by Julia James
Like the woman he was enjoying now.
Anna was exactly what he wanted. There’d been a lot of tension surrounding the launch of the Levantsky marque, and he’d put a lot of personal effort into ensuring that tonight and tomorrow were being organised the way he wanted them to be. That, of course, was on top of his normal non-stop business schedule. It might annoy him, but it didn’t surprise him, that something had had to give—and that something was his sex life. It had been nearly a month since he had parted company with the Italian divorcee with whom he had been more than happy to celebrate her new sexual freedom, and there had been no time to choose her successor.
So the sable-haired beauty in his arms had caught his attention at a timely moment. She was just what he needed. A sophisticated, independent, unattached woman who had made it more than clear that she was receptive to his attentions. The world she moved in was known for its liberal sexual habits, and she doubtless had her pick of lovers in her time. Her caustic tongue and attitude might well put some men off, but it didn’t bother him. It could just be put on for effect, anyway, to make herself stand out from the competition—deliberately assumed to catch the attention of men like him, jaded by fawning women.
Whatever the cause, it certainly wasn’t in evidence now. She was reacting just the way he’d known she would—letting him taste her to the full and taking her own pleasure in it.
Leisurely, Leo slid his hand over her hip. Though slender, it was not in the least bony—for which he was glad. There was a rounded softness there beneath the silk of her dress that was really very enticing.
He deepened the kiss, pulling her body closer against his. He could feel his own body reacting very pleasurably to the contact. Rich anticipation filled him. A month’s celibacy might have been unwelcome, but it had its compensations.
Tonight would be good, he knew.
She would be good.
Letting his tongue powerfully stroke hers, he felt her yield to him, and he liked that. Too many women these days started a competition when he was kissing them, presumably thinking he found it exciting. They did not appreciate—as this one did—just how very erotic it was for a man to feel a woman being pleasured by him…
He felt his arousal strengthen. A month’s starvation had made him hungry.
Hungry for much more than a mere appetiser. Time to take their table for the main course.
He drew his mouth back a little, just enough to allow him to softly bite her swollen lower lip.
‘Shall we?’ he said, his mouth curving sensually, his lashes sweeping down over his eyes. He exerted the slightest pressure at her hip, loosening his hand from her neck to guide her towards the bed.
As he released her she swayed slightly, eyes dazed. A small frown started to form between his eyes.
Was she drunk? She’d nursed a single glass of champagne all evening, and it had still been almost as full at the end as at the beginning. And just now, over supper, she had stuck entirely to water. So why was she swaying? Looking dazed and dizzy?
Or was it merely sexual arousal? Her pupils were wide and dilated, lips swollen, parted. His eyes flickered downward, and then his mouth curved into a relaxing smile. Her breasts were straining against the confines of her dress, and even without the help of the laced corset, the soft mounds were swelling deliciously above her bodice.
He felt his own arousal surge through his body. Of its own volition his hand reached, curved around one lovely, tempting orb, thumb brushing the dark silk where the nipple strained against it.
He wanted her, badly. Now.
‘You really are…’ his voice was husky ‘…so very tempting.’ His thumb brushed again, and he felt himself thicken at the contact. Unable to resist, he started to close in on her. He wanted that mouth once more, that silken lushness…
The crack of her palm against his cheek took him totally and completely by surprise.
Anna hauled herself back. Her heart was hammering in her chest, pounding as if she’d done a workout. Panic, horror and a whole storm of emotions she couldn’t even identify poured through her like a deluge.
‘What the hell—?’
Leo Makarios was staring at her, shock naked on his face. Where her hand had impacted was a red mark.
Anna jerked further back.
‘Get out of here. Just get out!’
He was standing stock still. Every line of his body taut.
‘You will tell me,’ he bit out, ‘exactly what that was for!’
Her eyes flashed. Her breathing was ragged, tumultuous, her heart still pounding. Adrenaline was surging through her—and a whole lot more.
