by Lynne Graham
‘Tonight, ma petite … I would like to make you mine and you will have no regrets,’ Navarre purred, stroking his fingertips delicately along the taut line of her full lower lip, sending wicked little markers of heat travelling to every secret part of her as she thought helplessly of that mouth on hers, those sure, skilled hands, that strong, hard body. She couldn’t breathe for excitement.
The shooting lunch was delivered to the men on the moors while those women who had no taste for the sport joined Catrina and Tawny for a more civilised repast at the castle. During that meal, liberally accompanied by fine wine, celebrity and designer names were dropped repeatedly as well as descriptions of fabulous gifts, insanely expensive shopping trips and impossibly luxurious holidays with each woman clearly determined to outdo the next. It was all highly competitive stuff and Tawny hated it, finding the trip to the spa something of a relief, for at least everyone was in separate cubicles and she no longer had to try to fit in by putting on an act.
‘You and Navarre won’t last,’ Catrina informed Tawny confidently as they were driven back to Strathmore.
‘Why do you think that?’
‘Navarre will get bored and move on, just as he did with me,’ Catrina warned. ‘I was once in love with him too. I’ve seen your eyes follow him round the room. When he ditches you, I warn you … it’ll hurt like hell.’
‘He’s not going to ditch me,’ Tawny declared between clenched teeth, wondering if her eyes did follow Navarre round the room. It was an image that mortified her. It was also unnerving that she could be unconscious of her own behaviour around him.
When she entered the bedroom it was a shock to glance through the open bathroom door and see Navarre already standing there naked as he towelled his hair dry. Her face burning, she averted her eyes from that thought-provoking view and went over to the wardrobe to extract the evening dress she planned to wear—a shimmering gold gown that complimented her auburn hair and fair complexion. Her palms were damp. He was gorgeous, stripped he was even more gorgeous. Tonight … I would like to make you mine. She shivered at the memory of the words that had burned at the back of her mind throughout the day, full of seductive promise and threatening her self-discipline. For never before had Tawny wanted a man as she wanted Navarre Cazier—with a deep visceral need as primitive as it was fierce.
The towel looped round his narrow hips Navarre strolled out and tossed her mobile phone down on the bed. ‘Ring your grandmother,’ he told her.
She switched on her phone but there was no reception and after a fruitless moment or two of pacing in an attempt to pick up a signal at the window, Navarre handed her his phone. ‘Use mine.’
Celestine answered the call immediately. ‘I tried to ring you yesterday but I couldn’t get through. I thought you might be too busy to ring, ma chérie. And on a Friday evening that would be good news,’ the old lady told her chirpily. ‘It would mean you had a date which would please me enormously.’
‘I am going to a party tonight,’ Tawny told her, knowing how much her grandmother would enjoy that news. ‘Why were you trying to ring me?’
‘A friend of yours called me, said she was trying desperately to get in touch but that you weren’t answering your phone. It was that work friend of yours, Julie.’
‘Oh … forget about it, it wouldn’t have been important.’ Tawny felt her skin turn clammy as she wondered what Julie was after now. How dared she disturb her grandmother’s peace by phoning her? And where on earth had she got Celestine’s number from? It could only have been from Tawny’s personnel file, which also meant that Julie had used her computer skills to go snooping again. Had her calculating former friend hoped that the old lady might have information about where Tawny and Navarre had gone after leaving the hotel?
‘What are you wearing to the party?’ Celestine asked, eager for a description.
And Tawny really pushed the boat out with the details, for the old lady adored finery. Indeed Tawny would have loved to tell Celestine about the Golden Movie Awards and Tia Castelli and her husband, not to mention the castle she was currently staying in, but she did not dare to breathe a word of what Navarre probably considered to be confidential information. Instead she caught up with her grandmother’s small daily doings and she slowly began to relax in the reassuring warmth of the old lady’s chatter. Unlike her daughter, Susan, Celestine was a very happy personality, who always looked on the bright side of life.
