by Penny Jordan
She was still trembling with its aftershock seconds later, when he moved up the bed to hold her, wrapping her tightly in his arms, his breath warm against the top of her head.
Was it because it had been such a long time since he had done this that her reaction had affected him so much? Luke questioned himself. Had he somehow forgotten just how intense the pleasure of pleasuring a woman was for him? Had he somehow managed to overlook the way it made him feel? Because he was damn sure that no one had given him this feeling before. Exhilarated, Suzy clung to Luke. His naked flesh felt smooth and warm beneath her fingertips. Idly she traced the line of his collarbone, and then pressed a small kiss to it for no other reason than that she wanted to. She ran her finger around the aureole of his nipple, dark and flat, unlike the rosy fullness of her own. The nipple itself was different too. She teased it languidly and then burrowed her face against his chest, relishing the scent and taste of him.
‘If you keep doing that…’ Luke warned her rawly.
‘You’ll do what?’ Suzy challenged him deliberately.
‘This,’ he responded promptly, rolling her over and then beneath him.
Eagerly Suzy opened her legs and wrapped them round him, welcoming him into her soft warmth. Desire ran through her with liquid heat, but more than that, as her hips lifted and writhed and her body welcomed him with fierce female longing, Suzy recognised that it wasn’t just her body that could feel him, that wanted him. It was her heart and her mind as well! And that meant—
But, no, she did not want to think about what that meant right now. In fact she did not want to think at all. She simply wanted to know. To experience. To feel. To be here in this place at this time with this man, and to hold on to what they were sharing for ever.
A sensation of exquisite urgency was filling her, taking her with him through time and space. Each thrust of his powerful body within her own brought them closer, physically and emotionally.
The increasingly fast movement of his thrusts was pushing her up the bed, and Suzy had to reach out to grab hold of the bedpost behind her.
In that same moment she heard his harsh cry, and felt again that same rainbow explosion within herself as she reached her climax, and it showered her whole body with quick silver darts of pleasure.
Soul mates. Meant to be together.
The words, the knowledge floated through her like precious stars set in a perfect sky.
As they lay in a damp and relaxed tumble of arms and legs, Suzy’s head on his chest, his arms wrapped hard around her, Luke marvelled again at the intensity of his own pleasure. He had been so overwhelmed by his need for her that he hadn’t even had time to think about any practicalities.
In his youth, when he had been as keen on exploring sex as any other teenager, he had practised safe sex—primarily because he had had no wish to become a father before he was ready. Over the last few years his career had meant that sex, safe or otherwise, simply wasn’t on his personal agenda. But he had taken Suzy to bed without even taking the most rudimentary health precautions. She would be protected against pregnancy, of course, but it was a bit late now to demand a full report on her sexual health and history!
Moonlight streamed in through the window, leaving a silver trail on Luke’s naked body. Suzy traced it with one loving finger, frowning as she suddenly found the hard ridge of a scar. Leaning up, she looked down at it, her heart twisting as she saw its raw newness. Overwhelmed by her feelings for him, she bent her head and tenderly placed her lips against the puckered ridge of flesh.
Immediately Luke tensed, wrenching himself away from her.
‘What is it?’ Suzy asked him in concern. ‘Did I hurt you?’
When he shook his head she asked softly. ‘How did it happen, Luke?’ She couldn’t bear to think of him being in danger, being hurt.
Pushing her away, Luke said harshly, ‘If you must know it was caused by a woman just like you!’
He could see the shock in her face, but he ignored it.
‘She may not have fired the bullet that caused it, but she was still responsible.’
A dark, frightening anger filled his expression, banishing the intimacy they had shared. Bitterly Luke contemplated what he had done. How could he not have controlled himself? Stopped himself? How could she have made him feel like that? How could she have made him want like that, when she was everything he did not want in a woman? Anger and self-disgust left a sour taste in his mouth.