‘How dare you? How dare you think you can help yourself to me? Get out!’
His face darkened, his eyes suddenly as hard as steel.
‘It’s a little late,’ he spelt out, his voice harsh, contemptuous, ‘to tell me that.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t like teases. Don’t say yes to me and then change your mind and blame me for it.’
Anna’s eyes distended.
‘Say yes? I never said yes!’
‘You’ve been saying yes all evening,’ he bit back. ‘From the moment I first set eyes on you. You made it crystal-clear you wanted me. Right up to ten seconds ago. Don’t pretend to be naïve.’ The voice was still harsh, still contemptuous. Two lines of white were etched around his mouth, colour flaring along his cheekbones.
She took a thin, hissing breath, eyes aflame with fury.
‘My God, you have a nerve. I don’t have to take this from you. Go and find some other willing floozy for the night! How dare you think you can use me for a night’s entertainment?’
‘Forgive me, but you gave every impression that you were willing.’ The sneer in his voice was open.
Anna’s eyes spat fire. Oh, how she wanted to feel anger! She was feeling it now all right. Coruscating, burning, biting, furious, incandescent anger. She was shaking with it.
‘Get out! I don’t have to take this! I don’t have to put up with men who think because I model clothes I’ll take them off for them whenever they feel like it. Now get out of my room before I charge you for harassment!’
Leo’s face was as if carved from marble.
‘Be very careful,’ he told her, his eyes like chips of rock, ‘what you say to me.’
Her face contorted.
‘Don’t threaten me. I don’t have to be treated like this by you or anyone else—however stinking rich they are!’
‘Don’t tell me—’ the contemptuous note was back in his voice ‘—it’s in your contract.’
‘Well, it’s just as bloody well it is, isn’t it?’ she spat back at him. ‘Because with you around I need it!’
The eyes were like granite again.
‘Enough. You have made your point of view very clear. But next time you want to play the outraged virtue card, Ms Delane, I suggest you do it before you entertain a man in your bedroom at midnight.’
He threw a last stony, contemptuously angry look at her, and walked out.
The door shut behind him with a violent reverberating thud.
Leo strode down the corridor in a cold rage such as he had seldom experienced.
Christos, where the hell had that come from?
From temptress to virago in ten seconds flat!
Deliberate?
His eyes narrowed. If there’d been the slightest indication that the whole thing was a put-on he’d—
He felt his hands clench as he walked rapidly away, and he had to force himself to release them.
No, she wasn’t worth it. Whether or not she was putting it on—one of those women who enjoyed blowing hot then cold just to twist men up—he didn’t care. Let her enjoy her virtue. Theos, it was all she was going to enjoy tonight.
Anna Delane could enjoy her precious celibacy, and he…he could have a cold shower.
How the hell was I supposed to know she didn’t want it?
Indignation filled him—and a sense of unjustified ill usage.
&nbs
p; Good God, he wasn’t some callow teenager, unable to tell whether a woman was responding to him. Anna Delane had responded all right—clear and loud.
So why the outrage?
Roughly, he pushed the question aside. What the hell did he care what the answer was?
His interest in Anna Delane was over.
Permanently.
CHAPTER FOUR
ANNA lay in bed. Her heart was still pumping, adrenaline surging through her. She couldn’t stop it. Her whole body was as tense as a board, every muscle rigid.
How had it come to this? How?
Disbelief kept flooding through her, cold and icy through her guts.
The cold emptied through her again, clutching at her with its icy fingers.
How, how had it happened?
The question went round and round, pounding ceaselessly, tormentingly.
How had she let Leo Makarios do that to her? Just walk up to her and start to touch her. And she’d done nothing—nothing! Pathetic. Pathetic.
A shudder went through her.
She had just let him stand there and kiss her, fondle her, as if she was some kind of…some kind of…
She felt anger excoriating her. Anger at Leo Makarios, who had just walked into her bedroom and decided to help himself to her. The anger wired through her nerves. Anger at Leo Makarios.