‘You seem very close to your grandmother,’ Navarre commented as Tawny returned his phone to him.
‘She’s a darling,’ Tawny said fondly, gathering up stuff to take into the en suite with her, mindful of the fact she had been accused of being a tease and determined not to give him further cause to believe that she was actively encouraging his interest.
‘What about your mother?’
Tawny paused with her back still turned to him and tried not to wince. ‘Relations are a little cool between us at present,’ she admitted, opting for honesty.
Mother and daughter were still speaking but things had been said during that last confrontation that would probably never be forgotten, Tawny reflected painfully. Tawny could not forget being told what a drastic disappointment she was to her mother. But then mother and child had always rubbed each other up the wrong way. Tawny had refused to dye her red hair brown when her mother suggested it and had sulked when a padded bra was helpfully presented to her. She had done well in the wrong subjects at school. She had declined to train for a business career and as a result had failed to attain the salary or status that her mother equated with success. And finally and unforgivably on Susan’s terms, Tawny had failed to make the most of her entrée into her half-sisters’ wealthy world where with some effort she might have met the sort of man her mother would have viewed as an eligible partner. Her recent work as a chambermaid had been the proverbial last straw in her dissatisfied mother’s eyes. No, Tawny would never be a daughter whom Susan felt she could boast about with her cronies.
Supressing those unhappy memories of her continuing inability to measure up to parental expectations, Tawny set about doing her make-up. She had watched the make-up artist who had done her face for the Golden Awards carefully and she used eyeliner and gold sparkly shadow with a heavier hand than usual, outlining her lips with a rich strawberry-coloured gloss. The dress had an inner corset for shape and support and she had to breathe in hard and swivel it round to put it on without help. Toting her cosmetic bag, she emerged from the bathroom.
Navarre fell still to look at her and it was one of those very rare occasions when he spoke without forethought. ‘Your skin and hair look amazing in that colour.’
‘Thank you.’ Suddenly shy of him but with a warm feeling coiled up inside her, Tawny turned to the dressing table to put on the diamond earrings and bracelet. Even while she did so she searched out his reflection in the mirror, savouring the sight of him in a contemporary charcoal-grey designer suit. So tall, dark and sophisticated, so wonderfully handsome, Navarre Cazier was the ultimate fantasy male … at that point her thoughts screeched to a sudden stricken halt.
Why was she thinking of him like that? It was past time that she reminded herself that absolutely everything, from the fancy clothes she wore to her supposed relationship with Navarre Cazier, was a giant sham. She felt her upbeat spirits dive bomb. After all, she was not living the fairy tale in a romantic castle with a rich handsome man, she was faking it every step of the way. It was a timely recollection.
CHAPTER SIX
TOWARDS midnight, Navarre strode into the ballroom, his keen gaze skimming through the knots of guests until it came to rest on Tawny.
In the subdued light Tawny shimmered like a golden goddess, red hair vibrant, diamonds sparkling, her lovely face full of animation as she looked up at the tall blond man talking to her with a hand clamped to her waist. Navarre recognised her companion immediately: Tor Henson, a wealthy banker very popular with women. Although Navarre had been absent for most of the evening while
he talked business with Sam Coulter and had left Tawny very much to her own devices, he was not pleased to see her looking so well entertained. She had not gone without amusement; she had, it seemed, simply replaced him. A rare burst of anger ripped through Navarre’s big frame, cutting through his powerful self-discipline with disorientating speed and efficiency. His strong white teeth ground together as he crossed the floor to join them.
‘Je suis désolé …’ Navarre began to apologise to Tawny for his prolonged absence.
At the sound of his voice, Tawny whirled round, her expression telegraphing equal amounts of relief and annoyance. ‘Where have you been all this time?’
‘I gather you don’t read the business papers,’ Tor Henson remarked with a knowing glance in Navarre’s direction for recent revealing movements on the stock market had hinted that major change could be in store for Sam Coulter’s business empire.