‘Luke?’ Suzy whispered hesitantly.
Why wasn’t he saying anything to her? Why was he turning away from her instead of holding her as she longed for him to do?
He had to make it plain to her that what had just happened between them hadn’t left him vulnerable or open to any kind of persuasion, Luke told himself. He could still feel the soft warmth of her lips against his scar. Anger burned through him. A gunshot wound was nothing compared with what he could see inside his head. He saw the smouldering rubble of what had once been a home, the body of the pretty young woman who had lived in it lying on the ground like that of a broken doll, murdered, and all because some damn female journalist had ignored his explicit instructions so that she could get her human interest story…
‘Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the fact that we’ve had sex changes anything,’ he told Suzy brutally. ‘It doesn’t! After all, we both know that sex is the currency you favour. On this occasion it didn’t work!’
A cold feeling of sickness was crawling through her. Shock, anguish, despair—she could feel them all.
Luke was making it humiliatingly plain that he had simply used her for sex. How could she have been so stupid as to allow herself to think—To think what? That because for her sexual intimacy was inextricably linked to emotional intimacy Luke would think the same thing? That because she could not stop herself from feeling the way she did about him he shared those feelings? Was she totally crazy? Hadn’t he just made it brutally plain to her that he did not?
Silently Suzy turned away from him, whilst pain raked her with burning claws.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘I’M BORED!’
Charlie’s petulant comment was a welcome interruption to Suzy’s agonised inner examination of what had happened with Luke last night.
She and the children had breakfasted alone, Lucy informing her with a world-weary sigh that, ‘Daddy and Luke are talking business and we aren’t allowed to interrupt them.’
Was it business that had been responsible for Luke’s absence from both the bed they had shared last night and the suite when she had woken up this morning? Suzy didn’t really care! She was glad he seemed to have forgotten his threat to stay with her day and night, and was just relieved that she hadn’t had to go through the embarrassment and humiliation of seeing him.
In fact she wished passionately that she might never have to see him again! How could he have used her so cold-bloodedly—and more importantly, how could she have let him?
‘It’s a beautiful day,’ she responded to Charlie’s statement of his boredom. ‘Why don’t you go for a swim?’
She had seen the swimming pool from her vantage point on the hillside above the villa, and had admired the elegance of its tranquil setting.
‘We can’t go swimming,’ Charlie told her crossly.
Suzy frowned, wondering if perhaps their father had put a ban on them swimming without adult supervision. But before she could say anything Lucy told her unhappily, ‘We can’t swim because Mummy sent us with the wrong clothes. She forgot about packing our swimming things.’
Forgot? Suzy felt a sharp stab of anger against the children’s mother as she looked at Lucy’s downbent head, and wondered cynically if it was just that the children’s swimming things had been forgotten or if she had deliberately sent them away with the wrong clothes in order to make life difficult for their father.
‘Well, perhaps you could ask Daddy to buy some new things for you?’ she suggested practically. The resort had any number of shops selling
clothes and, whilst they might be expensive, Sir Peter Verey did not strike her as a man who had to watch his budget!
A maid came in to clear away the breakfast things, and through the open door Suzy could see a powerfully built man standing in the hallway.
One of Luke’s men? Although there was no obvious evidence of the villa being heavily guarded, Suzy suspected that if she tried to make any attempt to leave she would find that she wasn’t allowed to get very far.
Idly she wondered just what it was that demanded Luke’s presence here. Certainly the soldiers she had seen departing must have something to do with it. It must be politically delicate rather than dangerous, she suspected, otherwise the children wouldn’t be here. Sir Peter might not be a particularly hands-on father, but surely he wouldn’t risk exposing his children to danger?
‘It’s no use us asking Daddy to take us shopping. He’ll just say that he’s too busy.’ Lucy informed Suzy, her words breaking into her thoughts.
The weary resignation in her voice made Suzy’s heart ache for her. It told of a small lifetime of being told that her parents were ‘too busy’.