But a worse fury consumed her too.
Anger at herself.
How could she have succumbed to him like that? Letting him come into her room, kiss her, caress her, do what he wanted to her? How could he have just swept away all her defences, all her years of fighting men off?
And into her head stole a voice that chilled her to the bone.
Because you didn’t want to fight him off. You wanted him…you wanted him badly…Wanted to feel his mouth on yours, wanted his hands caressing you, wanted to feel him stroke you, arouse you…
She closed her eyes in anguish, her face contorting.
No, please—please. She mustn’t want Leo Makarios.
Not a man like that, a man who’s just proved himself to be everything you knew he was. Everything! The kind of man who wants instant cheap gratification and thinks you’re going to roll over and let him get it from you!
Revulsion shuddered through her.
Then slowly, agonisingly slowly, piece by piece, she started to pull herself together.
Yes, she had been a fool, an idiot, but the worst had not happened—that was what she must hang on to. It might have been so close to the edge of the precipice that she must never, ever think of it again, but at least she had summoned the last of her sanity and sent him packing.
She opened her eyes again, staring into the dark.
Imagine if it were now after you’d given yourself totally to him. If you were lying here now and he’d gone back to his gilded state apartment, sleek and sated, leaving you here with nothing left but the bones…
Cold iced through her again.
She had had such a narrow escape…
But she had escaped—that was what she must remember. She had clawed back to sanity just in time.
And she was safe now. Safe.
Slowly, very slowly, she felt her heart-rate come down.
Never, ever again would Leo Makarios push her that close to the precipice.
Never.
Her mouth thinned.
Never.
‘Plunge your hands in. Now lift them out—lift, lift, lift! Yes. Hold them up! Up!’
Anna held her hands the way she was being told to. So did the other three models. They were standing around the vast oak table in the castle’s echoing hall again, but this time none of them was wearing any of the Levantsky jewels.
Their hands were all in a huge golden bowl into which had been poured rivers of diamonds, emeralds, rubies and sapphires. And now the four models were plunging into this golden cornucopia and lifting them out, their fingers dripping necklaces and earrings and bracelets.
‘Basta!’ Tonio Embrutti called, simultaneously summoning the stylist and her assistants. ‘Now I want the jewels just draped over their shoulders, in their hair, over their arms, their breasts. Not fastened, just draped.’
His pudgy face took on a sulky look. ‘Of course, their bodies should be naked, but—’
He contented himself with merely making an Italian gesture of exasperation with his hands, waving his camera around as he did so.
Anna stood patiently as the stylist’s assistants got to work.
Her mind was strangely numb. She’d got hardly any sleep last night, and the disapproving make-up artist had commented adversely on the effect thereof on her eyes and complexion. Anna didn’t care. She was, she knew, beyond caring. She had only one overriding impulse.
To get out of here. Out and home.
But she still had today and tonight to get through before she could run. At least today there was no sign of Leo Makarios. He’d gone off with his guests—some whisked off to ski slopes, some on horse-drawn sleigh rides, some on helicopter tours of the Austrian Alps, or back to Vienna and Munich for shopping trips.
Even so, today’s shoot seemed longer than yesterday’s, but finally it was done. Released at last, changed back into her normal clothes, Anna headed back up to her room. Vanessa had disappeared instantly—presumably Markos was in the wings somewhere—and Kate almost as quickly.
‘There’s an early concert in the town’s Musikverein,’ Kate had explained to the others eagerly. ‘Maestro Lukacs has given me a ticket!’ She’d said it as though he’d given her the keys to the kingdom, her eyes shining.
‘Have fun,’ Anna had said dryly. Preferably, she added silently, not in Antal Lukacs’s bed. Kate was far too impressionable.
She headed off after Jenny, also making for her room. The other model had a head start on her up the vast stairs. Anna sprinted after her.