Navarre captured a slender white hand in his and held it fast. He wanted to haul her away from Henson and take her upstairs to spread her across their bed, a primal prompting that he dimly understood was born of a rage unlike anything he had ever experienced. ‘Thank you for looking after her for me, Tor,’ he murmured with glacial courtesy.
‘I’m not a child you left behind in need of care and protection!’ Tawny objected, ice-blue eyes stormy as he ignored the comment and virtually dragged her onto the dance floor with him. ‘Why are you behaving like this, Navarre? Why are you acting like I’ve done something wrong?’
‘Haven’t you? If I leave you alone for five minutes I come back to find you flirting with another man!’ he censured with icy derision, splaying long sure fingers to her spine to draw her closer to his hard, powerful body than she wanted to be at that moment.
The scent of him, clean, warm and male, was in her nostrils and she fought the aphrodisiac effect that proximity awakened in her treacherous body. ‘You left me alone for two hours!’
‘Was it too much for me to expect you to be waiting quietly where I left you?’ Navarre prompted shortly, in no mood to be reasonable.
‘Yes, I’m not an umbrella you overlooked and I wasn’t flirting with Tor! We were simply talking. He knows I’m engaged,’ Tawny snapped up at him, tempestuous in her own self-defence.
‘Tor would get a kick out of bedding another man’s fiancée, n’est-ce pas?’
She saw the genuine anger in his gaze and the hard-edged tension in his superb bone structure. ‘You’re jealous,’ she registered in wide-eyed surprise, astonished that she could have that much power over him.
His beautiful mouth took on a contemptuous curve. ‘Of course I’m not jealous. Why would I be jealous? We’re not really engaged,’ he reminded her very drily.
But Tawny was not so easily deflected from an opinion once she had formed it. ‘Maybe you’re naturally the possessive type in relationships … You definitely didn’t like seeing me enjoy myself in another man’s company. But have you any idea how insulting it is for you to insinuate that I might go off and shag some guy I hardly know?’
‘I’d have bedded you within five minutes of meeting you, ma petite,’ Navarre confided with a roughened edge to his voice, holding her so close to his body that she could feel the effect her closeness was having on him and warmth pooled in the pit of her tummy in response to his urgent male sexuality.
‘I’m not like you—I would never have agreed to that!’ Tawny proclaimed heatedly, stretching up on tiptoe to deliver that news as close to his ear as she could reach.
‘Mais non … I can be very persuasive.’ Navarre laced long deft fingers into her tumbling curls to hold her steady while he bent his mouth to hers, his breath fanning her cheek. He was no fan of public displays but in that instant he was controlled by a driving atavistic need to mark her as his so that no other man would dare to approach her again. He crushed her succulent lips apart and tasted her with uninhibited hunger, not once but over and over again until she shuddered against him, her slight body vibrating like a tuning fork in response to his passion.
With reluctance, Navarre dragged his mouth from hers, scanned her rapt face and urged her towards the exit. ‘Let’s go.’
Go where? she almost asked, even though she knew where. She could not find the breath or the will to argue. After all, she wanted to be alone with him. She wanted him to kiss her again, she had never wanted anything more, and where once the presence of others might have acted as a welcome control exercise, this time around it was an annoyance. Objections lay low in the back of her mind, crushed out of existence by the fierce longing rippling through her in seductive waves.
‘This has to be a beginning, not an end,’ Navarre declared, thrusting shut the door of the bedroom.
Tawny didn’t want him to talk, she only wanted him to kiss her. As long as he was kissing her she didn’t have to think and wonder about whether or not she was making a mistake. Even worse, the wanting was so visceral that she could not stand against the force of it.
He unzipped her gown, ran his fingers smoothly down her slender spine and flipped loose her bra. She shivered, electrified with anticipation, knees turning to water as his hands rose to cup the swelling mounds of her breasts and massage the achingly sensitive nipples. He touched her exactly as she wanted to be touched. She had never dreamt that desire might leave her so weak that it was a challenge to stay upright, but now as she leant back against him and struggled simply to get oxygen into her lungs she was learning the lesson. She turned round in the circle of his arms and kissed him, hands closing into his jacket and pushing it off his broad shoulders. For an instant he stepped back, shedding the jacket, freeing his shirt from his waistband to unbutton it.
