by Penny Jordan
Ignoring the lynx-eyed look he was giving her, Suzy took a deep breath. Lovers! Panic shot through her as she recognised that her instinctive response to the thought was not one of abhorrence and rejection. Why wasn't it? She wasn't still holding onto that idiotic thing about them being soul mates, was she?
Lovers! Inside her head images were forming. Dangerous, wanton and tormenting images that made her body ache and burn.
Beneath her thin top Suzy could feel her nipples stiffening and peaking. Her heart thudding erratically, she turned away from him to look up at the villa. It was awesomely elegant and magnificent.
'Built by an Italian prince for his favourite mistress and the children she had by him,' Lucas informed her. 'The frescoes around the hall and staircase include images of both her and their sons. Come on.'
The visually gentle clasp of his hand around hers was in reality anything but, Suzy recognised and she flinched beneath his tight grip.
'My things—' she began, but Luke shook his head.
'I'll get someone to come out for them.'
The supposed butler who opened the door to them exchanged a look with Luke which made her suspect that the man was more than just a servant. One of Luke's men? Suzy suspected so, but before she could voice her suspicions one of the doors off the hallway opened and a young boy of around six came running out, hotly pursued by a pre-teenage girl who was protesting crossly,
'That's mine, Charlie, give it back to me now.'
'Children! Oh—Luke.'
This must be the children's father, Suzy guessed, and she waited to be introduced to her unsuspecting host.
He was tall and good-looking, with crinkly blue eyes and a nice smile, but Suzy still recognised that of the two of them it was obvious that Luke was the one in charge.
'Peter, I am delighted to tell you that you have an additional guest,' Luke announced. 'My partner, Suzy Roberts. Darling, this is Sir Peter Verey,'
'Luke, I applaud your taste.' Peter Verey smiled warmly, his words for Luke but his admiring gaze fixed very firmly on Suzy.
There was something almost endearing about Peter Verey, Suzy decided as she tried rebelliously to move away from Luke, but then tensed as his fingers closed around her wrist in steely warning.
'I'm going to take Suzy up to my room. It's almost dinnertime…'
Suzy opened her mouth to say something, but Luke took immediate action to forestall her by the simple expedient of silencing her protest with the pressure of his mouth on her own.
Caught like a rabbit in a car's headlights, she stared up into his eyes and saw the warning glinting there. But the warning certainly didn't match the soft, sensual pressure of his mouth as it moved on hers, Suzy recognised as her heart thumped painfully. He was holding her, kissing her as though…
A huge lump formed in her throat and she had to close her eyes against the sharp pain that speared her heart. As she did so she felt him lifting his mouth from hers.
They were alone in the vast hallway, Sir Peter having discreetly disappeared.
'This way,' Luke announced curtly.
He had released her wrist and Suzy noticed that he made no attempt to re-imprison her. In fact as she walked numbly towards the stairs he seemed to deliberately hang back a little from her. The lump in her throat turned to icy panic as she realised how bereft her body felt at its lack of contact with him.
He was a monster. She ought to hate and loathe him. She did hate and loathe him. It was just her body that was vulnerable to him. That was all.
Stopping mid-step, she turned on the stair and looked at Luke. He was two stairs below her and their eyes were on the same level. As she looked into his her heart gave a funny little kick-beat before flinging itself at the wall of her chest.
'Do we really have to share a room?' she asked, anxiety thickening her voice to a husky whisper.
Something in the soft timbre of her voice was touching a nerve he didn't want to have touched, Luke recognised angrily—arousing a reaction he didn't want to have aroused. What the devil was the matter with him?
'Yes, because that will ensure that I can keep a very close eye on you, and it will reinforce the necessary fiction I've had to create that we are lovers,' Luke said to her prosaically, adding scathingly, 'I should have thought you could have worked that out for yourself. I assure you there's no other reason for it.'
Mutely Suzy looked at him, then turned away and began to climb the remaining stairs.
What was it about those eyes that made him want to take hold of her?
Infuriated by the effect Suzy was having on him, Luke followed her up the stairs.
'This way.' Tensing beneath Luke's brief touch on her bare arm, Suzy willed herself not to betray how emotionally vulnerable he was making her feel.
He had come to a halt outside a door which he unlocked and pushed open.
Warily Suzy stepped inside, her eyes widening as she took in the magnificence of her surroundings.
What she was standing in wasn't just a room but a suite. Almost an apartment, she decided, and she gazed around in awe, recognising wryly that her own small flat would have fitted easily into the elegant and spaciously proportioned sitting room in which she was now standing. Through the three tall windows she could see the grounds of the villa, but it wasn't the view from the windows that caught and held her attention. As she stared through the double doors which opened into what was obviously the bedroom Suzy felt her throat constrict.