‘Wait for me!’ she called. But Jenny was ploughing on, reaching the set of stairs that led to the upper floors. She seemed to be walking faster and faster, as if the devil was driving her.
But then it was, Anna knew. Her face shadowed. God, she might have been an idiot the night before, letting Leo Makarios get to within a hair’s breadth of tumbling her down into bed, but at least she’d found her sanity in time! Jenny had never found hers with the man who had got her into this mess. And now she was facing the complete disintegration of her life. Forced to cash in everything she had and flee.
Flee to keep her baby safe from the man who would take it from her.
Anna’s eyes darkened. Well, whatever it took she would make sure she stood by Jenny! Money, support—someone there at the birth of her child—whatever Jenny needed, she’d stick by her.
But right now Jenny just needed reassurance. Someone to keep her spirits up, take away the edge of fear that was eating into her day by day at the thought of her pregnancy being discovered.
Anna hurried on, up the second flight of stairs and along the corridor to her bedroom. Jenny had rushed ahead and was out of sight. Anna paused outside her friend’s door, wondering whether Jenny would like a cup of tea with her.
‘Jen, do you want a cuppa? Rosehip or chamomile?’
There was no answer.
Anna opened the door and poked her head round. Maybe Jenny was in the bathroom.
She wasn’t.
She was sitting on her bed. Like Anna, she was wearing trousers, but unlike Anna she had a large, fleecy long-sleeved pullover on.
And out of the sleeve she was sliding a long ruby bracelet.
For one long, timeless moment Anna did not believe what she was seeing. And then, with a rush of icy water in her stomach, she stepped into the room, closing the door behind her.
Jenny was staring at her. Staring at her with shock and fear naked on her face. She was as white as a sheet, every bone in her face starkly outlined.
Slowly, Anna came forward.
‘Oh, my God, Jen, what have you done?’
Her voice was hollow.
Jen
ny just stared; she was beyond speech, Anna could see—wound up so tight she would break if stressed any further.
Carefully, Anna went and sat down beside her.
Jenny turned huge distended eyes on her.
‘Do you know—’ her voice sounded taut and strange ‘—Khalil wanted to give me a ruby bracelet? I said no. He wanted to give me lots of jewels, but I always said no. It made him angry, I know. He hid it, but it did.’ Her eyes went down to the ruby bracelet lying across the palm of her hand, winking in the lamplight.
‘It’s ironic, isn’t it?’ she said, and her voice still had that strange breaking quality about it. ‘If I’d just taken one, just one of all the jewels he wanted to give me, I’d be all right now. I could sell it and have enough…enough money to…to escape with. But I never took them. Not one. Even though he wanted to give them to me.’
She touched one of the stones with her finger.
Carefully, very carefully, Anna spoke.
‘But these aren’t Khalil’s jewels, Jen. And he never gave them to you.’ She paused. ‘I’ll take the bracelet back.’
She reached across to lift it from Jenny’s palm. For a moment so brief it hardly happened she saw Jenny’s fingers start to claw shut over the bracelet. Then, as if exerting a vast invisible effort, the fingers stilled.
‘You can’t keep it, Jen. You know you can’t.’
Anna’s voice was quiet, reassuring.
Slowly Jenny opened her palm completely, letting the glittering stones run red across her hand. She stared down at them.
Anna lifted them away. Her heart was beating fast, the icy water still in her stomach. Slowly she got to her feet. Her mind was racing, almost going into panic. But she mustn’t panic—she mustn’t.
What the hell am I going to do?
And, shooting right through her panicking brain, came one grim question.
How long have we got before it’s discovered missing?
Claws pincered in her stomach. The security arrangements for the Levantsky jewels were draconian. They had to be, obviously. Every time they were brought out or put away—either for a shoot, or for her and the other models to wear the night before—security guards were all over the place. Every item was catalogued and signed in and out on a computerised check system personally entered by Leo Makarios’s sidekick, Justin.