Just looking at him made her mouth run dry. A muscular bronzed section of hair-roughened torso was visible between the parted edges of his shirt and she wanted to touch, explore, taste … it was as though he had got under her skin and changed her from inside out, teaching her to crave what she had never even thought of before. Now she didn’t just think, she acted. She raised her hands to that hard flat abdomen and let her palms glide up over the corrugated muscles to discover the warm skin and revel shamelessly in the way that her touch made him tense and roughly snatch his breath in.
Navarre lifted her free of her gown and she stood there, feeling alarmingly naked in only her high heels and a flimsy pair of white silk knickers. He sank down on the side of the bed and drew her down between his spread thighs, nibbling sensuously at her swollen lower lip while he eased his hand beneath the silk and rubbed the most sensitive spot of all with a skill and rhythm that provoked a series of gasps from her throat.
‘I want you naked, ma petite …’ he breathed thickly as he slid down her knickers and removed them, flipping off her shoes with the careless casual skill of a man practised at undressing women. ‘And then I want you every way I can have you.’
Navarre bent her back over his arm and brought his mouth down hungrily on the proud pouting tip of an engorged nipple, drawing on the sensitised bud while his hand continued to explore the most sensitive part of her. Her fingers dug into his black cropped hair as he caressed her, a sharp arrow of need slivering through her. ‘You’re wearing too many clothes,’ she told him shakily.
He settled her down on the bed and stood over her stripping. The shirt and the trousers were followed by his boxers. She had never seen a man naked and aroused before and she couldn’t take her eyes off the long thick steel of his bold length. She was both intimidated and aroused by the size of him. Her face hot with self-consciousness, she scrabbled below the covers, her entire body tingling with extra-sensory awareness. He tossed foil-wrapped condoms down on top of the bedside cabinet and slid in beside her, so hot and hard and strong that he sent a wave of energising desire through her the instant she came into contact with his very male physique.
He detached the diamond earrings still dangling from her ears and set them aside, brilliant green eyes locked to her anxious face. ‘What’s wrong?’
As he leant do
wn to her she closed her arms round his neck and kissed him, needing the oblivion of passion to feel secure, trembling as the hot hardness of his muscular body connected with hers. He lowered his tousled dark head and kissed her breasts, teasing her straining nipples with his tongue and pulling on the oversensitive buds until her hips squirmed in frustration on the mattress. Only then did he touch her where she most needed to be touched. He explored the silken warmth between her thighs with deft fingers and then he subjected that tender flesh to his mouth. She was unprepared for that ultimate intimacy and she jerked away in shock and tried to withdraw from it, but he closed his hands on her hips and held her fast until sensation spread like wildfire at the heart of her and entrapped her as surely as a prison cell. She wanted more of that wild, intoxicating feeling, she couldn’t help wanting more; she was a slave to sensation. The hunger rose like a great white roar inside her, bypassing her every attempt to control it. Her body was shaking and the constricted knot at her core was notching tighter and tighter until the pleasure just rose in a huge overwhelming tide and engulfed her, leaving her shuddering and crying out in reaction.
‘Navarre …’ she whispered jaggedly.
‘You liked that, ma petite,’ he husked with all the satisfaction of a man who knew he had given a woman unimaginable pleasure.
Numbly she nodded, every reaction slowed down. It had never occurred to her that her body could feel anything that intensely and in the stunned aftermath of that climax she was only dimly aware that he was reaching for a condom, and then he was reaching for her again. Her body was pliant with obedience, already trained to expect pleasure from him, and as he pushed back her thighs and rose over her she quivered with the awareness of him hard and bold and alien at her tiny entrance, but there was a sense of trust as well.