Because she could see that the bedroom did in fact possess only one bed. A very large bed, admittedly, but still only one.
'I am not sleeping in that bed with you,' she announced flatly.
She looked and sounded shocked and outraged, Luke recognised. Pink flags of apparent distress were flying in her cheeks and her eyes were glittering with emotion. Even her body language, her tightly balled fists and tensely held body, was perfect for the part she had chosen to play.
She was good, he told himself angrily. She was very, very good. But he wasn't fooled!
'Well, you certainly won't be doing anything other than sleeping!' he told her emphatically. 'So you can disabuse yourself of any ideas you might be entertaining of favouring me with your sexual expertise. Because I'm not in the market for it.'
Somewhere inside her a small, sensible voice was trying to make itself heard, to tell her that she ought to be relieved by his words and the message of safety they held for her. But it was being drowned out by the outraged protests of her emotions, Suzy knew, and she recoiled from the rejection in Luke's words.
'I am not going to sleep with you!'
Could he hear the panic in her voice? Suzy no longer cared. All she cared about was saving herself from the humiliation of having to share a bed with a man she already knew had the most dangerous effect on her body—especially when he had made it so clear how he felt about her. She could not, would not share Luke's bed!
Was it because she was afraid that if she did she might somehow forget herself and…?
And what? Suzy derided herself mirthlessly. Seduce him? Her? Seduce a man like Luke?
'I'll sleep in the sitting room on one of the sofas,' she announced shakily.
'No!' Luke checked her immediately.
The cool word offered no hope of a compromise.
Uncertainly Suzy looked at him.
'Didn't you listen to what I told you?' he asked softly. 'I am not going to let you out of my sight! Night and day, wherever I go, you come with me. Besides, we are supposed to be lovers. I don't want the maids gossiping that we aren't sleeping together. Of course, if you prefer to spend the next few weeks in prison…' he offered cordially.
There was a cold look in his eyes that told her he wasn't joking. Wildly Suzy contemplated telling him that she would prefer the option of prison. Surely anything was better than having to share his bed! Than lying there beside him, terrified that she might somehow be overwhelmed by temptation and reach out to him and be rejected.
'The bathroom's throu
gh here,' she heard Luke informing her, quite obviously waiting for her to follow him.
A small spurt of rebellion surged through her. Suzy stayed where she was.
Luke paused and turned to look at her. 'Are you waiting for me to come and get you?' he asked softly.
Silently they looked at one another.
Something unseen and dangerous sizzled in the air between them. Suzy might not be able to see it, but she could certainly feel it. Inside she was trembling, teetering on a tightrope of hyped-up sexual excitement and overstretched emotions.
If she stayed here what would Luke do? Just the thought of his hands on her body in any kind of way sent a high-voltage shock of sensual longing jolting through her.
What was happening to her?
Gritting her teeth, she took a step towards him. Anything, even giving in to him now, was a million times better than putting herself in a position where she might humiliate herself by letting Luke see…
See what? What was there to see? she asked herself with angry defiance. But of course she knew!
How on earth could she be unlucky enough to have the kind of emotional and sexual feelings she did towards a man like Luke? And why, knowing what he thought of her, hadn't she been able to destroy them?
And, as if that wasn't enough for her to have to cope with, why had fate deemed it necessary to condemn her to this current situation, where she would be exposed day and night to Luke's proximity? Day and night!
Luke frowned as he watched the expressions chase one another over Suzy's face. That look of agonised despair he had just seen darken her eyes had surely been pure theatre!
Numbly Suzy followed Luke into the bathroom, then stopped dead to stare in disbelief and bemusement around the room.
'The current owner renovated the whole place, with particular attention to the bathrooms,' she heard Luke explaining calmly while she stood and stared, then turned and closed her eyes, and then opened them again.
The bathroom was like something out of a private fantasy!
The bath was huge, round and half-sunk into the floor. It was dark green marble with marble steps leading down to it and gold dolphin-head taps attached.
As though that were not enough five columns surrounded it, supporting a cupola-type canopy the centre of which was painted with…Suzy blinked, and then blinked again at the scenes of extremely explicit sensuality above her head. And not just above her head, she realised, but all along the wall frieze as well! Luscious-breasted women, each with her godlike Adonis entwined in a variety of intimate sexual embraces! Huge mirrors covered one of the walls, and on another she could see handbasins…
'I…' she began falteringly, shaking her head when her voice failed her and her gaze was drawn back to the frieze!
Hastily she refocused it on the bathtub, and then wished she had not as, out of nowhere, the most intimate and erotic images presented themselves to her.
Luke sleekly wet and naked…Luke bending over her as one Adonis on the frieze was bending over his lover…
A dizzying surge of sensual heat gripped her body. Fiercely she tried to repel it.
