by Penny Jordan
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 through 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 nex
t 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.
‘I just don’t need this,’ Suzy heard him mutter savagely, but then his hand was pushing through her hair, securing her head at just the right angle for his mouth to home in on hers, to take it and make her want to return the passion she could feel in his kiss. It was the same passion that was running through her like liquid fire and honey. Any thought of resisting him or of denying herself the pleasure her body craved was forgotten!
She lifted up her arms and put them round him. This time it was her tongue-tip that probed the line of his lips, but it was Luke who drew it deep inside the dark, warm sensuality of his mouth, coaxing it, encouraging it, and then fiercely mating with it. Her heart was bouncing around inside her chest like a yo-yo. She could hardly breathe—and not just because of the way Luke was kissing her.
Like a snake sloughing off an unwanted skin, she wriggled her body until the towel dropped off, her action driven by instinct and not any deliberate thought. She was incapable of that! Incapable of anything other than responding to the subtle pressure of Luke’s hard hand holding her head, Luke’s equally hard mouth on hers.
His hands were on her naked back, splaying out against her skin, sliding downwards to her waist and then her buttocks, cupping their rounded softness and then pulling her fiercely into his own body, his own arousal. Helpless to stop herself, Suzy ground her hips against him.
What he was doing was crazy, Luke warned himself. He must be out of his mind for even thinking about contemplating what he was contemplating. If he had any sense he would back off right now and—
He felt Suzy’s body move against his own, heard the soft, hot sound of excitement she made against his skin and his aroused body refused to obey his demands. He lifted his hand to cover her naked breast, feeling the taut nub push eagerly against his palm.
Suddenly Suzy realised what she was doing. With a small moan of anguish she pushed at Luke’s chest.
Immediately he set her free. His face was hard with anger and her own face felt tight with shock and misery.
Unsteadily Suzy retrieved her towel, dreading what Luke might be going to say. Had he guessed what he had done to her? How he had made her feel? How he had made her want him?
To her relief he strode towards the bathroom without saying anything, leaving her alone to dress.
In the bathroom Luke fought furiously to sandbag his feelings. How could he have allowed himself to react to her like that—to respond to her like that? He tried to pinpoint the second things had got out of control, and the reason, rerunning the whole thing through his head in order to reexamine it and sort out some kind of damage limitation plan. But to his disbelief he realised that remembering how Suzy had looked standing there naked was already arousing him again.
Turning on the shower, Luke stepped under its icy blast, savagely angry with himself and equally angry with Suzy. Did she really think he had been deceived by the role she was trying to play, or by the white-faced look of despair he had seen in her eyes as she tore herself out of his arms?
As she tore herself out of his arms. The icy jets of water needled onto Luke’s skin unnoticed as he stood still.
Suzy had been the one to end their intimacy, not him, and if she had not done so by now she would be lying beneath his body.
Cursing himself Luke tried to ignore the images his mind was relaying to him. He was a man who intended to live his life to a specific moral code; she was a woman who didn’t have a moral bone in her body! An impossible coupling! And he intended to ensure that it remained impossible!
‘Ready?’
Numbly Suzy nodded her head, not trusting herself to speak.
She was wearing a simple linen top with shoestring straps with her trousers, and Luke frowned as he looked at her, recognising how effective the outfit was at making her appear fragile and somehow vulnerable.
As he opened the suite door for her Suzy snatched a brief look at Luke, helplessly aware that the sight of him, in a pair of immaculate dark-coloured trousers and an equally immaculate soft white shirt, was doing things to her she had no wish whatsoever to acknowledge.
As they descended the impressive staircase together, Suzy was acutely conscious of him at her side. When they reached the hallway he touched her bare arm lightly, and immediately she flinched.
‘We’re a couple, remember?’ Luke warned her in a low, cold voice.
As he reached past her to push open the door Suzy caught the clean male smell of his skin, and immediately a quiver of response ran down her spine. She felt an overwhelming urge to turn round and bury her face in his throat, just bre
athe in the smell of him until she was drunk on it.
‘In here!’
The door opened and Suzy stepped through it, Luke behind her. The two children she had seen earlier were seated on a windowseat, their heads bent over a computer game. Suzy felt an unexpected tug of emotion as she saw that, despite their clean clothes, they somehow had a heart-rending air of neglect about them.
Was it because of her own childhood she was so immediately and instinctively aware that these children lacked a mother’s loving input into their lives? Suzy wondered ruefully as she watched them.
Sir Peter was picking up the drink which had just been poured for him by the smartly dressed waiter. As he saw them he put it down.
‘There you are! Suzy, my dear, what will you have to drink, Luke, are you going to break your normal abstinence tonight?’
For all that he was their host, Suzy could see that Sir Peter was actually a little in awe of Luke, and she watched the interaction between the two men curiously as Luke announced that he would simply have a tonic.
‘And Suzy?’ Sir Peter pressed, giving her another warm smile.
‘Tonic for me too,’ she echoed.
‘I’m afraid we have to let the children have dinner with us,’ Sir Peter apologised to Suzy as the young Italian waiter handed her her drink. ‘It really is a nuisance having them here, but I’m afraid I wasn’t given the opportunity to refuse.’
A heavy sigh accompanied the frowning look Sir Peter gave his children, and Suzy’s sympathy for them increased.
‘Perhaps I should go and introduce myself to them,’ she suggested gently, leaving Luke standing with Sir Peter whilst she made her way over to the windowseat.
As Suzy walked away Luke discovered that his gaze was focused on the gentle sway of her hips and the rounded curves of her bottom.
‘Lovely girl,’ he heard Peter saying appreciatively at his side. ‘I envy you, old chap.’
Luke saw that the other man’s gaze was lingering on Suzy’s curvy posterior as well.
For no reason he could think of Luke moved to block his view.