’s core. Fire licked through her veins—languorous, smouldering, an erotic summons. Although she’d idolised Derek,
basking foolishly in the belief that his caresses meant he loved her, he’d never made her feel like this—so wild, so free, so ardently abandoned.
Kain said quietly, ‘You are beautiful.’
A faint, wistful smile curled her lips. Derek had told her often enough that she was beautiful, but it had been all false.
Just as she’d been unwittingly lying when she’d told him she’d loved him; loneliness had driven her into his bed, and a childish hunger for love and protection.
She wouldn’t make that mistake again.
At least Kain made no false promises, no pretence. He disliked her, but his passion was honest and real, and she wanted it so much…
A wave of aching anticipation broke over her, washing away her reservations and her cowardly fears. ‘What’s sauce for the goose…’ she said huskily. ‘Why don’t you take off your shirt?’
Eyes gleaming, he let her go and leaned back against the sofa with arms outspread. ‘Why don’t you take it off?’ he challenged.
Her fingers shook as she reached for the hem of his shirt and began to lift it. Avoiding his gaze, she stifled the itch to explore the tanned skin revealed as she eased up the warm fabric. He raised his arms and bent his black head forward; she slid the shirt over it and let it drop to join hers on the floor.
And then she halted, mind and emotions in turmoil, not knowing what to do next.
His chest expanded in a quiet laugh. He must have discerned her total lack of confidence, because he took her hand and held it against his heart.
‘What do you feel?’ he asked.
The heavy throb beat against her palm. ‘Your life,’ she said almost inaudibly, excited all over again at the realisation that she was doing this to him.
She bent her head and kissed the spot, letting her lips linger over his skin, then with delicate swiftness licking it. His taste filled her mouth—salty, a little musky, delicious.
Then she gasped as her bra fell away, discarded like their shirts. He lifted her and kissed her between her breasts, and she felt her heart go crazy when his lips lingered.