Luke himself, who had previously derided and then ignored the flamboyantly sensual décor of the bathroom, had a sudden and unwanted image of Suzy lying in the ornate tub, her naked body gleaming with pearly iridescence. Would the tangle of curls between her thighs be the same unique shade of gold as her hair? And when he lifted her out of the water and laid her down, so that he could caress the taut peaks of her breasts with his fingers, before he touched her more intimately, would those curls cling lovingly to his fingers as he parted the folded lips of her sex?
Furious with himself, Luke turned away from Suzy to stop her from seeing the effect his thoughts were having on him. His erection was straining against his clothes and throbbing almost painfully. The physical rebelliousness of his body was a hazard he had not accounted for, never having had to deal with it before, and mentally Luke cursed that unexpected kiss Suzy had given him the first time they had met.
Then she had caught him off guard, and somehow superimposed on his body and his arousal mechanism an imprinted response to her which right now he seemed powerless to destroy!
'The shower is over there,' he told Suzy curtly, breaking off as they both heard a discreet knock on the outside door to the suite. 'That will be your stuff.'
Glad of a reason to escape from the overwhelming sensuality of the bathroom, Suzy hurried back into the suite, Luke at her heels. A young Italian was standing beside the door with Suzy's case. As Suzy thanked him he gave her an intense and admiring look.
'I'll take that,' Luke announced tersely, somehow managing to insert himself between Suzy and the young man as he dismissed him. 'You've got half an hour before dinner,' he told Suzy as he closed the door, shutting her inside the suite, on her own with him. 'I've only used part of the wardrobe, so you'll have plenty of space for your stuff.'
Her stuff? It was just as well that the exclusivity of her hotel meant that she had brought a couple of outfits with her more formal than she would normally have packed for a holiday, Suzy acknowledged.
'You can use the shower first if you like.'
'Yes, thanks—I will,' she told him woodenly, unzipping her case and trying to be discreet as she extracted clean underwear. But it was next to impossible when Luke was standing right next to her.
'If you need anything pressing now's the time to say,' he told her, ignoring her discomfort.
'Well, what kind of thing should I wear? I mean, how formal…?' she began uncertainly. Something told her that Sir Peter Verey was not someone who sat down to dinner wearing a pair of jeans!
'Will these be okay?' she asked reluctantly, removing a pair of linen trousers from her case. She hated to have to ask him for anything, even a small piece of advice, but she knew that she had no choice.
'They won't need pressing,' she told him, and he nodded his head.
Quickly hanging them up, she found her toilet bag and headed for the bathroom. As she did so she thought she heard Luke call something after her, but she refused to turn back to find out what it was. Another criticism of her, no doubt, she decided, and she closed the bathroom door with a satisfying bang.
Fortunately the shower was modern and plain, and no way in danger of inclining her toward wanton thoughts concerning her jailer!
Determinedly Suzy pushed away her dangerous fantasies and turned on the shower, carefully adjusting the heat and letting the water run for a few seconds before testing it to make sure the temperature was right.
Quickly stripping off her clothes, she stepped into it, enjoying the warm cascade of water over her skin. The warmth of the water was just perfect.
'Aaagrh!' Suzy screamed as suddenly icy cold water pelted her unprepared skin. Frozen, she reached for the towel she had hung over the shower door, but felt it slip from her grasp. It only took her seconds to escape from the shower's icy blast, but by the time she had she was shivering with cold and shock.
'I tried to warn you about the water but you didn't bother to listen.'
Soaking wet, shivering and totally naked, she stared in affronted outrage at Luke, who was standing in the doorway, having heard her scream and guessed its cause.
CHAPTER SIX
'HERE.' In two quick strides Luke was beside her, having grabbed hold of a towel.
'No, don't—I can manage.' She began to protest, but the words became a muddled muffle as he wrapped her unceremoniously in the towel and started to rub her dry so fiercely that her skin began to glow.
His actions were spare, rigorous and practical, and there was no reason at all why they should remind her of the loving care of her mother when she was a little girl, but they did. And then she turned her head and stiffened as she saw the way he was looking at her. He had stopped towelling her, and what she could see in his eyes was making her heart turn over and her resistance melt.
Frantically she forced herself to remember who he was and what he had done! Glaring at
him, she turned away and headed for the bedroom, only to give a gasp of shock as she tripped on the hem of her towel.
The speed with which Luke moved was very impressive. One minute he was standing beside her, the next he was catching her in his arms and swinging her up off the floor, so that instead of taking a nasty tumble she was held securely against his warm chest.
Initially she struggled to break free, then suddenly the whole world stopped turning and her heartbeat was suspended with it.
'Luke…'
She had barely whispered his name, but he must have heard her because she could feel him registering it. His body tensed, as though there was something in her one little word that he needed every bit of his formidable artillery of weaponry to repel.