‘But Suzy could take us! Lucy, let’s go and ask Daddy if she can!’ Charlie suggested excitedly, getting off his chair.
‘If she can what?’
Suzy spun round as Sir Peter and Luke came into the room.
‘Daddy, Mummy forgot to pack our swimsuits and our shorts and things,’ Lucy answered her father, a little reluctantly.
She obviously felt that what she was saying was a betrayal of her mother, Suzy recognised.
‘Yes, and we want Suzy to take us out and buy some new ones,’ Charlie added importantly.
Suzy could feel both Sir Peter and Luke looking at her. The relaxed approval in Sir Peter’s eyes certainly wasn’t mirrored in Luke’s.
Suzy’s heart gave a painful jerk. The sight of him was releasing the despair and anguish she had been fighting to ignore. Self-contempt and misery crawled through her veins like poison. And yet, as she dragged her gaze from Luke’s face, Suzy acknowledged that it wasn’t the anger she should be feeling that was making her tremble inwardly, but a destructive and humiliating ache of longing!
She was distantly aware of Sir Peter exclaiming enthusiastically, ‘What an excellent idea! My dear, you are a godsend!’
‘Peter, I don’t think—’ Luke began, an ominous expression in his eyes as he cast Suzy a freezing look of contempt.
‘Luke, I know you want her all to yourself, and I can’t blame you.’ Sir Peter smiled. ‘But we mustn’t disappoint the children!’
Luke had intended to spend the morning catching up on some paperwork and trying to see if there wasn’t some way that President Njambla could be pinned down to a definite date in order that he could wind up the whole exercise with as much speed as possible. He told himself he should have guessed that Suzy would try to pull this kind of trick.
He had already given orders that no one was to be allowed to leave the villa without his permission, and thanks to the high wall that surrounded the property it was impossible to leave other than via one of the discreetly guarded gates.
The staff all lived in, and had been thoroughly vetted, and it should have been an easy task to ensure that Suzy did not have any outside contact with anyone. He had taken possession of her mobile phone and her passport.
Taken possession! Luke wished his brain had not supplied him with those two particular words. Last night he had physically taken possession of Suzy herself, but only because his desire for her had taken possession of him!
‘Indeed we mustn’t,’ Luke answered Sir Peter grimly. ‘I’ll organise a car. Are you ready to leave now?’ he asked Suzy curtly.
‘Well, I need to go upstairs and get my bag,’ Suzy responded shakily as she tried to withstand the look he was giving her.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Luke announced, leaving her with no option other than to walk towards the door, uncomfortably aware as she did so that he was following her.
Halfway up the stairs she asked herself bitterly why, after what he had done to her and what he had said to her, the reaction of her body to the knowledge that he was so close behind her now was one of longing and not rejection.
Quickening her step, she headed for their suite. But as she reached for the door handle Luke was there before her. Suzy flinched as she felt the brief brush of hard fingertips against her wrist.
‘Quite a clever move,’ Luke said conversationally as he closed the door, imprisoning her with him in the room’s heavy silence. ‘I had forgotten that female reporters are different from the rest of their sex and do not possess any scruples where children are concerned.’
There was a look in his eyes that confused Suzy—a mixture of biting contempt and savage anger laced with pain, as though somehow his words had a personal meaning for him.
‘I am not using the children!’ Suzy denied heatedly.
‘It was their idea to approach their father. And besides, I could hardly manufacture the fact that their mother has been spiteful enough to send them here without proper holiday clothes. The dress Lucy was wearing last night looked so uncomfortable. Poor little scraps—I feel so sorry for them,’ Suzy told him emotionally.
Luke could feel himself tensing as he listened to her. Why, when he knew she was acting, was he allowing himself to react to her faked emotions, allowing her to needle her way under his professional skin, letting her touch personal nerve-endings he had no damned business allowing her to touch?
‘And as for using them! You’re a fine one to talk about that!’ she accused him angrily. ‘You’re keeping me imprisoned here because whatever it is that is going on might potentially be dangerous—and yet you are using the children as camouflage!’
‘The children’s presence here is directly against my wishes,’ Luke told her shortly, looking away from her.
‘So you mean that there is actually someone who can’t be bullied, threatened and coerced into doing what you want?’ Suzy couldn’t resist demanding.
Immediately Luke turned round, subjecting her to a narrow-eyed gaze that made her want to shiver, as though her flesh had been touched by a blast of cold air.
‘Coerced?’ Luke challenged her. ‘If by that you are trying to imply that last night I coerced you…you certainly didn’t give me the impression that you didn’t want what was happening. In fact—’
‘I don’t want to talk about last night,’ Suzy interrupted him wildly. ‘I don’t.’
Was that because she didn’t want to have the pathetic remnants of the fantasies and daydreams she was holding onto wrenched from her? Why not? What was the point in stubbornly clinging to them? They were worthless…meaningless…like the physical act she had shared with Luke!
‘Save the emotional histrionics for Peter,’ Luke told her contemptuously. ‘He’s becoming besotted enough with you to believe them!’
His words made Suzy frown. Certainly Peter was enjoying pretending to flirt with her, but a pretence at flirtation was all it was. If Suzy could see that she wondered why Luke, who was surely trained to observe and analyse people’s behaviour and reactions, could not.
‘The children will be waiting,’ she told him stiffly.
‘I’ll just get my bag.’
Before she could move, Luke said, ‘Stay here. I’ll get it.’
His unexpected chivalrous gesture caught her off guard, but nowhere near so much as his casual question as he picked up a briefcase and opened it.
‘Are you all right for money?’
‘Yes. I’ve got enough of my own.’ Suzy stopped him quickly.
His concern for her after his earlier comments was like balm on a painful wound, and she watched silently as he closed his case and then crossed the room to pick up her small handbag. It looked tiny grasped in his large hand as he brought it to her.
‘And just remember,’ he warned her grimly, ‘I’m going to be right beside you. If you were thinking—’
‘You mean that you’r
e coming with us?’
Luke’s hand was pressing against her wrist and Suzy could barely think for the effect his touch was having on her body.
‘Why not? You’re my partner, after all, and according to Peter I can’t bear to let you out of my sight,’ he told her derisively.
He certainly wasn’t exhibiting any concern for her now, Suzy recognised. He was standing so close that she felt as though she could hardly breathe.
Automatically Suzy stepped back. Her mind and body were tearing her apart with the ferocity of the conflicting messages they were sending her. She wanted to go somewhere quiet and dark and stay there until she felt able to cope. Instead she was going to have to go to the resort, with Luke at her side and a smile pinned to her face.
Impulsively she turned to Luke, driven to get him to believe her and to set her free, but the words died unspoken as she saw the look on his face.
Well, if he could feel contemptuous about her then somehow she would learn to feel the same way about him, she told herself fiercely, and walked towards the door.
As he watched her Luke too was prey to conflicting emotions. He had absolutely no doubt that his suspicions concerning her were correct. And, that being the case, it was essential that he prevented her from having any kind of contact with anyone she might pass information on to. In that sense, in the professional sense, she was his enemy.
But his anger and bitterness towards her because of what she was—they were not professionally objective feelings, in any way, shape or form. They were personal. And on that personal level those feelings were unacceptable, Luke told himself grimly. Unacceptable and potentially prejudicial to his ability to do his job.
When fighting men became battle-weary they ceased to be effective. That was one of the reasons why he had left the Army. Because he had begun to feel he had fought too many wars and seen too much death. Was he now experiencing a similar syndrome within his current work? Was Suzy Roberts getting to him because for some reason he was no longer an effective operative? Or was he no longer an effective operative because Suzy Roberts was getting to him?